The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers. (part 3 of 7)

The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers. (part 3 of 7)

After the country and its dependencies had been thoroughly settled under the new government, the republican leaders resolved upon commencing hostilities against Holland, which, during the civil war, had manifested a decided leaning towards the king, and had recently treated the triumphant party with marked disrespect. In the summer of 1652, the Dutch fleet, under its famous commanders Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt, had several encounters with the English ships, under Admirals Blake and Ayscue, without any decided success on either side. But in the ensuing spring, an action was fought between Blake and Van Tromp, in which the latter lost eleven ships. The Dutch then sued for peace, which the Rump Parliament, for various reasons, were little inclined to grant. Their principal motive for prosecuting the war, was a conviction that it tended to restrict the power of Cromwell, to whom they now paid by no means a willing obedience. Cromwell, perceiving their design, proceeded with 300 soldiers to the House (April 1653), and entering with marks of the most violent indignation, loaded the members with reproaches for their robbery and oppression of the public; then stamping with his foot, he gave signal for the soldiers to enter, and addressing himself to the members, ‘For shame!’ said he; ‘get you gone! give place to honester men! I tell you you are no longer a Parliament: the Lord has done with you!’ He then commanded ‘that bauble,’ meaning the mace, to be taken away, turned out the members, and locking the door, returned to Whitehall with the key in his pocket.

Being still willing to keep up the appearance of a representative government Cromwell summoned one hundred and forty-four persons in England Ireland, and Scotland, to assemble as a Parliament. These individuals chiefly remarkable for fanaticism and ignorance, were denominated the Barebones Parliament, from the name of one of the members, a leather seller, whose assumed name, by a ridiculous usage of the age, was Praise-God Barebones. As the assembly obtained no public respect, Cromwell took an early opportunity of dismissing it. His officers then constituted him PROTECTOR of the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland, with most of the prerogatives of the late king.

The war against Holland was still carried on with great spirit. In the summer of 1653, two naval actions, in which both parties fought with the utmost bravery, terminated in the triumph of the English, and the complete humiliation of the Dutch, who obtained peace on the condition of paying homage to the English flag, expelling the young king from their dominions, and paying a compensation for certain losses to the East India Company. In a war which he subsequently made against Spain, the fleets of the Protector performed some exploits of not less importance. The respect which he thus gained for the English name throughout Europe, is one of the brightest points in his singular history. But while generally successful abroad, he experienced unceasing difficulties in the management of affairs at home. Of the various Parliaments which he summoned, no one was found so carefully composed of his own creatures as to yield readily to his will: he was obliged to dissolve them all in succession, after a short trial. He also experienced great difficulty in raising money, and sometimes applied for loans in the city without success. His own officers could scarcely be kept in subordination, but were constantly plotting a reduction of his authority. The Royalists, on the other hand, never ceased to conspire for his destruction; one named Colonel Titus, went so far as to recommend his assassination in a pamphlet entitled ‘Killing no Murder,’ after reading which he was never seen again to smile.

The last Parliament called by Cromwell was in January 1656; when, besides the Commons, he summoned the few remaining peers, and endeavored, by ennobling some of his officers, to make up a kind of Upper House. This assembly proved as intractable as its predecessors, and he contracted such a disgust at the very nature of a representative legislature, as to resolve, like Charles I, never to call another. His health finally gave way, and he died on the 3d September 1658, a day which was thought to be propitious to him, as it was the anniversary of several of his victories. His eldest son, Richard, a weak young man, succeeded him as Protector, and was at first treated with all imaginable respect; but he could not long maintain a rule which even his father had ultimately failed in asserting. He quietly sunk out of public view, leaving the supreme authority in the hands of the Rump, which had taken the opportunity to reassemble.

THE RESTORATION――DUTCH WAR.

This remnant of an old Parliament continued in power till the autumn of 1659, when it gave way to a council of the officers who had been in command under Cromwell. The latter government, in its turn, yielded to the Rump, which sat down once more in December. The people, finding themselves made the sport of a few ambitious adventurers, began to long for some more fixed and respectable kind of government. At this crisis, General Monk, commander of the forces in Scotland, conceived the design of settling the nation. He left Scotland (January 2, 1660), with a considerable army; and though he kept his thoughts scrupulously to himself, all men bent their eyes upon him, as a person destined to realize their hopes. He reached London (February 3), and was received with feigned respect by the Rump. Some resistance was attempted by Lambert, one of Cromwell’s officers, but in vain. Ere long, Monk was able to procure the restoration of the members who had been excluded from Parliament by Cromwell, who, being a majority, gave an immediate ascendancy to anti-republican views. As soon as this was effected, an act was passed for calling a new and freely-elected Parliament; after which, the existing assembly immediately dissolved itself.

The new Parliament proved to be chiefly composed of Cavaliers and Presbyterians, men agreeing in their attachment to monarchy, though differing in many other views. After some cautious procedure, in which the fears inspired by the late military tyranny were conspicuous, they agreed to invite the king from his retirement in Holland, and to restore him to the throne lost by his father. They were so glad to escape from the existing disorders, that they never thought of making any preliminary arrangement with the king as to the extent of his prerogative. On the 29th of May, being his thirtieth birthday, Charles II entered London amidst such frantic demonstrations of joy, that he could not help thinking it his own fault, as he said, that he had been so long separated from his people.

One of the first measures of the new monarch was the passing of a bill of indemnity, by which all persons concerned in the late popular movements were pardoned, excepting a few who had been prominently concerned in bringing the king to the block. Harrison, Scrope, and a few other regicides, were tried and executed; and the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were raised from the grave and exhibited upon gibbets. In Scotland, only three persons suffered――the Marquis of Argyle, Johnston of Warriston, and Mr. Guthry, a clergyman: it was considered remarkable, that the marquis had placed the crown upon the king’s head at Scone in the year 1651. Excepting in these acts, the king showed no desire of revenging the death of his father, or his own exclusion from the throne. The Parliament which called him home was constituted a legal one by his own ratification of an act for that purpose. In the settlement of other matters, it seemed the prevailing wish that all the institutions of the country should be made as nearly what they were before the civil war as possible. Thus the Episcopal church was established both in England and Scotland, though not without causing about a third of the clergy in both countries to resign their charges. The stern and enthusiastic piety which prevailed during the civil war, was now treated with ridicule, and the most of the people vied with each other in that licentious riot and drunkenness which is condemned by all systems of faith. The nation, in fact, seemed intoxicated with the safety which they supposed themselves to have at length gained, in a restoration to the imperfect freedom they enjoyed before the civil war.

Ireland, which, during the Protectorate, had been managed by Henry, a younger son of Cromwell, acceded to the Restoration with as much readiness as any other part of the British dominions. An act was passed for settling property, by which the Catholics obtained some slight benefits, but which, in its main effects, tended to confirm the rights of the settlers introduced by Cromwell.

Though Charles had been restored with the approbation of a very large portion of his subjects, his most zealous friends were the Royalists and Episcopalians; hence he almost immediately subsided into the character of a party ruler. It was deemed necessary that he should maintain an armed force for the protection of his person, and to keep down popular disturbances. He therefore caused several horse regiments to be embodied under the name of Life Guards, being chiefly composed of Royalist gentlemen upon whom a perfect dependence could be placed; and he afterwards added two or three foot regiments, the whole amounting to about 5000 men. The King paid these troops chiefly out of the money allowed for his own support, for Parliament did not sanction his keeping up such a force, and the nation generally beheld it with suspicion. This was the commencement of a standing army in England.

Personally indolent, dissolute, and deficient in conscientiousness, and surrounded almost exclusively by the ministers of the basest pleasures, Charles was not qualified to retain the sincere respect of a people whose habitual character is grave and virtuous. His extravagant expenditure soon cooled the affections of his Parliament, and he began to find considerable difficulties in obtaining money. To relieve himself from this embarrassment, he accepted £40,000 from the French king for Dunkirk, a French port, which had been acquired by Cromwell. For the same purpose, he married a Portuguese princess of the Catholic religion, who possessed a dowry of half a million. He also commenced (1664) a war against Holland, for apparently no better reason than that, in applying the Parliamentary subsidies necessary for keeping up hostilities, he might have an opportunity of converting part of the money to his own personal use.

This Dutch war was chiefly conducted by sea. On the 3d of June 1665, an English fleet of 114 sail met a Dutch one which numbered just one ship less, near Lowestoffe, and after an obstinate fight, gained a complete victory, depriving the enemy of eighteen vessels, and compelling the rest to take refuge on their own coast. The commander on this occasion was the Duke of York, the king’s younger brother; a man of greater application and more steady principles, but who soon after became unpopular, in consequence of his avowing himself a Catholic.

Some other well-contested actions took place at sea, and the English, upon the whole, confirmed their naval supremacy. Owing, however, to a failure of the supplies, the king was obliged to lay up his best vessels in ordinary, and to send only an inferior force to sea. The Dutch took advantage of this occurrence to send a fleet up the Thames (June 10, 1667), which, meeting with no adequate resistance, threatened to lay the capital in ruins and destroy its shipping. Fortunately, the Dutch admiral did not think it expedient to make this attempt, but retired with the ebb of the tide, after having sunk and burnt nearly twenty vessels, and done much other damage. The king, finding himself rather impoverished than enriched by the war, soon after concluded a peace.

PLAGUE AND FIRE OF LONDON――PERSECUTION IN SCOTLAND.

In the meantime two extraordinary calamities had befallen the metropolis. In the summer of 1665, London was visited by a plague, which swept off about 100,000 people, and did not experience any abatement till the approach of cold weather. On this occasion the city presented a wide and heartrending scene of misery and desolation. Rows of houses stood tenantless, and open to the winds; the chief thoroughfares were overgrown with grass. The few individuals who ventured abroad, walked in the middle of the streets, and when they met, declined on opposite sides to avoid the contact of each other. At one moment were heard the ravings of delirium, or the wail of sorrow, from the infected dwelling; at another the merry song or careless laugh from the tavern, where men were seeking to drown in debauchery all sense of their awful situation. Since 1665, the plague has not again occurred in London, or in any other part of the kingdom.

The second calamity was a conflagration, which commenced on the night of Sunday the 2d of September 1666, in the eastern and more crowded part of the city. The direction and violence of the wind, the combustible nature of the houses, and the defective arrangements of that age for extinguishing fires, combined to favor the progress of the flames, which raged during the whole of the week, and burnt all the part of the city which lies between the Tower and the Temple. By this calamity, 13,200 houses and 89 churches, covering in all 430 acres of ground, were destroyed. The flame at one time formed a column a mile in diameter, and seemed to mingle with the clouds. It rendered the night as clear as day for ten miles around the city, and is said to have produced an effect upon the sky which was observed on the borders of Scotland. It had one good effect, in causing the streets to be formed much wider than before, by which the city was rendered more healthy. By the populace, this fire was believed to have been the work of the Catholics, and a tall pillar, with an inscription to that effect, was reared in the city, as a monument of the calamity. This pillar with its inscription still exists; but the fire is now believed to have been occasioned purely by accident.

THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE――THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.

The kingdom of France was at this period, under Louis XIV, rising into a degree of power and wealth which it had never before known. Louis had some claims through his wife upon the Netherlands (since called Belgium), which were then part of the Spanish dominions. He accordingly endeavored to posess himself of that country by force of arms. A jealousy of his increasing power, and of the Catholic religion, professed by his people, induced the English to wish that his aggressions should be restrained. To gratify them, Charles entered into an alliance with Holland and Sweden, for the purpose of checking the progress of the French king. In this object he was completely successful, and consequently he became very popular. The Parliament, however, having disappointed him of supplies, he soon after changed his policy, and with the assistance of five abandoned ministers――Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, who were called the CABAL, from the initials of their names forming that word, resolved to render himself, if possible, independent of Parliament; in other words, an absolute prince. In consideration of a large bribe from Louis, he agreed to join France in a war against Holland, with a view of putting an end to that example of a Protestant republic.

War was accordingly declared in May 1672, and the naval force of England was employed in meeting that of the Dutch by sea; while Louis led a powerful army across the Rhine, and in a very short time had nearly reduced the whole of the Seven Provinces. In this emergency the Dutch could only save themselves from absolute ruin by laying a great part of their country under water. The English, who had not entered heartily into this war, soon began to be alarmed for the fate of Holland, which was almost their only support against the dread of Popery; and though forbidden under severe penalties to censure the government measures, they soon contrived to exhibit so much dissatisfaction, as to render a change of policy unavoidable.

The king found it necessary to assemble his Parliament (February 1673), and it was no sooner met than it passed some acts highly unfavorable to his designs. Among these was the famous Test Act, so called because it enacted the imposition of a religious oath upon all persons about to enter the public service, the design being to exclude the Catholics from office. Above all things, the House of Commons declared that it would grant no more supplies for the Dutch war. The king resolved to prorogue the assembly; but before he could do so, they voted the alliance with France, and several of his ministers to be grievances. Charles, who, in wishing to be absolute, had been inspired by no other motive than a desire of ease, now saw that there was a better chance of his favorite indulgence in giving way to his subjects than in any other course; and he at once abandoned all his former measures, and concluded a separate peace with Holland. This country was now beginning, under the conduct of the Prince of Orange, to make a good defense against the French, which it was the better enabled to do by obtaining the friendship of Germany and Spain. In the year 1678, after a war which, without any decisive victories, will ever reflect lustre upon Holland, a peace was concluded. The Prince of Orange, in the previous year, had married the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of the Duke of York, and educated in the reformed faith――an alliance which pleased the English, from its strengthening the Protestant interest, and which was destined, some years after, to bring about important results.

During the whole of this reign the corruptness of the court was very great; but it was in some measure the protection of the public. Charles spent vast sums in debauchery, and thus made himself more dependent on his Commons than he would otherwise have been. Many of the Commons were exceedingly corrupt, and all kinds of evil methods were adopted to render them more so. Bribes were distributed among them, and they were frequently closeted; that is, brought into the presence of the king individually, and personally solicited for votes. Still a considerable party maintained its purity and independence, and long kept the majority against the court.

THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT――DEATH OF CHARLES II.

A fit of slavishness now befell the English nation, as remarkable in its extent as the late fury against the court and the Catholics. Supported by this mood of the people, Charles caused all the corporations in the kingdom to give up their old charters, and accept of new ones, by which he became all-powerful over the elections of magistrates, and consequently, over those of parliamentary representatives should ever another election of that kind take place. The leaders of the late majority in Parliament, comprising the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Russell (son of the Earl of Bedford), the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard, the famous Algernon Sydney, and John Hampden, grandson of the patriot who first resisted Charles I, being reduced to absolute despair, formed a project for raising an insurrection in London, to be supported by one in the west of England, and another under the Earl of Argyle in Scotland, and the object of which should be confined to a melioration of the government. They were betrayed by an associate named Rumsay, and implicated, by a train of unfortunate circumstances, in a plot for assassinating the king (styled the Rye-house Plot), of which they were perfectly innocent. By the execution of Russell and Sidney, and some other severities, the triumph of the king might be considered as completed. After having been an absolute sovereign for nearly four years, he died (February 6, 1685), professing himself at the last to be a Catholic, and was succeeded by the DUKE OF YORK.

Charles II was a prince of a gay and cheerful disposition, and so noted a sayer of witty things, and so addicted to humorous amusements, that he was called ‘the Merry Monarch.’ His wit, shrewdness, and good humor, form the best side of his character. On the other side, we find a deficiency of almost every active virtue and of all steady principle. He never allowed any duty of his station, or any claim upon his justice or clemency, to interfere with his own interests, or even to disturb him in his indolent and vicious pleasures. Neglecting his wife, who never had any children, he spent most of his time with his various mistresses, who openly lived at court, and were even received by the queen. Of these ladies, the most remarkable were Louisa Querouaile, whom he created Duchess of Portsmouth, and Barbara Villiers, whom he made Duchess of Cleveland. Six sons of the king by his mistresses were made dukes, and five of these were the progenitors of families in the present English nobility.

During the reign of Charles II, the nation advanced considerably in the arts of navigation and commerce; and the manufactures of brass, glass, silk, hats, and paper, were established. The post-office, set up during the Commonwealth as a means of raising money, was advanced in this reign, and the penny-post was now begun in London by a private person. Roads were greatly improved, and stage-coach traveling was commenced, though not carried to any great extent. During this reign, tea, coffee, and chocolate, which have had a great effect in improving and softening manners, were first introduced. In 1660, the Royal Society was established in London, for the cultivation of natural science, mathematics, and all useful knowledge. The science of astronomy was greatly advanced by the investigations of Flamstead and Halley. But the greatest contribution to science was made by Sir Isaac Newton, whose Principles of Natural Philosophy were published in 1683: in this work, the true theory of planetary motion was first explained, in reference to the principle of gravitation. Among the literary men of the period, the first place is to be assigned to John Milton, author of the ‘Paradise Lost’ and other poems: Samuel Butler shines as a humorous and satirical poet, and Edmund Waller as a lyrist. Amongst divines, the highest names connected with the church are those of Jeremy Taylor and Isaac Barrow; while the highest among the Nonconformists are those of Richard Baxter and John Bunyan. The theatre, which had been suppressed during the Commonwealth, was revived in this reign; but the drama exhibited less talent and more licentiousness than it did in the previous reigns. Female characters, which had formerly been acted by men, were now for the first time performed by females.

JAMES II――EXPEDITION OF MONMOUTH.

Charles II, with all his faults, had conducted himself towards his subjects with so much personal cordiality, and had so well calculated his ground before making any aggressions upon popular liberty, that he might probably have pursued his arbitrary career for many years longer. But his brother James, though much more respectable as a man, more industrious, and more sincere, wanted entirely the easiness of carriage, pleasantry, and penetration, which were the grounds of the late king’s popularity and success. He was, moreover, an avowed Catholic, and inspired by an ardent desire of reforming the nation back into that faith. He began his reign by declaring before the privy-council his intention to govern solely by the laws, and to maintain the existing church; and such was the confidence in his sincerity, that he soon became very popular. Addresses poured in upon him from all quarters, professing the most abject devotion to his person. The Parliament called by him voted an ample revenue, and expressed the greatest servility towards him in all things. The doctrines of passive obedience, and the divine right of the sovereign, were now openly preached. The university of Oxford promulgated an elaborate declaration of passive obedience to rulers, which they declared to be ‘clear, absolute, and without any exception of any state or order of men.’

The remains of the Whig party still existed, though in exile, and there were some districts of the country where they were supposed to have considerable influence. The Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyle (the latter of whom had been condemned to death in Scotland, for adding a qualification to the test-oath, but had escaped) met in Holland, and projected two separate invasions, for the purpose of expelling King James. The former soon after landed in the west of England with a small retinue, and quickly found himself at the head of 5000 persons, though irregularly armed. At several places he caused himself to be proclaimed king, which offended many of his principal adherents, as inconsistent with his previous engagements. Upon the whole, his conduct was not energetic enough for the management of such an enterprise. Being attacked by the king’s troops near Bridgewater, his infantry fought with some spirit, but being deserted by the cavalry, and by the duke himself, were obliged to give way. Monmouth was taken and executed. Many of his followers were hanged without form of trial by the royal troops, and others were afterwards put to death, with hardly any more formality, by the celebrated Chief-Justice Jefferies, whom the king sent down with a commission to try the offenders. The butchery of several hundred men of low condition, who were unable of themselves to do any harm to the government, was looked upon as a most unjustifiable piece of cruelty, even if it had been legally done; and the principal blame was popularly ascribed to the king.

The Earl of Argyle sailed in May with a corresponding expedition, and landed in that part of the West Highlands which owned his authority. Unfortunately for him, the government had received warning, and seized all the gentlemen of his clan upon whom he had chiefly depended. He nevertheless raised between 2000 and 3000 men, and made a timid advance to Glasgow, in the expectation of being joined by the persecuted Presbyterians of that part of the country. Being surrounded on the march by various parties of troops, he dispersed his army, and sought to escape in disguise, but was taken, brought to Edinburg, and executed. Thus terminated the last effort made by the Whig party to ameliorate the despotic sway of the Stuarts.

ARBITRARY MEASURES OF THE KING.

Encouraged by his success, James conceived that he might safely begin the process of changing the established religion of the country. On the plea of his supremacy over the church, he took the liberty of dispensing with the test-oath in favor of some Catholic officers, and thus broke an act which was looked upon, under existing circumstances, as the chief safeguard of the Protestant faith. His Parliament, servile as it was in temporal matters, took the alarm at this spiritual danger, and gave the king so effectual a resistance that he resorted to a dissolution. Transactions precisely similar took place in Scotland.

Heedless of these symptoms, he proclaimed a universal toleration, for the purpose of relieving the Catholics, and thus assumed the unconstitutional right of dispensing with acts of Parliament. The nation was thrown by this measure, and by the numerous promotions of Roman Catholics, into a state of great alarm; even the clergy, who had been so eager to preach an implicit obedience to the royal will, began to see that it might be productive of much danger. When James commanded that his proclamation of toleration should be read in every pulpit in the country, only two hundred of the clergy obeyed. Six of the bishops joined in a respectful petition against the order; but the king declared that document to be a seditious libel, and threw the petitioners into the Tower. In June 1688, they were tried in Westminster Hall, and to the infinite joy of the nation acquitted.

Blinded by religious zeal, the king proceeded on his fatal course. In defiance of the law, he held open intercourse with the Pope, for the restoration of Britain to the bosom of the Romish church. He called Catholic lords to the privy-council, and even placed some in the cabinet. Chapels, by his instigation, were everywhere built, and monks and priests went openly about his palace. A court of high commission――a cruel instrument of power under Charles I――was erected, and before this every clerical person who gave any offense to the king was summoned. He also excited great indignation, by violently thrusting a Catholic upon Magdalen College, at Oxford, as its head, and expelling the members for their resistance to his will. Public feelings was wound to the highest pitch of excitement by the queen being delivered (June 10, 1688) of a son, who might be expected to perpetuate the Catholic religion in the country, and whom many even went the length of suspecting to be a suppositious child, brought forward solely for that purpose.

The disaffection produced by these circumstances extended to every class of the king’s subjects, except the small body of Roman Catholics, many of whom could not help regarding the royal measures as imprudent. The Tories were enraged at the ruin threatened to the church of England, which they regarded as the grand support of conservative principles in the empire. The Whigs, who had already made many strenuous efforts to exclude or expel the king, were now more inflamed against him than ever. The clergy, a popular and influential body, were indignant at the injuries inflicted upon their church; and even the dissenters, though comprehended in the general toleration, saw too clearly through its motive, and were too well convinced of the illegality of its manner, and of the danger of its object, as affecting the Protestant faith, to be exempted from the general sentiment. But for the birth of the Prince of Wales, the people at large might have been contented to wait for the relief which was to be expected, after the death of the king, from the succession of the Princess of Orange, who was a Protestant, and united to the chief military defender of that interest in Europe. But this hope was now shut out, and it was necessary to resolve upon some decisive measures for the safety of the national religion.

THE REVOLUTION.

In this crisis, some of the principal nobility and gentry, with a few clergymen, united in a secret address to the Prince of Orange, calling upon him to come over with an armed force, and aid them in protecting their faith and liberties. This prince, who feared that England would soon be joined to France against the few remaining Protestant powers, and also that his prospects of the succession in that country, as nephew and son-in-law of the king, were endangered, listened readily to this call, and immediately collected a large fleet and army, comprising many individuals, natives of both Scotland and England, who had fled from the severe government of the Stuart princes. The preparations for the expedition were conducted with great secrecy, and James was partly blinded to them, by a rumor that their only object was to frighten him into a closer connection with France, in order to make him odious to his subjects. When he was at length assured by his minister in Holland that he might immediately expect a formidable invasion, he grew pale, and dropped the letter from his hands. He immediately ordered a fleet and large army to be collected, and, that he might regain the affections of his subjects, he called a parliament, and undid many of his late measures. The people justly suspected his concessions to be insincere, and were confirmed in their belief, when, on a rumor of the Prince of Orange being put back by a storm, he recalled the writs for assembling Parliament.

On the 19th of October, the Prince of Orange set sail with 50 ships of war, 25 frigates, 25 fire-ships, and 500 transports, containing 15,000 land troops. A storm occasioned some damage and delay; but he soon put to sea again, and proceeded with a fair wind along the British Channel, exhibiting from his own vessel a flag on which were inscribed the words, ‘THE PROTESTANT RELIGION AND THE LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND,’ with the apposite motto of his family, ‘Je Maintiendrei――‘I will maintain.’ As he passed between Dover and Calais, his armament was visible to crowds of spectators on both shores, whose feelings were much excited at once by its appearance and its well-known purpose. The English fleet being detained at Harwich by the same wind which was so favorable to the prince, he landed (November 5) without opposition at Torbay, and immediately proceeded to circulate a manifesto, declaring the grievances of the kingdom, and promising, with the support of the people, to redress them.

At the first there seemed some reason for fear that the prince would not meet with adequate support. On his march to Exeter, and for eight days after arriving there, he was not joined by any person of consequence. The nation, however, soon became alive to the necessity of giving him encouragement. The gentry of Devon and Somersetshires formed an association in his behalf. The Earls of Bedford and Abingdon, with other persons of distinction, repaired to his quarters at Exeter. Lord Delamere took arms in Cheshire; the city of York was siezed by the Earl of Danby; the Earl of Bath, governor of Plymouth, declared for the prince; and the Earl of Devonshire made a like declaration in Derby. Every day discovered some new instance of that general confederacy into which the nation had entered against the measures of the king. But the most dangerous symptom, and that which rendered his affairs desperate, was the spirit which he found to prevail in his army. On his advancing at its head to Salisbury, he learned that some of the principal officers had gone over to the Prince of Orange. Lord Churchill (afterwards famous as Duke of Marlborough), Lord Trelawney, and the king’s son-in-law, George, Prince of Denmark, successively followed this example. Even his daughter, the Princess Anne, deserted him. In great perplexity, he summoned a council of peers, by whose advice writs were issued for a new Parliament, and commissioners despatched to treat with the prince. A kind of infatuation now took possession of the king; and having sent the queen and infant prince privately to France, he quitted the capital at midnight, almost unattended, for the purpose of following them, leaving orders to recall the writs and disband the army. By this procedure, the peace of the country was imminently endangered; but it only served to hasten the complete triumph of the Prince of Orange, who had now advanced to Windsor. The supreme authority seemed on the point of falling into his hands, when, to his great disappointment, the king, having been discovered at Feversham, in Kent, was brought back to London, not without some marks of popular sympathy and affection. There was no alternative but to request the unfortunate monarch to retire to a country-house, where he might await the settlement of affairs. James, finding his palaces taken possession of by Dutch guards, and dreading assassination, took the opportunity to renew his attempt to leave the kingdom. He proceeded on board a vessel in the Medway, and after some obstructions, arrived safely in France, where Louis readily afforded him an asylum.

The same day that the king left Whitehall for the last time, his nephew and son-in-law arrived at St. James’. The public bodies immediately waited on him, to express their zeal for his cause; and such of the members of the late Parliaments as happened to be in town, having met by his invitation, requested him to issue writs for a convention, in order to settle the nation. He was in the same manner, and for the same purpose, requested to call a convention in Scotland. The English convention met on the 22d of January 1689, and during its debates the prince maintained a magnanimous silence and neutrality. The Tory party, though it had joined in calling him over, displayed some scruples respecting the alteration of the succession, and seemed at first inclined to settle the crown on the princess, while William should have only the office of regent; but when this was mentioned to the prince, he calmly replied, that in that event, he should immediately return to Holland. A bill was then passed, declaring that ‘James II, having endeavored to subvert the constitution, by breaking the original contract between the king and the people, and having withdrawn himself from the kingdom, has abdicated the government; and that the throne is thereby become vacant.’ To the bill was added a Declaration of Rights――namely, an enumeration of the various laws by which the royal prerogative and the popular liberties had formerly been settled, but which had been violated and evaded by the Stuart sovereigns. William and Mary, having expressed their willingness to ratify this declaration, were proclaimed king and queen jointly――the administration to rest in William; and the convention was then converted into a Parliament.

In Scotland, where the Presbyterians had resumed an ascendancy, the convention came to a less timid decision. It declared that James, by the abuse of his power, had forfeited all right to the crown――a decision also affecting his posterity: and William and Mary were immediately after proclaimed. By a bill passed in the English Parliament, the succession was settled upon the survivor of the existing royal pair; next upon the Princess Anne and her children; and finally, upon the children of William by any other consort――an arrangement in which no hereditary principle was overlooked, except that which would have given a preference to James and his infant son.

By the Revolution, as this great event was styled, it might be considered as finally decided that the monarchy was not a divine institution, superior to human challenge, as the late kings had represented it, but one dependent on the people, and established and maintained for their benefit.

RESISTANCE IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

The new government was at first extremely popular in Scotland; but one portion of the people was much opposed to it. This consisted of the Highland clans――a primitive race, unable to appreciate the rights which had been gained, prepossessed in favor of direct hereditary succession, and of such warlike habits, that though a minority, they were able to give no small trouble to the peaceful Lowlanders. When the Scottish convention was about to settle the crown on William and Mary, Viscount Dundee, formerly Graham of Claverhouse, and celebrated for his severity upon the recusant Presbyterians, raised an insurrection in the Highlands in favor of King James, while the Duke of Gordon, a Catholic, still held out Edinburgh Castle in the same interest. It was with no small difficulty that the new government could obtain the means of reducing these opponents. The castle, after a protracted siege, was given up in June (1689). General Macky was despatched by William, with a few troops, to join with such forces as he could obtain in Scotland, and endeavor to suppress the insurrection in the Highlands. He encountered Dundee at Killiecrankie (July 27), and, though his troops were greatly superior in number and discipline, experienced a complete defeat. Dundee, however, fell by a musket-shot in the moment of victory, and his army was unable to follow up its advantage. In a short time the Highland clans were induced to yield a nominal obedience to William and Mary.

In Ireland, a much more formidable resistance was offered to the revolution settlement. Since the accession of James, the Romish faith might be described as virtually predominent in that kingdom. The laws against Catholics had been suspended by the royal authority, all public offices were filled by them, and though the established clergy were not deprived of their benefices, very little tithe was paid to them. The viceregal office was held by the Earl of Tyrconnel, a violent and ambitious young man, disposed to second the king in all his imprudent measures, and resolved, in the event of their failing, to throw the country into the hands of the French. The people at large being chiefly Catholics, were warmly attached to the late sovereign, whose cause they regarded as their own.

Early in the spring of 1689, James proceeded from France to Ireland, where he was soon at the head of a large though ill-disciplined army. He immediately ratified an act of the Irish Parliament for annulling that settlement of the Protestants upon the lands of Catholics, which had taken place in the time of Cromwell, and another for attainting 2000 persons of the Protestant faith. The Protestants, finding themselves thus dispossessed of what they considered their property, and exposed to the vengeance of a majority over whom they had long ruled, fled to Londonderry, Inniskillen, and other fortified towns, where they made a desperate resistance, in the hope of being speedily succoured by King William. That sovereign now led over a large army to Ireland, and (July 1) attacked the native forces under his father-in-law at the fords of the river Boyne, near the village of Dunore, where he gained a complete victory.

James was needlessly dispirited by this disaster, and lost no time in sailing again to France. In reality, the Irish made a better appearance, and fought more vigorously, after the battle of the Boyne than before it. The Duke of Berwick, a natural son of James, and the Earl of Tyrconnel, still kept the field with a large body of cavalry, and the infantry were in the meantime effectually protected in the town of Limerick. William invested this town, and in one assault upon it lost 2000 men, which so disheartened him, that he went back to England, leaving his officers to prosecute the war. The Irish army afterwards fought a regular battle at Aghrim, when partly owing to the loss of their brave leader, St. Ruth, they were totally routed. The remains of the Catholic forces took refuge in Limerick, where they finally submitted in terms of a treaty which seemed to secure the Catholic population in all desirable rights and privileges.

REIGN OF WILLIAM III.

Though all military opposition was thus overcome, William soon found difficulties of another kind in the management of the state. The Tories, though glad to save the established church by calling in his interference, had submitted with no good grace to the necessity of making him king; and no sooner was the danger past, than their usual principles of hereditary right were in a great measure revived. From the name of the exiled monarch, they now began to be known by the appellation of Jacobites. James’ hopes of a restoration were thus for a long time kept alive, and the peace of William’s mind was so much embittered, as to make his sovereignty appear a dear purchase. Perhaps the only circumstances which reconciled the king to his situation, was the great additional force he could now bring against the ambitious designs of Louis XIV. Almost from his accession he entered heartily into the combination of European powers for checking this warlike prince, and conducted military operations against him every summer in person. The necessity of having supplies for that purpose rendered him unfit, even if he had been willing, to resist any liberal measures proposed to him in Parliament, and hence his passing of the famous Triennial Act in 1694, by which it was appointed that a new Parliament should be called every third year. In this year died Queen Mary, without offspring; after which William reigned as sole monarch.

The peace of Ryswick, concluded in 1697, by which the French power was confined to the limits, permitted William to spend the concluding years of his reign in peace. In 1700, in consideration that he and his sister-in-law Anne had no children, the famous Act of Succession was passed, by which the crown, failing these two individuals, was settled upon the next Protestant heir, Sophia, Duchess of Hanover, daughter of Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I.

The reign of King William is remarkable for the first legal support of a standing army, and for the commencement of the national debt. It is also distinguished by the first establishment of regular banks for the deposit of money, and the issue of a paper currency. Formerly, the business of banking, as far as necessary, was transacted by goldsmiths, or through the medium of the public Exchequer, by which plans the public was not sufficiently insured against loss. In 1695, the first public establishment for the purpose, the Bank of England, was established by one William Paterson, a scheming Scotsman; and next year the Bank of Scotland was set on foot by one Holland, an English merchant. The capital in the former case being only £1,200,000, and in the latter, the tenth part of that sum.

In the reign of King William flourished Sir William Temple, an eminent political and philosophical writer, to whom is usually assigned the honor of first composing the English language in the fluent and measured manner which afterwards became general. The most profound philosophical writer of the age was John Locke, author of an Essay on the Human Understanding, an Essay on Toleration, and other works. Bishop Tillotson stands high as a writer of elegant sermons. The greatest name in polite literature is that of John Dryden, remarkable for his energetic style of poetry, and his translations of Virgil and Juvenal.

QUEEN ANNE――MARLBOROUGH’S CAMPAIGNS.

William was succeeded by his sister-in-law, ANNE, second daughter of the late James II; a princess now thirty-eight years of age, and chiefly remarkable for her zealous attachment to the church of England. The movement against the king of France had not been confined to Great Britain; it was a combination of that power with the emperor of Germany and the states of Holland. Queen Anne found it necessary to maintain her place in the Grand Alliance, as it was termed; and the Duke of Marlborough was sent over to the continent with a large army to prosecute the war in conjunction with the allies. Now commenced that career of military glory which has rendered the reign of Anne and the name of Marlborough so famous. In Germany and Flanders, under this commander, the British army gained some signal successes, particularly those of Blenheim and Ramillies; in Spain, a smaller army, under the chivalrously brave Earl of Peterborough, performed other services of an important kind. The war, however, was one in which Britain had no real interest――for it has been seen that Spain has continued under a branch of the House of Bourbon without greatly endangering other states.

A party, consisting chiefly of Tories, endeavored, in 1706, to put an end to the war; and France was so much reduced in strength, as to concede all the objects for which the contest had been commenced. But the people were so strongly inspired with a desire of humiliating France, which in commerce and religion they considered their natural enemy, that some ambitious statesmen of a contrary line of politics were enabled to mar the design of a treaty. Among these was the Duke of Marlborough, who, being permitted to profit not only by his pay, but by perquisites attached to his command, wished the war to be protracted, merely that he might make his enormous wealth a little greater. It was in consequence of these unnecessary interferences with continental politics, urged chiefly by the people, and by a class of statesmen popular at the time, that the first large sums of the national debt were contracted.

UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Since their religious enthusiasm had been laid at rest by the Revolution Settlement, the Scottish people had been chiefly animated by a desire of participating in the commerce of England. The treatment of their expedition to Darien had now inspired them with a bitter feeling against their southern neighbors, and they resolved to show their power of counter-annoyance by holding up threats of dissenting from England in the matter of the succession. In 1703, their Parliament passed the famous Act of Security, by which it was ordained that the successor of her majesty in Scotland should not be the same with the individual adopted by the English Parliament, unless there should be a free communication of trade between the countries, and the affairs of Scotland thoroughly secured from English influence. Another act was at the same time passed for putting the nation under arms. The English ministers then saw that an incorporating union would be necessary to prevent the Pretender from gaining the Scottish crown, and to protect England from the attacks of a hostile nation. For this purpose they exerted themselves so effectually in the Scottish Parliament, as to obtain an act, enabling the queen to nominate commissioners for the arrangement of a union. The men appointed, thirty on each side, were, with hardly an exception, the friends of the court and of the Revolution Settlement; and the treaty accordingly was drawn up without difficulty.

In October 1706, this document was submitted to the Scottish Parliament, and was found to contain the following principal points:――That the two nations were to be indissolubly united under one government and legislature, each, however, retaining its own civil and criminal law; the crown to be in the House of Hanover; the Scottish Presbyterian church to be guaranteed; forty-five members to be sent by the Scottish counties and burghs to the House of Commons, and sixteen elective peers to be sent to the Upper House by the nobles; the taxes to be equalized, but, in consideration of the elevation of the Scotch imposts to the level of the English (for the latter people already owed sixteen millions), an equivalent was to be given to Scotland, amounting to nearly four hundred thousand pounds, which was to aid in renewing the coin, and other objects. These terms were regarded in Scotland as miserably inadequate; and the very idea of the loss of an independent legislature and a place among governments, raised their utmost indignation. Nevertheless, by dint of bribery, the union was carried through Parliament; and from the 1st of May 1707, the two countries formed one state, under the title of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

PEACE OF UTRECHT――DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE.

The members of the cabinet applied themselves, though very secretly, to the business of bringing about a peace. When their plans were matured, the consent of the House of Commons was easily gained; but the Lords having shown some reluctance, it was found necessary to create twelve new peers, in order to overpower the sense of that part of the legislature. After a tedious course of negotiation, Britain and Holland concluded a peace at Utrecht (1713), leaving the emperor of Germany still at war. By this arrangement, Philip V was permitted to retain Spain and the Indies, but no other part of the dominions which his ambitious grandfather had endeavored to secure for him; and it was provided that he and his descendants should never inherit the kingdom of France, nor any future king of France accede to the crown of Spain. Britain obtained nothing tangible by all her exertions, except the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca, and the privilege of being exclusively employed to carry slaves to the Spanish American colonies. It has justly been considered a stain upon the nation, that it should have concluded a separate peace under such clandestine circumstances, as the interests of the other belligerent parties were thereby greatly injured. For the gratification of their High Church supporters, the ministers obtained an act for preventing dissenters from keeping schools, and another for establishing church patronage in Scotland, the former of which was repealed in the following reign.

It is believed that Queen Anne and her Tory ministers were in secret willing to promote the restoration of the main line of the Stuart family, and Harley and St. John are now known to have intrigued for that purpose. But before any plan could be formed, the queen took suddenly ill and died (August 1, 1714), when the ministers had no alternative but to proceed according to the Act of Settlement. The Electress Sophia being recently dead, her son, the elector, was proclaimed under the title of GEORGE I.

The reign of Queen Anne is not more distinguished by the wonderful series of victories gained by Marlborough, than by the brilliant list of literary men who now flourished, and who have caused this to be styled the Augustan age of English literature, as resembling that of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Alexander Pope stands unrivaled in polished verse on moral subjects. Jonathan Swift is a miscellaneous writer of singular vigor and an extraordinary kind of humor. Joseph Addison wrote on familiar life and on moral and critical subjects with a degree of elegance before unknown. Sir Richard Steele was a lively writer of miscellaneous essays. This last author, with assistance from Addison and others, set on foot the ‘Tatler,’ ‘Spectator,’ and ‘Guardian,’ the earliest examples of small periodical papers in England, and which continue to this day to be regarded as standard works. Cibber, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Farquhar, were distinguished writers of comedy; and Prior, Philips, and Rowe, were pleasing poets. In graver literature, this age is not less eminent. Dr. Berkeley shines as a metaphysician; Drs. Sherlock, Atterbury, and Clark as divines; and Bentley as a critic of the Roman classics.

ACCESSION OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER――REBELLION OF 1715-16.

The new sovereign lost no time in coming over to Britain, and fixing himself in that heritage which his family has ever since retained. He was fifty-four years of age, of a good, though not brilliant understanding, and very firm in his principles. Knowing well that the whigs were his only true friends, he at once called them into the administration. It was the custom of that period for every party, on getting into power, to try to annihilate their opponents. Not only were the whole Tory party insulted by the king, but a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to prepare articles of impeachment against Oxford, Bolingbroke, the Duke of Ormond, and the earl of Strafford. Bolingbroke, perceiving his life to be in danger, fled to the continent; and his attainder was in consequence moved and carried by his rival Walpole. Ormond suffered a similar fate. Oxford, after a protracted trial, was only saved in consequence of a differance between the Lords and Commons.

During the first year of King George, the Tories kept up very threatening popular disturbances in favor of High Church principles; but the Whigs, gaining a majority in the new House of Commons, were able to check this a little by the celebrated enactment called the Riot Act, which permits military force to be used in dispersing a crowd, after a certain space of time has been allowed. Disappointed in their hopes of office and power, and stung by the treatment of their leaders, the Tories resolved to attempt bringing in the Pretender by force of arms. With an eager hopefulness, which for a long time was characteristic of the party, they believed that all England and Scotland were ready to take up arms for the Pretender, when in reality there was but a limited portion of the people so inclined, and that portion unwilling to move if they saw the least risk or danger. Blind to these circumstances, and without design or concert, they commenced the unfortunate civil war of 1715.

The Earl of Mar, who had been a secretary of state in the late administration, raised his standard in Braemar (September 6), without any commission from the Pretender, and was soon joined by Highland clans to the amount of 10,000 men, who rendered him master of all Scotland north of the Forth. There, however, he weakly permitted himself to be cooped up by the Duke of Argyle, who with a far less numerous force, had posted himself at Stirling. Mar expected to be supported by an invasion of England by the Duke of Ormond, and a rising of the people of that country. But the Duke completely failed in his design, and no rising took place, except in Northumberland. There Mr. Foster, one of the members of Parliament for the county, and the Earl of Derwentwater, with some other nobleman, appeared in arms, but unsupported by any considerable portion of the people. Mar detached a party of 1800 foot, under Mackintosh of Borlum, to join the Northumbrian insurgents, who complained that they had no infantry. The junction was managed with great address; and at the same time some noblemen and gentlemen of the south of Scotland attached themselves to the southern army. The government was ill provided with troops but it nevertheless sent such a force against Mr. Foster, as obliged him to retire with his men into the town of Preston, in Lancashire, where, after an obstinate defense, the whole party (November 13) surrendered themselves prisoners at the king’s mercy. On the same day, the Earl of Mar met the Duke of Argyle at Sheriffmuir, near Dumblane, where a battle was fought, in which, after the manner of the battles in the civil war, the right wing of each army was successful, but neither altogether victorious. The Duke withdrew in the face of his enemy to Stirling, and the earl retired to Perth, resolved to wait for the news of an invasion from France, and for the arrival of the Pretender, whom he had invited to Scotland.

Mar did not for some time become aware how little reason he had to expect support from France. Louis XIV, upon whom the hopes of the party greatly rested, had died in September, leaving the government to the Regent Orleans, who had strong personal reasons for wishing to cultivate the good-will of the British monarch, and of course declined to assist in the present enterprise. The Pretender, nevertheless, sailed for Scotland, and on the 22d of December, arrived incognito at Peterhead, bringing nothing but his person to aid his adherents. Mar, who had already attempted to negotiate a submission to the government, brought him forward to Perth, where he was amused for some time with preparations for his coronation. But before he had been many days there, the Duke of Argyle found himself in a condition to advance against the insurgent force; and on the 30th of January 1716, this unfortunate prince commenced a retreat to the north, along with his dispirited army. On the 4th of February, he and the Earl of Mar provided for their own safety by going on board a vessel at Montrose, and setting sail for France: the army dispersed itself into the Highlands. For this unhappy appearance in arms, the Earl of Derwentwater, Viscount Kenmure, and about twenty inferior persons, were executed; forty Scottish families of the first rank lost their estates, and many excellent members of society became exiles for the remainder of their lives.

The suppression of this insurrection, and the ruin of so many Tory leaders, tended to increase the power of the Whig party, and the stability of the Hanoverian dynasty. The government, nevertheless, acted under considerable difficulties, as they were opposed by the majority of the clergy and country gentry, as well as by the whole of the mob feeling, except in the large commercial towns. To avoid the hazard of too often appealing to the people, they carried, in 1716, a bill for repealing King William’s Triennial Act, and protracting the present and all future Parliaments to a duration of seven years. The chief popular support of the government was in the dissenters, and in the middle classes of the community.

From the peace of Utrecht, Britain remained free from foreign war for nearly thirty years, excepting that, in 1719, the ministry was called on to interfere for the repression of an attempt on the part of Spain to regain her Italian territories.

GEORGE II――WAR WITH SPAIN.

George I, at his death in 1727, was succeeded by his son, GEORGE II, a prince of moderate abilities, but conscientious, and free from all gross faults. In the early part of his reign, Walpole effected some useful measures, and upon the whole was a vigorous and enlightened administrator of public affairs, though nothing can justify the extensive system of bribery by which alone he pretended to manage the House of Commons. After a peace of extraordinary duration, he was urged, much against his will, into a contest with Spain, on account of some efforts made by that country to check an illicit trade carried on by British merchants in its American colonies.

REBELLION OF 1745-46.

The Pretender had married, in 1719, the Princess Clementina Sobieski of Poland, and was now the father of two sons in the bloom of youth, the elder of whom has been distinguished in history by the title of Prince Charles Stuart. The misfortunes of the British arms on the continent, and the dissensions which prevailed among the people and the Parliament, encouraged this prince to make an attempt to recover the throne of his ancestors. In 1744, he had been furnished by France with a large fleet and ample stores to invade the British dominions, but had been driven back by a storm, and prevented from again setting sail by a superior fleet under Sir John Norris. Though the French monarch would not grant him any further supply, Charles resolved to make the proposed attempt, trusting solely to the generosity and valor of his friends in Britain. He therefore landed from a single vessel, with only seven attendants, on the coast of Inverness-shire, where the clans most attached to his family chiefly resided. By merely working upon the ardent feelings of the Highland chiefs, he soon induced several of them to take up arms, among whom were Locheil, Clanranald, Glengarry, and Keppoch.

On the 19th of August 1745 he raised his standard at Glenfinnan, within a few miles of the government station of Fort William, and found himself surrounded by about 1500 men. The government was at first inclined to disbelieve the intelligence of these proceedings, but was soon obliged to take steps for its own defense. A reward of thirty thousand pounds was offered for the head of the young prince, who with all his family, was under attainder by act of Parliament; and Sir John Cope, commander of the forces in Scotland, was ordered to advance with what troops he had into the Highlands, and suppress the insurrection. Cope proceeded on this mission with about 1400 infantry; but on finding the Highlanders in possession of a strong post near Fort Augustus, he thought it necessary to go aside to Inverness. Charles, taking advantage of this ill-advised movement, immediately poured his motley followers down into the Lowlands, gaining accessions everywhere as he advanced; and there being no adequate force to oppose him, he took possession successively of Perth and Edinburgh.

Cope now transported his troops back to Lothian by sea, and on the 21st September, a rencontre took place between him and Charles at Prestonpans. Seized with a panic, the royal troops fled disgracefully from the field, leaving the prince a complete victory. With the lustre thus acquired by his arms, he might have now, with four or five thousand men, made a formidable inroad into England. Before he could collect such a force, six weeks passed away, and when at length (November 1) he entered England, a large body of troops had been collected to oppose him. After a bold advance to Derby, he was obliged by his friends to turn back. At Stirling he was joined by considerable reinforcements, and on the 17th of January 1746, a battle took place at Falkirk between him and General Hawley, each numbering about 8000 troops. Here Charles was again successful; but he was unable to make any use of his victory, and soon after found it necessary to withdraw his forces to the neighborhood of Inverness, where he spent the remainder of the winter. The Duke of Cumberland now put himself at the head of the royal troops, which had been augmented by 6000 auxiliaries under the Prince of Hesse. During the months of February and March, the Highland army was cooped up within its own territory by the Hessians at Perth, and the royal troops at Aberdeen. At length, April 16, Prince Charles met the English army in an open moor at Culloden, near Inverness, and experienced a total overthrow. He had himself the greatest difficulty in escaping from the country, and the Highlands were subjected for several months to the horrors of military violence in all its worst forms.

GEORGE III――BUTE ADMINISTRATION――PEACE OF 1763.

Soon after his accession, George III espoused the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, by whom he had a large family. One of his earliest political measures was to confer one of the state-secretaryships upon the Earl of Bute, a Scottish nobleman of Tory or Jacobite predilections, who had been his preceptor, and possessed a great influence over his mind. This, with other alterations, infused a peaceful disposition into his majesty’s counsels, which was not much relished by Mr. Pitt. That minister, having secretly discovered that Spain was about to join France against Britain, and being thwarted in the line of policy, which he consequently thought it necessary to assume, retired with a pension, and a peerage to his wife; after which the ministry was rendered still less of a warlike temper. A negotiation for peace was entered into with France, which offered, for that end, to give up almost all her colonial possessions. The demands of the British were, however, rather more exorbitant than France expected, and not only was the treaty broken off, but Spain commenced those hostilities which Mr. Pitt had foretold. Nevertheless, Britain continued that splendid career of conquest, which, except at the beginning, had been her fortune during the whole of this war. In a very few months Spain lost Havana, Manilla, and all the Philippine Isles. The Spanish forces were also driven out of Portugal, which they had unjustly invaded. At sea the British fleets reigned everywhere triumphant, and at no former period was the country in so proud a situation. The ministry, however, were sensible that war, even with all this good fortune, was a losing game; and they therefore, much against the will of the nation, concluded a peace in February 1763.

By this treaty Great Britain gave up a certain portion of her conquests, in exchange for others which had been wrested from her; but she was nevertheless a gainer to an immense amount. She acquired from the French, Canada, that part of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, Cape Breton, Senegal, the islands of Grenada, Dominica, St. Vincent’s, and Tobago, with all the acquisitions which the French had made upon the Coromandel coast in the East Indias since 1749. From Spain she acquired Minorca, East and West Florida, with certain privileges of value. The continental states in alliance with Great Britain were also left as they had been. These advantages on the part of Great Britain had been purchased at the expense of an addition of sixty millions to the national debt, which now amounted in all to £133,959,270.

Since the accession of the Brunswick family in 1714, the government had been chiefly conducted by the Whig party, who formed a very powerful section of the aristocracy of England. Walpole, Pelham, Newcastle, and Pitt, had all ruled chiefly through the strength of this great body, who, till the period subsequent to the rebellion of 1745, seem to have had the support of the most influential portion of the people. After that period, when the Stuart claims ceased to have any effect in keeping the crown in check, a division appears to have grown up between the government and the people, which was manifested in various forms even before the demise of George II, but broke out in a very violent manner during the early years of his successor’s reign. George III, who had imbibed high notions of the royal prerogative from the Earl of Bute, showed, from the beginning of his career, an anxious desire to extend the power of the crown, to shake off the influence of the great Whig families, and keep popular force of all kinds within strict limits.

A stranger, with no connection in the country, a favorite, and, moreover, a man of unprepossessing manners, the Earl of Bute had neither the support of the aristocracy nor of the people. He was assailed in Parliament, and through the newspapers, with the most violent abuse――the unpopular peace furnishing a powerful topic against him. To this storm he at length yielded, by retiring (April 8, 1763).

AMERICAN STAMP ACT.

The administration of Mr. Grenville is memorable for the first attempt to tax the American colonies. An act passed under his influence (March 1765) for imposing stamps on those countries, appeared to the colonists as a step extremely dangerous to their liberties, considering that they had no share in the representation. They therefore combined almost universally to resist the introduction of the stamped paper by which the tax was to be raised. Resolutions were passed in the various assemblies of the States, protesting against the assumed right of the British legislature to tax them. Partly by popular violence, and partly by the declarations issued by the local legislative assemblies, the object of the act was completely defeated.

The home government were then induced to agree to the repeal of the act, but with the reservation of a right to impose taxes on the colonies. Between the Stamp Act and its repeal, a change had taken place in the administration: the latter measure was the act of a Whig ministry under the Marquis of Rockingham, which, however, did not long continue in power, being supplanted by one in which Mr. Pitt, now created Earl of Chatham, held a conspicuous place. The second Pitt administration was less popular than the first: the Earl of Chesterfield, reflecting on the title conferred on the minister, at the same time that he sunk in general esteem, called his rise a fall up stairs. All the ministries of this period labored under a popular suspicion, probably not well founded, that they only obeyed the will of the sovereign, while the obnoxious Earl of Bute, as a secret adviser behind the throne, was the real, though irresponsible minister.

At the suggestion of Mr. Charles Townshend, a member of the Earl of Chatham’s cabinet, it was resolved, in 1767, to impose taxes on the Americans in a new shape; namely, upon British goods imported into the colonies, for which there was some show of precedent. An act for imposing duties on tea, glass, and colors, was accordingly passed with little opposition. Soon after this, Mr. Townshend died, and the Earl of Chatham, who had been prevented by illness from taking any share in the business, resigned. The Americans met the new burdens with the same violent opposition as formerly.

In 1770, the Duke of Grafton retired from the cabinet, and his place was supplied by Lord North, son of the Earl of Guilford. The new ministry was the tenth which had existed during as many years, but the first in which the king might be considered as completely free of the great Whig families, who, by their parliamentary influence, had possessed the chief power since the Revolution. This was the beginning of a series of Tory administrations, which, with few and short intervals, conducted the affairs of the nation down to the close of the reign of George IV.

THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

Meanwhile the remonstrances of the American colonists had induced the ministry to give up all the new taxes, with the exception of that on tea, which it was determined to keep up, as an assertion of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. In America, this remaining tax continued to excite as much discontent as the whole had formerly done, for it was the principle of a right to impose taxes which they found fault with, and not the amount of the tax itself. Their discontent with the mother country was found to affect trade considerably, and the British merchants were anxious to bring the dispute to a close. The government was then induced to grant such a drawback from the British duty on tea, as enabled the East India Company to offer the article in America at a lower rate than formerly, so that the American duty, which was only three pence per pound, did not affect the price. It was never doubted that this expedient would satisfy the colonists, and large shipments of tea were accordingly sent out from the British ports. The principle of the right to tax still lurked, however under the concession, and the result only showed how little the sentiments of the Americans were understood at home.

The approach of the tea cargoes excited them in a manner totally unlooked-for in Britain. At New York and Philadelphia, the cargoes were forbidden to land; in Charleston, where they were permitted to land, they were put into stores, and were prohibited from being sold. In Boston harbor, a ship-load was seized and tossed into the sea. This last act was resented by the passing of a bill in Parliament for interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and another for taking away the legislative assembly of the state of Massachusetts. The former measure was easily obviated by local arrangements; and in reference to the latter, a Congress of representatives from the various States met at Philadelphia, in September 1774, when it was asserted that the exclusive power of legislation, in all cases of taxation and internal policy, resided in the provincial legislatures. The same assembly denounced other grievances, which have not here been particularly adverted to, especially an act of the British legislature for trying Americans, for treasonable practices, in England. The Congress also framed a covenant of non-intercourse, by which the whole utility of the colonies to the mother country, as objects of trading speculation, was at once laid prostrate. The colonists still avowed a desire to be reconciled, on the condition of a repeal of the obnoxious statutes. But the government had now resolved to attempt the reduction of the colonists by force of arms. Henceforth, every proposal from America was treated with a haughty silence on the part of the British monarch and his advisers.

The war opened in the summer of 1775, by skirmishes between the British troops and armed provincials, for the possession of certain magazines. At the beginning there seemed no hope of the contest being protracted beyond one campaign. The population of the colonies was at this time under three millions, and they were greatly inferior in discipline and appointments to the British troops. They possessed, however, an indomitable zeal in the cause they had agreed to defend, and fought with the advantage of being in the country of their friends. At Bunker’s Hill, near Boston (June 17, 1775), they had the superiority in a well-contested fight with the British troops, of whom between two and three hundred were killed. At the end of one year, the British government was surprised to find that no progress had been made towards a reduction of the Americans, and sent out an offer of pardon to the colonists, on condition that they would lay down their arms. This proposal only met with ridicule.

On the 4th of July 1776, the American Congress took the decisive step of a declaration of their independence, embodying their sentiment in a document remarkable for its pathos and solemnity. During the next two campaigns, the slender forces of the new republic were hardly able anywhere to face the large and well-appointed armies of Great Britain. Much misery was endured by this hardy people in resisting the British arms. Notwithstanding every disadvantage and many defeats, America remained unsubdued.

The first serious alarm for the success of the contest in America, was communicated in December 1777, by intelligence of the surrender of an army under General Burgoyne at Saratoga. In the House of Commons, the ministers acknowledged this defeat with marks of deep dejection, but still professed to entertain sanguine hopes from the vigor with which the large towns throughout Britain were now raising men at their own expense for the service of the government. Mr. Fox, the leader of the Opposition, made a motion for the discontinuance of the war, which was lost by 165 to 259, a much narrower majority than any which the ministry had before reckoned in the Lower House.

In proportion to the dejection of the government, was the elation of the American Congress. Little more than two years before, the British sovereign and ministers had treated the petitions of the colonists with silent contempt; but such had been the current of events, that, in 1778, they found it necessary, in order to appease the popular discontent, to send out commissioners, almost for the purpose of begging a peace. As if to avenge themselves for the indignities of 1775, the Americans received these commissioners with the like haughtiness; and being convinced that they could secure their independence, would listen to no proposals in which the acknowledgment of that independence, and the withdrawal of the British troops, did not occupy the first place. The ministers, unwilling to submit to such terms, resolved to prosecute the war, holding forth to the public, as the best defense of their conduct, the necessity of curbing the spirit of insubordination, both in the American colonies and at home, which they described as threatening the overturn of the most sacred of the national institutions.

The rise of Great Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in wealth and military and naval power, had been observed by many of the surrounding states with no small degree of jealousy. France in particular, had not yet forgiven the triumphant peace which Britain had dictated in 1763. The Americans, therefore, by their emissary, the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, found no great difficulty in forming an alliance with France, in which the latter power acknowledged the independence of the colonists, and promised to send them large auxiliary forces. Viewing the distressed state to which Britain was reduced by the contest, and concluding that the time had arrived to strike a decisive blow for the humiliation, Spain soon after declared war against her; and in 1780, Holland was added to the number of her enemies. Russia then put herself at the head of what was called an Armed Neutrality, embracing Sweden and Denmark, the object of which was indirectly hostile to Britain. So tremendous was the force reared against Britain in 1779, even before all these powers had entered into hostilities, that it required about 300,000 armed men, 300 armed vessels, and twenty millions of money annually, merely to protect herself from her enemies. Even her wonted superiority at sea seemed to have deserted her; and for some time the people beheld the unwonted spectacle of a hostile fleet riding in the Channel, which there was no adequate means of opposing.

It was now obvious to the whole nation that this contest, upon whatever ground it commenced, was a great national misfortune; and the Opposition in Parliament began to gain considerably in strength. After some votes, in which the ministerial majorities appeared to be gradually lessening, Mr. Dunning, on the 6th of April 1780, carried, by a majority of eighteen, a motion, ‘that the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.’ This was looked upon as a severe censure of the government, considering that the House of Commons was not altogether a popular body, but included many who had seats there only through the influence of the crown, or by the favor of the nobility and gentry.

In the year 1778, an act had been passed, relieving the Roman Catholics in England from some of the severe penal statutes formerly enacted against them. The apprehension of a similar act for Scotland caused the people of that country to form an immense number of associations with a view to opposing it; and in the early part of 1779, the popular spirit broke out at Edinburgh and Glasgow in several alarming riots, during which one or two Catholic chapels, and some houses belonging to Catholics, were pillaged and burnt. An extensive Protestant Association was also formed in England, to endeavor to procure the repeal of the English act. This body was chiefly led by Lord George Gordon, a son of the late Duke of Gordon, and member of the House of Commons. In June 1780, an immense mob assembled in London to accompany Lord George to the House of Commons, where he was to present a petition against the act, signed by 120,000 persons. His motion for the repeal of the act being rejected by a vast majority, he came out to the lobby and harangued the crowd in violent terms, suggesting to them similar acts to those which had taken place in Scotland. The mob accordingly proceeded to demolish the chapels of the foreign ambassadors. Meeting with no effectual resistance, for the magistrates of the city were afraid to take decisive measures against them, they attacked Newgate, released the prisoners, and set the prison on fire. The new prison at Clerkenwell, the King’s Bench, and Fleet Prisons, and the New Bridewell, were treated in like manner. At one time thirty-six fires were seen throughout the city. The mob had uncontrolled possession of the streets for five days, pillaging, burning, and demolishing; until the king in council determined to authorize the military to put them down by force of arms. Tranquillity was then restored, but not before upwards of 400 persons were killed and wounded. Many of the ringleaders were convicted and executed. Lord George Gordon was tried for high treason, but acquitted on a plea of insanity, which his subsequent life showed to be well founded. Similar outrages were attempted in other cities, but prevented by the vigor of the magistrates. The chief sufferers from these riots were the party who aimed at political reforms. On the other hand, the king obtained increased respect, in consequence of the firmness he had shown in taking measures for the suppression of the riots.

The states of North and South Carolina, which contained a larger proportion of persons friendly to the British crown than any of the northern states, had submitted, in 1780, to a British army under General Clinton. Next year the greater part of the troops which had been left in those states were conducted northward by Lord Cornwallis, in the hope of making further conquests; but the consequence was that General Greene, after a series of conflicts, in which he greatly distressed various parties of the British troops, regained both Carolinas, while Lord Cornwallis took up a position at Yorktown in Virginia. At this time, General Washington, the American commander-in-chief, to whose extraordinary sagacity and purity of motives the colonists chiefly owed their independence, was threatening General Clinton’s army at New York. Clinton tamely saw him retire to the southward, believing that he only meant to make a feint, in order to draw away the British from New York, when he in reality meant to attack Cornwallis. On the 29th of September (1781), Yorktown was invested by this and other corps of Americans and French; and in three weeks more, the British batteries being completely silenced, Lord Cornwallis surrendered with his whole army. With this event, though some posts were still kept up by the British troops, hostilities might be said to have been concluded.

At the next opening of Parliament many of those who had formerly supported the war, began to adopt opposite views; and early in 1782, a motion, made by General Conway, for the conclusion of the war, was carried by a majority of nineteen. The necessary consequence was, that, on the 20th of March, Lord North and his colleagues resigned office, after twelve years of continued misfortune, during which the prosperity of the country had been retarded, a hundred millions added to the national debt, and three millions of people separated from the parent state.

As usual in such cases, a new administration was formed out of the Opposition. The Marquis of Rockingham was made prime minister, and Mr. Fox one of the secretaries of state. The new ministers lost no time in taking measures for the restoration of peace. Unfortunately for their credit with the nation, Sir George Rodney gained an important victory over the French fleet of the island of Dominica, April 12, 1782, after the ministers had despatched another officer to supersede him in the command. On this occasion, thirty-seven British vessels encountered thirty-four French; and chiefly by the dexterous manœuvre of a breach of the enemy’s line, gained one of the most complete victories recorded in modern warfare. The triumph was eminently necessary, to recover in some measure the national honor, and enable the ministers to conclude the war upon tolerable terms. In November, provisional articles for a peace with the United States of America, now acknowledged as an independent power, were signed at Paris, and the treaty was concluded in the ensuing February. When the American ambassador was afterwards, for the first time, introduced at the British levée, the king received him kindly, and said with great frankness, that though he had been the last man in his dominions to desire that the independence of America should be acknowledged, he should also be the last to wish that that acknowledgment should be withdrawn. War was soon after concluded with France, Spain, and Holland, but not without some considerable concessions of colonial territory on the part of Great Britain.

The conclusion of this war is memorable as a period of great suffering, arising from the exhaustion of the national resources, the depression of commerce, and the accident of a bad harvest. The principles of prosperity were, after all, found to be so firmly rooted in the country, that immediately after the first distresses had passed away, every department of the state resumed its wonted vigor, and during the ensuing ten years of peace, a great advance was made in national wealth.

In 1786, Mr. Pitt established his celebrated but fallacious scheme for redeeming the national debt, by what was called a Sinking Fund. The revenue was at this time above fifteen millions, being about one million more than was required for the public service. This excess he proposed to lay aside annually, to lie at compound interest; by which means he calculated that each million would be quadrupled at the end of twenty-eight years, and thus go a great way towards the object he had in view. To this scheme Mr. Fox added the infinitely more absurd amendment, that, when the government required to borrow more money, one million of every six so obtained should be laid aside for the same purpose. The scheme was so well received as to increase the popularity of the minister, and it was not till 1813 that its fallacy was proved.

In the same year commenced the parliamentary proceedings against Mr. Warren Hastings, for alleged cruelty and robbery exercised upon the natives of India during his governorship of that dependency of Great Britain. These proceedings were urged by Mr. Burke and other members of the Whig party, and excited so much public indignation against Mr. Hastings, that the ministry were obliged, though unwillingly, to lend their countenance to his trial, which took place before Parliament in the most solemn manner, and occupied in the aggregate one hundred and forty-nine days, extending over the space of several years. The proceedings resulted in the acquittal of Mr. Hastings.

The king and queen had in the meantime become the parents of a numerous family of sons and daughters. The eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, had now for several years been of age, and exempted from the control of his father. He had no sooner been set up in an establishment of his own, than he plunged into a career of prodigality, forming the most striking contrast with the chastened simplicity and decorum of the paternal abode. He also attached himself to the party of the Opposition, though rather apparently from a principle of contradiction to his father, than a sincere approbation of their political objects. The result was the complete alienation of the Prince of Wales from the affections of his majesty.

In November 1788, an aberration of intellect, resulting from an illness of some duration, was observed in the king, and it became necessary to provide some species of substitute for the exercise of the royal functions. To have invested the Prince of Wales with the regency, appeared the most obvious course; but this would have thrown out the ministry, as it was to be supposed that his royal highness would call the chiefs of his own party to his councils. Mr. Fox contended that the hereditary nature of the monarchy pointed out an unconditional right in the prince to assume the supreme power under such circumstances; but Mr. Pitt asserted the right of Parliament to give or withhold such an office, and proposed to assign certain limits to the authority of the intended regent, which would have placed the existing ministry beyond his reach. The Irish Parliament voted the unconditional regency to the prince; but that of Great Britain was about to adopt the modified plan proposed by Mr. Pitt, when, March 1789, the king suddenly recovered, and put an end to the difficulty. The debates on the regency question exhibit in a very striking light how statesmen will sometimes abandon their most favorite dogmas and strongest principles on the call of their own immediate interests.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND CONSEQUENT WAR WITH FRANCE.

The country had for several years experienced the utmost prosperity and peace, when it was roused by a series of events which took place in France. The proceedings of the French nation for redressing the political grievances under which they had long labored, commenced in 1789, and were at first very generally applauded in Britain, as likely to raise that nation to a rational degree of freedom. Ere long, the violence shown at the destruction of the Bastile, the abolition of hereditary privileges, the open disrespect for religion, and other symptoms of an extravagant spirit, manifested by the French, produced a considerable change in the sentiments of the British people. The proceedings of the French were still justified by the principal leaders of Opposition in Parliament, and by a numerous class of the community; but they inspired the government, and the propertied and privileged classes generally, with great alarm and distrust.

When at length the coalition of Austria and Prussia with the fugitive noblesse had excited the spirit of the French people to a species of frenzy, and led to the establishment of a Republic, and the death of the king, the British government and its supporters were effectually roused to a sense of the danger which hung over all ancient institutions, and a pretext was found (January 1793) for declaring war against France. A comparatively small body of the people were opposed to this step, which was also loudly deprecated in Parliament by Messrs. Fox and Sheridan; but all these remonstrances were drowned in the general voice of the nation. At such a crisis, to speak of political reforms in England seemed the height of imprudence, as tending to encourage the French. All, therefore, who continued to make open demonstrations for that cause, were now branded as enemies to religion and civil order. In Scotland, Mr. Thomas Muir, a barrister, and Mr. Palmer, a Unitarian clergyman, were tried for sedition, and sentenced to various terms of banishment. Citizens named Skirving, Gerald, and Margarot, were treated in like manner by the Scottish criminal judges, for offenses which could only be said to derive the character ascribed to them from the temporary and accidental circumstances of the nation. An attempt to inflict similar punishments upon the English reformers, was defeated by the acquittal of a shoemaker named Hardy; but the party was nevertheless subjected, with the apparent concurrence of a large and influential portion of the people, to many minor severities.

After alliances had been formed with the other powers hostile to France, the British ministers despatched an army to the Netherlands, under the command of the king’s second son, the Duke of York, to coöperate in reducing the fortresses in possession of the French, while the town of Toulon, being inclined to remain under the authority of the royal family, put itself into the hands of a British naval commander. At first, the French seemed to fail somewhat in their defenses; but on a more ardently republican party acceding to power under the direction of the famous Robespierre, the national energies were much increased, and the Duke of Brunswick experienced a series of disgraceful reverses. The Prussian government, having adopted new views of the condition of France, now began to withdraw its troops, on the pretext of being unable to pay them; and though Britain gave nearly a million and a quarter sterling to induce this power to remain nine months longer upon the field, its coöperation was of no further service, and was soon altogether lost. On the 1st of June 1794, the French Brest fleet sustained a severe defeat from Lord Howe, with the loss of six ships; but the republican troops not only drove the combined armies out of the Netherlands, but taking advantage of an unusually hard frost, invaded Holland by the ice which covered the Rhine, and reduced that country to a Republic under their own control. The successes of the British were limited to the above naval victory, the temporary possession of Corsica and Toulon, the capture of several of the French colonies in the West Indies, and the spoliation of a great quantity of the commercial shipping of France; against which were to be reckoned the expulsion of an army from the Netherlands, the loss of 10,000 men and 60,000 stand of arms, in an unsuccessful descent upon the west coast of France, some considerable losses in mercantile shipping, and an increase of annual expenditure from about fourteen to nearly forty millions.

In the course of the year 1795, the lower portions of the community began to appear violently discontented with the progress of the war, and to renew their demands for reform in the state. As the king was passing (October 29) to open the session of Parliament, a stone was thrown into his coach, and the interference of the horse guards was required to protect his person from an infuriated mob. The ministers consequently obtained acts for more effectually repressing sedition, and for the dispersion of political meetings. They were at the same time compelled to make a show of yielding to the popular clamor for peace; and commenced a negotiation with the French Directory, which was broken off by the refusal of France to restore Belgium to Austria. In the ensuing year, so far from any advance being made towards the subjugation of France, the northern states of Italy were overrun by its armies, and formed into what was called the Cisalpine Republic. The celebrated Napoleon Bonaparte made his first conspicuous appearance as the leader of this expedition, which terminated in Austria submitting to a humiliating peace. At the close of 1796, a French fleet sailed for Ireland, with the design of revolutionizing that country, and detaching it from Britain; but its object was defeated by stress of weather. At this crisis, a new attempt was made to negotiate with the French Republic; but as the events of the year had been decidedly favorable to France, a renewed demand of the British for the surrender of Belgium was looked upon as a proof that they were not sincere in their proposals, and their agent was insultingly ordered to leave the French territory. To add to the distresses of Britain, while Austria was withdrawn from the number of her allies, Spain, by a declaration of war in 1797, increased in no inconsiderable degree the immense force with which she had to contend.

THREATENED INVASION――SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

For some time an invasion of Britain had been threatened by France; and, sacred as the land had been for centuries from the touch of a foreign enemy, the successes of the republicans had hitherto so greatly exceeded all previous calculation, that the execution of their design did not appear improbable. Just as the inteference of the neighboring powers had, in 1792, roused the energies of the French, so did this proposed invasion stimulate the spirit of the British people. The clamors of reformers, and of those who were friendly to France, were now lost in an almost universal zeal for the defense of the country; and not only were volunteer corps everywhere formed, but the desire of prosecuting the war became nearly the ruling sentiment of the nation. The ministers, perceiving the advantage which was to be derived from the tendency of the national spirit, appeared seriously to dread an invasion, and thus produced an unexpected and very distressing result. The credit of the Bank of England was shaken; a run was made upon it for gold in exchange for its notes, which it could not meet. On the 25th of February 1797, therefore, the Bank was obliged, with the sanction of the privy-council, to suspend cash payments――that is, to refuse giving coin on demand for the paper money which had been issued. This step led to a great depreciation in the value of Bank of England notes; and was followed by a very serious derangement of the currency for a number of years.

In April, a new alarm arose from the proceedings of the seamen on board the Channel fleet, who mutinied for an advance of pay, and the redress of some alleged grievances. A convention of delegates from the various ships met in Lord Howe’s cabin, and drew up petitions to the House of Commons and the Board of Admiralty. Upon these being yielded to, order was restored; but the seamen on board the fleet at the Nore soon after broke out in a much more alarming revolt; and on the refusal of their demands, moored their vessels across the Thames, threatening to cut off all communication between London and the open sea. The reduction of this mutiny appeared at one time as if it could only be effected by much bloodshed; but by the firmness of the government, and some skillful dealings with the seamen, a loyal party was formed, by whom the more turbulent men were secured, and the vessels restored to their respective officers. The ringleaders, the chief of whom was a young man named Richard Parker, were tried and executed.

The same year was remarkable for several victories gained by the British fleets. A Spanish fleet of twenty-seven ships was attacked by fifteen vessels under Admiral Jervis (February 14), off Cape St. Vincent, and completely beaten, with the loss of four large vessels. A fleet under Admiral Harvey, with a military force under Sir Ralph Abercromby, captured the island of Trinidad, a Spanish colony. In October, a Dutch fleet, under Admiral De Winter, was attacked off the village of Camperdown, upon their own coast, by Admiral Duncan, who after a desperate battle, captured nine of the enemy’s vessels. These naval successes compensated in some measure for the many land victories of the French, and served to sustain the spirit of the British nation under this unfortunate contest.

In 1798, the French overran and added to their dominions the ancient republic of Switzerland, which gave them a frontier contiguous to Austria, and enabled them eventually to act with increased readiness and force upon that country. In this year, the directors of the French Republic, beginning to be afraid of the ambition of their general, Bonaparte, sent him at the head of an expedition to reduce and colonize Egypt, intending from that country to act against the British empire in the East Indies. The expedition was successful in its first object; but the fleet which had conveyed it was attacked in Aboukir Bay, by Admiral Nelson (August 1), and almost totally destroyed or captured. While so much of the strength of the French army was thus secluded in a distant country, the eastern powers of Europe thought they might safely recommence war with the republic. Austria, Naples, and Russia, formed a confederacy for this purpose; and Britain, to supply the necessary funds, submitted to the grievance of an income tax, amounting in general to ten per cent., in addition to all her previous burdens.

The new confederacy was so successful in 1799, as to redeem the greater part of Italy. A Russian army, under the famous Suwaroff, acted a prominent part in the campaign; but, in the end, attempting to expel the French from Switzerland, this large force was nearly cut to pieces in one of the defiles of that mountainous country. In August of the same year, Great Britain made a corresponding attempt to expel the French from Holland. Thirty-five thousand men, under the Duke of York, formed the military part of the expedition. The fleet was successful at the first in taking the Dutch ships, but the army, having landed under stress of weather at an unfavorable place for their operations, was obliged, after an abortive series of skirmishes, to make an agreement with the French, purchasing permission to go back to their country by the surrender of 8000 prisoners from England.

The reverses which France experienced in 1799, were generally attributed to the weakness of the Directory――a council of five, to which the executive had been intrusted. Bonaparte suddenly returned from his army in Egypt, and, by a skillful management of his popularity, overturned the Directory, and caused himself to be appointed the sole depositary of the executive power of the state, under the denomination of First Consul. He immediately wrote a letter to King George, making overtures of peace, but was answered, by the British secretary, that no dependence could be placed by Great Britain on any treaty with France, unless her government were again consolidated under the Bourbons. Bonaparte, having much reason to wish for peace, made a reply to this note, vindicating France from the charge brought against her, of having commenced a system of aggression inconsistent with the interests of other states, and asserting her right to choose her own government――a point, he said, that could not decently be contested by the minister of a crown which was held by no other tenure. But the British government was at this time too much elated by the expulsion of the French army from Italy, and the late changes in the executive, which, in their estimation, betokened weakness, to be immdiately anxious for peace.

The events of 1800 were of a very different nature from what had been calculated upon in England. Sir Sidney Smith, who commanded the British forces in Syria, had made a treaty with the French army after it had been left by Bonaparte, whereby it was agreed that the French should abandon Egypt, and retire unmolested to their own country. The British government, in its present temper, refused to ratify this arrangement, and the consequence was a continuance of hostilities. The French overthrew a large Turkish army at Grand Cairo, and made themselves more effectually than ever the masters of the country, so that Britain was obliged to send an army next year, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, to accomplish, at an immense expense, and a great waste of human life, what the French had formerly agreed to do. In Europe, the presence of Bonaparte produced equally disastrous results. By one of his most dexterous movements, he eluded the Austrians, led an army over the Alps by the Great St. Bernard into the Milanese, and having gained a decisive victory at Marengo (June 14), at once restored the greater part of Italy to French domination. Cotemporaneously with Napoleon’s movements, Moreau led another army directly into Germany, overthrew the Austrians in several battles, and advanced to within seventeen leagues of their capital, Vienna. These reverses obliged Austria next year (1801) to sue for and conclude a peace, by which France became mistress of all continental Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Adige.

REBELLION IN IRELAND――UNION WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

Although the government had been able, in 1783, to procure a dissolution of the volunteer corps, the bulk of the Irish people continued to express the most anxious desire for such a reform in their Parliament as might render it a more just representation of the popular voice. Unable to yield to them on this point, Mr. Pitt endeavored to appease them by extending their commercial privileges; but his wishes were frustrated, chiefly by the jealousy of the British merchants. A strong feeling of discontent, not only with the government, but with the British connection, was thus engendered in Ireland.

The commencement of the revolutionary proceedings in France excited the wildest hopes of the Irish. Towards the close of the year 1791, they formed an association, under the title of the United Irishmen, comprehending persons of all religions, and designed to obtain ‘a complete reform of the legislature, founded on the principles of civil, political, and religious liberty.’ The government from the first suspected this association of meditating an overturn of the state, and took strong measures for keeping it in check. Acts were passed for putting down its meetings, and the secretary, Mr. Hamilton Rowan, was tried and sentenced to a fine and two years’ imprisonment for what was termed a seditious libel. At the same time, some concessions to the popular spirit were deemed indispensable, and the Irish Parliament accordingly passed acts enabling Catholics to intermarry with Protestants, to practice at the bar, and to educate their own children.

On discovering that a treasonable correspondence had been carried on with France by some leading persons in the society of United Irishmen, the government was so much alarmed as to send (1794) a Whig lord-lieutenant (Earl Fitzwilliam) to grant further concessions; but ere anything had been done, the ministers were persuaded by the Protestant party to return to their former policy. The patriotic party now despaired of effecting any improvement by peaceable means, and an extensive conspiracy was entered into for delivering up Ireland to the French republic. The scheme was managed by a directory of five persons, and though half a million of men were concerned in it, the most strict secrecy was preserved. In December 1796, a portion of the fleet which had been fitted out by the French to coöperate with the Irish patriots, landed at Bantry Bay; but measures for a rising of the people not being yet ripe, it was obliged to return. Next year, the losses at Camperdown crippled the naval resources of France, and prevented a renewal of the expedition. Losing all hope of French assistance, the conspirators resolved to act without it; but their designs were betrayed by one Reynolds; and three other members of the directory, Emmett, Macnevin, and Bond, were seized. Notwithstanding the precautionary measures which the government was thus enabled to take, the Union persisted in the design of rising on a fixed day. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, another of its leaders, was then arrested, and being wounded in a scuffle with his captors, soon after died in prison. On the 21st of May 1798, Lord Castlereagh, secretary to the lord-lieutenant, disclosed the whole plan of insurrection, which had been fixed to commence on the 23d.

Though thus thwarted in their designs, and deprived of their best leaders, the conspirators appeared in arms in various parts of the country. Parties attacked Naas and Carlow, but were repulsed with loss. A large party, under a priest named Murphy, appeared in the county of Wexford, and took the city of that name. Slight insurrections about the same time broke out in the northern counties of Antrim and Down, but were easily suppressed. In Wexford alone did the insurgents appear in formidable strength. Under a priest named Roche, a large party of them met and defeated a portion of the government troops; but on a second occasion, though they fought with resolution for four hours, they were compelled to retreat. Another defeat at New Ross exasperated them greatly, and some monstrous cruelties were consequently practised upon their prisoners. On the 20th of June, their whole force was collected upon Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, where an army of 13,000 men, with a proportionate train of artillery, was brought against them by General Lake. They were completely overthrown and dispersed. From this time the rebellion languished, and in July it had so far ceased to be formidable, that an act of amnesty was passed in favor of all who had been engaged in it, except the leaders.

On the 22d of August, when the rebellion had been completely extinguished, 900 French, under General Humbert, were landed at Killala, in the opposite extremity of the country from that in which the insurgents had shown the greatest strength. Though too late to be of any decisive effect, they gave some trouble to the government. A much larger body of British troops, under General Lake, met them at Castlebar, but retreated in a panic. They then advanced to the centre of the country, while the lord-lieutenant confessed the formidable reputation which their countrymen had acquired, by concentrating an immensely disproportioned force against them. On the 8th of September, they were met at Carrick-on-Shannon by this large army, to which they yielded themselves prisoners of, war.

During the ensuing two years, the British ministers exerted themselves to bring about an incorporating union of Ireland with Great Britain; a measure to which the Irish were almost universally opposed, but which, by the use of bribes and government patronage liberally employed amongst the members of the Irish legislature, was at length effected. From the 1st of January 1801, the kingdom of Ireland formed an essential part of the empire, on which was now conferred the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The act of Union secured to the Irish most of the commercial privileges which they had so long sought. Upon a comparison of the aggregate exports and imports of the two countries, Ireland was to raise two parts of revenue for every fifteen raised by Great Britain, during the first twenty years of the Union, after which new regulations were to be made by Parliament. One hundred commoners were to be sent by Ireland to the British (now called the Imperial) Parliament; namely, two for each county, two for each of the cities of Dublin and Cork, one for the university, and one for each of the thirty-one most considerable towns. Four lord spiritual, by rotation of sessions, and twenty-eight lords temporal, elected for life by the Peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords.

The Union, though, upon the whole, effected in a spirit of fairness towards Ireland, increased the discontent of the people, which broke out in 1803 in a new insurrection. Under Robert Emmet and Thomas Russell, a conspiracy was formed for seizing the seat of the vice-government, and for this purpose a great multitude of peasantry from the county of Kildare assembled (July 23) in Dublin. Disappointed in their attempt upon the castle, they could only raise a tumult in the streets, in the course of which Lord Kilwarden, a judge, and his nephew, Mr. Wolfe, were dragged from a carriage and killed. The mob was dispersed by soldiery, and Emmett and Russell, being seized, were tried and executed.

CHANGE OF MINISTRY, AND PEACE OF AMIENS, 1801.

At the commencement of 1801, Britain had not only to lament this unexpected turn of fortune, but to reckon among her enemies the whole of the northern states of Europe, which had found it necessary to place themselves on a friendly footing with Bonaparte, and though they did not declare war against Britain, yet acted in such a manner as to render hostilities unavoidable. Nelson sailed in March with a large fleet for Copenhagen, and proved so successful against the Danish fleet, as to reduce that country to a state of neutrality. The death of the Russian Emperor Paul, which took place at the same time, and the accession of Alexander, who was friendly to Britain, completely broke up the northern confederacy. Yet the great achievements of France on the continent, joined to the distresses of a famine which at this time bore hard on the British people, produced a desire for that peace which, a year before, might have been gained upon better terms. With a view, apparently, to save the honor of Mr. Pitt and his friends, a new ministry was appointed under Mr. Addington, by whom a peace was at length, in the end of the year (1801), concluded with France, which was left in the state of aggrandizement which has just been described.

The war of the French Revolution placed Great Britain in possession of a considerable number of islands and colonies in the East and West Indies and elsewhere; and while only two war ships had been lost on her part, she had taken or destroyed 80 sail of the line, 181 frigates, and 224 smaller ships, belonging to the enemy, together with 743 privateers, 15 Dutch, and 76 Spanish ships. The triumphs of the British fleets were indeed numerous and splendid, and had the effect of keeping the national commerce almost inviolate during the whole of the war while that of France was nearly destroyed. There was, however, hardly the most trifling instance of success by land; and the expenses of the contest had been enormous. Previously to 1793, the supplies usually voted by the House of Commons were £14,000,000; but those for 1801 were £42,197,000――a sum about double the amount of the whole land-rent of the country.

WAR RENEWED WITH FRANCE, 1803――SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

It was only one of the results of the war against French independence, that France was led by the course of events to place herself under the control of her chief military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte; a man singularly qualified for concentrating and directing the energies of a country in the existing condition of France, but animated more by personal ambition than by any extended views of the good of his species. It was soon manifested that Bonaparte did not relish peace. By taking undue advantage of several points left loose in the treaty, he provoked Great Britain to retaliate by retaining possession of Malta; and the war was accordingly recommenced in May 1803. Britain immediately employed her superior naval force to seize the French West India colonies; while France took possession of Hanover, and excluded British commerce from Hamburg. Bonaparte collected an immense flotilla at Boulogne, for the avowed purpose of invading England; but so vigorous were the preparations made by the whole British population, and so formidable the fleet under Lord Nelson, that he never found it possible to put his design in execution. In the year 1804, he was elevated to the dignity of Emperor of the French; and France once more exhibited the formalities of a court, though not of the kind which the European sovereigns were anxious to see established. In April of the same year, the Addington administration was exchanged for one constructed by Mr. Pitt, and of which he formed the leader.

In 1805, under the fostering influence of Great Britain, a new coalition of European powers, consisting of Russia, Sweden, Austria, and Naples, was formed against Napoleon. He, on the other hand, had drawn Spain upon his side, and was making great exertions for contesting with Britain the empire of the sea. A fleet of thirty-three sail, partly French and partly Spanish, met a British fleet of twenty-seven, under Nelson, off Cape Trafalgar, October 25, 1805, and was completely beaten, though at the expense of the life of the British commander. Britain thus fixed permanently her dominion over the seas and coasts of the civilized world. At this time, however, Napoleon was asserting with equal success his supremacy over continental Europe. By a sudden, rapid, and unexpected movement, he conducted an army into Germany, where the Austrians were already making aggressions upon neutral territory. On the 17th October, he took the fortress of Ulm, with its artillery, magazines, and garrison of 30,000 men; a month after, he entered Vienna without resistance. He then pursued the royal family, and the allied armies of Russia and Austria, into Moravia; and on the 2d of December 1805, he gained the decisive and celebrated victory of Austerlitz, which put an end to the coalition, and rendered him the dictator of the continent.

This series of events caused much gloom in the British councils, and with other painful circumstances, among which was the impeachment of his colleague Lord Melville, for malpractices in the Admirality, proved a death-blow to Mr. Pitt, who expired on the 23d of January 1806, completely worn out with state business, at the early age of forty-seven, half of which time he had spent in the public service. Mr. Pitt is universally allowed the praise of high talent and patriotism. But his policy has been a subject of dispute between the two great political parties into which British society is divided. By the Tories it is firmly believed that his entering into the war against the French Republic was the means of saving the country from anarchy and ruin; by the Whigs, that this step only ended to postpone the settlement of the affairs of France, and loaded Britain with an enormous debt. Of the absence of all selfish views in the political conduct of Mr. Pitt, there can be no doubt; for, so far from accumulating a fortune out of the public funds, he left some debts, which Parliament gratefully paid.

Mr. Pitt’s ministry was succeeded by one composed of Lord Grenville, Mr. Fox, and their friends; it was comprehensively called Whig, although Lord Grenville was a Tory, except in his advocacy of the claims of the Catholics for emancipation. In the course of 1806, the new cabinet made an attempt to obtain a peace from France, which now threatened to bring the whole world to its feet. But the Grenville administration encountered serious difficulties from the king, who never could be induced to look with the least favor on the Catholic claims, or those who advocated them. Exhausted by his useless labors, Mr. Fox died, September 13, 1806. Few names are more endeared to the British people than his, for, though the leader of the Whigs, he never excited any rancor in his opponents. He was remarkable for his frankness and simplicity. His abilities as a parliamentary orator and statesman were of the first order, and he was invariably the consistent and sincere friend of popular rights.

A new coalition, excluding Austria, but involving Prussia, had been subsidised by Britain, and was preparing to act. With his usual decision, Napoleon led what he called his ‘Grand Army’ by forced marches into Prussia; gained, on the 14th of October, the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, which at once deprived that country of her army, her capital, and her fortresses; and then proclaimed the famous ‘Berlin Decrees,’ by which he declared Great Britain in a state of blockade, and shut the ports of Europe against her merchandise. The King of Prussia, Frederick William III, took refuge with his court in Russia, which now was the only continental power of any importance that remained unsubdued by France.

Towards that country Napoleon soon bent his steps, taking, as he went, assistance from Poland, which he promised to restore to independence. After a series of skirmishes and battles of lesser importance, he met the Russian army in great strength (June 14, 1807), at Friedland, and gave it a total overthrow. He might now have easily reduced the whole country, as he had done Austria and Prussia; but he contented himself with forming a treaty (called the treaty of Tilsit, from the place where it was entered into), by which Russia agreed to become an ally of France, and entered into his views for the embarrassment of Britain by the exclusion of her commerce from the continental ports. France had thus, in the course of a few years, disarmed the whole of Europe, excepting Great Britain, an amount of military triumph for which there was no precedent in ancient or modern history.

The Grenville administration was displaced in the spring of 1807, in consequence of the difference between its members and the king on the subject of the Catholic claims, which had long been urged by the Whig party, with little support from the people. The next ministry was headed by the Duke of Portland, and included Lords Hawkesbury and Castlereagh (afterwards Earl of Liverpool and Marquis of Londonderry), and Mr. Canning, as secretaries; Mr. Spencer Perceval being chancellor of the exchequer. After being accustomed to the services of such men as Pitt and Fox, the people regarded this cabinet as one possessing comparatively little ability. One of its first acts was the despatch of a naval armament to Copenhagen to seize and bring away the Danish shipping, which was expected to be immediately employed in subserviency to the designs of France, and for the injury of Britain. The end of the expedition was very easily obtained; but it was the means of lowering the honor of Britain in the estimation of foreign powers.

FIRST PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN――SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

The retaliation of France, for the interferences of other powers with its Revolution, even supposing such retaliation justifiable, was now more than completed. Further measures could only appear as dictated by a desire of aggrandizement. But France was now given up to the direction of a military genius, who had other ends to serve than the defense of the country against foreign aggression or interference. The amazing successes of Napoleon had inspired him with the idea of universal empire: and so great was the influence he had acquired over the French, and so high their military spirit, that the attainment of his object seemed by no means impossible. There was a difference, however, between the opposition which he met with before this period, and that which he subsequently encountered. In the earlier periods of the war, the military operations of the European powers were chiefly dictated by views concerning the interests of governments, and in which the people at large felt little sympathy. Henceforth a more patriotic spirit rose everywhere against Napoleon: he was looked upon in England and elsewhere as the common enemy of humanity and of freedom; and every exertion made for the humiliation of France was animated by a sentiment of desperation, in which the governors and governed alike participated.

The Spanish peninsula was the first part of the prostrated continent where the people could be said to have taken a decidedly hostile part against Napoleon. He had there gone so far as to dethrone the reigning family, and give the crown to his elder brother Joseph. A sense of wrong and insult, mingled with religious fanaticism, raised the Spanish people in revolt against the French troops; and though their conduct was barbarous, it was hailed in Britain as capable of being turned to account. In terms of a treaty entered into with a provisional government in Spain, a small army was landed, August 8, 1808, in Portugal, which had been taken possession of by the French. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who afterwards became so famous as Duke of Wellington, was the leader of this force. In an engagement at Vimeira, on the 21st, he repulsed the French, under Junot, who soon after agreed, by what was called the Convention of Cintra, to evacuate the country. Sir Arthur being recalled, the British army was led into Spain under the command of Sir John Moore; but this officer found the reinforcements poured in by Napoleon too great to be withstood, and accordingly, in the end of December, he commenced a disastrous, though well-conducted retreat towards the port of Corunna, whither he was closely pursued by Marshal Soult. The British army suffered on this occasion the severest hardships and losses, but did not experience a check in battle, or lose a single standard. In a battle which took place at Corunna, January 16, 1809, for the purpose of protecting the embarkation of the troops, Sir John Moore was killed.

Much of the public attention was about this time engrossed by circumstances in the private life of the eldest son of the king. The Prince of Wales had been tempted, in 1796, by the prospect of having his large debts paid by the nation, to marry the Princess Caroline of Brunswick, for whom he entertained no real affection. Almost ever since the marriage, he had shown the most marked disrespect for his consort, who consequently lived separate from him, and was herself considered by many as not altogether blameless in her conduct as a matron.

In 1809, Austria was induced once more to commence war with France. Upwards of half a million of men were brought into the field, under the command of the Archduke Charles. Bonaparte, leaving Spain comparatively open to attack, moved rapidly forward into Germany, and, by the victory of Eckmühl, opened up the way to Vienna, which surrendered to him. After gaining a slight advantage at Essling, the archduke came to a second decisive encounter at Wagram, where the strength of Austria was completely broken to pieces. The peace which succeeded was sealed by the marriage of Napoleon to Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Austria, for which purpose he divorced his former wife Josephine.

In the autumn of 1809, the British government despatched an army of 100,000 men, for the purpose of securing a station which should command the navigation of the Sheldt. The expedition was placed under the command of the Earl of Chatham, elder brother of Mr. Pitt, a nobleman totally unacquainted with military affairs on such a scale. The army, having disembarked on the insalubrious island of Walcheren, was swept off in thousands by disease. The survivors returned in December without having done anything towards the object for which they set out. This tragical affair became the subject of inquiry in the House of Commons, which by a majority of 272 against 232, vindicated the manner in which the expedition had been managed.

SUCCESSES OF WELLINGTON IN SPAIN.

A new expedition in Spain was attended with better success. Taking advantage of the absence of Napoleon in Austria, a considerable army was landed, April 23, 1809, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who immediately drove Soult out of Portugal, and then made a rapid move upon Madrid. King Joseph advanced with a considerable force under the command of Marshal Victor; and on the 28th of July, attacked the British and Spanish troops in a strong position at Talavera. The contest was obstinate and sanguinary; and though the French did not retreat, the advantage lay with the British. As this was almost the first success which Britain experienced by land in the course of the war, Sir Arthur Wellesley became the theme of universal praise, and he was elevated to a peerage, under the title of Viscount Wellington of Talavera. He was obliged immediately to fall back upon Portugal, where he occupied a strong position near Santarem.

Early in 1810, Napoleon reinforced the army in Spain and gave orders to Massena to ‘drive the British out of the Peninsula.’ Wellington posted his troops on the heights of Busaco――eighty thousand in number, including Portuguese――and there, on the 27th of September, was attacked by an equal number of French. Both British and Portuguese behaved well: the French were repulsed with great loss, and for the first time in the war, conceived a respectful notion of the British troops. Wellington now retired to the lines of Torres Vedras, causing the whole country to be desolated as he went, for the purpose of embarrassing the French. When Massena observed the strength of the British position, he hesitated; and ultimately, in the spring of 1811, performed a disastrous and harassing retreat into the Spanish territory.

It now became an object of importance with Wellington to obtain possession of the Spanish fortresses which had been seized by the French. On the 22d of April, he reconnoitered Badajos, and soon after laid siege to Almeida. Massena, advancing to raise the siege, was met on fair terms at Fuentes d’Onoro, May 5, and repulsed. Almeida consequently fell into the hands of the British. General Beresford, at the head of another body of British forces, gained the bloody battle of Albuera over Soult, and thereby protected the siege of Badajos, which, however, was soon after abandoned. During the same season, General Graham, in command of a third body of troops, gained the battle of Barossa. At the end of a campaign, in which the French were upon the whole unsuccessful, Wellington retired once more into Portugal.

EVENTS OF 1811, 1812, AND 1813.

The year 1811 was regarded as the period of greatest depression and distress which the British empire had known for several ages. At this time, with the exception of an uncertain footing gained in Spain, the influence of England was unknown on the continent. Bonaparte seemed as firmly seated on the throne of France as any of her former monarchs, while every other civilized European kingdom either owned a monarch of his express appointment, or was in some other way subservient to him. By the Berlin and Milan decrees, he had shut the ports of the continent against British goods, so that they could only be smuggled into the usual markets. By British orders in council, which, though intended to be retaliatory, only increased the evil, no vessel belonging to a neutral power――such, for instance, as the United States――was permitted to carry goods to those ports, unless they should previously land and pay a duty in Britain. Thus the nation at once suffered from the shortsighted despotism of the French emperor, and from its own narrow and imperfect views of commerce; for, by embarrassing America, it only deprived itself of one of its best and almost sole remaining customers.

The power of Bonaparte, though sudden in its rise, might have been permanent if managed with discretion. It was used, however, in such a way as to produce a powerful reaction throughout Europe in favor of those ancient institutions, which, twenty years before, had been threatened with ruin. The exclusion of British goods――a measure which he had dictated in resentment against England――proved the source of great distress, oppression, and hardship throughout the continent, and was greatly instrumental in exciting a spirit of hostility against him. The very circumstance of a foreign power domineering over their native princes, raised a feeling in favor of those personages, which, being identified with the cause of national independence, acted as a very powerful stimulant. On the other hand, a sense of the grasping ambition of Napoleon――of his hostility to real freedom――of his unscrupulousness in throwing away the lives of his subjects for his own personal aggrandizement――had for some time been gaining ground in France itself.

In 1812, when the transactions in Spain had already somewhat impaired Napoleon’s reputation, Alexander, Emperor of Russia, ventured upon a defiance of his decrees against British merchandise, and provoked him to a renewal of the war. With upwards of half a million of troops, appointed in the best manner, he set out for that remote country, determined to reduce it into perfect subjection. An unexpected accident defeated all his plans. The city of Moscow, after being possessed by the French troops in September, was destroyed by incendiaries, so that no shelter remained for them during the ensuing winter. Napoleon was obliged to retreat; but, overtaken by the direst inclemency of the season, his men perished by thousands in the snow. Of his splendid army, a mere skeleton regained central Europe. Returning almost alone to Paris, he contrived with great exertions to reinforce his army, though there was no replacing the veterans lost in Russia.

Early in 1813, he opened a campaign in northern Germany, where the emperor of Russia, now joined by the king of Prussia and various minor powers, appeared in the open field against him. After various successes on both sides, an armistice was agreed to on the 1st of June, and Bonaparte was offered peace on condition of restoring only that part of his dominions which he had acquired since 1805. Inspired with an overweening confidence in his resources and military genius, he refused these terms, and lost all. In August, when the armistice was at an end, his father-in-law, the emperor of Austria, joined the allies, whose forces now numbered 500,000 men, while an army of 300,000 was the largest which Napoleon could at present bring into the field. Henceforth he might be considered as overpowered by numbers. By steady, though cautious movements, the allies advanced to France, driving him reluctantly before them, and increasing their own force as the various states became emancipated by their presence. At the close of 1813, they rested upon the frontiers of France, while Lord Wellington, after two successful campaigns in Spain, had advanced in like manner to the Pyrenees.

HOME AFFAIRS――WAR WITH AMERICA.

Some changes had in the meantime taken place in the British administration. On the 11th of May, 1812, the premier, Mr. Perceval, was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, by a man named Bellingham, whom some private losses had rendered insane. Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh then became the ministerial leaders in the two Houses of Parliament, but were quickly voted down by a majority of four, upon a motion made by Mr. Stuart Wortley, afterwards Lord Wharncliffe. The ministry was finally rendered satisfactory to Parliament by the admission of Earl Harrowby as president of the council, Mr. Vansittart as chancellor of the exchequer, and Lord Sidmouth (formerly premier while Mr. Addington) as secretary for the home department; Lord Liverpool continuing as premier, and Lord Castlereagh as foreign and war secretary.

Notwithstanding the successes which were at this period brightening the prospects of Britain, the regent and his ministers did not enjoy much popularity. The regent himself did not possess those domestic virtues which are esteemed by the British people, and he had excited much disapprobation by the steps which he took for fixing a criminal charge upon his consort. The general discontents were increased by the effects of the orders in council, for prohibiting the commerce of neutral states. Vast multitudes of working people were thrown idle by the stagnation of manufactures, and manifested their feelings in commotion and riot. The middle classes expressed their dissatisfaction by clamors for parliamentary reform.

At this unhappy crisis, provoked by the orders in council, as well as by a right assumed by British war-vessels to search for and impress English sailors on board the commercial shipping of the United States, that country (June 1812) declared war against Britain. Before the news had reached London, the orders had been revoked by the influence of Lord Liverpool; but the Americans, nevertheless, were too much incensed to retrace their steps. During the summer and autumn, several encounters took place between single American and British ships, in which the former were successful. It was not till June 1, 1813, when the Shannon and Chesapeake met on equal terms, that the British experienced any naval triumph in this war with a kindred people. On land, the Americans endeavored to annoy the British by assaults upon Canada, but met with no decisive success. The British landed several expeditions on the coast of the States; and were successful at Washington, Alexandria, and at one or two other points, but experienced a bloody and disastrous repulse at New Orleans. The war ended, December 1814, without settling any of the principles for which the Americans had taken up arms. But while thus simply useless to America, it was seriously calamitous to Britain. The commerce with the States, which amounted in 1807, to twelve millions, was interrupted and nearly ruined by the orders in council, and the hostilities which they occasioned: henceforth America endeavored to render herself commercially independent of Britain, by the encouragement of native manufactures――a policy not immediately advantageous perhaps to herself, and decidedly injurious to Great Britain. The fatal effects of the Berlin and Milan decrees to Napoleon, and of the orders in council to the interests of Britain, show how extremely dangerous it is for any government to interfere violently with the large commercial systems upon which the immediate interests of their subjects depend.

PEACE OF 1814――SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

At the close of 1813, it was evident that Bonaparte could hardly defend himself against the vast armaments collected on all hands against him. Early in 1814, having impressed almost every youth capable of bearing arms, he opposed the allies on the frontiers with a force much less numerous and worse disciplined. Even now he was offered peace, on condition that he should only retain France as it existed before the Revolution. But this proposition was too humiliating to his spirit to be accepted; and he entertained a hope that, at the worst, his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, would not permit him to be dethroned. Two months were spent in almost incessant conflict with the advancing allies, who, on the 30th of March, entered Paris in triumph; and in the course of a few days, ratified a treaty with Napoleon, by which he agreed to resign the government of France, and live for the future as only sovereign of Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean.

In the measures for settling France, Great Britain concurred by her representative Lord Castlereagh, who attended the allies during the campaign of 1814; and peace was proclaimed in London on the 20th of June. France was deprived of all the acquisitions gained both under the Republic and the Empire, and restored to the rule of the ancient royal family in the person of Louis XVIII. The emperor of Russia and the king of Prussia visited England in June, and were received with all the honors due to men who were considered as the liberators of Europe. Wellington, now created a duke, received a grant of £400,000 from the House of Commons, in addition to one of £100,000 previously voted; and had the honor to receive in person the thanks of the House for his services. Representatives from the European powers concerned in the war, met at Vienna, October 2, in order to settle the disturbed limits of the various countries, and provide against the renewal of a period of war so disastrous. Throughout the whole arrangements, Great Britain acted with a disinterested magnanimity, which, after her great sufferings and expenses, could hardly have been looked for, but was highly worthy of the eminent name which she bore amidst European nations.

In March 1815, the proceedings of the Congress were interrupted by the intelligence that Napoleon had landed in France and was advancing in triumph to the capital. He had been encouraged by various favorable circumstances to attempt the recovery of his throne; and so unpopular had the new government already become, that, though he landed with only a few men, he was everywhere received with affection, and on the 20th of March was reinstated in his capital, which had that morning been left by Louis XVIII. The latter sovereign had granted a charter to his people, by which he and his successors were bound to rule under certain restrictions, and with a legislature composed of two chambers, somewhat resembling the British Houses of Parliament. Bonaparte now came under similar engagements, and even submitted to take the votes of the nation for his restoration; on which occasion he had a million and a-half of affirmative, against less than half a million of negative voices, the voting being performed by ballot. His exertions to reorganize an army were successful to a degree which showed his extraordinary influence over the French nation. On the 1st of June he had 559,000 effective men under arms, of whom 217,000 were ready to take the field.

A Prussian army of more than 100,000 men, under Blucher, and one of about 80,000 British, Germans, and Belgians, under Wellington, were quickly rendezvoused in the Netherlands, while still larger armies of Austrians and Russians, making the whole force above 1,000,000, were rapidly approaching. These professed to make war, not on France, but against Bonaparte alone, whom they denounced as having, by his breach of the treaty, ‘placed himself out of the pale of civil and social relations, and incurred the penalty of summary execution.’ Napoleon, knowing that his enemies would accumulate faster in proportion than his own troops, crossed the frontier on the 14th of June, with 120,000 men, resolved to fight Blucher and Wellington separately, if possible. The rapidity of his movements prevented that concert between the Prussian and English generals which it was their interest to establish. On the 16th, he beat Blucher at Ligny, and compelled him to retire. He had at the same time intrusted to Marshal Ney the duty of cutting off all connection between the two hostile armies. His policy, though not fully acted up to by his marshals, was so far successful, that Blucher retired upon a point nearly a day’s march from the forces of Wellington.

After some further fighting next day, Napoleon brought his whole forces to bear, on the 18th, against Wellington alone, who had drawn up his troops across the road to Brussels, near a place called Waterloo. The battle consisted of a constant succession of attacks by the French upon the British lines. These assaults were attended with great bloodshed, but nevertheless resisted with the utmost fortitude, till the evening, when Blucher came up on the left flank of the British, and turned the scale against the French, who had now to operate laterally, as well as in front. The failure of a final charge by Napoleon’s reserve to produce any impression on the two armies, decided the day against him: his baffled and broken host retired before a furious charge of the Prussian cavalry, who cut them down unmercifully. On his return to Paris, Napoleon made an effort to restore the confidence of his chief counsellors, but in vain. After a fruitless abdication in favor of his son, he retired on board a small vessel at Rockfort, with the intention of proceeding to America; but being captured by a British ship of war, he was condemned by his triumphant enemies to perpetual confinement on the island of St. Helena, in the Atlantic, where he died in 1821.

Louis XVIII was now restored, and the arrangements of the Congress of Vienna were completed. The expenses of Great Britain during the last year of hostilities exceeded seventy millions; and the national debt, which in 1763 had been £230,000,000, now amounted to the vast sum of £860,000,000.

During the latter years of Napoleon, a reaction had taken place throughout Europe against the innovatory doctrines which, by producing the French Revolution, had been the cause, innocent or guilty, of so much ruinous warfare. Encouraged by this sentiment, the sovereigns of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, had no sooner settled the new government of France, than they entered, September 26, 1815, into a personal league or bond for assisting each other on all occasions when any commotion should take place among their respective subjects. This treaty was composed in somewhat obscure terms; and from its professing religion to be the sole proper guide ‘in the counsels of princes, in consolidating human institutions, and remedying their imperfections,’ it obtained the name of the Holy Alliance. It was published at the end of the year, and communicated to the Prince Regent of England, who approved of, but did not accede to it.

In May 1816, the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, was married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a young officer who had gained her affections when attending the allied sovereigns at the British court. In November 1817, to the inexpressible grief of the whole nation, the young Princess died, immediately after having given birth to a dead son.

In August 1816, a British armament under Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, and reduced that piratical state to certain desirable conditions respecting the treatment of Christian prisoners.

The year 1816, and the four following years, will always be memorable as an epoch of extraordinary distress, affecting almost every class of the community. The liberation of European commerce at the end of the war produced a proportionate diminution of that trade which England had previously enjoyed, through her exclusive possession of the seas. While all public burdens continued at their former nominal amount, the prices of every kind of produce, and of every kind of goods had fallen far below the unnatural level to which a state of war and of paper money had raised them; and hence the expenses of the late contest, which had never been felt in the fictitious prosperity then prevalent, came to press with great severity upon the national resources, at a time when there was much less ability to bear the burden. To complete the misery of the country, the crops of 1816 fell far short of the usual quantity, and the price of bread was increased to an amount more than double that which has since been the average rate.

On the 20th of January 1820, George III died at Windsor, in his eighty-second year, without having experienced any lucid interval since 1810. The Prince Regent was immediately proclaimed as GEORGE IV; but there was no other change to mark the commencement of a new reign. A few days after the decease of George III, the Duke of Kent, his fourth son, died suddenly, leaving an infant daughter, Victoria, with a very near prospect to the throne.

REIGN OF GEORGE IV.

At the time when George IV commenced his reign, the recent proceedings of the ministry, had inspired a small band of desperate men with the design of assassinating the ministers at a cabinet dinner, and thereafter attempting to set themselves up as a provisional government. On the 23d of February 1820, they were suprised by the police in their place of meeting, and, after a desperate resistance, five were seized, among whom one Thistlewood was the chief. These wretched men were tried for high treason, and executed. Nearly about the same time, an attempt was made by the workmen in the west of Scotland to bring about some alteration in the state; and two men were executed.

On the accession of the king, his consort’s name had been omitted from the liturgy. This and other indignities induced her to return from a voluntary exile in Italy, June 1820, to the great embarrassment of the king and his ministers. Her majesty, who had long been befriended by the Opposition, was received by the people with the warmest expressions of sympathy. Whatever had been blameable in her conduct was overlooked, on account of the greater licentiousness of life ascribed to her husband, and the persecution which she had suffered for twenty-four years. The king, who had established a system of observation round her majesty during her absence from the country, caused a bill of pains and penalties against her to be brought (July 6) into the House of Lords, which thus became a court for her trial. Messrs Brougham and Denman, who afterwards attained high judicial stations, acted as counsel for her majesty, and displayed great dexterity and eloquence in her defense. The examination of witnesses occupied several weeks; and nothing was left undone which might promise to confirm her majesty’s guilt. But no evidence of criminality could soften the indignation with which almost all classes of the community regarded this prosecution. Though the bill was read a second time by a majority of 28 in a house of 218, and a third time by 108 against 99, the government considered it expedient to abandon it, leaving the queen and her partisans triumphant.

In July 1821, the coronation of George IV took place under circumstances of great splendor. On this occasion, the queen made an attempt to enter Westminster Abby, for the purpose of witnessing the ceremony, but was repelled by the military officers who guarded the door; an insult which gave such a shock to her health as to cause her death in a few days.

From the year 1805, the Catholic claims had been a prominent subject of parliamentary discussion, and since 1821 they had been sanctioned by a majority in the House of Commons. Almost despairing of their cause, while left to the progress of mere opinion in the English aristocracy, the Irish Catholics had in 1824 united themselves in an Association, with the scarcely concealed purpose of forcing their emancipation by means of a terrifying exhibition of their physical strength. An act was quickly passed for the suppression of this powerful body; but it immediately reäppeared in a new shape. In fact, the impatience of the Catholic population of Ireland under the disabilities and degradation to which they were subjected on account of religion, was evidently becoming so very great, that there could be little hope of either peace or public order in that country till their demands were conceded. Though the English public lent little weight to the agitation, and the king was decidedly hostile to its object, Catholic emancipation rapidly acquired importance with all classes, and in all parts of the empire. In the spring of 1828, a kind of preparation was made for the concession, by the repeal of the test and corporation oaths, imposed in the reign of Charles II.

The ministry soon after received an alarming proof of the growing force of the question. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald had vacated his seat for the county of Clare, on becoming president of the Board of Trade. He was a friend to emancipation, and possessed great influence in the county; but he was also a member of an anti-Catholic administration. As an expedient for annoying the ministry, the Catholic Association, and all the local influences on that side, were set in motion to procure the return of Mr. Daniel O’Connell, the most distinguished orator of the Catholic party. To the surprise of the nation, Mr. O’Connell was returned by a great majority. It was even surmised that the laws for the exclusion of Catholics from Parliament would be unable to prevent him from taking his seat. The Duke of Wellington now began to see the necessity of taking steps towards a settlement of this agitating question; and the first, and most difficult, was to overcome the scruples of the sovereign. At the opening of the session of 1829, in consequence of a recommendation from the throne, bills were introduced by ministers for removing the civil disabilities of Catholics, and putting down the Catholic Association in Ireland; and notwithstanding a great popular opposition, as well as the most powerful exertions of the older and more rigid class of Tories, this measure was carried by a majority of 353 against 180 in the House of Commons, and by 217 to 112 in the House of Lords.

REIGN OF WILLIAM IV.

The agitations respecting the Catholic Relief Bill had in some measure subsided, when, June 26, 1830, George IV died of ossification of the vital organs, and was succeeded by his next brother, the Duke of Clarence, under the title of WILLIAM IV. About a month after, a great sensation was produced in Britain by a revolution which took place in France, the main line of the Bourbon family being expelled, and the crown conferred upon Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans. By this event, a great impulse was given to the reforming spirit in Britain, and the demands for an improvement in the parliamentary representation became very strong. The consequence was the retirement of the Wellington administration in November, and the formation of a Whig cabinet, headed by Earl Grey. The agitations of the time were much increased by a system of nocturnal fire-raising, which spread through the south of England, and caused the destruction of a vast quantity of agricultural produce and machinery.

The Whig ministry came into power upon an understanding that they were to introduce bills for parliamentary reform, with reference to the three divisions of the United Kingdom. These, when presented in March 1831, were found to propose very extensive changes, particularly the disfranchisement of boroughs of small population, for which the members were usually returned by private influence, and the extension of the right of voting in both boroughs and counties to the middle classes of society. The bills accordingly met with strong opposition from the Tory, now called the Conservative party. By a dissolution of Parliament, the ministry found such an accession of supporters as enabled them to carry the measure through the House of Commons with large majorities; but it encountered great difficulties in the House of Lords; and it was not till after a temporary resignation of the ministry, and some strong expressions of popular anxiety respecting reform, that the bills were allowed to become law.

During the few years which followed the passing of the Reform Bills, the attention of Parliament was chiefly occupied by a series of measures which a large portion of the public deemed necessary for improving the institutions of the country, and for other beneficial purposes. The most important of these, in a moral point of view, was the abolition of slavery in the colonies, the sum of twenty millions being paid to the owners of the negroes, as a compensation. By this act, eight hundred thousand slaves were (August 1, 1834) placed in the condition of freemen, but subject to an apprenticeship to their masters for a few years.

In the same year, an act was passed for amending the laws for the support of the poor in England, which had long been a subject of general complaint. One of the chief provisions of the new enactment established a government commission for the superintendence of the local boards of management, which had latterly been ill conducted, and were now proposed to be reformed. The able-bodied poor were also deprived of the right which had been conferred upon them at the end of the eighteenth century, to compel parishes to support them, either by employment at a certain rate, or pecuniary aid to the same amount: they were now left no resource, failing employment, but that of entering poor-houses, where they were separated from their families. The contemplated results of this measure were a reduction of the enormous burden of the poor-rates, which had latterly exceeded seven millions annually, and a check to the degradation which indiscriminate support was found to produce in the character of the laboring classes.

Early in 1837, the ministry again introduced into the House of Commons a bill for settling the Irish tithe question; but before this or any other measure of importance had been carried, the king died of ossification of the vital organs (June 20), in the seventy-third year of his age, and seventh of his reign, being succeeded by his niece, the PRINCESS VICTORIA. The deceased monarch is allowed to have been a conscientious and amiable man, not remarkable for ability, but at the same time free from all gross faults.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT REIGN.

Queen Victoria began to reign June 20, 1837, having just completed her eighteenth year; was crowned on the 28th of June in the following year; and was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Coburg and Gotha, February 10, 1840. In the autumns of 1842, ‘44, ‘47, and ‘48, her majesty visited Scotland, but on each occasion more in a private than in a state capacity; residing at the mansions of the nobility that lay in her route to the Highlands, where the Prince Consort enjoyed the invigorating sports of grouse-shooting and deer-stalking. In 1843 she paid a visit, entirely divested of state formalities, to the late royal family of France; and shortly after made another to her uncle, the king of the Belgians. In 1845, besides making the tour of the English midland counties, the royal pair visited the family of Prince Albert at Coburg and Gotha; receiving the attentions of the various German powers that lay on their outward and homeward route. Her majesty has received in turn the friendly visits of several crowned heads, among whom have been the ex-king of the French, Leopold of Belgium, the king of Saxony, and the emperor of Russia. Such interchanges and attentions are not without their importance; at all events they are characteristic of a new era in the international history of Europe.

The Whig ministry and measures, which had for some time been on the decline, were set aside by a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the summer of 1841; a dissolution of Parliament was the consequence; and after the new elections, the Opposition was found to be so far in the ascendancy, that Viscount Melbourne tendered his resignation, and retired from public life, leaving Sir Robert Peel again to take the helm of affairs. The Parliament of 1841, under the direction of the Peel ministry, was in many respects one of the most important during the reigning dynasty. Besides passing several measures of benefit to the internal management of the country, it established, by the abolition of the corn-laws and other restrictive duties, the principles of free trade, and in that course Britain has since been followed by other nations; it gave, by the imposition of a property and income tax, a preference to the doctrine of direct taxation; it countenanced in all its diplomatic negotiations the duties and advantages of a peace policy; and engaged less with political theories than with practical and business-like arrangements for the commerce, health, and education of the country. In consequence of ministerial differences, Sir Robert Peel tendered his resignation as premier in June 1846, and was succeeded in office by Lord John Russell, to whom was assigned the further task of carrying out the principles of free trade, of legislating for Ireland in a time of dearth and famine (caused by successive failures of the potato crop), and of adopting some plan of national education――a subject which has been too long neglected in this otherwise great and prosperous empire.

Since the accession of her majesty, Britain has been on the most friendly terms with the other nations of Europe――coöperating with them in the extension and liberation of commerce, the continuance of peace, the suppression of slavery, and the advancement of other measures of importance to civilization. The disputed boundaries between British America and the United States have been determined by friendly negotiation; thus giving permanency in the new world as well as in the old to the spirit of peace and national brotherhood.

WAR WITH RUSSIA――ALLIANCE OF ENGLAND, FRANCE AND TURKEY.

On the 12th of March, 1854, a treaty of alliance between England, France, and the Porte, was signed by the representatives of those powers.

The treaty consists of five articles. By the first, France and England engage to support Turkey in her present struggle with Russia, by force of arms, until the conclusion of a peace which shall secure the independence of the Ottoman empire, and the integrity of the rights of the Sultan. The two protecting Powers undertake not to derive from the actual crisis, or from the negotiations which may terminate it, any exclusive advantage. By the second article the Porte, on its side, pledges itself not to make peace under any circumstances without having previously obtained the consent and solicited the participation of the two Powers, and also to employ all its resources to carry on the war with vigor. In the third article the two Powers promise to evacuate, immediately after the conclusion of the war, and on the demand of the Porte, all the points of the empire which their troops shall have occupied during the war. By the fourth article the treaty remains open for the signature of the other Powers of Europe who may wish to become parties to it; and the fifth article guarantees to all the subjects of the Porte, without distinction of religion, equality in the eye of the law, and admissibility into all employments. To this treaty are attached, as integral parts of it, several protocols. One relates to the institution of mixed tribunals throughout the whole empire; a second is relative to an advance of 20,000,000fr. jointly by France and England; and a third relates to the collection of the taxes and the suppression of the haratch or poll-tax, which, having been considered for a long time past by the Turkish Government as only the purchase of exemption from military service, leads, by its abolition, to the entrance of Christians into the army.

The Russians continued to prosecute the war eagerly on the banks of the Danube, but any temporary success was more than counterbalanced by subsequent and more brilliant Turkish victories.

In consequence of the atrocious conduct of the military authorities of Odessa, in firing upon an English flag of truce, a division of English and French steam frigates appeared before Odessa. On their arrival the greatest terror pervaded the city. The wealthy hired all the post-horses to remove to the interior, and the inhabitants sought refuge in the neighboring country; but the English and French steamers having withdrawn, after taking a survey of the roads, the alarm subsided, the population returned, and the shops were reöpened. On the 21st of April, however, the appearance of thirty-three sail on the horizon created still greater terror, for it was evident that they were coming to avenge the insult above alluded to, and which, even at Odessa, was the subject of universal reprobation. The next day nothing could exceed the consternation, everybody being in constant apprehension of a catastrophe. The fears redoubled when after a bombardment of eight hours, the gunpowder magazine blew up, and the military stores were seen on fire. The sight of wounded soldiers brought in from the batteries, and the brutality of the governor and his forces towards the inhabitants, were not calculated to allay their terror. This affair produced great discouragement among the troops, and an excellent effect on the population, who perceived that the Russian army was unable to protect them; and that, if the city were not reduced to ashes, it was solely owing to the generosity of the allied Powers.

On the 14th June, the Duke of Cambridge with his staff, the brigade of Guards, and the Highland brigade (42d, 79th, and 93d regiments), arrived at Varna, where a numerous Anglo-French army was already encamped. It is probable that the unexpected and retrograde movement of the Russians upon the Pruth――intelligence of which reached the allied generals about this time――occasioned a deviation from the plan of operations originally contemplated, as it obviated the necessity of any active coöperation with Omer Pacha’s army on the Danube. An expedition upon a gigantic scale was, however, planned, its destination being the Crimea and Sebastopol.

The result of the Baltic operations may be given in few words. The fleet of the Czar, outnumbered by that of the allied powers, was detained in captivity at Helsingfors and Kronstadt, declining alike every offer of battle, and unable to stay the devastation that was effected along the Finnish shore of the Bothnian Gulf. Scarcely a Russian merchant vessel escaped the vigilance of the cruisers; and the whole line of her coasts, up to the shoals of Kettle Island, were shown to be at the mercy of the allies. In a national point of view, there was not much to boast of in the achievements of so stupendous a fleet. But there were individual acts of valor as bright as any that adorn the pages of naval history.

Until the last twelvemonth opened a new page in history, it could not have been anticipated that the battle-field of Europe would be a little arid peninsula in the remotest corner of the Black Sea, and that the armies of Britain, France, Turkey, and Russia would be concentrated in direct strife around a fortress, whose very name was hardly known in this country before the present war broke out.

Connected with the barren steppes of the mainland of Southern Russia only by the narrow strip of flat and sandy land, not five miles across, which constitutes the Isthmus of Perekop, the Crimea stretches out in a nearly northerly direction, in the form of a diamond-shaped peninsula, about one-third the size of Ireland. At its western point is Cape Tarkham; at its eastern, Kertch and Kaffa, and in the south, the bay, town, and fortress of Sebastopol.

At least one third of the Crimea consists of vast waterless plains of sandy soil, rising only a few feet above the level of the sea, and in many places impregnated with salt; but all along the south-eastern side of the peninsula, from Sebastopol to Kertch and Kaffa, there extends a chain of limestone mountains. Beginning at Balaklava, nine miles east of Sebastopol, precipices fringe all this north-eastern coast; but at the foot of these limestone precipices extends a narrow strip of ground, seldom half a league in width, intervening between the hills and the shore. It is in this picturesque and delightful region that the Allied army established its base of operations. A luxuriant vegetation descends to the water’s edge. Chesnut trees, mulberries, almonds, laurels, olives, and cypresses grow along its whole extent. Numbers of rivulets of the clearest water pour down from the cliffs, which effectually keep off cold and stormy winds. Thickly studded with villages, and adorned with the villas and palaces of the richest Russian nobles, this tract offers a most striking contrast to the remainder of the peninsula or indeed to any part of Russia.

The possession of the Crimea, and the construction of a maratime fortress of the first order in the magnificent harbor of Akhtiar (for such was the former name of Sebastopol) were prominent parts of that vast scheme of policy, by which the genius of the Czar Peter, and his successors, transformed Muscovy into the Russian Empire.

The ever-memorable expedition of the Allies, designed to wrench this fortress and fleet from the possession of the Czar, set sail from Varna in the first week of September, 1854. No naval expedition ever before equaled it.

In the bay of Baltjik, where the expedition first rendezvoused, the sea was literally covered for a space of eight miles long with splendid shipping. Thirty-seven sail of the line――ten English, sixteen French, and eleven Turkish, about a hundred frigates and lesser vessels of war, and nearly two hundred of the finest steam and sailing transports in the world, lay at anchor, in one immense semicircle, nine or ten deep. The great line of battle-ships, with lights gleaming from every port, looked like illuminated towns afloat; while the other vessels, with position-lights hoisted at the main and fore, shed a light upon the sea, twinkling away until lost in the distance. Each division of the army carried lights, corresponding to the number of their division, and at night, when every ship was lighted up the scene was of the most extraordinary and interesting description. Constantinople, during the feast of Bairam, or the feast of Lamps, described in Moore’s poems, would have been a worthy illustration.

On the 4th of September, 1854, six hundred vessels sailed from Varna, bearing the combined army of 60,000 in the direction of Sebastopol: at the same time intelligence was received by the commanders of a signal victory obtained by Schamyl at Tiflis, over the Russians under Prince Bebutoff. They lost on this occasion many men and horses, seven guns, 3000 tents, all their amunition, baggage, provisions, and retreated in some disorder from Kutais and Kars to Taflis.

On the 14th September, 58,000 men were landed at Eupatoria, about forty-five miles N. W. of Sebastopol. They subsequently advanced some distance inland without meeting with any opposition.

The place of debarkation had many advantages. It is a small town, containing only 4,000 inhabitants, weakly defended by a garrison of about 12,000 men, and in no condition to resist an invasion such as this. The commanders had intended, in the first place, to have thrown up entrenchments sufficiently strong to secure the place; but having experienced no resistance, the troops marched at once towards their destination. In this march they proceeded for about eleven miles, along a slip of land, having on the left the salt lake Sasik, and the sea on their right.

The country traversed is fertile, and well supplied with water by three rivers, the Alma, the Katcha, and the Balbek. On the left, or southern bank of the latter stream, the first obstacles encountered were the outworks recently thrown up by the Russians, and an old star fort. Having surmounted these, the Allies found themselves in possession of the high ground commanding the rear of the defenses on the northern shore of the inlet, and they were scarcely adapted to resist a strong attack.

As the Black Sea expedition was departing from Varna for the Crimea, the Baltic fleet, or the greater part of it, received orders to “bear up” for England.

On the night of the 18th September, 1854, orders were given by Lord Raglan that the troops should strike tents at daybreak. An advance had been determined upon, and it was understood that the Russian light cavalry had been sweeping the country of all supplies up to a short distance from the outlaying pickets.

At three o’clock next morning, the camp was roused by the reveille, and all the 30,000 sleepers woke into active life. Of Turkish infantry, 7,000 under Suleiman Pacha moved along by the sea side; next came the divisions of Generals Bosquet, Canrobert, Forey, and Prince Napoleon. The order of march of the English army was about four miles to the right of their left wing, and as many behind them. The right of the allied forces was covered by the fleet, which moved along with it in magnificent order, darkening the air with innumerable columns of smoke, ready to shell the enemy should they attack the right, and commanding the land for nearly two miles from the shore.

The troops presented a splendid appearance. The effect of these grand masses of soldiery descending the ridges of the hills, rank after rank, with the sun playing over forests of glittering steel, can never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Onward the torrent of war swept, wave after wave, huge stately billows of armed men; while the rumbling of the artillery, and the tramp of cavalry, accompanied their progress. A halt took place about three o’clock, at a muddy stream, of which the men drank with avidity. At this stage they passed the Imperial post-house, twenty miles from Sebastopol.

Orders were given to halt and bivouac for the night, which was cold and damp, but the men were in excellent spirits, looking forward to the probability of an engagement with the enemy with perfect confidence as to the result.

On the morning of the 20th, ere daybreak, the whole force was under arms. They were marshaled silently; no bugles or drums broke the stillness; but the hum of thousands of voices rose loudly from the ranks, and the watchfires lighted up the lines of the camp as though it were a great town. When dawn broke it was discovered that the Russians had retired from the heights. It was known that the Russians had been busy fortifying the heights over the valley through which runs the little river Alma, and that they had resolved to try their strength with the allied army in a position giving them vast advantages of ground, which they had used every means in their power to improve to the utmost. The advance of the armies this great day was a sight which must ever stand out like a landmark of the spectator’s life. Early in the morning, the troops were ordered to get in readiness, and at half-past six o’clock they were in motion. It was a lovely day; the heat of the sun was tempered by a sea breeze. The fleet was visible at a distance of four miles, covering the ocean as it was seen between the hills, and steamers could be seen as close to the shore as possible. The Generals, St Arnaud, Bosquet, and Forey, attended by their staff, rode along the lines, with Lord Raglan and his Generals at second halt, and were received with tremendous cheering.

The order in which the army advanced was in columns of brigades in deploying distance; the left protected by a line of skirmishers of cavalry and of horse artillery. The advantage of the formation was, that the army, in case of a strong attack from cavalry and infantry on the left or rear, could assume the form of a hollow square, with the baggage in the centre. The great object was to gain the right of the position, so that the attacking parties could be sheltered by the vertical fire of the fleets. As soon as the position of the allies could be accurately ascertained, the whole line, extending itself across the champaign country for some five or six miles, advanced. At the distance of two miles the English army halted to obtain a little time to gather up the rear; and then the troops steadily advanced in grand lines, like the waves of the ocean.

The French occupied the high road, nearest the beach, with the Turks; and the English marched to the left. At about one o’clock in the afternoon, the Light Division of the French army came in sight of the village of Almatamak, and the British Light Division descried that of Burliuk, both situated on the right bank of the river Alma.

At the place where the bulk of the British army crossed, the banks of the Alma are generally at the right side, and vary from two and three to six and eight feet in depth to the water; where the French attacked, the banks are generally formed by the unvaried curve of the river on the left hand side. A village is approached from the north by a road winding through a plain nearly level till it comes near the village, where the ground dips, so that at the distance of three hundred yards a man on horseback can hardly see the tops of the nearer and more elevated houses, and can only ascertain the position of the stream by the willows and verdure along its banks. At the left or south side of the Alma the ground assumes a very different character――smooth where the bank is deep, and greatly elevated where the shelve of the bank occurs, it recedes for a few yards at a moderate height above the stream, pierced here and there by the course of the winter’s torrents, so as to form small ravines, commanded, however, by the heights above. It was on these upper heights, and to the sea, that the Russian army, forty-five thousand strong, besides six or eight thousand cavalry, and at least a hundred pieces of artillery, were posted. A remarkable ridge of mountains, varying in height from 500 to 700 feet, runs along the course of the Alma on the left or south side with the course of the stream, and assuming the form of cliffs when close to the sea. At the top of the ridges, between the gullies, the Russians had erected earthwork batteries, mounted with 32lb. and 24lb. brass guns, supported by numerous field pieces and howitzers. These guns enfiladed the tops of the ravines parallel to them, or swept them to the base, while the whole of the sides up which an enemy, unable to stand the direct fire of the batteries, would be forced to ascend, were filled with masses of skirmishers, armed with an excellent two-grooved rifle, throwing a large solid conical ball with force at 700 and 800 yards, as the French learned to their cost. The principal battery consisted of an earthwork of the form of the two sides of a triangle, with the apex pointed towards the bridge, and the sides covering both sides of the stream, corresponding with the bend of the river below it, at the distance of 1000 yards; while, with a fair elevation, the 32-pounders threw, very often, beyond the houses of the village to the distance of 1400 and 1500 yards. This was constructed on the brow of a hill about 600 feet above the river, but the hill rose behind it for another 50 feet before it dipped away towards the road. The ascent of this hill was enfiladed by the fire of three batteries of earthwork on the right, and by another on the left, and these batteries were equally capable of covering the village, the stream, and the slopes which led up the hill to their position. In the first battery were thirteen 32-pounder brass guns of exquisite workmanship, which only told too well. In the other batteries were some twenty-five guns in all.

The force of the British was about 26,000, that of the French about 23,000.

It had not escaped the observation of the allied Commanders that the Russian General had relied so confidently on the natural strength of his position towards the sea where the cliff rose steep and high above the gardens of an adjacent village, that he had neglected to defend this part of his works by masses of troops or by heavy guns. These military defenses were, on the contrary, accumulated on his right and centre. The plan of the battle was therefore formed so as to enable the French, and a Turkish division, in the first instance, to turn the Russian left, and gain the plateau; and, as soon as this operation was accomplished, so as to occupy a portion of the Russian army, the British troops and the French Third Division were to attack the key of the position on the right of the enemy, while the French completed his defeat on the upper ground.

General Bosquet’s division crossed the river Alma near the mouth about 11:30; the Turkish battalions crossing at the same time close to the bar, and within musket range of the beach. This movement was unopposed; and, although a crowd of French skirmishers and light-infantry crossed the gardens and brushwood below the hill, which might easily have been defended, not a shot was fired on them, and not a gun seemed to bear on the line of march they followed. It was afterwards ascertained from the Russian prisoners, that Prince Menschikoff had left this line unguarded, because he regarded it as absolutely impassable even for goats. He did not know the Zouaves. With inconceivable rapidity and agility they swarmed up the cliff, and it was not till they formed on the height, and deployed from behind a mound there, that the Russian batteries opened upon them. The fire was returned with great spirit, and a smart action ensued, during which General Bosquet’s division was engaged for some time almost alone, until General Canrobert came to his support. The Turkish division, which presented a very martial appearance, and was eager to fight, formed part of the army under the command of Marshal St. Arnaud; and some regret was felt by these brave troops that they had no active part assigned to them in the struggle.

While the French troops were scaling the heights, the French steamers ran in as close as they could to the bluff of the shore at the south side of the Alma, and commenced shelling the Russians in splendid style; the shells bursting over the enemy’s squares and batteries, and finally driving them from their position on the right, within 3000 yards of the sea. The Russians answered the ships from the heights, but without effect.

At 1:50 a line of skirmishers got within range of the battery on the hill, and immediately the Russians opened fire at 1200 yards, with effect, the shot ploughing through open lines of the riflemen, and falling into the advancing columns behind. Shortly ere this time, dense volumes of smoke rose from the river, and drifted along to the eastward, interfering with the view of the enemy on the left. The Russians had set the village on fire. It was a fair exercise of military skill――was well executed――took place at the right time, and succeeded in occasioning a good deal of annoyance. It is said the Russians had taken the range of all the principal points in their front, and placed twigs and sticks to mark them. In this they were assisted by the post sign-boards on the road. The Russians opened a furious fire on the whole English line. The round shot whizzed in every direction, dashing up the dirt and sand into the faces of the staff of Lord Raglan. Still he waited patiently for the development of the French attack. At length, an Aid-de-Camp came to him and reported the French had crossed the Alma, but they had not established themselves sufficiently to justify an attack. The infantry were, therefore, ordered to lie down, and the army for a short time was quite passive, only that the artillery poured forth an unceasing fire of shell, rockets, and round shot, which plowed through the Russians, and caused them great loss. They did not waver, however, and replied to the artillery manfully, their shot falling among the men as they lay, and carrying off legs and arms at every round.

Lord Raglan at last became weary of this inactivity, and gave orders for the whole line to advance. Up rose these serried masses, and――passing through a fearful shower of round, case-shot and shell――they dashed into the Alma and ‘floundered’ through its waters, which were literally torn into foam by the deadly hail. At the other side of the river were a number of vineyards, occupied by Russian riflemen. Three of the staff were here shot down; but, led by Lord Raglan in person, they advanced, cheering on the men. And now came the turning point of the battle, in which Lord Raglan, by his sagacity, probably secured the victory at a smaller sacrifice than would have been otherwise the case. He dashed over the bridge, followed by his staff. From the road over it, under the Russian guns, he saw the state of the action. The British line, which he had ordered to advance, was struggling through the river and up the heights in masses, firm indeed, but mowed down by the murderous fire of the batteries; and by grape, round shot, shell, canister, case-shot, and musketry, from some of the guns in the central battery, and from an immense and compact mass of Russian infantry.

Then commenced one of the most bloody and determined struggles in the annals of war. The 2d Division, led by Sir de Lacy Evans, crossed the stream on the right. Brigadier Pennefather (who was in the thickest of the fight, cheering on his men), again and again was checked, but never drew back in his onward progress, which was marked by a fierce roll of Minié musketry; and Brigadier Adams bravely charged up the hill, and aided him in the battle. Sir George Brown, conspicuous on a gray horse, rode in front of his Light Division, urging them with voice and gesture. Meantime the Guards on the right of the Light Division, and the brigade of Highlanders, were storming the heights on the left. Suddenly a tornado of round and grape rushed through from the terrible battery, and a roar of musketry from behind it thinned their front ranks by dozens. It was evident that the troops were just able to contend against the Russians, favored as they were by a great position. At this very time an immense mass of Russian infantry were seen moving down towards the battery. They halted. It was the crisis of the day. Sharp, angular, and solid, they looked as if they were cut out of the solid rock. Lord Raglan saw the difficulties of the situation. He asked if it would be possible to get a couple of guns to bear on these masses. The reply was ‘Yes;’ and an artillery officer brought up two guns to fire on the Russian squares. The first shot missed, but the next, and the next, and the next, cut through the ranks so cleanly, and so keenly, that a clear lane could be seen for a moment through the square. After a few rounds the columns of the square became broken, wavered to and fro, broke, and fled over the brow of the hill, leaving behind them six or seven distinct lines of dead, lying as close as possible to each other, marking the passage of the fatal messengers. This act relieved the infantry of a deadly incubus, and they continued their magnificent and fearless progress up the hill. ‘Highlanders,’ said Sir C. Campbell, ere they came to the charge, ‘don’t pull a trigger till you’re within a yard of the Russians!’ They charged, and well they obeyed their chieftain’s wish; Sir Colin had his horse shot under him; but he was up immediately, and at the head of his men. But the Guards pressed on abreast, and claimed, with the 33d, the honor of capturing a cannon. The Second and Light Division crowned the heights. The French turned the guns on the hill against the flying masses, which the cavalry in vain tried to cover. A few faint struggles from the scattered infantry, a few rounds of cannon and musketry, and the enemy fled to the south-east, leaving three Generals, three guns, 700 prisoners, and 4000 killed and wounded, behind them.

The loss on the part of the British was 2000 killed, wounded, and missing; that of the French, about 1400.

On the night after the battle the allied army bivouacked on the summit of the heights which they had so gloriously won; the French Marshal pitching his tent on the very spot occupied by that of Prince Menschikoff the morning before.

On the 23d the Allied armies left the Alma and proceeded to cross the Katscha; on the 24th they crossed the Belbec, where it had been intended to effect the landing of the siege materiel with a view to an attack on the north side of Sebastopol. It was found, however, that the enemy had placed a fortified work so as to prevent the vessels and transports from approaching this river; and it was determined to advance at once by a flank march round the east of Sebastopol, to cross the valley of the Tchernaya, and seize Balaklava as the future basis of operations against the south side of the harbor at Sebastopol.

The enemy did not hold Balaklava in any strength. After a few shots the little garrison surrendered, and as Sir E. Lyon’s ship, the Agamemnon, reached the mouth of the harbor at the very time that the troops appeared on the heights, the British army was once more in full communication with the fleet.

The march of the French army which followed in the track of the British, was more prolonged and fatiguing. They did not reach the Tchernaya river until the 26th, having passed the previous night at Mackenzie’s Farm. It was on this day that the French marshal, at length succumbing to his fatal malady, issued his last order of the day, in which he took leave formally of his troops, and resigned the command into the hands of General Canrobert.

Having swept the enemy from their path by the bloody triumphs of the Alma, the next step of the Allies was to lay siege to Sebastopol.

The bay of Balaklava, which now became the principal base of their operations, is a place admirably suited for the landing of stores and materiel. As a port it is the most perfect of its size in the world. The entrance is between perpendicular cliffs, rising eight hundred feet high on either hand, and is only wide enough to allow the passage of one ship at a time; but once in you find yourself in a land-locked tideless haven, still as a mountain lake, three quarters of a mile in length, by two hundred and fifty yards wide, and nowhere less than six fathoms deep, so that every square foot of its surface is available for ships of the greatest burden.

The bay of Balaklava was instantly adopted as the new base of operations of the British army, and never before did its waters mirror so many tall ships on their bosom.

From fifty to a hundred war-ships and transports were constantly at anchor, landing the siege-guns, stores, and provisions of all kinds. The only access to Balaklava from the land side is at the inner end of the bay, through a breach in the surrounding hills, which gradually opens out into an extensive valley, about three miles long by about two broad; it was in this valley that the serious part of the combat of the 25th October took place. Through this valley runs the road to the Tchernaya and Mackenzie’s Farm, by which the Allies advanced to Balaklava, and which on the other side of the Tchernaya enters deep gorges in the mountains. On the side next the sea this valley is bounded by a line of hills stretching from Balaklava to Inkerman, and along the summit of which runs the road to Sebastopol. Another road in the opposite direction conducts to the valley of Baider, the most fertile district of the Crimea.

The port of Balaklava having been found barely large enough for the landing of the British stores and guns, the French selected as their base of operations the three deep bays lying between Cape Chersonesus and Sebastopol bay. The country between Balaklava and Sebastopol, upon which the Allied army encamped, is a barren hilly steppe, destitute of water, and covered with no better herbage than thistles. The French took up their position next the sea; the British inland, next the Tchernaya. The front of the besieging force extended in a continuous line from the mouth of the Tchernaya to the sea at Strelitska bay, forming nearly a semicircle around Sebastopol, at a distance of about two miles from the enemy’s works. The position was found to be close enough, as the Russian guns were found to throw shells to the distance of four thousand yards. A most unfortunate delay took place in landing and bringing up the siege guns and stores of the Allies; a delay which was improved to the utmost by the Russians, who kept large bands of citizens, and even women, as well as the garrison, at work in relays both night and day, in throwing up a vast exterior line of earthen redoubts and entrenchments, and in covering the front of their stone-works with earth.

The force disposable for the defense of Sebastopol was nearly equal in number to the besieging army; and as, from the nature of its position, the place could only be invested upon one side, supplies of all kinds could be conveyed into the town, and the Russian generals could either man the works with their whole forces, or direct incessant attacks against the flank and rear of the allies.

Never did any army ever undertake so vast and perilous an enterprise as that in which the allied commanders found themselves engaged.

Sebastopol is situated at the southern point of the Crimea, which puts out into the Black Sea, and is distant from Odessa, 192 miles; from Varna, 295, and from Constantinople, 343.

It is one of the most modern creations of the Czar, and stands, like an advanced post, near to Cape Chersonese――its site, until 1786, having been occupied by a few straggling huts. Catherine II, on her accession, perceived its natural advantages as a naval port, the first stone was laid in 1780, and from that period it has rapidly increased in strength and importance. On doubling the Cape, bordered with a vast chain of rocks and breakers, Sebastopol appears about six and a half miles to the east――a remarkable picture, on account of its white cliffs, and the amphitheatrical appearance of the town.

The port of Sebastopol consists of a bay running in a south-easterly direction, about four miles long, and a mile wide at the entrance, diminishing to 400 yards at the end, where the Tchernaya or Black River empties itself. On the southern coast of this bay are the commercial, military, and careening harbors, the quarantine harbor being outside the entrance――all these taking a southerly direction, and having deep water. The military harbor is the largest, being about a mile and a half long by 400 yards wide, and is completely land-locked on every side. Here it is that the Black Sea fleet is moored in the winter――the largest ships being able to lie with all their stores on board close to the quays. The small harbor, which contains the naval arsenal and docks, is on the eastern side of the military harbor, near the entrance. The port is defended to the south by six principal batteries and fortresses, each mounting from 50 to 190 guns; and the north by four, having from 18 to 120 pieces each; and besides these, there are many smaller batteries. The fortresses are built on the casemate principle, three of them having three tiers of guns, and a fourth two tiers. Fort St. Nicholas is the largest, and mounts about 190 guns. It is built of white limestone; a fine, sound stone, which becomes hard, and is very durable, the same material being used for all the other forts. Between every two casemates are furnaces for heating shot red hot. The calibre of the guns is eight inches, capable of throwing shells or 68-pounds solid shot.

There were in the military harbor of Sebastopol twelve line-of-battle ships, eight frigates, and seven corvettes, comprising the Black Sea fleet, independent of steamers.

The town of Sebastopol is situated on the point of land between the commercial and military harbors, which rises gradually from the water’s edge to an elevation of 200 feet, and contains 31,500 inhabitants. Including the military and marines, the residents numbered 40,000. It is more than a mile in length, and its greatest width is about three-quarters of a mile――the streets entering the open steppe on the south. The streets are built in parallel lines from north to south, are intersected by others from east and west, and the houses, being of limestone, have a substantial appearance. The public buildings are fine. The library erected by the Emperor, for the use of naval and military officers, is of Grecian architecture, and is elegantly fitted up internally. The books are principally confined to naval and military subjects and the sciences connected with them, history, and some light reading. The club-house is handsome externally, and comfortable within; it contains a large ball-room, which is its most striking feature, and billiard-rooms, which appear to be the great centre of attraction; but one looks in vain for reading rooms, filled with newspapers and journals. There are many good churches, and a fine landing-place of stone from the military harbor, approached on the side of the town, beneath an architrave supported by high columns. It also boasts an Italian opera-house. The eastern side of the town is so steep that the mastheads of the ships cannot be seen until one gets close to them. Very beautiful views are obtained from some parts of the place, and it is altogether agreeably situated. A military band plays every Thursday evening in the public gardens, at which time the fashionables assemble in great numbers.

As Sebastopol is held exclusively as a military and naval position, commerce does not exist; the only articles imported by sea being those required for materials of war, or as provisions for the inhabitants and garrison. On the eastern side of the military harbor, opposite to the town, is a line of buildings consisting of barracks, some store-houses, and a large naval hospital.

The country around Sebastopol sinks gradually down, in a succession of ridges from the position occupied by the Allied army to the town; but for nearly a third of a mile, immediately in front of the town, the ground is quite flat, the ridges there having been long ago leveled by the Russians in order to give no cover to an attacking force. We have said that there is a circuit of five or six hundred yards of level ground immediately around the town, and it was beyond this radius that the Russians threw up their new works, erecting strong redoubts on several elevated positions; the Allies had to open their trenches at the distance of a mile from the body of the place, although within one hundred and twenty yards of the Russian batteries. The French were the first to break ground. At nine at night, on the 9th, the trenches were opened by one thousand six hundred workmen, divided into relief parties, and supported to defend the works. A land wind, and an almost entire absence of moonlight, favored the operations, and by breaking of day 1,014 yards in length were completed, without interruption from the enemy, of sufficient depth to cover the men.

Next night the British broke ground; but this time the garrison were on the alert, and kept up a very heavy but ineffectual fire. The British, who occupied much higher ground than the French, placed their batteries with great skill. The raised mounds or beds of earth, upon which the guns were placed, were erected precisely along the crest of the various ridges on which the batteries were planted, and, when finished, showed only the muzzle of the guns over the brow of the ridge, so as to present little to the direct fire of the enemy.

The besiegers’ batteries were now drawing near completion; and the governor of Sebastopol had sent a request to Lord Raglan, that he would spare the inhabitants by not firing upon the civilian part of the city, to which he replied, that he would grant a safe-conduct to such of the inhabitants as were desirous of leaving, but would promise nothing as to his mode of attack, save that the buildings marked by the yellow flag should be respected as hospitals.

Every means was adopted to keep up the spirits of the garrison, and balls even were given every other night.

On the 17th of October the dreadful work began, and no one then present will ever forget that memorable scene. The morning dawned slowly; a thick fog hung over the town, and spread far up the heights. Towards six o’clock the mist began to disperse, and the rich clear October sun every instant made objects more and more visible.

In the Allied lines, all the artillerymen were at their pieces, and as the iron muzzles of the guns became visible through the fog in the now unmasked embrasures, a scattering and fast-increasing fire was opened upon them from the Russian lines. Soon the Russian works, crowded with grey figures, could be seen below, with, in rear, the large handsome white houses and dockyards of Sebastopol itself. Slowly, like the drawing back of a huge curtain, the mist moved off seaward, a cool morning breeze sprang up, and the atmosphere became clear and bright. Around were the wide extending lines of the besiegers, sloping down from the elevated ridges held by the British to the low grounds on the coast occupied by the French. Facing them below was the continuous line of Russian intrenchments of earthwork, interspersed with redoubts and stone towers, and loop-holed walls, with the line-of-battle ships showing their broadsides in the harbor; and beyond all, the open sea, bearing on its bosom, like a dark belt, the immense armada of the Allied fleet.

At half-past six, the preconcerted signal of three shells went up, one after another, from a French battery, and the next instant the whole Allied batteries opened simultaneously. On the side of the British, seventy-three, and of the French, fifty-three, in all one hundred and twenty-six guns, one-half of which were of the very heaviest calibre, launched their thunders on the side of the Allies; while upwards of two hundred replied in one deafening roar from the Russian lines. Two long lines of belching flame and smoke appeared, and through the space between hurled a shower of shot and shell, while the earth shook with the thunders of the deadly volleys.

Distinctly amidst the din could be heard the immense Lancaster guns, which here, for the first time, gave evidence of their tremendous powers. Their sharp report, heard among the other heavy guns, was like the crack of a rifle among muskets. But the most singular thing was the sound of their ball, which rushed through the air with the noise and regular beat precisely like the passage of a rapid railway train at close distance――a peculiarity which, at first, excited shouts of laughter from the men, who nicknamed it the express-train. The effect of the shot was terrific; from its deafening and peculiar noise, the ball could be distinctly traced by the ear to the spot where it struck, when stone or earth were seen to go down before it.

The first few minutes’ firing sufficed to show to each side, what neither had as yet accurately known, the actual strength of its opponents; and it now appeared, that even in the extent of the earthwork batteries thrown up since the siege began, the Russians immensely surpassed their besiegers. Besides their stone forts, and a long line of intrenchments, guns of heavy calibre had been planted on every ridge and height; and as fresh batteries were unmasked one after another, often in places totally unexpected, the Allied generals were completely taken by surprise at the magnitude of the defenses.

Opposite to the French lines, the main strength of the Russians lay in the Flag-staff batteries, erected upon a hill commanding the French works. They consisted of two tiers of intrenchments, each mounting about twenty-five guns, the upper of which tier of cannon was unknown to the besiegers until it opened fire; with several large mortars placed on the summit of the hill. And on the extreme right of the Russian lines was a ten-gun battery, most commandingly placed, so as to enfilade the French lines. In this quarter the Russians had not only a great advantage in point of position, but also their guns out-numbered those of the French, and it soon became evident that the French were fighting at a disadvantage, and were dreadfully galled in flank by the ten-gun battery. Suddenly, a little after nine o’clock, there came a loud explosion,――a dense cloud of smoke was seen hanging over one of the French batteries, and the Russians were observed on the parapets of their works cheering vigorously. The flank fire of the ten-gun battery had blown up one of the French magazines, killing or wounding about fifty men, and blowing the earthwork to atoms.

The British batteries were more successful. The principal works opposed to them were on their right front, the Round fort, a Martello tower, which had been faced up with earth. A battery of twenty heavy guns was planted on the top of this tower, and exterior earthwork intrenchments had been thrown up around it, mounted with artillery of heavy calibre. Next, nearly opposite the British centre, was the three-decker, the Twelve Apostles, placed across the harbor creek; and facing their left was the Redan redoubt, carrying about forty cannon, likewise surrounded by intrenchments armed with numerous guns. On the British side, the principal redoubts were the Crown battery, of 27 guns, in the centre, fronting the Twelve Apostles, and the Green-Mound battery, opposite the Redan redoubt.

At half-past three, a red-hot shot from the Russian three-decker, the Twelve Apostles, struck a powder wagon in the Crown battery, which exploded, killing one or two men, but leaving the works of the battery uninjured. The Russians cheered as before, imagining the same injury had been done, as previously to the French.

But while they were still cheering, a shell from the Green Mound battery lodged in the powder magazine of the Redan redoubt, and blew it up with a tremendous explosion. A white livid flame suddenly shot high into the air, followed by a report that made the very earth tremble in the Allied lines, and the next minute its garrison of hundreds, blown to atoms, were discovered strewing the ground to a distance around. ‘In the midst of a dense volume of smoke and sparks,’ says an eye-witness, ‘which resembled a water-spout ascending to the clouds, were visible to the naked eye, arms, legs, trunks, and heads, of the Russian warriors, mingled with cannons, wheels, and every object of military warfare, and, indeed, every living thing it contained.’ So powerful was the effect which this explosion produced on the morale of the besiegers, which had been somewhat depressed by the misfortunes of the day, that the enthusiasm displayed was almost of a frantic nature. Both the English and French troops, as well as officers, doffed their caps, and threw them high into the air, at the same time giving a shout which might have been heard at Balaklava, a league off. The Russians, however, were nowise daunted, and resumed their fire with undiminished energy.

While this terrific cannonade was going on by land, the Allied fleets were seen bearing down upon the strong forts which defend the mouth of the harbor. It had been arranged between the Admirals and Generals, that as soon as the attention of the Russians had been attracted to the landward attack, the fleets should move forward and take part in a general assault. The French took the Quarantine fort, and other works on the south side of the entrance to Sebastopol bay, and the British took Fort Constantine and the works on the north side.

By half-past one o’clock, the action was fairly commenced, and the conjoined roar from the guns of the fleet and in the forts, echoed by the thunders of the rival batteries on shore, baffled the imagination. Never before in the world’s history was such a cannonade witnessed――even the tremendous cannonade of Leipsic and Trafalgar fades into insignificance before so gigantic a strife. The fleets advanced to the attack in two lines――the British from the north, the French from the south.

Directly the vessels came within 2,000 yards, the forts opened fire, which the Allies never attempted to reply to until they took up their positions. The cannonade of the French was terrific and continuous; enveloped in smoke, they kept up whole salvoes, which was terrific, the smoke being lit up by the volleys of flashes, and the roar of cannon continuous. The Turks followed the French in this sometimes in whole broadsides, again their fire running continuously along the line. There was less of this with the English ships, whose style of firing appeared less awful, but more business-like. The Russians used red-hot shot, rockets, combustible shell, and bar-shot; and the terrible effects of these soon made themselves apparent. The bar-shot cut the masts, spars, and rigging to pieces, and the rockets and red-hot shot raised conflagrations in many of the attacking vessels.

The allied vessels met with but little success, and towards night stood out to sea, the Russians cheering vociferously, and redoubling their fire.

Such were the incidents of this memorable opening day of the bombardment.

On the 18th, the fleet did not renew the attack; and as the French batteries were wholly silenced for the time, the enemy were enabled to concentrate a terrific fire upon the British trenches. During the previous day’s firing, the Russians had discovered the weak points of their opponents, as well as their own, and before morning, had erected, with sand-bags, batteries on new and commanding positions.

During the night of the 18th, the French worked incessantly, repaired all their batteries, and again opened fire on the morning of the 19th. Still they were unfortunate. About eleven o’clock a shell from the Russian ten-gun battery once more blew up one of their magazines, killing most of the men in the battery, and dismounting most of the guns; thus most of the French works were again silenced before two o’clock.

The British lines kept up a hot fire throughout the whole day; but though at times nearly one hundred shot and shell were thrown per minute, little or no effect was produced upon the Russian intrenchments. The enemy were provided with a perfectly inexhaustible supply of all the materials requisite for a desperate defense. The instant a shot or shell struck their works the hole was filled up with sand-bags; so that the besieged built up as fast as the besiegers knocked down.

The French had repaired their injuries during the night, but in order to fire with more destructive effect, advanced one strong battery about two hundred yards nearer the enemy. This new advanced battery not only enabled them to maintain their ground, but even to destroy and silence their inveterate assailant, the Russian ten-gun battery.

During the 22d the cannonade from the French lines was incessant, and told with great effect; but early in the day the British batteries received orders to fire only once in eight minutes――occasioned by a deficiency of ammunition. The Russians worked their guns with great energy and precision, even under the hottest fire, standing to their pieces boldly as on the first day of the siege; and they continued to repair each night the injury done to their works in the previous day. The loss of the Allies up to this point of the siege was about twelve hundred men.

One feature in the memorable siege was the great use made of riflemen by the besieging force, and the extreme gallantry displayed by these men when at work.

Every day parties of skirmishers went out from the Allied lines, and lay under cover among the loose large stones about one thousand yards in advance of the batteries, and within two hundred yards of the Russian defenses.

This compelled the enemy to send out parties to dislodge them, and these, as they advanced for that purpose across the open ground, became exposed to the fire both of the skirmishers and of the trenches, and usually suffered severely.

On one occasion a private in the British lines who had fired his last cartridge, was crouching along the ground to join the nearest covering-party, when two Russians suddenly sprang from behind a rock, and seizing him by the collar, dragged him off towards Sebastopol.

The Russian who escorted him on the left side held in his right hand his own firelock, and in his left the captured Miniè; with a sudden spring the British soldier seized the Russian’s firelock, shot its owner, clubbed his companion, and then, picking up his own Miniè, made off in safety to his own lines. Another of these fellows resolved to do more work on his own account, got away from his company, and crawled up close to a battery under shelter of a bridge. There he lay on his back, and loaded, turning over to fire; until, after killing eleven men, a party of Russians rushed out and he took to his heels; but a volley fired after him leveled him with the earth, and his body was subsequently picked up by his comrades riddled with balls.

Probably 100,000 shot and shell a-day, exclusive of night-firing, was the average amount of projectiles discharged by both parties in the extraordinary siege.

The darkness of the night was constantly interrupted by the bursting of shell or rockets.

The passage of the shells through the air, thrown to an amazing height from the mortars, appeared like that of meteors. To the eye, the shell seems to rise and fall almost perpendicularly; sometimes burning as it turns on its axis, and the fuse disappears in the rotation, with an interrupted pale light; sometimes with a steady light, not unlike the calm luminosity of a planet. As it travels it can be heard, amid the general stillness, uttering in the distance its peculiar sound, like the cry of the curlew. The blue light in a battery announces the starting of a rocket, which pursues its more horizontal course, followed by a fiery train, and rushes through the air with a loud whizzing noise that gives an idea of irresistible energy. So went on, day and night, ceaselessly, this unparalleled bombardment――a cataract of war, a Niagara of all dread sounds, whose ceaseless booming was heard for long miles around. Ship after ship, nearing the Crimean shores, heard from afar that dull, heavy sound, and all eyes were strained to catch sight of the dread scene, of that valley where the battle of Europe was being fought, where the cannon were ever sounding, and ‘the fire was not quenched.’

While the operations were being carried on around the walls of Sebastopol, events of, if possible, still greater importance were taking place a few miles off, upon the flanks and rear of the investing force. In truth, the Allies were as much besieged as besiegers. For about a fortnight after an affair at the Mackenzie’s Farm, on the 25th of September, nothing had been seen of the enemy, who had retired towards Bakshi-serai to await reinforcements. It was towards the end of the first week of October that the Russians began to assume the offensive. The Allies at first seem to have regarded their position as unassailable; but the enemy, thoroughly acquainted with every foot of the country, and consequently able to advance in the dark, soon showed them their mistake.

At daybreak on the 6th, the Russians made an advance in force, for the purpose of reconnoitering, from the Tchernaya into the valley or plain in rear of the heights occupied by the Allies; and, after surprising, in the grey of the morning, a picket of the Fourth Dragoons, drew off again, having accomplished their object. During the following night, a most daring reconnoissance was made, by a French officer and ten men, who, on their return to camp, reported that they had gone as far as the river Belbec, and had only seen the bivouac of the Russian troops who had made the reconnoissance the preceding day. In order to check further surprises from this quarter, parties of Zouaves and Foot Chasseurs were placed in ambuscade as outposts; every evening at six o’clock four companies of them concealing themselves in a ravine through which the Russians would advance, and remaining there until daybreak next morning.

The enemy, however, forsaking the line of attack by the road from Mackenzie’s Farm, now began to appear among the mountains directly in rear of the Allied lines, and also close to Balaklava, advancing by a road from Kansara, through the hills, which was at first deemed by the Allied generals impracticable for artillery, and, consequently, along which no serious attack was anticipated. One day, however, a force of 2000 Russian cavalry, and 8000 infantry, with nine or ten guns, made its appearance in this quarter, but withdrew without showing fight.

As soon as it became evident that the principal attacks of the Russian relieving army would be directed against Balaklava, means were taken to put that place in a state of defense. One of the first, was to turn out the Greek and Russian inhabitants. The little bay, so narrow at its entrance that only one ship could get out at a time, was crowded with upwards of a hundred transports, in which, besides other stores, as well as in the buildings on shore, were large magazines of gunpowder; and as it was reported that the Greek population, besides acting as spies, had actually concerted to aid the Russian attack by simultaneously setting fire to the town, Lord Raglan ordered every one of them to be ejected from the place. At the same time, a redoubt, armed with heavy guns and manned with 1200 marines from the fleet, was constructed upon the summit of a conical hill, on the further side of the bay, about 1000 feet high, and commanding the coast road approaching Balaklava from the east. Other redoubts were so placed as to command the road from the Tchernaya, and also from Kamara, through the mountains.

Balaklava does not fall within the natural line of defense for besieging Sebastopol. It is held as a separate post, three miles in advance of Sebastopol heights, which form the main position of the besieging force. The British occupied a convex line of heights, stretching from the Tchernaya, near its mouth, to the sea-coast, midway between Cape Chersonese and Balaklava. On the north-east is a valley or plain, not level, but broken by little eminences, about three miles long by two in width. Towards the Tchernaya this valley is swallowed up in a mountain gorge and deep ravines, above which rise tier after tier of desolate whitish rocks. At its other extremity the valley in a similar manner contracts into a gorge, through which the high road passes, leading down to Balaklava. On the crest of the Allied line of heights, overlooking this plain, the French had constructed very formidable intrenchments, mounted with a few guns and lined by Zouaves and artillerymen. Intersecting the plains, about two miles and a half from Balaklava, is a series of conical heights, the highest and farthest off of which joins the mountain range on the opposite side of the valley, while the nearest one was commanded by the French intrenchments. On these eminences earth-work redoubts had been constructed, each mounted with two or three pieces of heavy ship guns, and manned by 250 Turks. At the end of the plain next Balaklava, and stationed at the mouth of the gorge leading down to it, were the 93d Highlanders. In the plain, about ten miles from Balaklava, were picketed the cavalry, commanded in chief by the Earl of Lucan, consisting of the Light Brigade, 607 strong, and the Heavy Brigade, mustering 1000 sabres.

Such was the position of the rearward forces of the Allies on the morning of the 25th October, 1854, when the Russians, under General Liprandi, starting from Kamara about five o’clock, advanced to attack them. The cavalry pickets, riding in haste, soon brought intelligence of the attack to the Allied head-quarters, and measures were instantly taken to forward all the troops that could be spared from before Sebastopol to the menaced point.

The Duke of Cambridge and Sir George Cathcart were ordered to advance with the 1st and 4th divisions with all speed, while Bosquet’s French division received similar orders from General Canrobert. Soon after eight o’clock, Lord Raglan and his staff turned out, and cantered towards the rear. The booming of artillery, the spattering roll of musketry, were heard rising from the valley, drowning the roar of the siege guns in front before Sebastopol. General Bosquet followed with his staff and a small escort of hussars at a gallop. From their position on the summit of the heights, forming the rear of the British position, and overlooking the plain of Balaklava, the Allied generals beheld the aspect of the combat. Immediately below, in the plain, the British cavalry, under Lord Lucan, were seen rapidly forming into glittering masses, while the 93d Highlanders, under Sir Colin Campbell, drew up in line in front of the gorge leading to Balaklava.

The main body of the Russians was by this time visible about two and a half miles off, advancing up the narrow valley leading from the Yæta pass. A mile in front of them were two batteries of light artillery, playing vigorously on the Turkish redoubts, and escorted by a cloud of mounted skirmishers, ‘wheeling and whirling like autumn leaves before the wind;’ following those were large, compact squares of cavalry; and in rear of all came solid masses of infantry, with twenty pieces of artillery in row before them. The enemy rapidly advanced his cavalry and horse-artillery, so as to overpower the detached corps of Turks before any troops could be moved forward from the main body to support them. In this he perfectly succeeded, and the second redoubt was abandoned, as the first had been――its defenders being severely cut up in their flight by the Cossack horse. They ran in scattered groups across towards the next redoubt, and towards Balaklava, but the horse-hoof of the Cossack was too quick for them, and sword and lance were busily plied among the retreating herd. The yells of the pursuers and pursued were plainly audible. As the lancers and light cavalry of the Russians advanced, they gathered up their skirmishers with great speed, and in excellent order; the shifting trails of men, which played all over the valley, like moonlight upon the water, contracted, gathered up, and the little pelotons in a few moments became a solid column. Then up came their guns, in rushed their gunners to the abandoned redoubts, and the guns of the second redoubt soon played with deadly effect upon the dispirited defenders of the third. Two or three shots in return from the earthworks, and all is silent. The Turks swarm over the earthworks, and run in confusion towards the town, firing their muskets at the enemy as they run.

Again the solid column of cavalry opens like a fan, and resolves itself into a long spray of skirmishers. It overlaps the flying Turks, steel flashes in the air, and down goes the poor Moslem, quivering on the plain, split through fez and musket-guard to the chin and breast-belt. There is no support for them. The remnant of the Turks, flying towards Balaklava, took refuge behind the ranks of the 93d Highlanders, and were formed into line on the wings of the regiment. The Russians by this time had turned the guns of the captured redoubt against the Allied front, but with little effect, as Sir Colin withdrew his Highlanders out of range, and the British Cavalry were hid from view by an undulating swell of the plain.

Encouraged by this retiring movement, the whole mass of Russian cavalry, about 4,000 strong, now came sweeping into the plain, with the obvious intention of breaking through the Allied line before reinforcements could arrive from before Sebastopol. This was the crisis of the day, as the slightest reverse to the Allies in this quarter would have been attended with serious consequences.

On came the foe in brilliant masses, pouring down at a canter into the plain and on to the high road. Here one body of horse, 1,500 strong, rapidly wheeling to their left, charged down the road towards Balaklava, against the single Highland regiment which there barred the way, and which awaited their approach in a line two deep. At 800 yards the Turks, drawn up on the wings of the regiment, discharged their muskets and fled.

‘Highlanders!’ exclaimed Sir Colin Campbell, as he saw his men wavering on being thus deserted, ‘if you don’t stand firm, not a man of you will be left alive.’

At 600 yards the regiment fired, but with little effect, upon the Russian squadrons now advancing at a gallop. The anxiety of the onlookers grew intense as they beheld that immense body of charging cavalry within 150 yards of their Highland line, when down again went the level line of Miniè rifles, a steady volley rang out, and the next instant the attacking squadrons were seen wheeling off to the right and left in retreat.

Meanwhile the main body of the Russian cavalry swept on straight across the plain, apparently with the design of carrying the thinly-defended heights at a gallop. But a foe intervened of which they did not make sufficient account. The instant they topped the little eminence in front of the British cavalry, the trumpets of the Heavy Brigade sounded the charge, and away went the brigade in two lines, the Scots Greys and Enniskillens in front, led on by Brigadier-General Scarlett. The Russians were likewise in two lines, and more than twice as deep. The shock was terrific, but lasted only for a moment. The handful of red-coats broke through the enemy, scattering the first line right and left, and then charged the second line, which came spurring up to the rescue. It was a fight of heroes. The position of the Greys and Enniskilleners quickly became one of imminent danger; for while cutting their way in splendid style through their foes, the Russian first line rallied again, and bore down upon their rear. God help them they are lost! burst from the Allied generals and on-lookers: when, like a thunder-bolt, the 1st Royals and 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards, forming the British second line, broke with one terrible assault upon the foe, cutting through the line of rallying Russians as if it were pasteboard, and then, falling upon the flank of the Russian line, disordered by the terrible assault, put it to utter rout. A cheer burst from every lip, and, in the enthusiasm, officers and men on the heights took off their caps and shouted with delight. The loss to the British in this splendid charge was very trifling. All danger to the Allied position was now past. The enemy had made their rush, and failed. The British and French divisions, arriving from before Sebastopol, began to take up a position in the plain, and the Russians drawing back and concentrating their forces, relinquished all the captured redoubts save one. The fight seemed over; when an unlucky mistake, the precise origin of which is still shrouded in mystery, gave rise to a most brilliant but disastrous feat of arms.

The British cavalry had been advanced to the edge of the plain next the enemy, who were now slowly retiring up the narrow valley leading to the Yaeta Pass, from which they had debouched in the morning. In a gorge of this narrow valley, at about a mile and a half distant from the British horse, a battery of nine heavy Russian guns was posted, with infantry and a body of 2,000 cavalry in the rear. Captain Nolan, of the Light Brigade, one of the best swordsmen and cavalry tacticians in the army, now came galloping up with an order from the Commander-in-chief to Lord Lucan to advance with the light cavalry, and, if possible, prevent the enemy from carrying off the guns which they had captured in the redoubts. The moment the Russians beheld the squadrons advancing, they covered the slopes of the valley with Minié riflemen, and quickly planted two batteries on the heights, one on either side of the gorge. Formed in two lines, the British light cavalry advanced rapidly into the valley of death――not a man flinching, and Lord Cardigan leading on with a coolness and contempt of danger that was magnificent. When they arrived at about 1,200 yards from the enemy, thirty Russian cannons simultaneously opened fire upon them, knocking over men and horses in numbers, and wounded or riderless steeds were seen flying over the field. Galloping on, they advanced up the valley, through this terrific cross-fire, towards the battery directly in front. The first line is broken, it is joined by the second, they never halt or check their speed an instant; with diminished ranks, thinned by those thirty guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their heads and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow’s death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies, and with the carcases of horses. Lord Cardigan was almost unhorsed by a 32-pounder exploding within a foot of his charger, and a shell bursting at his side, struck Captain Nolan in the breast, and with an involuntary shriek, the gallant officer fell dead from his saddle. The Russian gunners stood to their pieces till the dragoons were within ten yards of them, and were sabred to a man. Without drawing bridle, the British horse next charged the mass of cavalry in front of them, routed it, and pursued it pell-mell. Whilst the pursuit was at its height, suddenly the order was shouted “Wheel about!” The enemy, instead of being broken by their own men flying, formed up four deep in front of the charging horse, while a mass of lancers descended into their rear. But, nothing daunted, the heroic light horse, facing about, charged again through the gathering forces of the enemy, repassed the guns, and closed in desperate contest with the Russian lancers. At this moment the Russian artillerymen, returning to the guns behind, sent a deadly shower of grape into the fighting mass of horsemen, indiscriminately at friend and foe. The charge lasted barely half-an-hour, and but 198 out of 800 returned to the British lines. Whilst the batteries were firing upon the retiring cavalry, a body of French chasseurs d’Afrique charged at the guns erected on the left of the valley, and forced them to retire. After sabering amongst the Russian skirmishers, the chasseurs retired. This closed the operations of the day. The Russians withdrew their forces from the heights, and did not carry out their menaced attack on Balaklava.

The bombardment of the forts before Sebastopol continued without cessation all day.

Elated by their success against the Turks, and the capture of the guns of the redoubts, the Russians attempted a sortie from Sebastopol on the following day, the 26th October, whose strength exceeded 9000 infantry, with a numerous artillery; but no sooner had they entered within range of the Allies’ guns, which, eighteen in number, had taken up their position, than the word, ‘fire,’ was given, and a volley of shell tore open the ranks of the Russians, and checked their advance. The guns being reloaded, a second discharge, no less severe in its execution, caused the enemy to wheel round and retire.

On Sunday, the 5th of November, 1854, one of the most sanguinary battles ever fought within the memory of man, took place on the heights of Inkerman, under the walls of Sebastopol.

It is a difficult task, in a few lines of prose, to render justice to a bravery which excels that sung by the blind and immortal bard of Greece. We might devote page after page to individual feats of heroic daring in this fearful struggle, when 8,000 British troops and 6,000 Frenchmen defeated an army of 60,000 Russians, who left more killed and wounded upon the battle-field than the whole force the Allies brought against them.

From the preceding pages, the position of the besieging forces is already familiar to our readers. A road connects Balaklava and Sebastopol. From this road to the heights which crown the valley of the Tchernaya, extended the British lines. These heights form a right angle nearly opposite the ruins of Inkerman, and there run parallel with the river from which the valley has derived its name. On the other side of the Tchernaya rise a succession of hills above the ruins of Inkerman, where the Russians had established themselves.

The night between the 4th and 5th November was passed without apprehension by the Allied troops. It had rained almost incessantly, and the early morning gave no promise of any cessation of the heavy showers which had fallen for the previous four-and-twenty hours. Towards dawn a heavy fog settled down on the heights, and on the valley of the Inkerman. The fog, and vapors of drifting rain were so thick as morning broke, that one could scarcely see ten yards before him.

At four o’clock the bells of the churches in Sebastopol were heard ringing drearily through the cold night air; but the occurrence had been so usual that it excited no particular attention.

No one suspected for a moment that enormous masses of Russians were creeping up the rugged sides of the heights over the valley of Inkerman, on the undefended flank of the Second Division. There all was security and repose. Little did the slumbering troops in camp imagine that a subtle and indefatigable enemy were bringing into position an overwhelming artillery, ready to play upon their tents at the first glimpse of daylight.

Yet such was the case. The arrival of the Grand Dukes Michael and Nicholas, sons of the Emperor, with large reinforcements, determined Prince Menschikoff to make the attempt to annihilate the besieging forces, and raise the siege.

At daybreak (that is, at six o’clock), the alarm was given in the British camp that the Russians had surprised the advanced picquets, and were already in possession of all the heights commanding their position. The whole army stood to arms without delay. Presently a Russian battery appeared upon the crest of the height known as Shell-hill, near Careening Bay, whilst columns of infantry were descried already descending the hills, or marching up the ravines, which faced the front of the British position. The most serious attack of the Russians was, however, directed against the flank of the British army, along the heights running parallel to the valley of the Tchernaya.

The Russians in the front had now advanced to within five hundred yards of the encampment, and the action commenced. The musketry fire was awful, and the enemy who had now guns upon every favorable position, hurled shell and round shot at the advancing lines.

The enemy’s columns continued to push forward, trying to overwhelm the British regiments with their superior numbers. ‘And now (to quote the words of an eye-witness of the battle) commenced the bloodiest struggle ever witnessed since war cursed the earth. It has been doubted by military historians if any enemy have ever stood a charge with the bayonet, but here the bayonet was often the only weapon employed in conflicts of the most obstinate and deadly character. Not only did the English charge in vain, not only were desperate encounters between masses of men maintained with the bayonet alone, but they were obliged to resist bayonet to bayonet, with the Russian infantry again and again, as they charged the British with incredible fury and determination.’

The battle of Inkerman admits of no description. It was a series of dreadful deeds of daring, of sanguinary hand-to-hand fights, of despairing rallies, of desperate assaults, in glens and valleys, in brushwood glades and remote dells, hidden from all human eyes, and from which the conquerors, Russian or British, issued, only to engage fresh foes.

No one, however placed, could have witnessed even a small portion of the doings of this eventful day, for the vapors, fog, and drizzling mist, obscured the ground where the struggle took place to such an extent, as to render it impossible to see what was going on at the distance of fifty yards. Besides this, the irregular nature of the ground, the rapid fall of the hill towards Inkerman, where the deadliest fight took place, would have prevented one, under the most favorable circumstances, seeing more than a very insignificant and detailed piece of the terrible work below.

It was six o’clock when all the Head-quarter camp was roused by roll after roll of musketry on the right, and by the sharp report of field-guns. Lord Raglan was informed that the enemy were advancing in force, and soon after seven o’clock he rode towards the scene of action, followed by his staff, and accompanied by Sir John Burgoyne, Brigadier General Strangwayr, and several aids-de-camp. As they approached the volume of sound, the steady unceasing thunder of gun, and rifle, and musket, told that the engagement was at its height. The shell of the Russians, thrown with great precision, burst so thickly among the troops that the noise resembled continuous discharges of cannon, and the massive fragments inflicted death on every side.

Colonel Gambier was once ordered to get up two heavy guns (eighteen pounders) on the rising ground, and to reply to a fire which the light guns were utterly inadequate to meet. As he was engaged in this duty he was severely wounded, and obliged to retire. His place was taken by Lietenant-Colonel Dickson, who, in directing the fire of these two pieces, which had the most marked effect in deciding the fate of the day, elicited the admiration of the army. But long ere these guns had been brought up, there had been a great slaughter of the enemy, and a heavy loss of the British. The generals could not see where to go. They could not tell where the enemy were――from what side they were coming, or where going. In darkness, gloom, and rain, they led the lines through thick scrubby bushes and thorny brakes, which broke the ranks, and irritated the men, while every place was marked by a corpse or men wounded from an enemy whose position was only indicated by the rattle of musketry, and the rush of ball and shell.

Sir George Cathcart, seeing his men disordered by the fire of a large column of Russian infantry, which was outflanking them, while portions of the various regiments composing his division were maintaining an unequal struggle with an overwhelming force, went down into a ravine in which they were engaged to rally them. He rode at their head encouraging them, and when a cry arose that ammunition was failing, he said coolly, ‘Have you not got your bayonets?’ As he led on his men, it was observed that another body of men had gained the top of the hill behind them on the right, but it was impossible to tell whether they were friends or foes. A deadly volley was poured into the scattered British regiments. Sir George cheered them, and led them back up the hill, but a flight of bullets passed where he rode, and he fell from his horse close to the Russian columns. His body was recovered mutilated with bayonet wounds.

When he fell, Colonel Seymour, who was with him, instantly dismounted, and was endeavoring to raise the body, when he himself received a ball which fractured his leg. He fell to the ground beside his general, and a Russian officer and five or six men running in, bayoneted him, and cut him to pieces as he lay helpless. The Russians bayoneted the wounded in every part of the field, giving no quarter, and apparently determined to exterminate the Allies, to drive them into the sea.

The conflict on the right was equally uncertain and equally bloody. To the extreme right a contest, the like of which, perhaps, never took place before, was going on between the guards and dense columns of Russian infantry of five times their number. The guards had charged them and driven them back, when they perceived that the Russians had outflanked them. They were out of amunition, too, and were uncertain whether there were friends or foes in the rear. They had no support, no reserve, were fighting with the bayonet against an enemy who stoutly contested every inch of ground, when the corps of another Russian column appeared on their right far to their rear. Then a fearful mitraille was poured into them, and volleys of rifle and musketry.

The guards were broken; they had lost twelve officers dead on the field; they had left one-half of their number dead on the ground; and they retired along the lower road of the valley; but they were soon reinforced, and speedily avenged their loss.

The French advance, about ten o’clock, turned the flank of the enemy.

When the body of French infantry appeared on the right of the British position, it was a joyful sight to the struggling regiments. The 3d regiment of Zouaves, under the chiefs of battalion, supported in the most striking manner the ancient reputation of that force. The French artillery had already begun to play with deadly effect on the right wing of the Russians, when three battalions of chasseurs d’Orleans rushed by, the light of battle on their faces. They were accompanied by a battalian of chasseurs Indigénes――the Arab Sepoys of Algiers. Their trumpets sounded above the din of battle. Assailed in front, broken in several places by the impetuosity of the charge, renewed again and again, attacked by the French infantry on the right, and by artillery all along the line, the Russians began to retire, and at twelve o’clock they were driven pell-mell down the hill towards the valley, where pursuit would have been madness, as the roads were covered by their artillery. They left mounds of dead behind them. At twelve o’clock the battle of Inkerman seemed to have been won; but the day which had cleared up for an hour previously, again became obscured. Rain and fog set in; and as the Allies could not pursue the Russians, who were retiring under the shelter of their artillery, they had formed in front of the lines, and were holding the battle-field so stoutly contested, when the enemy, taking advantage of the Allies’ quietude, again advanced, while their guns pushed forward and opened a tremendous fire.

General Canrobert, who never quitted Lord Raglan for much of the early part of the day, at once directed the French to advance and outflank the enemy. In his efforts he was most nobly seconded by General Bosquet. General Canrobert was slightly wounded, and his immediate attendants suffered severely.

The renewed assault was so admirably managed that the Russians sullenly retired, still protected by their crushing artillery.

The loss sustained by the English army was 2,400 killed or wounded; of the French 1,726. The Russians, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, 15,000. An eye-witness thus describes the night after battle:

‘On the evening of the battle I went over the field. All the wounded had been removed. There is nothing so awful as the spectacle of the bodies of those who have been struck down by round shot or shell. Some had their heads taken off by the neck, as with an axe; others, their legs gone from their hips; others their arms; and others again, who were hit in the chest or stomach, were literally as smashed as if they had been crushed in a machine. Passing up to Sebastopol, over heaps of Russian dead, I came to the spot where the Guards had been compelled to retire from the defense of the wall above Inkerman valley. Here the dead of the Allies were nearly as numerous as the enemy’s. Beyond this the Russian Guardsmen and line regiments lay as thick as leaves, intermixed with dead and wounded horses. The path lay through thick brushwood, but it was slippery with blood, and the brushwood was broken down and encumbered with the dead. The scene from the battery was awful beyond description. I stood upon its parapet at about nine at night, and I felt my heart sink as I gazed upon the scene of carnage around.

‘The moon was at its full, and showed every object as if by the light of day. Facing me was the valley of Inkerman, with the Tchernaya, like a band of silver, flowing gracefully between the hills, which, for varied and picturesque beauty, might vie with any part of the world. Yet I shall never recall the memory of Inkermann valley with any but feelings of horror; for round the spot from which I surveyed the scene lay upwards of five thousand bodies. Some lay as if prepared for burial, and as though the hands of relatives had arranged their mangled limbs; while others again were in almost startling positions, half standing or kneeling, clutching their weapons or drawing a cartridge. Many lay with both their hands extended towards the sky, as if to avert a blow or utter a prayer; while others had a malignant scowl of fear and hatred. The moonlight imparted an aspect of unnatural paleness to their forms, and as the cold, damp wind swept round the hills and waved the boughs above their upturned faces, the shadows gave a horrible appearance of vitality; and it seemed as if the dead were laughing, and about to rise. This was not the case on one spot only, but all over the bloody field.’

The whole of the 6th (the day after the battle) was devoted to the sorry task of burying the dead. A council of war was held, presided over by Lord Raglan, at which it was determined to winter in the Crimea, and orders were issued accordingly. Large reinforcements were demanded bath by Lord Raglan and General Canrobert, which, with considerable promptitude were despatched by their respective governments.

HISTORY OF FRANCE.

The Franks, a tribe of German origin, had marched from their hereditary possessions on the Lower Rhine to the Meuse and the Sambre, A. D. 486. From this place, their warlike king, Clovis, led them forth to war and plunder. After he had conquered and put to death the last Roman governor, Syágrius, in Soissons, and made himself master of the country between the Seine and the Loire, he advanced against the Alemanni, who were in possession of an extensive kingdom on both banks of the Rhine. He defeated them in the great battle of Zülpich (between Bonn and Aix), and subjected their country on the Moselle and the Lahn. In the heat of the battle, Clovis had sworn, that if the doubtful combat should terminate in his favor, he would embrace the faith of his Christian wife; and in the same year, he, with 8,000 nobles of his train, received baptism in the waters of the Rhine. But Christianity produced no emotions of pity in his savage heart. After he had extended the Frank empire to the Rhone on the east, and to the Garónne on the south, he attempted to secure the whole territory to himself and his posterity, by putting to death the chiefs of all the Frank tribes.

The wickedness of the father was inherited by his four sons, who, after Clovis’s death, divided the Frank empire between them; the eldest received the eastern kingdom, Austrásia, with the capital, Metz; the three younger sons shared the western territory, Neustria, and Burgundy, which was connected with it. But the empire was again from time to time united. The history of the kingly house of Merovingians displays a frightful picture of human depravity. The murders of brothers and relatives, bloody civil wars, and the explosion of unbridled passions, fill its annals. The savage enormities of the two queens, Brunhilda and Fredigonda, are particularly dreadful. These horrors at length destroyed all the power of the race of Clovis, so that they are distinguished in history as sluggish kings, whilst the steward of the royal possessions (Mayor of the palace) gradually obtained possession of all the powers of government. A visit to the yearly assemblies of the people (Marzfelder), upon a carriage drawn by four oxen, was at last the only occupation of the imbecile Merovingians. At first, each of the three kingdoms had its own mayor, until the brave and shrewd Pepin of Heristal succeeded in uniting the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy with that of Austrásia, and making them hereditary in his own family. From this time, Pepin’s descendants, who were called dukes of Francónia, possessed the regal power, whilst the Merovingians were kings in nothing but name.

Pepin of Heristal, and his son Charles Martel, had gained the confidence of the nation by their warlike deeds, and the favor of the priests by their zeal in the propagation of Christianity. Both parties were instrumental in raising Pepin the Little, the son of Charles Martel, to the throne of the Franks. For when the assembly of the nation deposed the last imbecile representative of the Merovingians (Childeric III), and proclaimed the chief steward, Pepin, king, the pope confirmed the election, in hope of finding in the Frank ruler a support against the Longobards and the iconoclastic emperor of Byzantium. In return for the royal consecration, which was first performed by Boniface, and afterwards by Pope Stephen himself, Pepin endowed the Roman chair with the portion of coast on the Adriatic sea, southwards from Ravenna. This was the foundation of the temporal power of the pope.

Pepin reigned for sixteen years with vigor and renown over the Frank empire, which extended far into South and Central Germany, and which, at his death, he divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman. About three years afterwards, A. D. 771, Carloman died, and Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was declared sole ruler of the Franks, by the voice of the estates of the Empire. He conducted many wars, and advanced Christian cultivation and civil order. For the purpose of securing the boundaries of his kingdom and extending Christianity, he made war for thirty-one years on the Saxon confederation, which was formed by various Pagan tribes on the Weser and Elbe. Charles took the fortress of Eresburg, on the south of the Teutoburger forest, destroyed the national palladium――the statue of Arminius, and compelled the Saxons to a peace. He next proceeded against the Longobard king, Desidérius, in obedience to the summons of Pope Adrian. With an army collected together near Geneva, he crossed the St. Bernard, stormed the passes of the Alps, and conquered Pavia. Desidérius ended his days in a cloister. Charles erected the Lombard throne in Milan, united Upper Italy to the kingdom of the Franks, and confirmed the gifts made by Pepin to the pope.

During the absence of Charles, the Saxons had expelled the Frank garrisons and reëstablished their ancient boundaries. Charles again marched into their country, subdued them, and compelled the chiefs of the tribes to submit at Paderborn. Their warlike duke, Witikind, alone, fled to the Danes and refused to confirm the treaty. In the two following years, Charles fought against the Moors in Spain, took Pampelona and Saragossa, and united the whole country, as far as the Ebro, to his own kingdom, as a Spanish province. But during his return, his rear, under the command of Roland, suffered a defeat in the valley of Roncesválles, in which the bravest champions of the Franks were destroyed. Roland’s battle at Roncesválles was a favorite theme with the poets of the middle ages. The Saxons took advantage of his absence to make a fresh insurrection, and pursued their devastating course as far as the Rhine. Charles hastened to the spot, gave them repeated overthrows, and subdued their land afresh. But when he attempted to employ them as militia against the Slavonic tribes in the East, they fell upon the Frank troops who were marching with them, at the Suntal (between Hanover and Hameln), and slew them. This demanded vengeance. The Frank emperor marched through the land, plundering and destroying, and then held a court of judgment at Verden on the Aller. 4,500 prisoners expiated with their blood the crime of their brethren. Upon this, hostilities were resumed with fresh violence. But the battle on the Hase, which terminated to the disadvantage of the Saxons, put an end to the war. Witikind and the other chiefs took an oath of fealty and military service, and allowed themselves to be baptised. The people followed their example. Eight bishoprics provided for the maintenance and extension of Christianity among the Saxons. Another insurrection, however, was occasioned a few years afterwards, by the oppressive arriere-ban, and the unwonted payment of tithes to the Church, which resulted in 10,000 Saxon families being carried away from their homes, and colonies of Franks being established in their place. To oppose the Slavonic tribes to the east of the Elbe, Charles founded the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

Shortly after, Thassilo duke of Bavaria, attempted to render himself independent of the Frank power, by the assistance of the Avars, who lived to the east. He was overpowered, and expiated his breach of faith by perpetual confinement within the walls of the cloisters of Fulda. Bavaria was hereupon incorporated with the Frank empire, and Charles established the Eastern Margraviate as a check upon the wild Avars. When Charlemagne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and the Appenines to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Raab and the Elbe, he repaired to Rome at the conclusion of the century. It was here that, during the festival of Christmas, he was invested with the crown of the Roman empire, in the church of St. Peter, by Leo III, whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, that by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a single body, of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and Charles the secular head. It was at this time that the long-existing variance between the Western (Roman Catholic), and the Eastern (Greek Catholic) churches, terminated in a complete separation.

The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fertile of results than the foreign. 1. He improved the government and the administration of justice by abolishing the office of duke, dividing the whole kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts and deputies for the conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of the treasury for the management of the crown lands and the collection of imposts. The laws were confirmed by the popular assemblies (maifelder), in which every freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the cultivation of the land, and the education of the people. Agriculture and the breeding of cattle were encouraged, farms and villages sprang up, and barren heaths were converted into arable fields.

He founded conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the ancient Roman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old German heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and the historian Eginhard, from the Odenwald, had ample reason to congratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He favored the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the former obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music was improved, missionaries supported, and churches and monasteries erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were his favorite places of residence. He lies buried in the latter town.

The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Denbonnaire (the Gentle), was better fitted for the repose of a cloister than for the government of a warlike nation. A too hasty division of his kingdom among his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was the occasion of much sorrow to himself, and confusion to the empire. For when, at a later period, he proposed an alteration in favor of his fourth son, Charles the Bald, the fruit of a second marriage, the elder sons took up arms against their father. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on “the field of lies,” near Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled by Lothaire to do penance in the church and to abdicate his throne; and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true that Louis procured his father’s reinstatement; but when the weak emperor, after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom, deprived Louis of Germany, in favor of his brothers, Lothaire and Charles, Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old emperor’s heart. Full of sorrow, he ended his days on a small island of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile brothers now turned their arms against each other. A bloody civil war depopulated the country, so that at last, after a battle of three days’ duration, at Fontenaille in Burgundy, the Frank nobility refused to obey the arriere-ban, and by this means brought about the treaty of partition of Verdun. By virtue of this treaty, Lothaire received the imperial dignity, together with Italy, Burgundy, and Lorraine; Charles the Bald, western Franconia (France); and Louis the German, the lands on the right bank of the Rhine――Spire, Worms, and Mayence.

This division was followed by a time of great confusion, during which Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the Arabs; on the east, by the Slavi; and on the north and west, by the Normans. To oppose these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian monarchs, who were all men of weak and narrow minds, were obliged to restore the ducal office in the different provinces, and to sanction the hereditary authority of the Margraves, so that, in a short time, all the power fell into the hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths of most of the posterity of Louis the Denbonnaire, nearly the whole of the empire of Charlemagne devolved upon Charles the Fat, A. D. 876, a prince weak and indolent, and simple almost to imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant Normans, he purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding so exasperated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition, at Tribur on the Rhine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as his successor. Arnulf governed with vigor. He overthrew the Normans at Louvain, and called in the aid of the wild Magyars, or Hungarians, from the Ural, a people expert in horsemanship and archery, and who were now, under their valiant captain Arpad, occupying the plains on the Danube (named after them Hungary), against the Slavi and Avars. The Avars were either subjected or compelled to retreat. But the strangers (the Hungarians) soon became a more dreadful scourge to Germany than either the Slavi or the Avars. They made their predatory inroads and exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the youthful son of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a glorious campaign in Italy. This still continued, when, after the early death of this last of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles, among whom the dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria were preëminent for power, met together and elected Duke Conrad of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elective empire.

The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, but it possessed neither strength nor dignity. Under Charles the Simple, who had ascended the French throne after the deposition and subsequent death of Charles the Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves entirely independent, and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of Paris, kept the imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the other hand, was delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans, by Charles admitting duke Rollo into the province named after them Normandy, on condition that he and his followers would suffer themselves to be baptized, and recognize the king as their suzerain (feudal sovereign). The Normans, a people readily susceptible of civilization, soon acquired the language, manners, and customs of the Franks. Charles the Simple was followed by two other kings of the Carlovingian race; but their power was at last so limited that they possessed nothing but the town of Laon, with the surrounding country; every thing else had fallen into the hands of the insolent nobility. After the death of the Childless Louis V, Hugh Capet, son and heir of Hugh of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in prison Louis’ uncle Charles of Lorraine, who attempted to assert his right to the throne by force of arms.

The first successors of Hugh Capet possessed but little power and a narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the different provinces looked upon the king, who, properly, was only lord of France, as their equal, and only allowed him the first rank among themselves, in so far as they were obliged to recognize him as their feudal superior. The nobles dared not weaken the rights that appertained to him in this capacity, lest they should afford an example of breach of faith to their own subjects, and encourage them to similar behavior towards themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the great vassals were independent counties and principalities, which had no closer connection with the French throne than the western territories on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king of England; or the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and the Jura, which were portions of the German empire.

But in the attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet were not less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was fortunate, that, owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings, the throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of age to succeed his father, and that, consequently, there was never an interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their eldest sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their partners in the government, so that, on the death of the father, little or no change was suffered. The most important kings after Hugh Capet were Louis VII, who undertook the second crusade, and during his absence intrusted the government in France to the politic Abbot Suger of St. Denis; Philip Augustus II, who wrested Normandy and the other territories in the west from the English king, John Lackland; and Louis VIII, who enlarged his dominions on the south by the war against the Albigenses. But the reigns which had the greatest influence upon the history of France were those of St. Louis and Philip the Fair. The former improved the laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be looked upon as the highest in the land, and the disputes of the nobles among themselves, or with their vassals to be brought before them for decision: the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of the towns by granting various privileges and liberties to the citizens, and by being the first who summoned the representatives of the towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. After the death of Philip’s three sons, who reigned one after the other, but left no male heirs, the French throne passed to the house of Valois, A. D. 1328.

Philip VI of Valois, brother’s son of Philip the Fair, inherited the French throne. But Edward III of England also asserted his claims, as son of a daughter of Philip the Fair. Without regard to the Salic law, which prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of king of France, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a few years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the English were the victors, and the flower of the French chivalry, together with John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the field. The possession of the important town of Calais was the fruit of the victory. Philip died in the following year, and his son, John the Good, succeeded to the contested crown. Eager to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked the English army, which was under the command of Edward III’s heroic son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers, and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of England. Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed by the crown prince (Dauphin). During his rule, an insurrection broke out in Paris and over the whole land, which was attended with great devastations and outrages, until the imperfectly-armed citizens and peasants were subdued by the French knights, and visited with severe punishment. Shortly after this, a peace was established between France and England, by which Calais and the south-west of France was surrendered to the English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst Edward, on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the French throne. But when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, John voluntarily returned into captivity, and died in London.

John’s son, Charles V (the Wise), healed the wounds of his country. He quieted men’s minds by his moderate government, and by prudence and valor recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the Garonne; so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to wasting disease, and Edward III shortly followed him into the grave, nothing remained to the English of all their conquests but Calais. But under his successor, Charles VI, who became insane shortly after coming of age, France again fell into a state of confusion and lawlessness. Two powerful court parties, headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of Burgundy), and the king’s brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for the government; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy imposts, and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same time in which the towns were waging war against the knights in Germany, the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, and a dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, was making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class rose against the court and the nobility in Flanders and France also. But want of union among the insurgents gave the latter the victory, and the outbreak was followed by a diminution of the privileges of the people. The Burgundian party favored the citizens, the Orleans party the nobility.

The chivalrous king, Henry V of England, took advantage of these circumstances to renew the war with France. He demanded the former possessions back again; and when this was refused, he entered France by Calais, and renewed at Agincourt, on the Somme, the days of Crecy and Poictiers, A. D. 1415. The French army, four times the number of its opponents, was overthrown, and the flower of the French chivalry either fell in the field, or were taken prisoners by the enemy; nothing stood between the victor and Paris, where party violence had just now attained its highest point, and murders and insurrections were matters of daily occurrence. The Orleans party joined the Dauphin, whilst the Burgundian party, with the queen Isabella, united themselves with the English, and acknowledged Henry V and his descendants as the heirs of the French crown. The whole of the country to the north of the Loire was soon in the hands of the English. But Henry V was snatched away by death in the midst of his heroic course, in the same year in which the crazy Charles VI sank into the grave, and the Dauphin took possession of the throne under the title of Charles VII. But this made little difference to France. The English and their allies proclaimed Henry VI, who was scarcely a year old, the rightful ruler of the country, and retained their superiority in the field so that they already held Orleans in siege.

In this necessity, the MAID OF ORLEANS, a peasant girl of Dom Remy in Lorraine, who gave out that she had been summoned to the redemption of France by a heavenly vision, aroused the sinking courage of Charles and his soldiers. Under her banner, the town of Orleans was delivered, the king conducted to Rheims to be crowned, and the greater part of their conquests wrested from the English. The faith in her heavenly mission inspired the French with courage and self-confidence, and filled the English with fear and despair. This effect remained after Joan of Arc had fallen into the hands of the latter, and had been given up to the flames on a pretended charge of blasphemy and sorcery. The English lost one province after another; and when Philip the Good of Burgundy reconciled himself with the king, Calais soon became their last and only possession in the land of France. Paris opened its gates and received Charles with acclamations. He reigned over France in peace for twenty-five years; but he was a weak man, who suffered himself to be guided by women and favorites. He was followed by Louis XI, a crafty but politic prince, who, by cunning, violence, and unexampled tyranny, rendered the power of the throne absolute, and enlarged and consolidated his empire. He robbed the nobility of all their choicest privileges, and gradually united all the great fiefs with the crown. He then, by the assistance of the Swiss (whose hardy youth he and his successor engaged as mercenaries), overthrew Charles the Bold, and made himself master of the dukedom of Burgundy. The stings of conscience and the fear of men tortured him in the lonely castles where he spent the last years of his life, A. D. 1483. His two successors, Charles VIII and Louis XII, conquered Brittany, but dissipated the strength of the kingdon in their expeditions to Italy.

FRANCE DURING THE WAR OF RELIGION.

Henry II, a determined enemy of the Huguenots, died in consequence of a wound he received during a tournament, A. D. 1559. His feeble and delicate son, Francis II, was his successor. This prince was married to the fascinating Mary Stuart of Scotland, whose uncles, the Guises, in consequence, enjoyed great influence at the French court. The Guises, as zealous adherents of the Catholic Church and the papacy, made use of their lofty position to suppress the reformed party; but by doing this, gave their opponents, and in especial, the Prince Condé, of the family of Bourbon, and the Admiral Coligni, the opportunity of strengthening themselves by joining the Huguenots. The schism increased daily; the one party strove to overthrow the other, and to secure the victory to their own side by the assistance of the king. The day on which the Estates assembled at Orleans was selected by both parties as a befitting time for the execution of this project. The Guises gained the advantage. The chiefs of the Huguenots already found themselves in prison, when a turn was given to affairs by the sudden death of the king. The queen-mother, Catherine de Medicis, placed herself at the head of affairs during the minority of the new king, Charles IX, and the Bourbons assumed a position suited to their birth. The Guises, irritated at the neglect they experienced, retired with their niece, Mary Stuart, into Lorraine, whence the latter, shortly after, departed with sorrow and mourning into Scotland.

The removal of the Guises from the court was of advantage to the reformed party. They obtained toleration. Enraged at this concession, the duke of Guise concluded an alliance with some other powerful nobles for the preservation of the ancient faith in France, and returned to Paris. During this return, a horrible slaughter was perpetrated by the Guises and their attendants upon some Calvinists of the town of Vassy, who were assembled together in a barn, for the celebration of Divine worship. This proved the signal for a religious war. The outrage given to the conceded liberty of conscience by this bloody act of violence cried for vengeance. France was soon divided into two hostile camps, that attacked each other with bitter animosity and religious rage. The most horrible atrocities were committed, and the kingdom disturbed to its inmost depths. The Catholics obtained aid from Rome and Spain, the Protestants were assisted by England; Germany and Switzerland supplied soldiers. After the undecisive battle of Dreux, and the murder of the Duke Francis of Guise, at the siege of Orleans, peace was for a short time restored, and the Calvinists again assured of religious toleration――a promise that met with but little attention. The two parties were soon again arrayed in arms against each other, A. D. 1568. But despite the bravery of the Huguenots in the battle of St. Denis, where the elder Montmorenci lost his life, the superiority remained on the side of the Catholics; particularly when Catherine de Medicis, who had hitherto sided with neither party, embraced the interests of the latter. The sight of crucifixes and sacred objects broken to pieces, during a journey undertaken by the queen and her son, and the advice of the duke of Alba, with whom she had an interview in Bayonne, had produced this alteration in her opinions. After several bloody engagements in the vicinity of La Rochelle, which the Huguenots had selected as their battlefield, and after their gallant leader, Condé, had been basely assassinated during one of them, the peace of St. Germain was arranged, by which the Calvinists were again assured of the free exercise of their religion. Condé’s nephew, Henry of Bearn, who had been bred up in the doctrine of Calvin by his mother, Joanna d’ Albret, now placed himself at the head of the Huguenots; but the soul of the party was the brave Coligni, who stood by the side of the prince as his guide and adviser.

Coligni possessed great influence at the court after the peace. The young king respected him, and favored him with his confidence. For the purpose of bringing about a permanent reconciliation between the religious parties, the king now urged a marriage between his sister, Margaret of Valois, and the Bourbon, Henry of Bearn. This offended the Guises, who believed that Coligni had procured the assassination of Francis of Guise, and they resolved upon his destruction. Coligni was fired at one evening, as he was returning to his own house from the Louvre. The ball, however, only shattered his arm, and it was necessary to devise a fresh plan of destruction. The Guises, in conjunction with Catherine of Medicis, now entertained the horrible project of taking advantage of the approaching marriage, for the solemnization of which many illustrious Calvinists had hastened to the capital, to destroy the chiefs of the Huguenot party. Thus originated the Bloody Nuptials of Paris, in the night of St. Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. When the alarm bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois gave the signal at midnight, bands of armed ruffians fell upon the defenseless Calvinists. The gray-headed hero, Coligni, was the first victim that the Guises sacrificed to their hate; the murderous bands then marched through all parts of the city, filled the streets and houses with blood and corpses, and laughed to scorn every sentiment of humanity and justice. The butchery lasted for three days, and was imitated in other towns, so that, at the lowest computation, 25,000 Huguenots must have perished. The king, to whom the plan was communicated a short time before its execution, listened to the voice of his passions, and himself fired upon the fugitives. After the deed had been accomplished, and the Guises had been fixed upon by the public voice as its instigators, and called upon to answer for their conduct, Charles took the whole affair upon himself, and excused the crime by a pretended conspiracy. Many of the French quitted their homes in horror, and sought for security in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Henry of Bearn saved his life by a compulsatory abjuration, but returned to his old faith as soon as he found himself in security.

Charles IX died two years after the night of St. Bartholomew, troubled with evil dreams. His brother Henry, who had been for a twelvemonth the elected king of Poland, fled secretly from the rude shores of the Vistula to take possession of the fairer crown of France. Henry III was a weak and luxurious prince, without either assiduity or energy. Shut up with his favorites and pet dogs in the inmost apartments of the palace, he forgot his kingdom with its disturbances and miseries; and when remorse at his sinful life, which was passed in lust and debauchery, seized upon him, he sought consolation in superstitious devotion, in pilgrimages and processions, and in penance and flagellations. To bring the Huguenots to peace, so that he might be able to devote himself to the undisturbed enjoyment of the pleasures of his capital, Henry, immediately upon his accession, granted them freedom of conscience, and equal civil rights with the Catholics. Enraged at these concessions, which destroyed all the fruits of their previous exertions, the zealous Catholics, under the guidance of Henry of Guise, and with the cognizance of Philip II of Spain, concluded the Holy League for the preservation of the Church in all its ancient rights. Many members were won to this alliance by the insinuations of the priests and monks, and by the intrigues of the Jesuits. The fickle and faithless king, disturbed by this movement, united himself with the Catholic zealots, declared himself the head of the League, and curtailed the religious peace. The duke of Anjou, Henry’s younger brother, died a few years after this; and as he, like the king, was without children, the Bourbon, Henry of Navarre (Bearn), became the nearest heir to the throne. This prospect of a Protestant king alarmed the Catholic part of France, and gave fresh vigor to the League. The weak king was obliged to recall all treaties with the Huguenots, to announce the extirpation of heresy, and to approve the arrangements of the League. Henry of Guise, at first, only entertained the notion of putting aside the Protestant successor to the throne, who had been excommunicated by the pope; but his courage rose with his increasing power; he soon made attempts upon the crown himself, whilst, as a pretended descendant of the Carlovingi, he asserted the superiority of his claims to those of the reigning family. A conspiracy was formed in Paris (where the citizens were kept in a state of perpetual agitation by fanatical popular orators) against the freedom or life of the king; and when Henry III attempted to defend himself by calling in Swiss troops, the agitation burst into rebellion. The people assembled themselves around the Guises, who, against the king’s commands, were entering the capital, barricaded the streets and bridges, and commenced a furious contest with single divisions of the troops. The trembling king fled with his favorites to Chartres, and left his capital in the hands of his rival. Henry of Guise now possessed the same power that had belonged to the mayors of the palace in the time of the Merovingi. But even this position did not satisfy the ambitious party leader. An assembly of Estates, convoked at Blois, where the adherents of the Guises were the strongest party, proposed not only to deprive the Bourbons of their right to the throne and to exterminate Calvinism, but to change the government, and to place the whole power in the hands of the Guises. At this crisis, Henry hazarded a bold stroke; he had the duke of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal Louis, assassinated, and imprisoned the most influential leaders of their party. This proceeding produced a fearful commotion in the whole nation: in Paris, allegiance was renounced to the God-forsaken king, who had overthrown the pillar of Catholicism; the pope fulminated an excommunication at him; revolutionary movements took place in many quarters. Despised and forsaken, Henry III saw no other way to safety open to him than an alliance with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. A frightful civil war burst out afresh, but fortune was hostile to the League. Henry had already laid siege to Paris, and threatened to reduce the faithless town to a heap of ruins, when the knife of a fanatical monk put an end to his life. Henry III the last Valois, died on the first of August, 1589, after appointing Henry of Navarre and Bearn his successor.

Henry IV had still a long struggle to sustain before his head was ornamented by the crown of France. Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise, placed himself at the head of the League, and offered a vehement resistance to the Calvinistic claimant of the throne. Philip II sought to turn the confusion to his own advantage, and commanded his able general, Alexander of Parma, to march his forces from the Netherlands into France. Henry tried for a long time to get possession of his inheritance by the sword: he laid siege to Paris, and caused the citizens to feel all the horrors of famine; but he at length became convinced that he never could gain peaceable possession of the French throne by battles and victories. He thought the crown of France was worth a mass, and went over to the Catholic Church in the cathedral of St. Denis, and by this means destroyed the power of the League. Paris now threw open its gates, and welcomed the bringer of peace with acclamations. The pope recalled the anathema; the heads of the League concluded a treaty with him, and Philip II, a short time before his death, consented to the peace of Vervins. After foreign and domestic tranquillity had been thus restored to France, the king, by the Edict of Nantes, conferred upon the Calvinists liberty of conscience, the full rights of citizenship, and many other privileges; such as separate chambers in the courts of justice, several castles, with all their warlike munitions (La Rochelle, Montauban, Nismes, &c.) and freedom from episcopal jurisdiction. He next sought to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on the land by the war, by encouraging agriculture, trade and commerce; and had the economy of the state and the taxation admirably arranged by his friend and minister, Sully. He won for himself the warmest affections of his people by his genuine French character, and by his cordial and cheerful disposition. His solitary failing, his too great love for woman, was a merit in the eyes of the French. But fanaticism was only slumbering. Henry’s tolerant disposition towards heretics awakened it. As he was meditating the vast plan (with the approval of the Dutch Union and other European powers) of founding a Christian community with equal privileges for the three Confessions, and by this means destroying the supremacy of the royal house of Hapsburg, he fell beneath the knife of Ravaillac.

THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV――RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.

The first part of the reign of the weak Louis XIII, who only numbered nine years at the time of his father’s murder, was full of mischief for France. During the time the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, conducted the government, Italian favorites exerted a great influence upon affairs, enriched themselves at the expense of the French, and irritated the pride of the nation by their insolence. Enraged at this, the nobility took up arms, and filled the country with rebellion and the tumult of war. When at length Louis XIII himself, upon coming of age, assumed the government, he indeed consented that the foreign favorites should be removed by murder and execution, and banished his mother from the court; but the people gained little by it. The new favorites in whom the king, who possessed no self-reliance, reposed his confidence, were not distinguished from the former either by virtue or talents; for this reason, both the nobles of the kingdom and the Huguenots, who felt themselves injured in their rights, again rose against the government, and threw the land into fresh confusion. This melancholy condition of affairs was only put an end to when Cardinal Richelieu was admitted into the state council, and introduced a complete change of system, (A. D. 1624.)

This great statesman maintained an almost absolute sway in the court and in the kingdom for nearly eighteen years, though the king never loved him, the queen and the nobility were constantly attempting his overthrow, and a succession of cabals and conspiracies were plotted against him. The greatness of his mind triumphed over all obstacles. Richelieu’s efforts were directed towards the extension and rounding of the French territory without, and the increasing and strengthening of the royal power within. In furtherance of the former of these objects, he sought to weaken the house of Hapsburg, and for this purpose entered into alliances with the enemies of the emperor not only in Germany, in the time of the Thirty Years’ War, but in Italy and other places; and, to attain his aims in regard to the latter object, he neglected to call together the estates of the kingdom, broke the power of the nobility and of the independent officials and judges in the parliament, and attacked the Huguenots, who had formed an almost independent alliance in the south and west of France, with their own fortresses, and an effective militia, and great privileges. After conquering the most important of the Huguenot towns (Nismes, Montauban, Montpellier), and destroying their fortifications, in three wars, and when he had at length taken Rochelle, the bulwark of the Calvinists, after a siege of fourteen months, he proceeded to deprive the Protestants of their political privileges and of their independent position, but granted them, by the Edict of Nismes, liberty of conscience and equal rights with Catholic subjects. The turbulent nobles had been deprived of their greatest support by the disarming of the Huguenots, and the war could now be prosecuted against them with success. The most daring were got rid of by banishment and the executioner. Even the queen-mother and her second son, and the duke of Orleans, who attempted to procure the fall of Richelieu, were compelled to leave the country, and the confidential friend of the latter, Henry, duke of Montmorency, a scion of one of the most renowned families of France, died at Toulouse by the hand of the executioner. A similar fate awaited the count of Cinq-Mars and his friend, De Thou, a few years later, when in conjunction with the queen and some of the nobles, they formed a conspiracy against the mighty cardinal. The parliament, the upper tax-offices and courts of justice, which, like the king, claimed an independent authority on account of their offices being hereditary, were weakened by the establishment of extraordinary courts and higher officers, who were dependent upon the minister.

In the year 1642, died Richelieu, hated and feared by the nobility and the people, but admired by cotemporaries and posterity; Louis XIII, a prince without either great virtues or great vices, and dependent upon every one who could either acquire his favor or render himself formidable to him, soon followed him. His widow, Anne of Austria, the proud and ambitious sister of the king of Spain, undertook the government during the minority of his son. But as she reposed the whole of her confidence on the Italian, Mazarin, the inheritor of the office and the principles of Richelieu, she met with vehement opposers among the nobility and in the parliament, who attempted to regain their former power and position. The people, in the hope of being relieved of some of their heavy taxes, and guided by the clever and dexterous Cardinal Retz, embraced their cause, with the intent of compelling the court to remove Mazarin, and to adopt a different plan of government. This gave occasion to a furious civil war, which is known in history as “the War of the Fronde.” Mazarin was obliged to leave the country for a short time, but so immovable were the favor and confidence of the queen, that he governed France from Cologne as he had formerly done in Paris. But his banishment did not last long. When Louis XIV had attained the years of kingly majority, and Turenne, the commander of the royal troops, had conquered his rival, the great Condé, the general of the insurgents, in the suburb of St. Antoine, Mazarin returned in triumph. His solemn entry into Paris was a sign that absolute power had gained the victory, and that henceforth the will of the monarch was to be law. Mazarin enjoyed for six years longer the greatest respect in France and Europe; Cardinal Retz, the ingenious composer of the Memoirs of this war, was obliged to leave his country, after he had previously expiated his turbulent conduct in the prison of Vincennes; Condé, poor and unhappy, wandered among the Spaniards, till the grace of his master allowed him to return and take possession of his estates; Mazarin’s nieces, Italian females without name or position, were endowed with the wealth of France, and sought for as brides by the greatest nobles; and the members of parliament adapted themselves without opposition to the directions they received from above, after Louis had appeared before them in his boots and riding whip, and demanded their obedience with threats. Louis now gave effect to his principle, “I am the state” (l’etat, c’est moi). The peace of the Pyrenees with Spain was the last work of Mazarin. He died shortly after, (March 9, 1661,) leaving enormous wealth behind him. His death took place at the moment when Louis began to grow weary of him, and was longing to seize the reins of government in his own powerful grasp.

After the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV, in whom kingly absolutism attained its highest point, appointed no prime minister, but surrounded himself with men who merely executed his will, and whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the renown, glory, and honor of the king. In the choice of these men, Louis displayed judgment and the talents of a ruler. His ministers, especially Colbert, the great promoter of French industry, manufactures, and trades, as well as his generals, Turenne, Condé, Luxemburg, and the engineer, Vauban, as much surpassed, in talent, acquirements, and dexterity, the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries, as Louis XIV himself was preëminent among the princes of his age, in the greatness of his power, in commanding presence, and kingly dignity. He rendered the age of Louis XIV the most illustrious in the French annals, and caused the Court of Versailles (the seat of the royal residence) to be everywhere praised and admired as the model of taste, of refinement, and of a distinguished mode of living. But as he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness, of his own love of pleasure, of his pride, and of his desire for renown and splendor, his reign became the grave of freedom, of morals, of firmness of character, and of manly sentiments. Court favor was the end of every effort, and flattery the surest road to arrive at it; virtue and merit met with little acknowledgment.

It was during the last three decades of the seventeenth century that France stood at the culminating point of her power abroad and of her prosperity at home, so that the flattering chronicles of those days described the age of Louis XIV as the golden age of France. Trade and industry received a prodigious development by the care of Colbert; the woollen and silk manufactories, the stocking and cloth weaving, which flourished in the southern towns, brought prosperity, the maritime force increased, colonies were planted, and the productions of France were carried by trading companies to all quarters of the globe.

The court of France displayed a magnificence that had never before been witnessed. The palace of Versailles, and the gardens which were adorned with statues, fountains, and alleys of trees, were a model of taste for all Europe, fêtes of all kinds, jovial parties, ballets, fireworks, the opera and the theatre, in the service of which the first intellects in France employed their talents, followed upon each other in attractive succession; poets, artists, men of learning, all were eager to do honor to a prince who rewarded with a liberal hand every kind of talent that conduced either to his amusement or to his glory. Sumptuous buildings, as the Hospital of Invalides, costly libraries, magnificent productions of the press, vast establishments for the natural sciences, academies, and similar institutions, exalted the glory and renown of the great Louis. The refined air of society, the polished tone, the easy manners of the nobility and courtiers, subdued Europe more permanently and extensively than the weapons of the army. The French fashions, language, and literature, bore sway from this time in all circles of the higher classes. The consequences of the French Academy by Richelieu were a development of the language, style, and literary composition, that was extremely favorable to the diffusion of the literature. The language, so particularly adapted for social intercourse, for conversation, and for epistolary writing, remained from henceforth the language of diplomacy, of courts, and of the higher classes; and although the literary productions are wanting in strength, elevation, and nature,――the polish of the form, and the ease and felicity of the style, gave French taste the supremacy in Europe, and strengthened the French people in the agreeable delusion that they were the most civilized of nations.

But however flatterers may sing the praises of the age of Louis XIV, one spot of shame remains ineradicable――the persecution of the Huguenots. The French king believed that the unity of the Church was inseparable from a perfect monarchy. For this reason he oppressed the Jansenists, a Catholic party, which first contended against the Jesuits, and afterwards against the head of the Church himself; and he compelled the Calvinists, by the most severe persecutions, either to fly, or to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Colbert, who esteemed the Huguenots as active and industrious citizens, prevented for some time these violent measures; but the suggestions of the royal confessor, La Chaise, the zeal for conversion of the affectedly pious Madame Maintenon, who had been first a tutoress of the court, and afterwards Louis’ trusted wife, and the cruelty of Louvois, the minister of war, at length triumphed over the advice of Colbert. A long succession of oppressive proceedings against the Huguenots prepared the way for the great stroke. The number of their churches was restricted, and their worship confined to a few of the principal towns. Louis’ paroxysms of repentance and devotion were always the sources of fresh oppressions to the Calvinistic heretics, by whose conversion he thought to expiate his own crimes. They were gradually excluded from office and dignities; converts were favored; in this way, the ambitious were enticed, the poor were won by money, which flowed from the king’s conversion chest, and from the liberal gifts of the pious illustrious; a wide field was opened to the zeal for proselytism by the enactment that the conversion of children under age was valid. Families were divided, children were torn from their parents and brought up as Catholics. Court and clergy, the heartless and eloquent bishop Bossuet at their head, set all means in motion to establish the ecclesiastical unity of France. When all other means of conversion failed, came the dragonades. At the command of Louvois, the cavalry took possession of the southern provinces, and established their quarters in the dwellings of the Huguenots. The prosperity of the industrious citizens, whose substance was devoured by the dragoons, soon disappeared. The bad treatment by these booted missionaries, who quitted the houses of the apostates to fall in doubled numbers upon those who remained stedfast, operated more effectually than all the enticements of the court or the seductions of the priests. Thousands fled abroad that they might preserve their faith upon a foreign soil. At last came the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October, 1685. The religious worship of the Calvinists was now forbidden, their churches were torn down, their schools closed, their preachers banished from the land; when the emigration increased to a formidable degree, this was forbidden, under punishment of the galleys and forfeiture of goods. But despite all threats and prohibitions, upwards of 500,000 French Calvinists carried their industry, their faith, and their courage to Protestant lands. Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Brandenburg, Holland, and England, offered an asylum to the persecuted. The silk manufacture and stocking-weaving were carried abroad by the fugitive Huguenots. Flatterers extolled the king as the exterminator of heresy, but the courage of the peasants in Cevennes, and the number of Huguenots who contented themselves with private devotion, show how little religious oppression conduced to the desired end. For when the persecution was carried into the distant valleys of the Cevennes, where Waldenses and Calvinists lived, according to ancient custom, in the simplicity of the faith, the oppressors met with an obstinate resistance. Persecution called forth the courage of its victims, oppression urged zeal into fanaticism. Led on by a young mechanic, the Camisards, clad in a linen frock, rushed “with naked breast against the marshals.” A frightful civil war filled the peaceful valleys of Cevennes; fugitive priests, in the gloom of the forest, exhorted the evangelical brethren to a desperate defense, till, at length, the persecutors grew weary. Nearly two millions of the Huguenots remained without rights and without religious worship.

THE LAST DAYS OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY――THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Louis XV at first possessed the affections of his people to such a degree, that he was named the ‘Much-beloved;’ and when he was attacked by a dangerous illness in Metz, the whole land went into mourning, and his recovery was celebrated by the greatest rejoicings. But this love gradually changed into hatred and contempt when the king gave himself up to the most shameless debaucheries, and surrendered the government of the country, the command of the army, and the decision upon points of law and state policy, to the companions of his orgies and the ministers of his lusts and pleasures; and when mistresses, without morals or decency, ruled the court and the empire. Among these women, none possessed greater or more enduring influence than the Marchioness of Pompadour, who guided the whole policy of France for a period of twenty years, filled the most important offices with her favorites, decided upon peace or war, and disposed of the revenues of the state as she did of her private purse, so that, after a life passed in luxury and splendor, she left millions behind her. She and her creatures encouraged Louis’ excesses and love of pleasure, that he might plunge continually deeper in the pool of vice, and leave to them the government of the state. For the rest, the Pompadour used her position and her influence with a certain dignity, and with tact and discretion; but when the countess Du Barry, a woman from the very dregs of the people, occupied her place, the court lost all authority and respect.

When Louis XV, in consequence of his excesses, was carried off in the midst of his sins by a frightful distemper, the treasury was exhausted, the country in debt, credit gone, and the people oppressed by their burdens.

It was under these melancholy circumstances, that an absolute throne descended to a prince who certainly possessed the best of hearts, but a weak understanding; who was good-natured enough to wish to relieve the condition of the people, but possessed neither strength nor intellect for efficient measures. This prince was Louis XVI. Weak and indulgent, he allowed the frivolity and extravagance of his brothers, the count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII), and the count of Artois (Charles X); and permitted his wife, Marie Antoinette, the highly-accomplished daughter of Maria Theresa, to interfere in matters of state, and to exert a considerable influence upon the court and government. The queen, by her pride and haughty bearing, incurred the dislike of the people, so that they ascribed every unpopular measure to her influence, and put a bad construction upon every liberty she allowed herself in private.

The prevailing want of money, and the disordered state of the revenue, could only be remedied by including the nobility and clergy in the taxation, by large reforms in the whole system of government, like those proposed by Turgot and Malesherbes, and by order and economy in the expenditure. But Louis XVI had neither strength nor resolution to carry out such decisive measures; and as for economy, the extravagant court of Versailles would not listen to it. The Genevese banker, Necker, who undertook the management of the finances after Turgot, was as little in a position as his predecessor to reduce the disorder in the state economy; and when, upon the occasion of a loan, he exposed the financial condition of France in a pamphlet, he drew upon himself the displeasure of the court and the aristocracy to such a degree, that he was obliged to resign his office. This happened at a time when the American war had increased the scarcity of money, and aroused the feeling of liberty and republicanism in France. It was, therefore, a great misfortune for the French monarchy, that just at this critical moment the frivolous and extravagant Calonne undertook the management of the finances. This man departed from the frugal plan of Necker, acceded to the wishes of the queen and the necessities of the princes and courtiers, and deluded the world with high-sounding promises of putting an end to all difficulties. The most splendid festivals were celebrated in Versailles, and the talents of Calonne loudly extolled. But his means, also, were soon exhausted.

The popular favorite Necker, was a second time summoned, in 1788, to the ministry. He first allayed the irritation by repealing resolutions against the parliament, and then made preparations for summoning the Estates. Owing to this, there soon arose a division between him and the parliament and Notables, whom he had again consulted. The latter were of opinion that the new assembly should conform itself, both as to the number of representatives and the mode of procedure, to the Estates of 1614, while Necker wished to allow a double representation to the third Estate, and that they should vote individually, and not as a class; a view that was supported by some of the ablest writers of the nation in a multitude of pamphlets. (Abbè Sieyes: ‘What is the third Estate?’) Necker’s opinion triumphed. An order of the king fixed the number of noble and ecclesiastical members at 300 each, that of the citizens at 600, and appointed the following May as the time of opening. Necker was the hero of the day, but he was not the pilot of the ship, he only ‘drove the wind.’

In the beginning of May 1789, the deputies of the three Estates, and among them some of the ablest and most accomplished men of France, assembled at Versailles. The third Estate, irritated by the neglect of the court at the opening and during the audience, came to a rupture with the two privileged Estates at the first sitting, when the latter required that the Estates should carry on their debates separately, whilst the former insisted upon a general council and individual votes. After a contest of some weeks, the third Estate, which had chosen the astronomer, Bailli, the freedom-inspired representative of Paris, for its President, but which was guided by the superior talents of Sieyes and Mirabeau, declared itself a National Assembly, upon which it was joined by portions of the other Estates. The Assembly at once passed the resolution of allowing the levying of the present taxes only so long as the Estates should remain undissolved. This proceeding disturbed the court, and inspired it with the thought of granting a constitution to the nation, and thus rendering the estates unnecessary. For this purpose, a royal sitting was appointed, and the hall of assembly closed for a few days. Upon the intelligence of this, the deputies proceeded to the empty saloon of the Tennis Court, and raised their hands in a solemn vow not to separate till they had given a new constitution to the nation. When this Court also was closed, the meetings were held in the church of St. Louis. The royal sitting took place on the 23d of June. But neither the speech of the king, nor the sketch of the new constitution, afforded due satisfaction, and they were consequently received with coldness. After the termination of the sitting, Louis dissolved the Assembly. The nobility and clergy obeyed, but the citizen class retained their seats, and when the master of the ceremonies called upon them to obey, Mirabeau exclaimed: ‘Tell your master that we sit here by the power of the people, and that we are only to be driven out by the bayonet!’ The weak king did not venture to encounter this resolute resistance by force, but rather advised the nobility and clergy to join the citizens.

The government of the city was made over to a democratic municipality, at the head of which stood Bailli, as mayor. The court, alarmed at the increasing ferment, determined upon retiring to Versailles with a few regiments of German and Swiss troops. In this proceeding, the leaders of the movement believed they saw the purpose of some act of violence, and made use of it accordingly to excite fresh irritation. The intelligence was spread abroad in Paris, that Necker had been suddenly dismissed and banished from the country, and a favorite of the queen placed in his office. This was interpreted as the first step in the contemplated outrage, and proved the signal for a general rise. Crowds of the citizens, wearing the newly-invented national cockade, (blue, white, and red,) paraded through the streets, the alarm-bell was sounded, the work-shops of the gunsmiths plundered; tumult and confusion reigned everywhere. On the 14th of July, after the populace had taken 30,000 stand of arms and some cannon from the Hospital des Invalides, took place the storming of the Bastille, an old castle that served as a state prison. The governor, Delaunay, and seven of the garrison, fell victims to the popular rage; their heads were carried through the streets upon poles; and many men who were hated as aristocrats were put to death. The banished Necker was recalled, and his entrance into the towns and villages of France was celebrated as that of a hero crowned with victory. In this joyous reception of the minister, the people displayed their enthusiasm for liberty and their hatred to the court and the aristocracy. Lafayette, the champion of the liberty of America, was appointed commander of the National Guard, and whilst the king returned to Paris, and exhibited himself to the assembled people from the balcony of the council-house with the cockade in his hat, the count of Artois, and many nobles of the first rank, as Condé, Polignac, left their country in mournful anticipation of coming events.

Since the storming of the Bastille, the laws and magistrates had lost their authority in France, and the power lay in the hands of the populace. The country people no longer paid their tithes, taxes, and feudal dues to the clergy and nobles, but took vengeance for the long oppression they had suffered, by destroying the manorial castles. When intelligence of these proceedings spread abroad, it was proposed in the National Assembly, that the upper classes should prove to the people by their actions, that they were willing to lighten their burdens, and that, with this purpose, they should renounce, of their own free will, all the inherited feudal privileges of the middle ages. This proposal excited a storm of enthusiasm and self-renunciation. None would be behind-hand. Estates, towns, provinces, each strove for the honor of making the greatest sacrifices for the common good. This was the celebrated 4th of August, when, in one feverish and excited session, all tithes, labor-dues, manorial rights, corporate bodies, etc., were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the equality of all citizens of the state before the law and in regard to taxation was decreed. These resolutions, and the necessary laws and arrangements required for their reduction to practice, which were gradually adopted, produced in a short time a complete revolution in all existing conditions. The Church lost her possessions and was subjected to the state; monasteries and religious orders were dissolved, and the clergy paid by the state, the bishoprics newly regulated, and religious freedom established. Priests were required to swear allegiance, like officers of state, to the new constitution; but as the pope forbade it, the greater number refused the oath, which was the occasion of the French clergy being divided into sworn and unsworn priests; the latter lost their offices and were exposed to all kinds of persecutions, but enjoyed the confidence of the faithful among the people. The noble forfeited not only his privileges and the greater part of his income, but he also lost the external distinctions of his rank, by the abolition of all titles, coats of arms, orders, etc. Upon the principle of equality, all Frenchmen were to be addressed as ‘citizens.’ For the purpose of annihilating every remnant of the ancient system, France received a new geographical division into departments and arrondissements; a new system of judicature with jurymen; equality of weights, measures, and standards; and lastly, a constitutional government, in which the privileges of royalty were limited, and the legislative power committed to a single chamber, with a universal right of suffrage.

On the 5th of October, an immense multitude, chiefly of women, proceeded to Versailles to demand from the king relief from the scarcity of bread, and a return of the court to Paris. The king first attempted to pacify them by a conciliatory answer. But a wing of the palace was stormed during the night, and the guard put to the sword; the arrival of Lafayette, with the National Guard, prevented any further mischief. Upon the following day, the king was obliged to consent to proceed to Paris with his family, under the escort of this frightful crew, and to take up his residence in the Tuileries, which had for many years remained unoccupied. Shortly after, the National Assembly also followed, for whom the riding-school in the neighborhood of the palace had been prepared. The power now fell more and more into the hands of the lower class, who were kept in perpetual excitement by journalists and popular leaders, and were goaded to hatred against the court and the “aristocrats.”

On the day of the year in which the Bastille was taken, a grand federative festival was arranged in the Champ de Mars (July 14, 1790). It must have been a moving spectacle, when Talleyrand, at the head of 300 priests, clothed in white, and girded with tri-colored scarfs, performed the consecration of the banner at the altar of the country; when Lafayette, in the name of the National Guard, the president of the National Assembly, and, at length, the king himself, vowed fidelity to the Constitution; when the innumerable multitude raised their hands aloft and repeated after him the oath of citizenship, and the queen herself, carried away by enthusiasm, raised the Dauphin in the air and joined in the acclamations. This was the last day of happiness for the king, whose situation after this grew constantly worse. Necker, no longer equal to the difficulties, left France and retired to Switzerland. Mirabeau, won over by the court, opposed farther encroachments upon the kingly power with the whole of his eloquence, inasmuch as he believed a constitutional monarchy and not a republic to be the best government for France. Unfortunately for the king, this great man died, in his forty-second year, of a sickness brought on by his disorderly life and by over-exertion. A splendid funeral ceremony gave evidence of the influence of the man in whom sank the last strong pillar of the throne. Weak and unselfreliant as Louis XVI was, he now lost all firmness. By his refusal to receive a sworn priest as his confessor, or to declare the emigrants traitors, who were endeavoring from Coblentz to excite the European courts to a crusade against France, he excited a suspicion that he was not honestly a supporter of the constitution he had sworn to maintain, and not altogether ignorant of the efforts of the emigrants. The more this suspicion gained ground with the people, the more perilous became the position of the king. At this crisis, Louis embraced the desperate resolution of secretly flying to the northern frontier of his kingdom. Bouillé, a resolute general in Lorraine, was let into the secret, and promised to support the scheme with his troops. Leaving behind him a letter, in which he protested against all the acts which had been forced from him since October, 1789, the king happily escaped, with his family, from Paris in a large carriage. But the clumsily executed project nevertheless miscarried. Louis was recognized in St. Menehould by the postmaster, Drouet, stopped by the militia at Varennes, and led back to Paris at the command of the National Assembly, who sent three of their members, and among them, Pètion, to receive the royal family. The suspension of the royal authority, which had already been pronounced by the Assembly, remained in force, till Louis proclaimed and swore to observe, the Constitution completed at the end of September.

The attention of the government and the Assembly was particularly directed to the priests, who had refused the oath, and to the emigrants. Both were endeavoring to overthrow the existing order of things: the former by exciting hatred and discontent among the French people; the latter by making military preparations at Coblentz, and endeavoring to stir up foreign powers to an armed invasion of France. The Assembly therefore determined upon seeking out and arresting the unsworn priests, and declaring the emigrants traitors and conspirators, and punishing them by the loss of their estates and incomes. The king put his veto upon both these resolutions, and prevented their execution. This refusal was ascribed to the secret hopes, entertained by the court, of assistance from foreign powers and of the triumph of the emigrants, and thus the temper of the people grew continually more hostile. It was also known that the queen was in correspondence with her brother, the emperor of Austria, and that she looked for support and safety to the emigrant nobility. Neither was it any longer doubtful that war must soon break out, since the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia, after a conference in Pillnitz (August, 1791,) were making preparations, and demanded of the French government not only to make befitting indemnification to the German princes and nobles who had suffered loss by the abolition of tithes and feudal burdens, and to restore the province of Avignon, that had been wrested from the pope, but to arrange the government upon the plan proposed by the king himself in June, 1789. These demands were followed by a declaration of war against Austria and Prussia on the part of the French government, to which the king yielded his consent with tears. For the purpose of securing the capital and the National Assembly against any attack it was resolved to summon 20,000 of the federates from the southern provinces, under pretense of celebrating the festival of the Bastille, and to commit the defense of Paris to them. But Louis refused his consent to this resolution also. Upon this, the Girondist ministers laid down their offices, after Madame Roland had reproached and reprimanded the king in a letter that was soon in the hands of every body. These proceedings increased the irritation to such an extent that it became easy for the republicans to excite a popular insurrection. On the 20th of June, the anniversary of the meeting in the Tennis Court, the terrible mob, armed with pikes, marched from the suburbs, under the conduct of the brewer, Santerre, and the butcher, Legendre, into the Tuileries, to force the king to confirm the decree against the unsworn priests and for the summoning of the National Guard. But here also Louis remained firm. He defied for several hours all threats and dangers, and endured the insolence of the mob, who even placed the red Jacobin cap upon his head and gave him wine to drink, with the courage of a martyr. The rather tardy arrival of Pètion with the National Guard at length freed him from his perilous position.

At midnight on the 10th of August, a fearful mob proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, for the purpose of establishing a new democratic municipality, and then marched to the royal palace, which was defended by 900 Swiss, and the Parisian National Guard under the command of Mandat. The honest Mandat was resolved to check the advancing masses, which were ever assuming a more menacing aspect, by force; his destruction was consequently resolved upon by the democrats. He was commanded to appear at the Hôtel de Ville, and assassinated on his way thither; upon which the National Guard, uncertain what to do, and disgusted by the presence of a number of nobles in the palace, for the most part dispersed. The mob constantly assumed a more threatening aspect; cannon were turned upon the palace, the pikemen pressed forwards upon every entrance, the people loudly demanded the deposition of the king. At this crisis, Louis suffered himself to be persuaded to seek for protection with his family in the hall of the National Assembly, where they passed sixteen hours in a narrow closet. The king had scarcely left the palace, before the tumultuous multitude pressed forward more violently; the Swiss guard maintained a gallant resistance, and defended the entrance. When the report of musketry was heard in the adjoining Assembly, the indignant representatives of the people compelled the intimidated king to give his guard orders to cease firing. By this order, the faithful defenders of monarchy were doomed to destruction. Scarcely had the furious mob observed that the enemy’s fire had ceased, before they stormed the palace, slaughtered those they found in it, and destroyed the furniture. Nearly 5,000 men, and among them, 700 Swiss, fell in the struggle, or died afterwards, the victims of the popular fury. In the mean time, the National Assembly, upon the proposal of Vergniaud, embraced the resolution “to suspend the royal authority, to place the king and his family under control, to give the prince a tutor, and to assemble a National Convention.” The Temple, a strong fortress erected by the Knights Templars, soon enclosed the imprisoned royal family.

After the suspension of the king, a new ministry was formed by the National Assembly, in which, by the side of the Girondist, Roland, and others, the terrible Danton held office as minister of justice. This ministry, and the new Common Council of Paris which had appointed itself, and which, after the 10th of August, had strengthened itself by members who might be depended upon as hesitating at no wickedness, now possessed the whole power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with the ‘suspected’ and ‘aristocrats.’ It was now that the frightful resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hundreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September were commenced. From the 2d to the 7th of September, bands of hired murderers and villains were collected round the prisons. Twelve of them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked upon a list, were put to death by this inhuman crew under a semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3,000 human beings were either put to death singly, or slaughtered in masses, by these wretches, who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their ‘labors.’ Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the friend of the queen; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole to the Temple, and held it before Marie Antoinette’s window. The example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, incriptions, and other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the August and September days, which were the transition period between the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was distinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty and equality under the republican National Convention.

Lafayette, who was serving with the northern army, and who, after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsibility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the king, was now summoned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking for his death, he fled, with some friends who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might escape to America; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to England, and thence to America, where he awaited better times.

The new Assembly, which, under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by universal suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of different dispositions and opinions.

The trial of the king, ‘Louis Capet,’ was one of the first proceedings of the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a wall of the Tuileries, containing secret letters and documents, from which it was apparent that the French court had not only been in alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for overthrowing the Constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and conspiracy against the country and the people. Louis, with the assistance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes, of his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified bearing and defense, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to have the sentence referred to a general assembly of the people, Louis was condemned to death in a stormy meeting, by a small majority of five voices, January 17th, 1793. The party of the Mountain, where the advocate, Maximilian Robespierre, the former marquis St. Just, the frightful Danton, the lame Couthon, and the duke of Orleans, who had assumed the name of Citizen Egalité, were the leaders and chiefs, had left no means unattempted to produce this result by terror; they would, nevertheless, have failed in their purpose, had they not carried a resolution beforehand in the Assembly, that a bare majority should be sufficient for a sentence of death, and not, as had heretofore been the custom, that two thirds of the votes should be necessary. The murder was thus veiled by a show of justice. On the 21st of January, the unfortunate king ascended the scaffold in the square of the Revolution. The drums of the National Guard drowned his last words, and ‘Robespierre’s women’ greeted his bloody head with the shout of ‘Vive la République.’

The Girondists, enraged at the increasing power of the populace in Paris, and the unbridled acts of violence committed by the mob, entertained the project of converting France into a republican union like North America, and by this means, destroying the supremacy of the capital. The Mountain and the Jacobins, who saw that this scheme would weaken the revolutionary power of France, and endanger the future of the democratic republic, commenced a war of life and death with the Girondists (also called Brissotins) upon this point. They reproached them with weakening the power of the people, and destroying the republic at a moment when France was threatened with enemies both within and without; and when all these attacks were ignominiously repulsed by the victorious eloquence of the Girondists, the savage Marat, in his ‘Friend of the People,’ called upon the populace to rise against the moderate and lukewarm, and thus gave occasion to daily riots and tumults, which disturbed the capital and endangered life and property.

The National Convention acquired greater unanimity by the exclusion of the Girondists and the moderates; so that, from this time, it was enabled to develop a frightful power and activity. For the purpose of better superintending its multitudinous affairs, it resolved itself into committees, of which the committee of public safety and that of public security acquired a frightful celebrity by the persecution of every one opposed to the new order of things. A revolutionary tribunal, consisting of twelve jurymen and five judges, to which that man of blood, Fouquier Tinville, occupied the office of public accuser, seconded the activity of these committees by a cruel and summary administration of justice. At the head of the committee of public safety stood three men, whose names became the terror and horror of all just men; the envious and malignant Robespierre, the bloodthirsty Couthon, and the frantic for republican liberty and equality, St. Just. They pursued their bloody object without regard to human life; every thing that ventured to oppose their stormy course was unpityingly hurled down. Thus originated the terrible period of the years ‘93 and ‘94, which displayed itself in three different directions――within, by a cruel persecution of all citizens who were known as aristocrats or favorers of royality, and by a bloody suppression of insurrections in the south and west; without, by a vigorous defensive war against innumerable enemies.

The former minister, Malasherbes, the members of the Constituent Assembly, Bailli, etc. all who belonged to the old monarchy, and who had not saved themselves by flight, died by the guillotine. Among them was the severely-tried queen, Marie Antoinette, who displayed, during her trial and at her execution, a firmness and strength of soul that was worthy of her education and her birth. Her son died beneath the cruel treatment of a Jacobin; her daughter (the duchess of Angoulême) carried a gloomy spirit and an embittered heart with her to the grave. Louis XVI’s pious sister, Elizabeth, also died on the scaffold; the head of the profligate duke of Orleans, whom even the favor of Danton could not preserve from the envy of Robespierre, had fallen before her own.

The bloody rule of the Mountain party displayed itself in its most frightful excess in the suppression of the revolt against the reign of terror. When the inhabitants of Normandy and Bretagne rose in support of the excluded Girondists, the committee of public safety ordered the district between the Seine, the Loire, and the extreme sea-coast, to be visited with blood and slaughter by the terrible Carrier. This monster ordered, at Nantes, his victims to be drowned by hundreds in the Loire by means of ships with movable bottoms (noyades.) The proceedings of the Jacobins in the cities of the south, Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, were still more barbarous. In the first of these towns Chalier, who had formerly been a priest, and now was president of the Jacobin club, excited the people by scandalous placards to plunder and destroy the ‘aristocrats.’ Irritated at this audacity, the respectable and wealthy citizens of Lyons, who were thus menaced in their lives and property, procured the execution of the demagogue, July 16th, 1793. This deed filled the Parisian terrorists with fury. A republican army appeared before the walls of the town, which, after an obstinate contest, was taken and fearfully punished. Fréron a companion of Marat, Fouché, Couthon, and others, caused the inhabitants to be shot down in crowds, because the guillotine was too tedious in its operations; whole streets were either pulled down or blown into the air with gunpowder. The goods of the rich were divided among the populace; Lyons was to be annihilated, reduced to a nameless common. The republicans raged in a similar way in Marseilles and Toulon. The royalists of Toulon had called upon the English for assistance, and surrendered to them their town and harbor. Confident in this assistance, and in the strength of their walls, the citizens of Toulon bade defiance to their republican enemies. But the army of sans-culottes, in which the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, exhibited the first proofs of his military talents, overcame all obstacles. Toulon was stormed. The English, unable to maintain the town, set fire to the fleet, and left the unfortunate inhabitants to the frightful vengeance of the Convention. Here also the barbarous Frèron ordered all the wealthy citzens to be shot, and their property to be divided among the sans-culottes. The respectable inhabitants fled, and abandoned the city to the mob and the galley-slaves. Tallien behaved in a similar manner in Bourdeaux; and in the north of France, Lebon marched from place to place with a guillotine.

But the fate of La Vendée was the most frightful. This singular country, situated in the west of France, was covered with woods, hedges, and thickets, and intersected by ditches. Here dwelt a contented people, in rural quietude, and in the simplicity of the olden time. The peasants and tenants were attached to their landlords; they loved the king; and clung with reverence to their clergy and their church usages, which had been dear and sacred to them from their youth. When the National Assembly slaughtered or expelled their unsworn priests, when the blood of their king was poured out on the guillotine, when the children of the peasants were called away by a general summons, to the army――then the enraged people roused themselves to resistance and civil conflict. Under brave leaders, of undistinguished birth, as Charette, Stofflet, Cathelineau, who were joined by a few nobles, Laroche-Jaquelein, D’Elbée, etc., they at first drove back the republican army, conquered Saumur, and threatened Nantes. Upon this the Convention despatched a revolutionary army to La Vendée, under the command of Westermann and the frantic Jacobins, Ronsin and Rossignol. These fell upon the inhabitants like wild beasts, set fire to towns, villages, farms, and woods, attempted to overcome the resistance of the ‘royalists’ by terror and outrage. But the courage of the Vendéan peasants remained unsubdued. It was not until general Kleber marched against La Vendée with the brave troops who had returned to their homes after the surrender of Mayence, that this unfortunate people gradually succumbed to the attacks of their enemies, after the land had become a desert, and thousands of the inhabitants had saturated the soil with their blood. La Vendée, however, was only restored to tranquillity when Hoche, who was equally renowned for his courage and philanthropy, assumed the command of the army, offered peace to those who were weary of the contest, and reduced the refractory to submission. Stofflet and Charette were made prisoners of war, and shot.

The rage and cruelty of the Jacobins at length excited the disgust of the chiefs of the Cordeliers, Danton and Camille Desmoulins. The former, who was rather a voluptuary than a tyrant, and who was capable of kindly feelings, had grown weary of slaughter, and had retired into the country for a few months with a young wife, to enjoy the wealth and happiness that the revolution had brought him; but Camille Desmoulins, in his much read paper, ‘The Old Cordelier,’ applied the passages where the Roman historian, Tacitus, describes the tyranny and cruelty of Tiberius, so appropriately to his own times, that the application to the three chiefs of the committee of safety and their laws against the suspected was not to be mistaken. This enraged the Jacobins; and when, about this time, several friends and adherents of Danton (Fabre d’Eglantine, Chabot, etc.) were guilty of deceit and corruption in connection with the abolition of the East India Company, and others gave offense by their sacrilegious proceedings, the committee of safety made use of the opportunity to destroy the whole party of Danton. For since the Convention had altered the calendar and the names of the months, had made the year commence on the 22d of September, had abolished the observance of Sunday and the festivals, and introduced in their place the decades and sans-culotte feasts, many Dantonists, like Hebert, Chaumette, Momoro, Cloots, and others, had occasioned great scandal by their animosity to priests and Christianity. They desecrated and plundered the churches, ridiculed the mass, vestments and the church utensils, which they carried through the streets in blasphemous processions, raged with the spirit of Vandals against all the monuments of Christianity, and at length carried a resolution through the Convention that the worship of Reason should be introduced in place of the Catholic service of God. A solemn festival, in which Momoro’s pretty wife personated the Goddess of Reason in the church of Nôtre Dame, marked the commencement of this new religion. Robespierre, who plumed himself upon his reputation for virtue, because he was not a participator in the excesses or avarice of Danton and his associates, took offense at these proceedings. He determined to destroy their originators, and in their fall to involve the destruction of Desmoulins and Danton, before whose powerful natures his own spirit, which was filled with envy and ambition, stood abashed. Scarcely, therefore, had Danton resumed his seat in the Convention, before St. Just began the violent struggle by a remarkable proposal, in which he divided the enemies of the republic into three classes: the corrupt, the ultra-revolutionary, and the moderates, and insisted upon their punishment. This proposal resulted in nineteen of the ultra-revolutionaries, and among them Cloots, Momoro, Ronsin, and several members of the Common Council, being led to the guillotine on the 19th of March, 1794. On the 31st of April, the corrupt were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sechelles, etc., were maliciously distinguished as their partisans and involved in their fate. But Danton and Desmoulins, supported by a raging mob that were devoted to them, demanded with vehemence that their accusers should be confronted with them. For three days, Danton’s voice of thunder and the tumult among the populace rendered his condemnation impossible. For the first time, the bloody men of the Revolutionary Tribunal became confused. The Convention, at length, by a law of its own, gave the Tribunal the power of condemning the accused who were endeavoring to subvert the existing order of things by an insurrection, without further hearing; upon which the blood-stained heroes of the 10th of August and the days of September, who during their trial had shown that a lofty spirit might dwell even in the bosom of criminals, were led to the guillotine and beheaded, with a crowd of inferior Hebertists. They died with courage and resolution.

Since the fall of Danton, the committee of safety had ruled with well-nigh unlimited sway, and by repeated executions and arrests had brought the reign of terror to its highest point. But its chiefs had lost the confidence of the people and of the Convention. The friends of Danton were on the watch for the favorable moment of attack, and the number of their enemies was increased, when Robespierre, to put an end to the blasphemous proceedings of the adherents of the worship of Reason, had a resolution passed by the Convention in May, ‘That the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul were truths:’ and rendered himself at once hateful and ridiculous by his pride at the new festival in honor of the Supreme Being in the Tuileries, at which he officiated as high priest. Among his opponents was Tallien, who at a former period had been guilty of excesses in Bourdeaux, but who had been brought to adopt different principles by the fascinating Fontenay Cabarrus. With him were joined Frèron, Fouché, Vadier, the polished rhetorician Barrère, and others. On the 9th Thermidor, a battle for life or death commenced in the Convention. Robespierre and his adherents were not allowed to speak; their voices were drowned in the cries of their enemies, who carried through a stormy meeting the resolution, ‘That the three chiefs of the committee of safety, Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, and their confederate, Henriot, should be denounced, and conveyed as prisoners to the Luxembourg palace.’ They were liberated by the mob on their way; whereupon the drunken Henriot threatened the Convention with the National Guard, whilst the others betook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville. But the National Assembly was beforehand with them by a hasty resolution. A loudly proclaimed sentence of outlawry suddenly dispersed Henriot’s army, whilst the citizens who were opposed to the Jacobins arranged themselves around the Convention. The accused were again secured in the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot crept into a sewer, whence he was dragged forth by hooks. Robespierre attempted to destroy himself by a pistol-shot, but only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw, and was first conveyed, horribly disfigured, amidst the curses and execrations of the people, before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and then guillotined, with twenty-one of his adherents. On the two following days, seventy-two Jacobins shared the fate of their leaders.

Robespierre’s overthrow by the ‘Thermidorians’ was the commencement of a return to moderation and order. The assemblies of the people were gradually limited, the power of the Common Council diminished, and the lower classes deprived of their weapons. Frèron, converted from a republican bloodhound into an aristocrat, assembled the young men, who from their clothing were called the ‘gilded youth,’ around him. These, with the heavy stick they usually carried about them, attacked the Jacobins in the streets and in their clubs at every opportunity, and opposed the song of the ‘Awakening of the People’ to the Marseillaise. At length, the club was shut up and the cloister of the Jacobins pulled down. The Convention strengthened itself by the recall of the expelled members and of such Girondists as were still left, and ordered the worst of the Terrorists, Lebon, Carrier, Fouquier, Tinville, etc., to be executed. But when four of the most active members of the committee of safety, (Barrère, Vadier, Collot d’Herbois, and Billaud Varennes) were denounced, the Jacobins collected the last remains of their strength, and drove the people, who were suffering from a scarcity and want of money, to a frightful insurrection. Crowds of grisly wretches surrounded the house of assembly, and demanded, with threatening cries, the liberation of the patriots, bread, and the constitution of 1793. Pichegru, who was just at this moment in Paris, came to the assistance of the distressed convention with soldiers and citizens, and dispersed the crowd. The still more formidable insurrection of the 1st Prairial, 1795, in which the mob surrounded the convention both within and without from seven o’clock in the morning till two at night, for the purpose of enforcing a return to the reign of terror, was also suppressed by the courageous president, Boissy d’Anglas. From this time, the power of the Terrorists was no more. Many Jacobins died by their own hands; others were beheaded, imprisoned, or transported. By so much the stronger became the party of the royalists, who wished to have a king again; and when the new government was shortly after determined upon, by which the executive powder was to be delivered to the Directory of five persons, the legislative power to a council of Ancients and a council of Five Hundred, the republican members of the Convention feared that in the new election they might be thrust aside by the royalists. They therefore made additions to the original charter of the constitution, wherein it was declared that two-thirds of the two legislative councils must be chosen from members of the Convention. The royalists raised objections to this and some other limitations of the freedom of election; and when these were unattended with success, they occasioned the insurrection of the Sections. Hereupon, the Convention made over to the Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, the suppression of the insurgent royalists, who were joined by all the enemies of the republic and of the revolution. The victory of the 13th Vendemiaire, (October 5, 1795,) which was fought in the streets of Paris, gave the supremacy to the republicans of the Convention, and the command of the Italian army to Napoleon, who was then twenty-six years of age, and who, a short time before, had married Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnois.

The French army in Savoy and on the frontiers of Italy was in a melancholy condition. The soldiers were in want of every thing. At this crisis, Napoleon appeared as their commander-in-chief, and in a short time contrived so to inspirit the desponding troops and attach them to his person, that under his guidance they cheerfully encountered the greatest dangers. Where the love of glory and the sentiment of honor were not sufficient, there the treasures of wealthy Italy served as a stimulous to valor. In April 1796, Napoleon defeated the octogenarian Austrian general, Beaulieu, at Nilesimo and Montenotte, separated, by this victory, the Austrians from the Sardinians, and so terrified the king, Victor Amadeus, that he consented to a disadvantageous peace, by which he surrendered Savoy and Nice to the French, gave up six fortresses to the general, and submitted to the oppressive condition of allowing the French army to march through his land at any time.

The course of Napoleon’s victories in Upper Italy was equally rapid. After the memorable passage of the bridge of Lodi, he marched into Austrian Milan, subjected the Lombard towns, and so terrified the smaller princes by the success of his arms, that they were only too happy to make peace with the victor at any price. Napoleon extorted large sums of money, and valuable pictures, treasures of art and manuscripts, from the dukes of Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, etc.

Wurmser now took the place of the old Beaulieu. But he also was defeated at Castiglione, and afterwards besieged in Mantua. The army under Alvinzi that was sent to his relief sustained three defeats (at Arcola, Rivoli, La Favorita), by which the whole Austrian force in Italy was destroyed, dispersed, or captured. This compelled the gallant Wurmser to deliver up Mantua to the glorious victor. Bonaparte, respecting the courage of his enemy, permitted a free retreat to the gray-headed marshal, his staff, and a part of the brave garrison. Pope Pius VI, terrified at these rapid successes, hastened to purchase the peace of Tolentino by cessions of territory, sums of money, and works of art. Archduke Charles now assumed the command of the Austrian army in Italy. But he also was compelled to a disastrous retreat, and was pursued by Bonaparte as far as Klagenfurt, with the view of falling upon Vienna. The emperor Francis, anxious for the fate of his capital, allowed himself to be persuaded by female influence to conclude the disadvantageous preliminary peace of Leoben, at the very moment when, by the non-arrival of the expected reinforcements, and the threatening movements of the Tyrolese, Styrians, and Carinthians, the position of the French army was becoming critical. About the time this treaty of peace was concluded, a popular insurrection arose in the rear of the French army, in the territory of the republic of Venice, in consequence of which many Frenchmen were murdered in Verona and its neighborhood, and even the sick and wounded in the hospitals were not spared. This was taken advantage of by Napoleon to destroy the Venetian republic.

The French marched into Venice, carried off the ships and the stores of the arsenal, robbed the churches, galleries, and libraries of their choicest ornaments and most valued treasures, and kept possession of the city till the negotiations with Austria were so far advanced, that the peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797), by which Upper Italy fell into the hands of France under the name of the Cisalpine Republic, was concluded. Austria, who by this peace also surrendered Belgium to the French republic, and consented to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine with Mayence, received the territory of Venice, together with Dalmatio, as a recompense for this loss. The princes, prelates, the nobles, who suffered by this abandonment of the farther Rhineland, were to be indemnified on the right bank of the river, and this as well as all other points relating to Germany, were to be settled at the Congress at Rastadt. Napoleon opened this congress himself, and then returned to Paris, where he was received with acclamation.

The expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and Syria, produced a fresh coalition of the three great European powers, Russia, England, and Austria, against France. Russia had been governed since the year 1796 by Paul, the eldest son of Catherine, a prince with a mind somewhat deranged, who cherished the bitterest hatred against the Revolution; and who, as a great admirer of the Order of Malta, to the Grand Mastership of which he had himself appointed, saw in the capture of that island by Napoleon, cause for war. England feared danger to her foreign possessions from the Egyptian expedition, and scattered money with a liberal hand to raise up fresh enemies against France. Austria was at variance with the directoral government, because the house of the French ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, had been broken open, and the tricolor flag torn down and burnt, without the Austrian government having afforded the required satisfaction. War was waged, at the same time, in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands.

After his disembarkation at Alexandria, the whole of the French fleet at Aboukir, owing to the carelessness of the admiral, was defeated and captured by the English naval hero, Nelson; and Napoleon was in consequence obliged to make arrangements for a longer stay. In July, he marched from Alexandria through the Egyptian desert to Cairo. The distress of the army, unprovided with water or sufficient necessaries, in the burning heat, was very great. In the battle of the Pyramids, July 21st 1798, ‘from the tops of which 4,000 years looked down upon the combatants,’ the Mamalukes, who at that time swayed Egypt under the Turkish government, were defeated; whereupon Bonaparte marched into Cairo, and established a new government, police, and taxation, upon the European pattern, and ordered the curiosities of this wonderful land to be examined, and its monuments and antiquities to be collected and described, by the artists and men of learning who accompanied his army.

A dreadful insurrection broke out in Cairo, October 21st 1798, which could only be suppressed with difficulty by the superiority of European tactics, after nearly 6,000 Mahommedans had been slain. Napoleon made use of the victory to extort money, and then marched with his Turkish troops against Syria. After the conquest of Jaffa, where he ordered 2,000 Arnauts, whom he had a second time taken prisoners, to be shot as perjured, he proceeded to the siege of Jean d’Acre. It was there that the fortune of Napoleon met with its first rebuff. The Turks, provided with artillery by the English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, repelled the assaults of the enemy, despite their wonderful valor. At the same time, a Turkish army threatened the European soldiers in the interior of the country. The former was, indeed, defeated and dispersed by Junot at Nazareth, and at Mount Tabor by Kleber; nevertheless, upon the plague breaking out among his troops, Napoleon found himself compelled to give up Acre and to commence a retreat. The horses were laden with the sick, the soldiers suffered the most dreadful privations; the dangers and the distresses of the war were frightful. Napoleon shared all the fatigues with the meanest of his army; he is even said to have visited a hospital filled with those sick of the plague. He again reached Cairo in June, and in the following month, defeated a Turkish army of three times his number, at Aboukir. A short time after this, he learned the disasters of the French in Italy from some newspapers; and the intelligence produced such an effect upon him, that he determined upon returning to France. He quietly made his preparations for departure with the greatest expedition. After transferring the command of the Egyptian army to Kleber, Napoleon sailed from the harbor of Alexandria with two frigates and a few small transports, and about 500 followers, and, guided by the star of his fortunes, reached the coast of France undiscovered by the English, and landed at Frejus amidst the acclamations of the people.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Napoleon embraced the resolution of overthrowing the directoral government which had lost all authority and consideration. With this purpose, he made himself secure of the officers and troops that were in Paris, and consulted with Sieyes, one of the directors, and his own brother, Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected president of the Five Hundred, on the means of carrying his plan into execution. Lucien transferred the sittings of the council to St. Cloud, for the purpose of bringing the members within the power of the soldiers. There, Napoleon first attempted to win over the members to his plans by persuasion; when he found that he could not succeed in this, but rather, that he was overwhelmed with threats and reproaches, he commanded his grenadiers to clear the room with leveled bayonets. The republicans, who presented a bold front to the danger, were at length compelled to yield to superior force, and sought their safety through the doors and windows. This done a commission of fifty persons was appointed to draw up a fresh constitution, November 9th 1799. Thus ended the violent procedure of the 18th Brumaire, in consequence of which Napoleon Bonaparte took the conduct of affairs into his own strong hands.

According to the consular constitution, the power of the state was divided in the following manner:――1. To the Senate, which consisted of eighty members, belonged the privilege of selecting from the list of names sent in by the departments the members of the legislative power, and the chief officials and judges. 2. The legislative power was divided into the Tribunate, which numbered one hundred members, and whose office it was to examine and debate upon the proposals of the government; and the legislative bodies, who had only to receive or reject these proposals unconditionally. 3. The government consisted of three Consuls, who were elected for ten years. Of these Consuls, the first, Bonaparte, exercised the powers of government, properly so called; whilst the second and third Consuls (Cambacéres and Lebrun) were merely placed at his side as advisers. Bonaparte, as first Consul, surrounded himself with a state council and a ministry, for which he selected the most talented and experienced men. Talleyrand, the dexterous diplomatist, was minister of the exterior; the astute Fouché superintended the police; Berthier held the staff of general.

Bonaparte was at first engaged in reconciling the old with the new, in combining the results of the Revolution with the forms and manners of the monarchical period. But he very soon made known his preference for the ancient system, by the restoration of all the former arrangements and customs.

The reductions in the emigrant lists brought back many royalists to their homes, and the favor shown to them made them courteous and pliant in the service of the new court. Madame de Stael (daughter of Necker) collected, as in the old time, a circle of accomplished and illustrious men in her saloon. The vanity of the French favored Napoleon’s efforts; when he instituted the Order of the Legion of Honor, republicans and royalists grasped eagerly at the new plaything of human weakness.

One of the first cares of the Consul was the restoration of Christian worship in the French churches. After he had abolished the republican festivals (10th August, 21st January), and introduced the observance of the Sabbath, negotiations were opened with the Roman court, which at length led to the conclusion of the Concordat. No less attention did Napoleon devote to the affairs of education; but he particularly patronized the establishments for practical science, as the Polytechnic School in Paris.

Repeated conspiracies against the life of the First Consul, sometimes undertaken by the republicans and sometimes by the royalists, were always followed by fresh restrictions and a more rigorous system of espionage. The most desperate undertaking of this kind was the attempt, by means of the so-called infernal machine,――a cask filled with gunpowder, bullets, and inflammable materials, to blow up Bonaparte on his way to the opera-house,――an attempt which he escaped by the rapidity with which his coachman was driving, but which destroyed many houses and killed several people. In consequence of this atrocious deed, a great number of Jacobins were condemned to deportation, though it afterwards turned out that the plot was undertaken by the royalists. Still more dangerous and extensive were the conspiracies against Napoleon, when the office of Consul was conferred upon him for life by the voice of the people, with the privilege of naming his successor, (August 2, 1802). By this means, the Bourbons were cut off from the last hopes of a return, and the emigrants accordingly left no means untried of destroying him. The desperate George Cadoudal, and Pichegru, who were residing in England, allowed themselves to be employed as tools. They conveyed themselves secretly to France, but were discovered and arrested, with about forty confederates. Before their fate was decided, Napoleon allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of a revolting crime. It had been represented to him that the duke d’Enghien, the chivalrous grandson of the prince of Condé, was the soul of all the royalist conspiracies. Accordingly, this young nobleman, who was residing at Ettenheim, a small town of Baden, was seized at Napoleon’s command, by a troop of armed men, conducted with the greatest haste through Strasburg to Paris, condemned to death by a hurried court-martial, and, despite a magnanimous defense, shot in the trenches of Vincennes.

The fate of the conspirators was shortly after decided upon. Pichegru had already died a violent death in prison, whether by his own hand or that of another is uncertain. George Cadoudal, with eleven confederates, ascended the guillotine. General Moreau, who was implicated, retired into voluntary banishment in America.

NAPOLEON, EMPEROR.

The royalist conspiracies were made use of by Bonaparte to establish an hereditary monarchy. At the instigation of his adherents, the making over the hereditary dignity of emperor to Napoleon was proposed to the Tribunat, sanctioned by the Senate, and confirmed by the whole people by the subscription of their names. Whilst the minds of men were still painfully excited by the late bloody executions, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French, and at the end of the year, solemnly anointed by the pope in the church of Nôtre Dame. The crown, however, he placed on his own head, as well as on that of his wife, Josephine, who knelt before him. This magnificent coronation appeared to be the conclusion of the Revolution, since the whole ancient system, for the extinction of which thousands of human lives had been sacrificed, gradually returned. The new emperor surrounded his throne with a brilliant court, in which the former titles, orders, and gradations of rank were revived under different names. He himself certainly retained his old military simplicity, but the members of his family were made princes and princesses; his generals became marshals; the devoted servants and promoters of his plans were connected with the throne as the great officers of the crown, or as senators with large incomes. The establishment of a new feudal nobility, with the old titles of princes, dukes, counts, barons, completed the splendid edifice of a magnificent imperial court.

The great ends attained by the Revolution――equality before the law, the peasants’ right of property in the soil and other possessions, remained untouched. Industry made great progress, civil arts and trades received a vast impulse; and an unaccustomed prosperity made itself everywhere visible. Magnificent roads, like those over the Alps, canals, bridges, and improvements of all kinds, are, to the present day, eloquent memorials of the restless activity of this remarkable man. Splendid palaces, majestic bridges, and noble streets, arose in Paris, every thing great or magnificent that art had produced was united in the Louvre; the capital of France glittered with a splendor that had never before been witnessed. The university was arranged upon a most magnificent footing, and appointed the supreme court of supervision and control over the whole system of schools and education.

Whilst the attention of all Europe was directed to the western coast of France, where Napoleon was fitting out ships of every kind with the greatest diligence, and assembling a vast camp at Boulogne, with the purpose, as was believed, of effecting a landing on the English coast, he was making preparations, in all silence, for the memorable campaign of 1805. Never were Napoleon’s talents for command or his military genius displayed in a more brilliant light than in the plan of this campaign. Assured of the assistance of most of the princes of southern Germany, Bonaparte crossed the Rhine in the autumn with seven divisions, commanded by his most experienced marshals, Ney, Lannes, Marmont, Soult, Murat, etc, and marched into Swabia; whilst Bernadotte, disregarding Prussia’s neutrality, pressed forward through the Brandenburg Margravate of Anspach-Bayreuth upon the Isar. This violation of his neutral position irritated the king, Frederick William III, to such a degree, that he entered into closer relationship with the allies, and assumed a threatening aspect, without, however, actually declaring war.

After Ney’s successful engagement at Elchingen, the Austrian general, Mack, was shut up in Ulm, and cut off from the main army. Helpless, and despairing of deliverance, the incompetent commander commenced negotiations with the French, which terminated in the disgraceful capitulation of Ulm. By this arrangement, 33,000 Austrians, including thirteen generals, became prisoners of war. Covered with shame, the once-brave warriors marched before Napoleon, laid down their arms before the victor, placed forty banners at his feet, and delivered up sixty cannon with their horses. When too late, it was seen in Vienna that Mack was not equal to his lofty position, and he was deprived of his honor, his dignities, and the advantages of his office, by a court-martial. Napoleon’s joy at this unexampled good fortune was, however, diminished by the cotemporaneous maritime victory of the English at Trafalgar, which annihilated the whole French fleet, but which also cost the life of the great naval hero, Nelson.

The war-party had gained the upper hand in Prussia since the violation of the neutral territory of Bernadotte. The king renewed the bond of perpetual friendship with the sensitive emperor Alexander, in the church of the garrison at Potsdam, over the coffin of Frederick the Great, at night, and then sent Haugwitz with threatening demands to Napoleon. The French emperor, in the meantime, proceeded along the Danube towards the Austrian states, not without many bloody engagements, of which the battles of Dirnstein and Stein against the Russians under Kutusoff and Bagration were of especial importance. If the French found brave and circumspect opponents in the Russians in these encounters, they had the easier game in Austria. Murat took possession of Vienna without the slightest trouble; and the prince of Auersburg, who had orders either to defend the bridge over the Danube, which was fortified and filled with gunpowder, or to blow it into the air, allowed himself to be so completely deceived by the bold cunning of the French general, and by pretended negotiations of peace, that he surrendered it to the enemy uninjured and undefended. The irresolution of the emperor Francis, and the divisions between the Austrians and Russians, facilitated the victory of the French, who, laden with enormous booty, pursued the Austro-Russian army, in the midst of perpetual engagements, into Moravia. In Moravia, the battle of Austerlitz, in which the three emperors were present, was fought on the day of the year in which the emperor was crowned, December 2d, 1805, and in which the winter sun shone upon the most splendid of Napoleon’s victories. The emperor Francis, wishing for the termination of the war, suffered himself to be persuaded to pay a humble visit to Napoleon in the French camp, and then consented to a truce which stipulated for the retreat of the Russians from the Austrian states. Upon this, negotiations were commenced which terminated in the peace of Presburg.

After the battle of Austerlitz, the Prussian ambassador, Haugwitz, did not venture to convey the charge of his court to the victorious emperor; without asking permission in Berlin, he allowed himself to be induced, partly by threats, and partly by the engaging affability of Napoleon, to subscribe an unfavorable contract, by which Prussia exchanged the Franconian principality of Anspach, some lands on the Lower Rhine, and the principality of Nuremburg in Switzerland, for Hanover. It was in vain that the king resisted the exchange, which threatened to involve him in hostilities with England; separated from Austria by the hasty conclusion of the peace of Presburg, nothing was left to the king but to submit to the dictation of the victor.

The constitution of the German empire was already dissolved by the elevation of the Elector of Bavaria and of the Duke of Wirtemberg into independent monarchs. Napoleon, in consequence, entertained the project of entirely removing the south and west of Germany from the influence of Austria, and of uniting them to himself by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine. A prospect of enlarging their territories and increasing their power, and fear of the mighty ruler from whose side victory appeared inseparable, induced a great number of princes and estates of the empire to separate themselves from the German empire and join France. Self-interest was more powerful than patriotism. On the 12th of July, the treaty was signed in Paris, by virtue of which Napoleon, as protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, recognized the full sovereignty of the individual members, upon condition of their maintaining a certain contingent of troops ready at the emperor’s disposal. Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and several others, formed the kernel around which the lesser principalities, as Hohenzollern, Liechtenstein, Solms, etc., collected themselves, till at length almost all the German confederate states of the second and third rank gave in their adhesion. The Elector arch-chancellor Dalberg, who had been made prince-primate, and who had received Frankfort, together with Hanau and Fulda, as a principality, was chosen Napoleon’s representative in the Confederation of the Rhine.

The wavering conduct of Prussia had filled Napoleon with the deepest anger, and convinced him that the king would be untrustworthy as a friend, and cowardly and innocuous as an enemy. He accordingly flung aside all respect and forbearance, and purposely inflicted many mortifications on the Prussian government. The irritation produced by this was soon aggravated into a complete rupture.

The French troops under Napoleon and his experienced marshals were in the heart of Thuringia and Saxony, the Elector of which had united himself, after some hesitation, to Prussia. The first engagement at Saalfeld, where the gallant prince Louis found his death, went against the Prussians; but the defeat suffered by the army under the command of the old duke of Brunswick, in the great double battle of Jena and Auerstadt, was terrible and fatal. It decided the fate of the countries between the Rhine and the Elbe. The former presumption of the officers and young nobles was suddenly turned into despondency, and the greatest confusion and helplessness took possession of the leaders. Hohenlohe, with 17,000 men, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; the fortresses of Erfurt, Magdeburg, Spondau, Stettin, etc., surrendered within a few days, with such wonderful celerity, that the commandants of many of them were suspected of treachery, so utterly unaccountable did such cowardice and such entire want of self-reliance appear. Blücher alone saved the honor of Prussia by the bloody combat in and around Lubeck, though he could not prevent the horrible storming of this slightly-fortified town; in Colberg, also, Gneisenau and Schill, supported by the brave citizen, Nettlebeck, courageously resisted the superior force of the enemy. Thirteen days after the battle of Jena, Napoleon marched into Berlin, and issued his mandates from thence. The Elector of Hesse, who wished to remain neutral, and who had withdrawn his forces from the contest, was obliged to surrender both land and army to the enemy, and to seek for protection as a fugitive in a foreign land. He took up his residence in Prague. The duke of Brunswick, who had been severely wounded, and who was carried into his capital on a litter after the battle of Jena, was compelled to seek for refuge in Denmark to die in peace. Jena and East Friesland were united to Holland; the Hanse towns as well as Leipsic, were oppressed by the deprivation of all English wares, and by severe military taxes; and treasures of art and science, and the trophies of former victories, were carried away from all quarters. It was only to the Elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought at Jena, that Napoleon showed any favor. He set the Saxon prisoners at liberty, and granted the Elector a favorable peace; upon which the latter, dignified with the title of king, joined the Confederation of the Rhine, like the other Saxon dukes. From this time, Frederick Augustus, to the misfortune of himself and his people, felt himself bound by the ties of gratitude to the French emperor.

The king of Prussia had fled to Königsberg, where he vainly attempted to obtain peace. Napoleon’s demands rose with his fortunes. In his necessity, Frederick William turned to his friend Alexander, who immediately despatched a Russian army under Benningsen and others into East Prussia, to prevent the French passing the Vistula. Upon this, Napoleon issued a proclamation to the Poles, pretendedly in the name of Kosciusko, by which these misused people were summoned to fight for liberty and independence. The Poles willingly made the greatest sacrifices, and strengthened the ranks of the French by their brave soldiers under the command of Dombrowski. Napoleon marched into Warsaw amidst the rejoicings of the people; but the Poles discovered, only too soon, that the foreign potentate was more intent upon the gratification of his own ambition and love of power, than upon the restoration of their empire. Murderous battles were now fought upon the banks of the Vistula, and torrents of blood shed at Pultusk and Morungen. But the great blow was struck in the battle of Preuss-Eylau, February 8, 1807, when the marshal spirit of the French and Russians gave rise to a contest which in loss of men equals any event of the sort in the world’s history. Both parties claimed the victory, and their efforts and exhaustion were so great, that the war suffered an interruption of four months. During this interval, negotiations were again renewed; but much as the king, who was waiting with his family in Memel, might desire the termination of the war, that he might free his subjects from the dreadful exactions of the French, he was too honest to dissever his own cause from that of his ally. But when the Silesian fortresses on the Oder, Glogau, Brieg, Schweidnitz, and Breslau, fell into the hands of the French by the cowardice of their commandants, and even Dantzic was surrendered to the marshal Lefebvre by the gallant governor Kalkreuth, the king lost all confidence in the successful issue. When, after the recommencement of hostilities, the French gained a brilliant victory over the Russians in the battle of Friedland, on the anniversary of the battle of Marengo, and took possession of the field of Königsberg, the allied monarchs, after a personal interview with Bonaparte on the Niemen, thought it prudent to consent to the peace of Tilsit, oppressive as were the conditions.

Portugal, in consequence of her refusal to close her ports against the English, was occupied by a French army under Junot, who assumed the title of Duke of Abrantes, and proclaimed himself regent in the name of the French Emperor, after the departure of the Portugese royal family for Brazil. In pursuance of his favorite object, the destruction of English commerce, Napoleon not only extended his continental system to Portugal and Italy (as far as the latter country was dependent on France), but even formed a plan for the subjugation of Spain; and under pretense of protecting that country against an English invasion, crossed the Pyrenees at the head of 100,000 men. Charles IV, who a short time before in consequence of an insurrection against his contemptible favorite, Godoy, Prince of the Peace, had resigned his crown in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII, no sooner witnessed the entry of the French into Madrid, than he desired to recall his abdication. Under pretense of settling the dispute, Napoleon invited the whole party to meet him at Bayonne, and having made himself master of their persons, compelled the Bourbon family to resign the Spanish crown, and placed his brother Joseph on the throne. The vacant kingdom of Naples was then conferred on Murat, and the grand-duchy of Berg destined for the Crown Prince of Holland. Against the sovereign thus treacherously imposed on them, the whole Spanish nation rose as one man; and Joseph, after an unsuccessful attempt to conciliate his new subjects by granting them a liberal constitution, was compelled to quit Madrid and retire to Burgos.

An English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed in Portugal, and drove the French out of that country; the means of returning to France being secured to Junot and his army by the Convention of Cintra. At the same time, another French army, under Dupont, was surrounded and captured in the south of Spain. The French had already fallen back on the Ebro, when Napoleon (to whom the Emperor Alexander, in a personal interview at Erfurt, had promised assistance in the event of a war with Austria) appeared in Spain at the head of 335,000 men.

After a victorious progress from the Ebro, the French Emperor entered Madrid, and immediately abolished the inquisition, the feudal system, and the Council of Castile (which had recalled its consent to the abdication of Charles IV), and reduced the number of convents to one-third. Having, in conjugation with Soult, compelled the English to evacuate Portugal, Napoleon returned to France to make preparations for a fresh war with Austria. On the 21st February, 1809, the fortress of Saragossa which had been twice heroically defended by the Spanish General Palafox, with the loss of 53,000 men, surrendered to the French; and the cause of Spanish independence seemed utterly ruined; for the brilliant victory of Talavera 27th and 28th of July, obtained by Sir Arthur Wellesley over King Joseph, was neutralized by the defeat of an army recently raised by the Junta of Seville, which was almost annihilated by Soult, at Ocano.

The monks, to whose influence King Joseph attributed the general insurrection of the Spanish nation against the French, were punished by the suppression of all the monastic orders. Whilst the French, although perpetually harrassed by swarms of irregular troops, called Guerillas, were still advancing steadily towards the south, the Junta had retired to Seville, and assembled the Cortes (1810), which drew up and proclaimed in (1812), a new constitution, by which the monarchical power was greatly restricted. The repeated attempts of the French, especially under Massena, to regain a footing in Portugal, were as unsuccessful as their attacks on Cadiz, which was strongly fortified and protected by a combined Spanish and English fleet. In the year 1812, the French force in Spain having been reduced to 168,000 men, by the withdrawal of a large number of the best soldiers and generals for the Russian campaign, the whole population of several provinces were encouraged to take the field, and the Guerillas under Mina, the Curate Merino, Mendizabal, etc., became daily more numerous and daring. The fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were stormed by Lord Wellington, who spared the armies of Marmont and Soult, defeated the former near Salamanca, compelled Joseph to quit Madrid, and then, on the approach of the French, retreated to the Portuguese frontier. Soult having been recalled from Spain by Napoleon, after his disastrous campaign in Russia, the English general compelled King Joseph a second time to abandon his capital, and retire to the Ebro, and in the year 1813 decided the fate of Spain, by a brilliant victory over Jourdan at Vittoria. Joseph escaped being taken prisoner, by a precipitate flight into France. Soult, who had reëntered Spain by command of Napoleon, was compelled to recross the Pyrenees by Lord Wellington, and the war was terminated by the battle of Toulouse, in April, 1814, the Emperor Napoleon having previously abdicated, and Ferdinand VII being released from his imprisonment at Valencay.

Soon after his coronation, Napoleon had conceived the idea of depriving the Pope of his temporal power, and transporting him to Paris, where the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff might be advantageously employed for the promotion of his own ambitious designs. After a succession of annoyances and threats, Napoleon demanded that the Pope should accede to the continental system, close his ports against the English, and conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, at least against the Infidels, by which title he designated the Turks and all the Protestant powers. On the refusal of the Pope to entertain this proposal, the Emperor took possession of Rome, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy four provinces belonging to the States of the Church. These measures were speedily followed by the publication of a decree dated from Schönbrunn, in which the temporal authority of the Pope was declared to be at an end; and in the following year 1810 the rest of the States of the Church were incorporated into the French empire. Pius VII, who had excommunicated the originators and perpetrators of these acts of violence, was carried off by force to Grenoble, and thence removed to Savona, where he remained three years a prisoner, refusing with exemplary firmness to resign his temporal authority, and establish his residence at Paris. In the summer of 1812, he was removed to Fontainebleau, for the purpose of negotiating a fresh concordat, and returned to Rome after the abdication of Napoleon, in 1814.

After the peace of Tilsit, an attempt was made by the Austrian government to reëstablish its political influence in Europe. With this view the army was reörganized; and when Napoleon, in consequence of this movement, called on the members of the Rhenish Confederacy to hold themselves in readiness, the Austrians resolved to anticipate his attack. A proclamation was accordingly issued by the Emperor’s brothers, the Archdukes Charles and John, as commanders-in-chief of the army destined to act in Bavaria and Italy, calling on the German nation to coöperate with Austria in her struggles for the liberty of their common fatherland; but scarcely any effect was produced by this appeal. The army commanded by the Archduke Charles, which had entered Bavaria, was defeated in a series of engagements, which lasted from the 19th to the 23d of April at Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, by a force composed almost entirely of Germans, and compelled, after sustaining immense loss, to cross the Danube, and retreat towards Bohemia.

On the 13th of May, Vienna was a second time taken by the French; Napoleon, who had advanced by forced marches for the purpose of preventing the relief of Vienna by the archduke Charles, was defeated on the 21st and 22d of May, near the villages of Aspern and Esling. He then formed a junction with the Italian army under Eugene Beauharnais, a second time crossed the Danube, and defeated the archduke Charles in the sanguinary battle of Wagram, on the 5th and 6th of July. The two armies met again at Znaim, in Moravia, and victory had already begun to incline to the side of the French, when hostilities were suspended by the arrival of Prince Lichtenstein, who was empowered by the Emperor to arrange the terms of an armistice. After this battle, and an unsuccessful attempt of the English to effect a diversion by landing on the island of Walcheren, in Holland, the Austrian war was terminated on the 14th of October by the peace of Vienna. By this treaty Austria lost 2000 square miles of territory, with three and a half millions of inhabitants.

In the hope of obtaining an heir to his throne, and of imparting in some sort, a legitimate character to his dynasty, Napoleon divorced himself from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria. On the 20th of March, 1811, the new Empress was delivered of a son, who was immediately created king of Rome. His brother Louis having declared his readiness to abdicate in favor of his son, rather than ruin Holland by enforcing a rigid observance to the continental system, Napoleon annexed the whole of that country to France. Under the same pretext, and in the face of his own repeated declaration that he wished the Rhine to be the boundary of his dominions, the Emperor incorporated into the French empire the maritime provinces of northern Germany, a great part of the kingdom of Westphalia, the Hanse Towns, the grand duchy of Berg, Oldenburg, and East Friesland: as he had already annexed Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the Canton of Vallais in Switzerland. The empire at this time numbered 130 departments, and extended along the coast of western and southern Europe, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Trieste and Corfu. The imperial government now became every day more absolute: the sittings of the legislative body, which had long since been a mere farce, were suspended: the duties of the senate were confined to the appearance of its members on great occasions in the suite of the Emperor, and the passing of acts confirmatory of his decrees for the annexation of fresh territory.

The conviction that the continental system would be ruinous to her commerce, and that Napoleon would never rest until he had destroyed her influence as a first-rate European power, was soon forced on Russia, which had wrested Finland from Sweden in 1808, and extended her dominions to the Pruth, by the peace of Bucharest, concluded in 1812, after a six years’ war with the Turks. The first coolness between Alexander and Napoleon was occasioned by the annexation of Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, a measure which was regarded with suspicion by the Russian Emperor, as tending towards the reëstablishment of Poland as a kingdom. Other causes of offense followed in rapid succession; on the one side, Napoleon, who had already annoyed the Emperor by depriving the duke of Oldenburgh, husband of Alexander’s aunt by the mother’s side, of his dominions, now demanded the rigid enforcement of the continental system by Russia; whilst, on the other, the union of Warsaw, as a province, with Saxony, and the evacuation of the Prussian dominions, were strongly urged on France by the Russian government. The refusal of each party to accede to the demands of the other, at length produced a war, which was commenced in 1812 by Napoleon, who collected an army of 400,000, or, according to some writers, 600,000 men, from almost every country in south-western Europe. To oppose this formidable armament, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. With his accustomed rapidity of movement, Napoleon crossed the Nieman into Lithuania, and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the Russians, who were unwilling to hazard a general engagement until they had formed a junction with the troops from the interior. After defeating the Russians at Smolensk, and Borodino, on the Moskwa, Napoleon, on the 14th of September, entered Moscow, which was entirely abandoned by the inhabitants; and soon after his arrival a fire broke out, occasioned probably by the Russian governor Rostopchin, which raged six days, and destroyed nine-tenths of the city. Notwithstanding this calamity, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins of Moscow, endeavoring to negotiate a peace; but discovering his error when it was too late, he broke up his quarters on the 18th of October, and commenced his retreat with an army now reduced to 104,000 men. The winter had already set in with a severity almost unprecedented at that early season, and the whole of the country between Moscow and Beresina, an extent of 150 German miles, presented the appearance of a desert, the inhabitants of the villages having removed or destroyed all their agricultural produce. At length the army, reduced by famine and the unceasing attacks of the Russians and Cossacks to 30,000 men capable of bearing arms, reached the Beresina, where the passage of the river was forced by Ney and Oudinot, with 8,500 men, in the face of 25,000 Russians. The retreat now became a flight, in consequence of the intensity of the cold, and the abandonment of the army by Napoleon, who had placed himself in a sledge, when all was lost, and proceeded to Paris (arrived 18th December,) where his presence was rendered necessary by the unsettled state of public affairs. General Ney, who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Moskwa, and done good service by the masterly manner in which he had conducted the retreat, was created Prince of the Moskwa. The first step towards the emancipation of Prussia, was the conclusion of a convention of neutrality between the Prussian general Diebitsch and general York, who was sent to cover the retreat of the left wing of the French army under Macdonald. This proceeding on the part of the Prussian general was stigmatized by Napoleon as an act of the grossest treachery, and the chief cause of his subsequent misfortunes.

Frederick William III of Prussia, after issuing from Breslau a manifesto, in which he called on his people to rise and defend their liberties against the encroachments of the French, now concluded an alliance with Russia for the reëstablishment of the Prussian monarchy, and having been subsequently joined by Sweden and England, commenced his preparations for the formation of a national militia in Prussia.

In the month of March, the Prussian grand army under Blucher, marched through Silesia to Dresden, where it awaited the arrival of a Russian force commanded by Kalish. A second Russo-Prussian army was also sent from Berlin to join the two other corps. The allied army, under Wittgenstein, now numbered 85,000 men, and that of the French 120,000, most of whom were raw conscripts.

Towards the end of April, Napoleon reäppeared in Germany, and advanced to Leipzic, where he was compelled to engage the enemy at Grossgörschen, or, as he himself named the battle, at Lützen, on the 2d of May: but notwithstanding the disadvantage under which they labored, in being unprepared for the attack, and the heavy loss which they sustained in the battle, the French were victorious; and the allies retreated by way of Dresden into Lusatia. Sharnhorst died at Prague of the wounds which he had received in the battle. Soon afterwards Napoleon appeared at Dresden, and compelled the wavering king of Saxony to place the resources of his kingdom at the disposal of the French. On the 20th of May Napoleon attacked the allies at Bautzen, forced the passage of the Spree, and completed his victory on the following day, at Wurschen, where he sustained a considerable loss in killed and wounded. As the allies directed their retreat towards Silesia instead of Berlin, in order to effect a junction with the Austrians, the conqueror, who wished to prevent a meeting of the three powers, as well as to gain time for fresh levies, consented to an armistice from 4th of June to 10th of August, in the hope that Austria would eventually join the French. A short time previously to these events, the city of Hamburg, which had been abandoned by the French officials on the approach of a Russian army, under Tetterborn, was retaken by Davoust, and mercilessly pillaged, because the inhabitants were unable to pay a forced contribution of 48,000,000 francs.

The congress of Prague having terminated unsatisfactorily, in consequence of the unreasonable demands of Austria, and the unwillingness of England to become a party to a treaty of peace, war was declared by the Austrian government against Napoleon, whose subsequent overtures were treated with contempt. The allies had made the best use of the breathing time allowed them by the armistice. A subsidy of eleven millions, granted by England, enabled them to equip at least 600,000 men, who formed three divisions, viz, 1. The grand army of Bohemia, under Schwarzenberg, in whose camp were the three allied monarchs and General Moreau. 2. The army of Silesia, under Blücher. 3. The army of the North, under the Crown Prince of Sweden, Charles John Bernadotte. Against this enormous force Napoleon brought into the field about 350,000 men; and notwithstanding his inferiority in point of numbers, commenced hostilities with an attack on the army of Silesia, which retreated beyond the Katzbach. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had marched upon Dresden, and Napoleon was compelled to proceed by forced marches to that city, leaving General Macdonald in Silesia. On the 26th and 27th of August, Napoleon gained his last victory at Dresden, on German ground, amidst torrents of rain. Moreau was mortally wounded in this battle, and died soon afterwards. This advantage gained by Napoleon, was however almost neutralized by the failure of the other divisions of the French army.

The Silesian and northern armies having crossed the Elbe where Bertrand was defeated by York, near Wartemberg, in order to effect, if possible, a junction with the army of Bohemia in Napoleon’s rear, the French Emperor quitted Dresden, and drew together all his forces at Leipzic, where the great ‘battle of the nations’ was fought on the 16th, 17th, and 18th October. Towards the end of this battle, the Saxons and Würtembergers went over to the allies. On the first day Napoleon engaged the main body of the allies, under Schwarzenberg, on the plain southwards of Leipzic, near Wachau, but without any decisive result; whilst at the same time Blücher defeated Marmont, on the northern part of the city, near Möckern. On the 17th there was no general engagement, Napoleon having communicated to the Emperor of Austria his willingness to purchase peace, by the relinquishment of his sovereignty over Warsaw, Illyria, and the Rhineland, and to withdraw his troops to the other side of the Rhine, as soon as an armistice was concluded. Meanwhile, however, a reinforcement of more than 100,000 men had joined the allied army, which now numbered 300,000, whilst the French had scarcely 130,000. Under these circumstances the battle was renewed on the 18th of October. After losing more than 30,000 men (including Prince Poniatowsky, a nephew of the last King of Poland, who was drowned in the Elster), the defeated army, which still numbered 100,000 men, commenced its retreat, and fought its way to the Rhine, where 70,000 men crossed the river at Mainz. During this retreat, the French were attacked on the Unstrut by York, and at Hanau by the Bavarians, under Wrede, and were incessantly harassed by bands of Cossacks. The immediate consequences of this victory were――1. The breaking up of the Rhenish confederacy. 2. The dissolution of the kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchies of Frankfort and Berg. 3. The surrender of all the French garrisons as prisoners of war, with the exception of the garrison of Hamburg, which held out, under Davoust, until the 26th of May, 1814. 4. The re-conquest, by Bülow, of Holland, where the people, who had been more forward than any other nation in their resistance to the continental system, proclaimed the Prince of Orange sovereign of the Netherlands. 5. Denmark, on account of its alliance with Napoleon, was invaded by the crown prince of Sweden, and compelled, after a short winter campaign, to cede Norway to Sweden in exchange for Swedish Pomerania and Rügen. 6. Illyria and the Tyrol were restored to Austria after a long and bloody struggle. In the south, Murat, King of Naples, the Emperor’s brother-in-law, formed an alliance with the Austrians for the expulsion of the French from Italy, the Emperor of Austria undertaking to guarantee to him the undisturbed possession of his dominions. On the other hand, Switzerland, too feeble as yet to throw off the French yoke, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon, who deemed this the best mode of protecting his weakest frontier.

Wellington, being now prepared to enter France from Spain, and the allied army from the Rhine, Napoleon, who had rejected the offers of peace made to him by the allies, demanded a fresh conscription of 300,000 men, and prorogued the legislative assembly, which had ventured to present him an address describing, in strong language, the misery and exhaustion of France. At the commencement of the year 1814 the allies entered France, the grand army of Schwarzenberg traversing a portion of neutral Switzerland, and crossing the frontier at Basle, whilst the force under the command of Blücher crossed the Rhine, on new year’s eve, at Mannheim, Caub, and Coblenz. In the hope of preventing a junction, Napoleon attacked Blücher near Brienne, and forced him to retreat; but, in spite of this check, the united armies attacked the French at la Rothière, and drove them across the Aube. The two corps then separated, the grand army under Schwarzenberg proceeding along the banks of the Seine, and the army of Silisia along the Main, in the direction of Paris. No sooner was Napoleon aware of this separation, than he several times attacked the army of Silesia, and compelled it to retire northwards, and then defeated the grand army at Montereau. A congress was now held at Chatillon, but without any result except the temporary suspension of hostilities. In order to prevent Napoleon from following the grand army, Blücher continued his march on Paris, and defeated the French near Laon. Then Napoleon attacked the grand army at Arcis-sur-Aube, and being compelled to retire before a superior force, conceived the desperate design of leaving the road to Paris open, attacking the enemy in the rear from Lorraine, and drawing together all the garrisons of the eastern fortresses for a final struggle. With equal courage the allies continued their march towards the capital, and after defeating Marshals Marmont and Mortier, at la Fère Champenoise, and storming the heights of Montmartre, entered Paris, in consequence of a capitulation, on the 31st of March, with the Emperor Alexander, King Frederick William, and Prince Schwarzenberg, at their head. No sooner had the capital fallen, than the senate was persuaded by Talleyrand to declare the throne forfeited by Napoleon and his family, and the nation absolved from its oath of allegiance.

Napoleon, who had reached Paris a few hours too late, signed his abdication on the 11th of April, at Fontainebleau, renouncing for himself and heirs all claims to the throne of France, Italy, or any other country; the allies, on their side, engaging to confer on him the sovereignty of the island of Elba, with a pension of two millions of francs, to grant to his wife the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, with succession to her son and his desendants, and to provide for his relations.

On the very day of Napoleon’s landing at Elba (14th of May), Louis XVIII entered Paris, replaced the constitution hastily drawn up by the provisional government by another formed on the English model, with two chambers, one of peers and one of deputies, and concluded with the allies the peace of Paris, by which it was settled that the boundaries of France should be the same as they were before the Revolution, with the exception of some unimportant extensions towards the east and north-east.

For the definitive settlement of European affairs, especially as regarded Germany, a Congress was held at Vienna (1st of November, 1814-9th of June, 1815), which was attended by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Denmark, and Würtemberg, and several other princes, statesmen, and generals.

A spirit of disaffection had already begun to manifest itself in France, in consequence of the mal-administration of the government, and the insolence of those classes which had enjoyed peculiar privileges before the Revolution. Encouraged by the reports which he received of the prevalence of discontent, especially among the soldiers, and the difficulties in which the Congress of Vienna was involved by the Polish and Saxon questions, Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed with 2000 men at Cannes on the 1st of March 1815, and being joined by all the troops sent to oppose his progress, and by Marshal Ney, entered Paris on the 20th, amidst the acclamations of the people, and immediately established his head quarters at the Tuileries. Meanwhile Louis XVIII had fled to Ghent.

Napoleon, by a proclamation dated from Lyons, had already summoned the electoral colleges of the empire to hold an extraordinary meeting (Champ de Mai) in Paris, for the improvement of the constitution; but the popularity obtained by this apparent concession to the wishes of the people, was in a great measure lost in consequence of these ameliorations being eventually decreed by the emperor himself, without the intervention of a representative body. Notwithstanding repeated attempts on the part of Napoleon to reöpen negotiations with the emperors of Austria and Russia, the Congress of Vienna proclaimed him an outlawed traitor on the 13th of March, renewed their alliance for the restoration of Louis XVIII, and engaged to raise a force, which eventually amounted to 900,000 men. On the other hand, Napoleon was unable to complete the number which he had intended to bring into the field (560,000 men).

Napoleon now determined to commence hostilities by attacking simultaneously the allied troops (English, Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, etc.), which were dispersed through Belgium under the command of Wellington, and the Prussians under Blücher; and thus preventing a junction of the two armies. The Prussian army, which had not yet had time to concentrate itself, was defeated at Ligny; whilst Ney meanwhile marched northwards as far as Quatrebras, for the purpose of preventing the advance of Wellington to relieve the Prussians. Here an indecisive battle was fought, in which Duke William of Brunswick lost his life. Instead of falling back on Namur, as Napoleon had expected, the Prussians now endeavored to effect a junction with Wellington by Wavre. Having dispatched Marshal Grouchy to intercept Blücher, Napoleon attacked Wellington on the 18th of June, at Waterloo, where the English, after bravely fighting throughout the day, were beginning to waver towards evening, when Blücher who had left Thielemann to oppose Grouchy at Wavre, appeared on the field, and, in conjunction with Wellington, completely routed the French army, which fled in disorder, pursued by the Prussians. After a succession of victorious skirmishes, Blücher arrived, on the 22d of June, at Paris, where Napoleon had a second time abdicated, in favor of his son. Napoleon then fled to Rochefort, with the intention of embarking for America; but finding the harbor beset by English cruisers, he surrendered himself to Capt. Maitland, of the Bellerophon, and was conveyed a prisoner to St. Helena, where he died, after nearly six years’ suffering, on the 5th of May, 1821.

Before his return to Paris, Louis XVIII had issued a proclamation from Cambray, granting a free pardon to all who had taken part in the Revolution, with the exception of its chief authors, and constituted a liberal administration under Talleyrand; which, however, was speedily overthrown by the court party, headed by the king’s brother, the Compte d’ Artois. An act was then passed by the ultra-royalist majority in the chambers, excluding from the amnesty, and condemning to perpetual banishment, all who had taken part in the murder of Louis XVI.

Ney was arraigned before the chamber of peers, found guilty of high treason and shot. Louis XVIII having been persuaded to dissolve the chambers, some projects of law, of a more liberal character, respecting elections, liberty of the press and person, etc., were carried through the new chambers by the Duc de Richelieu, who also obtained at the congress of Aix la Chapelle, 1818, the withdrawal of the army of occupation, and a remission of some portion of the debt still due from France to the allies. In return for these concessions Louis XVIII joined the holy alliance.

The ultra-royalists now exerted themselves to obliterate every trace of the Revolution, and reëstablish the privileged classes in all their former splendor; a plan which they pursued with great zeal and success under Charles X. But the indignation of the people was at length excited by the pertinacity with which they endeavored to increase the influence of the priesthood, and by their granting an indemnification to the extent of 1,000,000,000 of francs to the emigrants, whose estates had been confiscated by the revolutionary government.

The ministry persuaded the king to sign the fatal Ordonnances of 25th of July, by which the liberty of the press was suspended, the recently elected chamber dissolved, the number of deputies diminished, and the mode of election altered. This open violation of the constitution produced the Revolution of July, 1830.

Some of the royal troops having joined the revolutionists, and the remainder been driven out of the city after three days’ hard fighting (27th――29th of July), Charles X abdicated at Rambouillet on the 2d of August, in favor of his grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux. Several unsuccessful attempts had already been made to proclaim a republic: and on the 30th of July the peers and deputies who happened to be resident at Paris, had met and nominated as regent the Duke of Orleans (descendant of a brother of Louis XIV), by whose representations Charles was induced to quit the kingdom, and seek an asylum in Scotland. On the 7th of August, the Duke of Orleans was proclaimed hereditary “King of the French,” by the chambers, and on the 9th swore fidelity to the charter of 1830, in which the sovereignty of the people was fully recognized. The national guard was reëstablished and placed under the command of Lafayette.

The first care of Louis Philippe was to obtain the recognition of his title by foreign powers; an object which was effected without much difficulty, as he founded his claim on his legitimate right to the throne (the elder branch of the Bourbons having abdicated) rather than the choice of the people. But this disavowal of the principle on which he had been chosen king of the French, however satisfactory to foreign cabinets, was exceedingly distasteful to the people, and the cause of serious disturbances. His ministers, who were repeatedly changed, were engaged in a perpetual contest with the Republicans on the one side, and the adherents of the ancient dynasty (Legitimists or Carlists) on the other.

The Carlists or Legitimists, who considered Henry V the Duke of Bordeaux the rightful sovereign of France, had many adherents, especially in la Vendée, where the Duchesse de Berri, who personally exerted herself on behalf of her son, was arrested and banished the country. On the other hand, the Republicans, endeavored to effect the overthrow of the ministry, if not of the throne itself, by means of societies, trades-unions, conspiracies, and émeutes in Paris, Lyons, and other cities. Several attempts were also made to assassinate the king (Fieschi’s infernal machine, Alibaud, Meunier, Hubert, Darmès, Henry). The appearance of Louis Napoleon, a son of the ex-king of Holland, at Strasburg, in 1837, and at Boulogne in 1840, produced no important results. In order to preserve peace with foreign powers, Louis Philippe adopted a system of non-intervention, which he was compelled to violate on several occasions by the clamors of the opposition party.

The manner in which the mediation of France was employed in a dispute between the Pacha of Egypt and the Porte afforded Thiers an opportunity of attacking the foreign policy of the government so fiercely, that the king was obliged to dismiss his advisers, and form a liberal administration (1840), which well nigh involved France in a war with the four great powers, on account of the Eastern question. Louis Philippe then formed a new administration (Soult-Guizot), which directed all its efforts towards the maintenance of peace, and persuaded the chambers to sanction the fortification of Paris.

The attempts of Louis Philippe to render himself independent of the nation, his selfishness with regard to the Spanish marriage, and the closeness of his political connection with the absolute European powers, had rendered it impossible for him to obtain a majority in the chambers, except by bribery; and as this could only be effected as long as the number of electors was limited, he resisted with his usual obstinacy every proposal for the extension of the franchise. This policy disgusted all who looked to a reformed system of election as the only means of improving the administration, and greatly increased the number of the moderate Republican party.

Even the eyes of those who had been slow to credit the corruption of the government, were at last opened by the trial of two ex-ministers, Cubières and Teste, for bribery, and the desire for reform became universal. An order of the government for the suppression of reform dinners, founded, as they pretended, on a law passed at the beginning of the first revolution (1790), and especially an attempt on the part of the police to prevent by force the holding of a reform banquet at Paris, provoked the opposition party, headed by Odillon Barrot, to propose the impeachment of ministers, a motion which was carried in the chamber of deputies after a stormy debate. The national guard and some of the troops of the line having refused to act against the people who had taken up arms on the 22d of February, Louis Philippe dismissed the Guizot ministry on the 23d, and tranquillity seemed to be completely restored; but on the evening of the same day fresh disturbances broke out, in consequence of some troops stationed in front of the foreign office having fired on the unarmed populace. Throughout the whole of that night the inhabitants of Paris were occupied in constructing barricades, and making preparations for active resistance on the morrow. Meanwhile, however, the king, alarmed at the increasing disaffection of his troops, and fearing an attack on the Tuileries, had abdicated in favor of the Comte de Paris, and quitted his palace, which was immediately plundered by the populace.

The Duchess of Orleans, accompanied by her two sons, having proceeded to the chamber of deputies for the purpose of obtaining their recognition of the Comte de Paris as king, and herself as regent, an armed multitude burst into the hall, and compelled the deputies to sanction the establishment of a provisional government, which proclaimed a republic at the Hôtel de Ville, and again on the Place de la Bastille, subject to the approbation of the great body of the people.

The provisional government commenced its proceedings by calling together the electoral colleges and constituent assembly. The elective franchise was extended to all Frenchmen who had attained their twenty-first year, and all above twenty-five years of age were declared eligible as deputies, of whom about 900 were returned to the chamber. The constituent assembly having met on the 4th of May, and the republic having been again proclaimed, the provisional government dissolved itself, and was succeeded by an executive commission composed of five of its members, Arago, Garnier, Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin. The most formidable opponents of these commissioners were the workmen and the leaders of the communists Barbes, Blanqui, Louis Blanc. The revolutionists of February had pronounced it to be the duty of the state to provide employment for the citizens, and had followed up this declaration by the establishment of national workshops, with a view to the ‘organization of labor.’ The failure of this impracticable scheme produced great discontent among the workmen; and after a fruitless attempt on their part to overthrow the government and extort contributions from the wealthier classes, the workshops were closed, and the men sent into the provinces. A sanguinary struggle ensued, in the course of which the Archbishop of Paris was shot, whilst addressing words of peace to the insurgents from one of the barricades. After four days’ hard fighting the malcontents were utterly defeated by General Cavaignac, formerly governor of Algiers. The city of Paris was then declared in a state of siege, and the powers of the executive commission transferred to Cavaignac, who immediately formed an administration, of which he declared himself president. More than 4000 of the insurgents were banished to the French settlements beyond seas, the national workshops suppressed, and the public clubs placed under the surveillance of the police.

By the new Constitution, France was declared to be a democratic republic, one and indivisible. The legislative authority was committed to a single assembly of 750 members, elected by all Frenchmen who had attained their twenty-first year. All citizens above twenty-five years of age were eligible as representatives, with the exception of paid government functionaries. The executive authority was vested in a ‘President of the Republic,’ who was required by the constitution to be thirty years old, and a native of France. Louis Napoleon was chosen for four years, by the direct suffrages of all the electors, on the 10th of December 1848.

Arrived at this hazardous position, he sought to strengthen his hold on the French by reviving, whenever opportunity offered, the most agreeable souvenirs of his uncle’s rule; while, at the same time he incessantly disavowed all ambitious sentiments, and complained of the suspicion of them as an injury. He made a pilgrimage to Ham, and in the neighborhood of his former prison expressed his repentance of the attempts of Strasbourg and Boulogne. Having thus combatted the preparations which a few constitutionalists were inclined to make against a possible coup d’etat, he played with the parliament until December 2d, 1851, in the morning of which day, before sunrise, he swept into prison every statesman of Paris known for public spirit and ability, dissolved the assembly, seized the most distinguished generals, and proclaimed himself dictator. A number of officers who had served in Africa, were sent into the streets with picked regiments, to shoot down remorselessly all who should raise an arm for the constitution; and so, having by the aid of 100,000 soldiers completely subdued the capital, and possessed himself of all power, he offered himself to France for ten years’ election to the office of president. As no other candidate was allowed to come forward he of course was returned, and subsequently proclaimed a constitution, which gave him more power than any European monarch, except the Czar of Russia, pretends to exercise.

A decree was issued October 19th, summoning the Senate to meet on the 4th of November 1852, to consider the question of changing the form of government and reëstablishing the empire.

Prince Jerome Bonaparte presided and opened the session by briefly stating its object. A committee of ten was appointed which subsequently made a report, closing with the draft of a senatus consultum, declaring; ‘The Empire is reëstablished, and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is Emperor, under the title of Napoleon III.’ Two decrees were immediately issued; the one convoking the French people, in its primary assemblies, to accept or reject the empire; and the second convoking the legislature for the purpose of verifying the regularity of the votes, and of counting them out and declaring the result. On the 1st of December, the vote was reported to be 7,864,189 for the empire, and 253,145 against it; 63,000 votes were canceled as illegal. There was no hesitation on the part of foreign powers to acknowledge the empire.

In March 1854, England and France announced to the world their intention of aiding Turkey in her struggle with Russia. The Queen’s declaration of war appeared in the Gazette on the 28th, and on the preceding day, at Paris, the Minister of State read to the legislative corps a Message from the Emperor, announcing ‘that the last resolution of the cabinet of St Petersburg had placed Russia in a state of war with respect to France――a war, the responsibility of which belonged entirely to the Russian government.’ The military operations of the commencement of this war have been described in the preceding pages. [See History of England――Reign of Victoria.]

HISTORY OF SPAIN.

About the opening of the fifth century, when Alaric, the terrible king of the Visigoths, had sacked and burned the City of the Seven Hills, his brother, Adolph, crossing the Pyrenees, penetrated into Spain, and founded, in that secluded province of the Roman Empire, a kingdom, of which the capital was Toledo――situated on a steep rock, which was washed on three sides by the waters of the Tagus.

The Gothic monarchy, thus established, lasted for three centuries, when Roderick, who wore the crown of Spain, ravished the daughter of a Count named Julian, and thus created an implacable foe. Boiling with resentment, and panting for vengeance, Count Julian crossed to Barbary, and invoked the aid of the adventurous Moors; and forthwith the sound of Moorish horns, and the neighing of war-steeds, and the waving of the Crescent, announced that a Saracenic host had invaded the sunny fields of Spain.

King Roderick encountered the Moors in several battles; and at length, in the summer of 711, a decisive conflict took place at Xeres. There the king and the flower of his chivalry perished; and the cities quietly yielding to the turbaned victors, a splendid Moorish monarchy was instituted under princes of the line of Omeyades. They exercised a temporal as well as spiritual authority, selected Cordova as their seat of empire, and adorned that city with magnificent palaces, colleges, libraries, hospitals, mosques, bridges, and fountains.

The vanquished Spaniards, so far from being harshly treated, enjoyed so much civil and religious liberty, that many remained in their native regions; and the Spanish women freely availed themselves of the invitation to intermarry with the conquerors. Such of the proud barons, indeed, as disdained to submit, escaped to neighboring countries; while others, departing from Andalusia, with its sunny skies and fair landscapes, moved northward, and formed themselves into petty states, at such mortal enmity with each other, and so exposed to the predatory incursions of the Arab cavalry, that the chieftains were under the necessity of keeping their followers in harness night and day.

Notwithstanding their internal feuds, the eyes of the Spaniards were perpetually turned, with the longing of exiles, toward the land of corn and wine of which they had been dispossessed; and they contemplated, with fierce indignation, the Crescent glittering on mosques under which their sires had worshiped the Christian’s God. Invoking as their patron St. James, on his white steed, bearing the banner of the Cross, they deemed themselves the champions at once of their country and Christendom; and the Spanish nobles, thus trained from infancy to serve against the Moors, were continually advancing southward, and in the stern school of adversity regained among the mountains of Gallicia so much of their ancestral valor as to render them formidable foes.

In the thirteenth century the Cordovan empire had been reduced to the little province of Granada, in the midst of which stood the beautiful city of that name, on one of whose hills rose the far-famed Alhambra; while the kingdom of Castile was not only receiving the homage of other states, but even the homage of the Moorish king, who pledged himself to pay an annual rent, to serve in war with a certain number of knights, and to attend the Cortes, or legislative assembly, when summoned.

A hundred years later, Castile was the scene of fierce civil war. Pedro, surnamed the Cruel, had rendered himself unpopular by the severity with which he treated his enemies; and his illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamare, conceived the idea of seizing the throne. With this view, he applied to Charles V of France, who sent to his aid several companies of Free Lances, commanded by Bertrand Du Guesclin, one of the most valiant warriors of the age. These terrible adventurers, after passing Avignon, and compelling the Pope to bestow upon them gold and his blessing, entered Spain. Pedro disbanded his troops and sought shelter in Gascony, at the court of Edward the Black Prince, by whom he was honorably received; while his rival was proclaimed king in his stead.

Henry of Trastamare transmitted the crown of Castile to his descendants, whose disputed title was decidedly favorable to public liberty, and rendered them deferential to public opinion, till the reign of Henry IV, who ascended the Castilian throne with the promise of a crusade against the Moors of Granada. The preparations made by him for that purpose were attended by results so inadequate, that he fell into contempt with friends and foes.

In the year 1465, on a plain outside the walls of Avila, a platform was erected; and thereon was placed, in royal robes, an effigy of Henry, with the crown on his head, the sceptre in his hand, and the sword of justice by his side. A sentence of deposition was pronounced: the archbishop of Toledo tore off the crown; one Count snatched away the sword; another removed the sceptre; a third tumbled the figure headlong to the ground; and proclamation was made that Don Alphonso was king of Castile and Leon. But Alphonso died in 1468; and Henry, though reduced to the depths of despair, continued to reign till his decease in 1474.

His daughter Joanna not being considered worthy of occupying the throne, his sister Isabella was recognized as heir to the deceased sovereign. The young queen, one of the most interesting characters in history, was highly endowed both in mind and person. Intelligence beamed in her mild blue eye, and was displayed in a manner which, though modest, was particularly gracious and dignified. In her nineteenth year she had been united to Ferdinand, the hereditary sovereign of Arragon, in conjunction with whom she now began to reign over the united kingdoms. They were not, however, undisturbed; for Alphonso, king of Portugal, whose victories over the Barbary Moors had gained for him the cognomen of ‘the African,’ having been affianced to the princess Joanna, invaded Castile to vindicate her claim to the crown. Ferdinand, by a herald, challenged the invader to fight with his whole army or by single combat, and the hostile ranks encountered. Castilian valor prevailed; the standard of Portugal was torn to shreds; the king escaped to a fortified castle, and soon after he withdrew with his youthful bride into Portugal; but the Pope having forbidden their marriage, the hapless princess sought consolation in a convent.

Ferdinand and Isabella, being now secure, introduced several important reforms for the observance of law, the administration of justice, and the regulation of trade. The Moorish kingdom of Granada was so tempting a prize, that they determined on annexing it to their dominions. Hitherto the two nations, in spite of their natural enmity, had enjoyed much, and not unimportant, friendly intercourse. The Spaniards had acquired something of Arabian gravity of demeanor, magnificence of air, and reserve in conversation, from communicating with their Saracenic neighbors. As late as 1463, Henry had held a personal interview with the king of Granada, under a splendid pavilion erected in the vega, at the foot of the Alhambra, and after an exchange of presents, the Spanish sovereign had been escorted to the frontiers by Moorish cavaliers; but in 1476, when the annual tribute was demanded, the Moorish king proudly replied, that the mints of Granada coined gold no longer, but steel; and he soon after attacked and carried off the population of the town of Zahara. At this crisis the high-spirited Moor died, and was succeeded by his nephew, the weak and unfortunate Boabdil. Thereupon Ferdinand, entering Granada with the whole force of Arragon and Castile, besieged the city for eight months. The Moorish king then came to the gates, and presenting the keys on a cushion to Ferdinand and Isabella, implored their protection. The valley of Piorchena was assigned him as a residence; but being discontented with his lot, he after a little delay went over to Barbary. On Friday, the 6th of January, 1492, Ferdinand and his queen made their entrance into Granada; the Moslem crescents were plucked from the minarets of the Alhambra, and the arms of Castile and Arragon were displayed in their stead.

The conquest of Granada made Ferdinand master of the fairest province in the Peninsula; and, assuming the title of King of Spain, he recovered from France the districts of which Louis the Crafty had taken possession. He then established the Court of Inquisition, which consigned thousands of his subjects to the flames for heresy, and was put in force against the Jews, who fled by thousands, with their industry and intelligence, to the other states of Europe. For these services, Ferdinand and Isabella were rewarded by the Pope with the title of Catholic Majesties.

About this time Christopher Columbus received from the court of Spain the encouragement which led to discoveries so important. A native of Genoa, he had unsuccessfully applied to the Government of that state for aid in his daring project of sailing to the East Indies by the west, and then made proposals to the Kings of England and Portugal, which were rejected. In 1486 he came to urge his schemes upon the sovereigns of Spain; but after six years of fruitless entreaty, was on the point of leaving the country, when Isabella, at the instance of her confessor, summoned the suitor to her presence. At this interview, the solemn aspect, grave air, and dignified appearance of Columbus, made so favorable an impression on the Queen that she ordered a fleet of three vessels to be fitted out at Palos. At that port, with a hundred and twenty companions, Columbus embarked on the 3d of August, 1492; and on the 12th of October, after thirty days’ sail from Canary, came in sight of land, which proved to be one of the Bahama Islands. When the sun rose, the adventurers, manning their boats, rowed ashore, playing martial music, and displaying the royal standard. Columbus, in a scarlet dress, and bearing a naked sword, set his foot on the soil of the new world, and after taking possession of the island on behalf of the Castilian sovereigns, gave it the name of San Salvador. The natives gazed on in silent surprise, and in the simplicity of their hearts believed the Spaniards to be preternatural beings.

Pursuing his career of discovery, Columbus took possession of Cuba and St. Domingo, and then returned in triumph to Spain. At Barcelona he was received by Ferdinand and Isabella with the utmost favor, and desired to sit covered, like a grandee of the realm. A fleet of seventeen ships was fitted out, and he undertook a second voyage, which ended in disappointment; but during a third, on the 1st of August, 1498, he discovered the continent of America, and carried six of the natives to St. Domingo, as evidence of his success. But the great navigator was doomed to humiliating reverses: his enemies prevailed at Madrid; he was displaced from his offices, and sent home in chains. Being set at liberty on arrival, he undertook a fourth expedition, from which, after being shipwrecked on the island of Jamaica, he arrived in Spain in 1505; but Isabella having meantime died, he was allowed by Ferdinand to drag out his career in obscurity at Valladolid.

Ferdinand, after taking an important part in the Italian wars, where his general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Great Captain, signalized his military skill against the French, died in 1516, and an Austrian prince ascended the Spanish throne.

Mary of Burgundy, daughter and heiress of that fiery Duke who fell fighting against the Swiss, became wife of Maximilian, afterward Emperor of Germany. In the month of February, 1482, that noble lady was holding her court in the city of Bruges, in Flanders, then a great commercial emporium of Europe; and, mounting her palfrey one day, she rode forth, with a small retinue, to fly her hawks at the herons, which abounded in the vicinity. While pursuing the sport and leaping a fence, the girths of her saddle burst, and she was thrown violently against a tree. Dying from the effects of the accident, Mary left a son, named Philip, who espoused Ferdinand’s daughter, Jane the Foolish, and had a son Charles, born at Ghent in 1500. On the demise of Isabella, Jane, as her daughter, became Queen of Castile; but immediately after, the sudden death of Philip bereft his young widow of her reason. Her case was hopeless; and on Ferdinand’s death, young Charles of Austria was associated with his insane mother on the Spanish throne, while the aged Cardinal Ximenes, a consummate statesman, grasped the reins of government with vigor and dexterity. Three years later, on the death of his grandfather Maximilian, the ambitious King of Spain was elected Emperor of Germany; and thus becoming the most powerful monarch in Europe, he commenced that long and arduous struggle with Francis I of France, which has been previously sketched.

At the time when Charles received the imperial crown there was residing on the island of Cuba a Spaniard, named Hernando Cortez, the scion of an ancient and honorable family. He had left the mother country at nineteen, became proprietor of a flourishing plantation, married a young woman of beauty and excellence, and acquired high favor with Velasquez, governor of the colony. Yet, though apparently destined to a prosperous and peaceful career, so adventurous was the spirit of Cortez, that he sought and obtained the command of a squadron which the governor was fitting out for a voyage of discovery to the American continent. Dreading the bold and ambitious nature of Cortez, the governor recalled this promise, and appointed another as captain; but Cortez got under way in the night, with the ships half-stored and equipped, and sailed from Cuba, never more to return. Arriving in the river Tabasco, he landed in spite of a desperate resistance, made the natives swear allegiance to the King of Spain, caused mass to be celebrated in the principal temples, formed an alliance with the Tlascalans, a warlike Indian tribe, and rolled the tide of conquest toward the capital of Mexico.

Montezuma, the Mexican Emperor, received the strangers with veneration, swore fealty to Spain, placed himself in the custody of Cortez, and assigned a temple as a Christian place of worship. This last concession was too much for his heathen subjects, who, instigated by their priests, declared that the Spaniards must perish on the altars they had violated. Cortez was preparing for a fierce struggle, when informed that a fleet had anchored off the coast, commanded by Narvaez, commissioned by the Governor of Cuba to supersede him. Aware that his only chance lay in a sudden stroke, Cortez, with seventy picked men, set out for the camp of Narvaez, and after arresting his rival in a dark night, allured the soldiers to his standard, and returned to the capital. There the fury of the Mexicans had become so great, that Montezuma in vain attempted to allay the storm; and mortified at his loss of authority, the Emperor expired, while the streets were thronged with countless multitudes, who for successive days besieged the palace where the Spaniards were lodged.

In this terrible situation, Cortez resolved to cut his way to the territory of his Tlascalan allies; and on a July night, after hearing mass, he led his followers from their quarters in the centre of the city. After a bloody fight on the causeway he effected an escape, and reached the open country; but there his little army was suddenly attacked by an overwhelming force. The position of the Spaniards seemed desperate, when Cortez, ever cool and courageous, suddenly penetrated to where the enemy’s banner was displayed, killed with his own hand the Mexican general, and instantly changed the fortune of the day. Resting from his fatigues till the autumn, he returned to the capital, where Gautemozin now reigned as Emperor, and commenced warlike operations. But in May, 1521, Cortez, hopeless of otherwise accomplishing his object, took the terrible resolution of destroying every house as he advanced. Burning palaces and temples, he gradually made his way into the market-place, and then reluctantly gave orders for a general assault. The battle, which lasted for two days, was decisive: the youthful Emperor, being taken in a canoe, was executed: and the independence of Mexico was extinguished.

Soon after the conquest of Mexico, Francis Pizarro, landing in Peru with a formidable force, subdued that large, powerful, and flourishing empire, compelled the Peruvians to work the mines for their advantage, and added the conquered territory to the possessions of the Spanish crown.

While his gallant subjects, stimulated by the desire of wealth, were winning for Charles an empire on which the sun never set, war was carried on in Europe; and his great rival, Francis, taken at Pavia, was lying at his mercy in Madrid. But though the might of the Emperor overshadowed the princes of Europe, the Spaniards, regarding him as a stranger and foreigner, revolted in defense of their political rights; the civil wars of the Communeros were the consequence; and Charles, having excluded the grandees from the representation, succeeded in withering by his despotism the free spirit that had long animated the ancient institutions of Castile and Arragon.

While the religious reformation was agitating the other states of Europe, the Spanish nation remained unmoved by the shock, and out of it came Ignatius Loyola, destined not only to rescue the imperiled Papacy, but to breathe new life into the expiring system by which Rome had for centuries held the human intellect in sacerdotal bondage.

Eight years after his rival Francis had gone to the grave, Charles, in 1556, abdicated the Spanish throne in favor of his son Philip, and a few months later, weary of war and disgusted with grandeur, he resigned the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, and retired to indulge his melancholy mood in the monastery of St. Just, on the frontiers of Castile. While there he is reported to have enacted no less extraordinary a scene than the celebration of his own funeral obsequies. After causing a tomb to be erected in the chapel, and making his attendants walk thither in procession, the ex-Emperor followed in his shroud, and was laid in his coffin. The monks then chanted the service for the dead, prayed for the repose of his soul, and shed tears for his departure. This singular ceremony is said to have thrown Charles into a fever, of which he expired in his fifty-ninth year.

Philip II, inherited one of the wealthiest and most magnificent empires on which the sun ever shone, and he sought to increase his hereditary influence by espousing Mary, queen of England, who loved him with the utmost tenderness. But, notwithstanding her displays of affection, Philip, tiring of the society of a spouse so destitute of attractions, and indignant that her subjects would not allow England to be made a fief of Spain, escaped to his Continental dominions. However, when the Pope, jealous of the King’s enormous power, formed an alliance with Henry II of France, to detach Milan and the Sicilies from the crown of Spain, Philip considered it expedient to feign some esteem for his Queen, and paying her a visit at Greenwich, obtained the aid of England in his struggle. His army was victorious over the French, led by the Constable Montmorency, at St Quentin; and at Gravelines the Count Egmont vanquished the old Marshal Thermes; after which the King of France, by the Treaty of Cambresis, surrendered to Spain eighty-nine fortified towns in Italy and the Low Countries.

Philip was destined to deal with a sovereign infinitely less accommodating: for, ere the treaty of peace was signed, Queen Mary had breathed her last, and been succeeded on the English throne by a princess whose policy baffled his schemes, and whose courage defied his vengeance. After in vain soliciting the coveted hand of Elizabeth, Philip wedded a daughter of Catherine de Medici; and becoming disquieted on the score of religion, he resolved to gratify his natural bigotry by extirpating from his dominions every species of heresy. He began with the Netherlands, where the Reformed doctrines had made considerable progress, and established the Inquisition with plenary power; but this alienated the hearts of the inhabitants, who, choosing as their leader William of Orange, a Count of the Empire, bravely resisted the power of Spain. Philip proscribed, and set a price on the head of, the Prince of Orange, who was soon assassinated; but his son, Maurice, appeared as his successor, and, with the aid of Queen Elizabeth, ere long secured the independence of the United Provinces.

Philip, exasperated by the assistance which the English Queen had afforded to the revolted Netherlands, having meantime seized on Portugal, commenced fitting out the Invincible Armada for the invasion of England; and preparations were in full progress when suddenly Sir Francis Drake made a dash at Cadiz, and after destroying thirty vessels, scoured the Spanish coast, burning and shattering many castles and ships. The King’s naval operations were thus delayed till May, 1588, when the Armada, consisting of a hundred and thirty sail, left the Tagus under the command of the Duke of Medina, who hoped to steer through the Channel to Flanders, and form a junction with the Duke of Parma. But being attacked by the English Admiral, and after several engagements driven toward Orkney, the fleet was so effectually scattered by a tempest, that the Duke returned to Spain with not more than sixty shattered vessels.

In 1596, war being formally declared, the Spaniards seized Calais, with other walled towns; and in alarm Queen Elizabeth dispatched a fleet to Cadiz, under the young and accomplished Earl of Essex. Landing in spite of the fire from the forts and battlements, the English forced the town to capitulate, made the inhabitants pay for their lives, razed the fortifications, and burned the houses. In revenge, Philip sent ships to threaten the English coast, though without any success; and at length, satiated with the blood which had been shed in promotion of his various ambitious designs, he signed the Peace of Vervins. On the eve of the battle of St. Quentin, Philip vowed, in the event of victory, to build, in honor of St. Lawrence, a church, a monastery and a palace, and in fulfillment of this vow, he erected near Madrid the magnificent palace of the Escurial, which contained the residence and mausoleum of the sovereigns of Spain. Expiring in 1598, he was laid in the cemetry which he had formed beneath the pavement of the church; and his son, Philip III, ascended the throne.

From that period Spain declined in power and importance, though her empire was long, to outward appearance, great and magnificent. The new king, who was not less bigoted than his gloomy sire, prosecuted the war against the United Provinces, but, in 1609, was forced to conclude a treaty at the Hague, which secured civil and religious freedom to the new republic, and restored the confiscated estates of the house of Orange. Yet, untaught by experience, and under the inspiration of his minister, the Duke of Lerma, he issued an edict, ordering the Morescoes, or descendants of the Moors, to leave the kingdom within thirty days, and thus farther enfeebled a state which war and emigration had previously deprived of so many energetic and industrious inhabitants. The Morescoes had been conspicuous for their skill and ingenuity in arts and manufactures, and this depopulation produced a most baneful effect.

Philip IV succeeded, on his father’s decease, to an empire more extensive indeed than the realms of the Grand Monarch, but corrupt in all its parts, and in a state of hopeless prostration. The result soon appeared. Brazil was taken by the Dutch; Catalonia revolted to France; and to suppress the rebellion, the Portuguese were intrusted with arms. The latter turning against their oppressive governors, placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne; and Philip was one of the last personages in Europe who heard of the important event. Shut up in the recesses of the Escurial, he was indulging in licentious dissipation, when one day his able and artful minister, Olivarez, craved an audience. ‘I bring,’ said he, ‘good news to your majesty. The Duke of Braganza’s whole fortune is yours. He has presumptuously got himself declared King of Portugal, and, consequently, you are entitled to the forfeiture of all his estates.’ Philip, lost in luxurious enjoyment, only replied, ‘Let the sequestration be ordered.’ And Portugal was lost to him beyond the hope of recovery.

A war which broke out with France was terminated, in 1659, by the Peace of the Pyrenees, which was negotiated by the crafty Mazarin; and by this treaty it was stipulated that Louis XIV should espouse the King’s eldest daughter, she renouncing all claim to the succession.

In 1665, Philip expired, and his son Charles succeeded. The kingdom was in a deplorable state, and its ruler a prey to listless melancholy and extravagant superstitions; so the Kings of France and England, seeing that Charles had no heirs, and that his days were numbered, agreed to a treaty of partition. This roused the languishing monarch into temporary indignation, which Louis, though the chief offender, succeeded in turning entirely against the other powers. Thus it happened, that while the Spanish ambassador was so insolent in his remonstrances at the court of St. James, that William commanded him to leave England, Charles, in making a destination of his territories by will, after numerous consultations with the Pope, the Spanish Universities, and his own Council, nominated as his heir Philip, duke of Anjou, second son of the Dauphin of France, and grandson of Louis. Having thus laid the foundation of a memorable war, Charles died on the 3d of November, 1700.

When it was publicly announced that the kingdom of Spain had been bequeathed to the Duke of Anjou, Louis, with an unscrupulous disregard of the obligations he had incurred by treaties, acknowledged his grandson as Philip V, and rejoiced in the thought of all the rich possessions of the crown of Spain being transferred to the house of Bourbon. Philip hastened to take possession of the magnificent legacy; his brothers accompanied him to the frontier; and Louis made use of the vain, but significant words――‘The Pyrenees exist no longer.’

Ferdinand V, a prince of a mild and pacific disposition, succeeded his father in 1746, and gave much encouragement to arts, commerce and manufactures; but the death of his Queen overwhelmed him in such grief that he died in 1759. His brother Don Carlos, ascending the throne with the title of Charles III, was induced to sign, with France, that family compact which stipulated for reciprocal aid between the different branches of the Bourbons, and denounced as the enemy of all, any power that might hereafter be at war with one.

Ferdinand and his subjects had soon cause to repent of this temerity; for the Seven Years’ War began, and the arms of England were signally triumphant. Havana was taken by the English in 1762, and Spain suffered enormous losses, till the Treaty of Fontainebleau put an end to the war, and restored her possessions.

Charles was once more drawn into war with England; and in 1779 commenced that siege of Gibraltar, which for two years was persisted in without effect. At length, in 1782, when the defense had been intrusted to General Elliot, a grand attack was resolved upon, and King Charles inquired every morning on waking, ‘Is it taken?’ On the 13th of September a mighty effort was made; a French engineer had constructed floating batteries which he said could neither be sunk nor set on fire; and four hundred pieces of the heaviest artillery were brought to bear on the fortress. But the red-hot balls fired by the garrison were irresistible in their effect; the hostile batteries were destroyed, the ships sunk, and most of the besiegers with them. Elliot, for his gallant and memorable defense, was ennobled, with the title of Lord Heathfield, and peace was concluded next year.

Soon after this failure, King Charles made an attempt to reform the dress and manners of his subjects, and carried his measures to so imprudent a length, that an insurrection occurred at Madrid, and he was under the necessity of dismissing his favorite minister, Squillace. The earthly career of Charles closed in 1788, and he was succeeded by his son, Charles IV.

When, in 1793, a confederacy was formed against the French Republic, Charles joined in the league; but a French army being sent into Spain, he changed sides, and was soon inspired with a high admiration of the Emperor Napoleon. His subjects being still animated by their ancient hatred toward England, Charles was not averse to minister to Napoleon’s ambition, and in 1805 they declared war in concert; but their united fleets were destroyed in the great battle of Trafalgar.

Still it was in Bonaparte’s power to exercise a sovereign influence over Spain, without infringing on that national spirit which, a century earlier, had resisted the allies of the House of Austria; till the dissensions in the royal family stimulated his ambition. Charles, a feeble prince, entirely under the influence of Godoy, the Queen’s favorite, had fallen into contempt. His son, Ferdinand, was the idol of the nation; and Napoleon was entreated to arbitrate in regard to their differences. He seized the occasion to send an army across the Pyrenees under Murat, who suddenly took possession of Barcelona and several strongholds. Soon after, Napoleon demanded a surrender of the provinces on the left bank of the Ebro. Charles and his spouse were dumb with surprise; Godoy advised the King and Queen to embark for their American dominions; and preparations were made with that view. But their son, Ferdinand, opposing the step, summoned the populace, raised an insurrection, in which the royal troops took part, caused Godoy to be arrested, kept the King prisoner, and after procuring an abdication in his own favor, entered Madrid in haughty triumph as Sovereign of Spain.

Brief was his ovation; for on the following day Murat marched his army into the capital, and Charles protested against his compulsory abdication; but though Murat refused to acknowledge the royalty of Ferdinand, he administered no comfort to Charles――‘Napoleon alone,’ he said ‘can decide between the father and the son.’

What that meant was ere long beyond all doubt; for the Emperor going to Bayonne, summoned thither the King as well as his undutiful heir. He then decided the matter by making Charles abdicate in his own favor, by imprisoning Ferdinand in the Château of Valencay, and by assigning that of Compiègne as a residence for the deposed monarch.

Murat, meanwhile, retained possession of Madrid; and, under French influence, the Council of Castile demanded as King the Emperor’s eldest brother, Joseph. The latter, resigning the crown of Naples to Murat, hastened to Bayonne, where he was acknowledged as sovereign of Spain by various deputations. But, ere his entry into Madrid, the Spanish peasantry had indignantly taken up arms; the clergy had inflamed their enthusiasm by representing Napoleon as Antichrist; the royal troops joined the insurgents; a cry of vengeance arose throughout the land; and at Cadiz the French fleet was seized and the crew slaughtered. The victory of Bessières opened the gates of Madrid to King Joseph; who, however, was fain, when Dupont capitulated at Bayleu, to leave the city within a week of his triumphant entry; and he soon possessed in all Spain no more than Navarre, Biscay, and Barcelona.

Ambitious of subjugating Spain, the Emperor summoned thither his still unconquered legions, and placing himself at their head, was victorious in three engagements. Entering Madrid, he tempted the inhabitants with promises of franchises and the abolition of feudalism; but their ears were closed against all offers.

The Spaniards were resolutely rising in organized bands, and the English army was approaching, when the news arrived that Austria had formed a new coalition with England. Bonaparte withdrew to the Rhine, while the Spaniards hailed their ancient enemies as deliverers, and the English defeated King Joseph in the battle of Talavera. The victory of Wellington over Marmont at Salamanca, in 1812, and that over King Joseph at Vittoria, in 1813, brought the English to the Pyrenees; and Spain was irreclaimably lost to the Empire of the French.

Emerging from his prison at Valencay, Ferdinand VII returned to take possession of his ancestral throne; but the princes of restored dynasties are the most infatuated of beings, and the new King of Spain did not escape the general doom. Instead of granting liberal institutions, he, at the instigation of the priests, reëstablished the hateful Inquisition, and practiced his tyrannies so ruthlessly, that, in 1820, the endurance of his subjects was at an end. Riego, rising in arms, proclaimed the Constitution which the Cortes had adopted in 1812; and, though he was unsuccessful, the greater part of the nation rose. The army joined the insurgents, and, though Ferdinand announced his intention of convening the Cortes and granting reforms, his offers were despised. The populace thronged and clamored around his palace; and the wretched King was fain to proclaim the Constitution.

At that time, the Congress of Verona convoked to consider the affairs of Greece, found the Spanish revolution a much more exciting topic; a French army on the frontier was ready to aid Ferdinand, but the Duke of Wellington, as representative of England, objected to intervention. Nevertheless, in 1823, the troops, under the Duke of Angoulême, crossed the Pyrenees, and entered Madrid. Ferdinand, who had previously been deposed by the Cortes, on being restored by French arms annulled every act of the Constitutional Government, and Riego was hanged on a very high gibbet, without being permitted to address the people.

In 1833, Ferdinand, from indulging to excess in eating, died of apoplexy, having previously nominated his Queen as Regent during the minority of her daughter, Isabella II, then three years of age. The new reign began with civil strife, for Don Carlos, uncle of the youthful sovereign, aspired to the crown, and on his return from exile the Carlist war for years desolated the unfortunate country.

HISTORY OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

The Empire of the West, which Charlemagne had constructed at so much cost of blood and treasure, fell to pieces after he had gone to the grave; and the crown of Germany, being separated from that of the Frankish monarchy, was worn by one branch of the Carlovingian race, while the members of another were enacting the part, without exercising the authority, of kings on the banks of the Seine. But in 911, the various princes of Germany, assuming an attitude of independence, elected Conrad of Franconia to the Imperial throne; and he, after a reign rendered troublous by the inroads of the Hungarians, was succeeded by Henry of Saxony, surnamed the Fowler.

Previous to the time of Charlemagne, the Germans considered it indicative of servitude to live in cities, and argued that even the fiercest animals lost their courage when confined. The prejudice had gradually worn away; and Henry, in order to resist the Hungarian horsemen, induced his subjects to build towns, surrounded them with ramparts, fortified them with towers, and enjoined a certain number of his nobles, albeit their favorite occupation was hunting, to reside within the walls.

Otho the Great, son of Henry, becoming emperor in 938, checked the indefatigable Hungarians, rendered Bohemia tributary to the Imperial crown, forced the Danes to receive baptism, and, on the invitation of the pope, marched to settle the affairs of Italy. At Rome he was crowned emperor, dignified with the title of Cæsar Augustus, and invested with the right of nominating the pope.

The son and grandson of Otho having successively enjoyed the Imperial dignity, it was, on the decease of the latter, conferred on his nephew, Henry of Bavaria, who asserted by arms his claim to the sovereignty of Italy.

Conrad II, duke of Bavaria, or the Salic, next enjoyed the crown, and rendered fiefs hereditary. By his wife, Gisella of Swabia, he had a son, who succeeded him, in the person of Henry III, surnamed the Black; and he, being a prince of spirit and ability, vindicated his right to create popes, nominated three in succession, and departing this life in 1056, left an infant son of his own name, under the care of his widow, Agnes of Guienne.

Henry IV succeeded to the Imperial throne on the eve of a great and momentous struggle, to which he was sacrificed from his youth upward. Being carried off from his widowed mother and intrusted to intriguing prelates, his young mind was deliberately corrupted; and he was encouraged to indulge in vicious courses. He was then commanded by pope Alexander to appear before the tribunal of the Holy See, and answer for his debaucheries. Henry treated this mandate with contempt; but soon after, Alexander died, and the papal throne was ascended by Hildebrand, one of the most remarkable men Europe ever saw.

Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter in a little town of Tuscany, had risen to be prior of Clugny, and in that capacity had become conspicuous for austerity and self-denial. On the nomination of Leo IX to the papal chair, he had pursuaded that pious prelate that an emperor had no right to create a pope, and even prevailed on Leo’s successor to confer on the College of cardinals the exclusive right of voting at papal elections. For his services to the church, Hildebrand had successively been appointed cardinal and chancellor of the Holy See; and in 1073, he was elected as pope by the Sacred College. But before assuming the tiara, he obtained the youthful emperor’s assent, and then assuming the title of Gregory VII, he prepared to throw off his mask, and execute his mission of ‘pulling down the pride of kings.’

Meantime the Saxon subjects of the emperor, on the verge of revolt, sent deputies to demand an audience of him, and explain their grievances. The deputies found Henry engaged with a game of hazard, and he contemptuously bade them to wait till it was finished. The Saxons indignantly rose in arms under Otho of Nordhim, and in a few hours the emperor was a fugitive. A Diet, or Assembly of the States, was held to depose him, and bestow the crown on Rodolph of Swabia; but a display of excessive loyalty on the part of the citizens of Worms caused the dissolution of the Diet, and Henry, panting for vengeance, led, in the depth of a severe winter, his gallant army to the Saxon frontier. There, however, he found the insurgent forces of Otho so much superior to his own, that he was under the necessity of capitulating; but at this point, the great feudatories of the empire taking up his quarrel, Henry, with the whole strength of Germany, encountered the rebellious Saxons on the banks of the Unstrut, and, at a fearful cost of life, gained a bloody victory.

Meanwhile, Gregory, having enacted a law forbidding priests to marry, and another precluding kings from the right of investing spiritual dignitaries, sent two legates to cite Henry to appear before him for his delinquencies, in continuing to bestow and sell investitures. This brought the dispute between the pope and the emperor to a crisis, for the legates being unceremoniously dismissed, and a Diet held at Worms having deposed Hildebrand, he, in retaliation, excommunicated the emperor, and released all that prince’s subjects from their oath of allegiance.

It was about the opening of the year 1076, that Henry, returning to Utrecht from a campaign against the revolted Saxons, became aware that he was under the papal ban; and in autumn a Diet held at Tribur decided that, in the event of the emperor not being received into the bosom of the Church by the following February, a Diet should be held at Augsburg, and his crown given to another. Henry, thereupon, took up his residence at Spire, where, deserted by his courtiers, he was consoled by his injured but forgiving wife――the pure and faithful Bertha. When months had worn away, and the pope still refused to receive him in Italy as a penitent, the proud emperor, assuming the garb of a pilgrim, and accompanied by Bertha, with their infant child in her arms, undertook, in the midst of a singularly severe winter, to cross the Alps, which, after the utmost danger and fatigue, they almost miraculously accomplished.

About the end of January the emperor appeared as a humble suppliant at the gate of the castle of Canossa, in whose feudal halls the pope was enjoying the hospitality of his faithful adherent, Matilda, countess of Tuscany. In the trenches of that Italian fortress, while the Aphenines were covered with snow, and the mountain streams with ice, Henry, cold, fasting, barefoot, and unclad, save with a scanty woolen garment, stood for three whole days, imploring, with tears of agony and cries for mercy, the pity of Hildebrand. As the third day was drawing to a close, the pope relaxed, admitted the humiliated emperor to his presence, and after subjecting the royal victim to the depth of debasement, revoked the papal anathema.

The degradation to which the emperor had been exposed so galled his subjects, that they meditated a removal of the imperial crown to the head of his infant son, Conrad; the Saxons having elected Rodolph as their sovereign, defeated Henry in two battles; and Hildebrand once more pronounced against him the sentence of excommunication. But the emperor had his revenge; for his rival, Rodolph, having fallen in battle by the hand of Godfrey of Bouillon, and the pope’s Norman allies being absent in the East, the banners of Germany were suddenly displayed before the walls of Rome. In the spring of 1084 the besiegers entered the Eternal City. Gregory took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, and Clement III, a rival pontiff, placed the Imperial crown on Henry’s brow. But the return of the warlike Normans caused the Imperial troops to retreat with precipitation; while the Roman citizens rising against his allies compelled Hildebrand to fly for shelter to Salerno. There, broken with time and trouble he expired; and his last words were, ‘I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile.’

Henry returned to Germany, where he reigned for a while undisturbed by civil war; but Pope Pascal, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of Hildebrand, incited Henry, the Emperor’s eldest son, to rebellion; and the youth declaring that he could not acknowledge as king or father a man who was excommunicated, treacherously imprisoned his sire, and assembling a Diet was proclaimed in his stead. Two prelates were sent to demand the regalia from the deposed Emperor; he, receiving them in his symbols of sovereignty, refused; but, laying violent hands on him, they dragged him from his chair, and forcibly divested him of the regal robes. Poor and distressed, Henry escaped from prison, and raised a considerable force to assert his rights; but he died at Liége in 1106, before active operations commenced. His body, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground, was interred in a cave near Spire.

Henry V, though indebted to the Pope for support in his parricidal rebellion, was no sooner established on the Imperial throne, than, reviving the claim of investiture for which his father had contended, he invited the Pope to Germany, that they might settle the dispute. But Pascal having appealed to the King of France, and a fruitless conference having been held at Chalons, Henry entered Italy with eighty thousand men, and after a tedious interview in the church of St. Peter, ordered his guards to take Pascal into custody. The populace of Rome rushed to the Pope’s rescue; a battle was fought under the walls; and the carnage was so terrible that the waters of the Tiber were stained with blood. Pascal, taken prisoner, crowned the Emperor, and confirmed the right of investiture; but hardly had Henry departed when the Pope changed his tune, and pronounced a sentence of excommunication. The Emperor once more entered Rome, chased the Pope to the territories of the Norman princes, and marched to take possession of Tuscany, which Matilda, during Hildebrand’s visit to Canossa, had bequeathed to the Church. Meanwhile Pascal died, and the States of the Empire having implored Henry to make peace with the new Pope, a Diet was held at Worms, and the matter accommodated. In 1125 a pestilential disease carried Henry to the grave; and the Imperial dignity, after being enjoyed till 1138 by Lothario II, was bestowed upon Henry’s nephew, Conrad, duke of Franconia. A rival appeared in the person of the haughty Duke of Bavaria, whose followers called themselves Guelphs, from his family name; while the adherents of the Emperor adopted the appellation of Ghibelines, from Hihghibelin, the village of which Frederick, the brother of Conrad, was a native. Both parties took up arms, and during the contest a romantic incident occurred at the siege of Weinsberg. The Guelphs in the castle, after being long besieged, yielded on condition that the Duke of Bavaria and his officers should be allowed to retire unmolested: but the noble Duchess, apprehending a breach of faith, stipulated that she and the other women in the castle should be allowed to come forth and be conducted to a place of safety, with as much as each of them could carry. Conrad, who expected to see the ladies loaded with jewels, gold, and silver, was in no small degree surprised when the Duchess and her fair comrades appeared carrying their gallant husbands; and he was so touched at this display of conjugal affection, that he granted most favorable terms to the Guelphs.

The preaching of St. Bernard, though in French, and therefore unintelligible to the Germans, had nevertheless a powerful effect on the latter; and Conrad, resolving to take part in the second Crusade, embarked with a mighty army: but being betrayed by Greek guides in Asia Minor, his forces were surprised and defeated amidst the defiles of Laodicea. The defeated Emperor, returning to Europe, died in 1151, and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, who was soon involved in a struggle with Henry the Lion duke of Saxony, with the Italian cities, and with another enemy infinitely more formidable than either.

Early in the twelfth century, Nicolas Breakspear, an English mendicant, was strolling about from place to place, when chance directed his vagrant steps to the convent of St. Rufus, in Provence, where the canons received him as a servant. Being afterward admitted as a monk, Nicolas rose to the rank of Abbot. In 1154, by personal merit and good fortune, the Anglo-Saxon beggar was placed in the papal chair as Adrian IV, and before crowning Frederick he insisted that the Emperor should on bended knee kiss his foot, hold his stirrup, and lead his white mule by the bridle for nine paces. Frederick reluctantly consented to perform the ceremony at Venice; but purposely mistaking the stirrup, he remarked with a sneer, ‘I have yet to learn the business of a groom.’

The Emperor proved himself an able politician and a stout soldier. To abridge the power of the martial nobles, he followed the example of Louis VI, of France, and conferred charters of community, which enfranchised the people and formed them into corporations.

Going to the third Crusade, this great ruler was drowned in crossing the river Seneff, and was succeeded on the Imperial throne by his son, Henry VI, who was speedily involved in Italian wars.

A few years earlier the throne of Sicily had been filled by William, a king of the Guiscard line, who had espoused Joan, a sister of Richard of England, without being blessed with heirs. William, however, had an aunt, named Constance, whose chance of being queen appeared so certain, that Henry, who was at once poor and avaricious, wedded, with great pomp, the princess, though she was thirty-two――an advanced age for a royal Italian bride. But when William died, so strong was the prejudice against a female sovereign, that his illegitimate son Tancred was proclaimed King. Henry prepared to assert his claim, but the lion-hearted King of England, on his way to Palestine, arrived at Sicily, and indignant to find his sister deprived at once of her dower and her freedom, commenced aggressions. Subsequently, however, Richard concluded with Tancred a league, offensive and defensive, and the Emperor, however he might have dealt with the Sicilian King, had no fancy for playing at the game of carnage with Richard Cœur de Lion. He therefore waited till the English King’s departure, and entering Italy, laid siege to Naples in the summer of 1091; but when a fever, which carried off a large portion of his army, prostrated himself, the Emperor, in alarm, raised the siege, and executed an inglorious retreat. But he treasured up his malice, and his day of triumph came.

When Richard had been seized, imprisoned, and forced to pay an enormous ransom, Tancred died, and his son was placed on the throne. Availing himself of the money extorted from Richard, Henry――who had meanwhile incorporated into a regular order the Teutonic knights, originally destined for the service of the sick in Palestine, and built for them a house at Coblenz――announced his resolution of undertaking a Crusade. But instead of going to the Holy Land, he marched into Sicily, the throne of which he seized, after perpetrating revolting cruelties. At length, one of the Norman princes having been tied naked to a chair of red-hot iron, and crowned with a circle of the same burning metal, the Empress in disgust turned against her husband, incited the inhabitants to rebel, and imposed upon him the most humiliating conditions. Henry died at Messina, poisoned, as was said, by his Italian spouse, and his son, Frederick II, was placed on the Imperial throne; but the German princes, indignant at seeing the crown become hereditary, held a Diet at Cologne, and elected Otho, duke of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion. Civil war arose between the princes, and Otho IV was crowned at Rome by the Pope; but Frederick allied himself with Philip Augustus, king of France, who at the village of Bovines, in 1214, totally defeated and ruined the rival. Upon this disaster Otho retired to Brunswick, where he became a devotee; while Frederick, having been crowned with unwonted magnificence, afterward undertook a Crusade without the papal sanction, and on his return was excommunicated by Gregory IX. From that period his life was one long and vexatious struggle with the Popes; the Dominican friars preached a holy war against him; a defeat before Parma made him retire to recruit his army in Sicily; and there he died in the year 1251.

His son Conrad, last Emperor of the house of Swabia, assumed the Imperial title; but after his death, in 1254, there was an interregnum of several years, during which Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III of England, spent large sums to secure his election as King of the Romans, which he deemed a certain step to the Imperial dignity; but several of the Electors being favorable to Alphonso, king of Castile, Richard’s aspiration was not fulfilled.

At length, in 1274, the German princes, though impatient of subordination, willing that the throne should be occupied by an emperor whose influence was not such as to excite their jealousy, elected Rodolph of Hapsburg, a Swiss baron; but the king of Bohemia, of whose household Rodolph had been steward, unable to brook the sovereignty of his former inferior, not only refused homage for his fiefs, but seized on the Duchy of Austria. He was soon compelled to give up Austria and do homage for Bohemia and Moravia, but bargained for the latter ceremony being performed in private. To gratify him in this particular, a close pavilion was erected on the small island of Cumberg, and thither came the Bohemian, decked with gold and jewels, while the Emperor appeared in plain and simple habiliments. The Bohemian was nervously anxious to avoid a public scene; but at a critical moment the curtains of the pavilion, falling aside, revealed to thousands of soldiers the proud King on bended knee before his former steward. Incited by a haughty spouse, he renounced his allegiance; but the Emperor taking the field, slew the hapless King in battle, and, to aggrandize the house of Hapsburg, bestowed Austria on his second son, Count Albert.

Adolph of Nassau being next elected Emperor, Count Albert of Austria, incited by Philip IV of France and supported by a minority of the Electors, rose in arms, slew Adolph in a battle at Spire, and was soon after crowned as Emperor. Thereupon Pope Boniface summoned him to answer for Adolph’s murder; but a bitter feud arising between the French King and the Pope, the latter found it convenient to court Albert’s alliance, and transferred to him the sovereignty of France. However, Albert soon had his hands full at home; for having, as hereditary sovereign of several Swiss cantons, made an attempt to seize the whole of the provinces, the natives combined, and with a small army won successive victories.

The end of Albert was particularly tragical. In 1309 he was walking one day on the banks of the Russ, when his companion, a nephew, whose patrimony he had unjustly retained, drawing his sword, inflicted a mortal wound; and the Electors raised to the throne Henry of Luxembourg, the most renowned knight of an age which boasted of Robert Bruce and Giles de Argentine. The martial Emperor having avenged his predecessor’s assassination, fought his way to Rome, imposed a tribute on the Italian States, and died in 1314; poisoned, as was supposed, by emissaries of the Pope. Louis of Bavaria was then elected; and, after a long dispute, defeated and captured Frederick the Handsome, of Austria. But successive Popes proved his mortal foes; and though the death of his Austrian competitor left Louis without a rival, Benedict XII, who resided at Avignon, vindictively pursued him to the grave. His subjects were made to choose between their sovereign and the pontiff: discord and disorder loosened the frame-work of society; and the fraternity known as the Friends of God, by the spread of their doctrines, prepared the way for that religious reformation which was accomplished in the following century.

On the death of Louis, in 1348, the king of Bohemia, favored by the Pope, obtained the vacant throne, with the title of Charles IV. This Emperor issued the celebrated Golden Bull, which limited the number of Electors to seven, because of the seven mortal sins and the candlestick with seven branches. The publication was signalized by an ostentatious ceremony, in which the Electors took their appropriate parts as hereditary officers. The Archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Triers, carried the Imperial seals of Germany, Italy, and Gaul; the Duke of Luxembourg, as proxy of the Bohemian King, officiated as cupbearer, and poured wine from a golden flagon into the Emperor’s golden cup; the Duke of Saxony, as grand-marshal, appeared with a silver measure of oats; the Elector of Brandenburg presented the Emperor and Empress with water in basins of gold; and the Count Palatine, in presence of the great officers of state, served up the viands in dishes of the most precious metal.

The Emperor Maximilian, known as the Moneyless, described Charles as ‘the pest of the empire,’ and not without cause; for he first dissipated the Imperial territories in Italy, and in 1376, to secure the election of his son, Wenceslaus, as King of the Romans, he promised each of the Electors a hundred thousand crowns. Unable to pay so large a sum, he alienated the ample Imperial domain which stretched along the banks of the Rhine from Basil to Cologne, and dying in 1378, was succeeded by the son for whom he had made so great a sacrifice.

Wenceslaus proved himself the most cruel and vicious of mankind. He is said to have walked the streets with an executioner, to put to death such persons as incurred his dislike, to have drowned in the Moldau a monk who refused to reveal the confessions of his wife, the Queen of Bohemia, and even to have, in an hour of intoxication, ordered his cook to be roasted alive. The tyrant was, in consequence of his gross incapacity, deprived of the Imperial crown, which was given to Robert, the Count Palatine; and he, in his turn, was succeeded by Sigismund, brother of Wenceslaus, and King of Hungary.

Christendom was at that period scandalized by the great schism of the West, produced by the cardinals having elected three rival popes――each considering himself endowed with all the attributes which Hildebrand had claimed for the Vicar of Christ; and Sigismund, eager to settle the controversy, visited England to consult Henry V. But finding that hero wholly occupied with French wars, the Emperor returned, and in 1418 summoned the Council of Constance, which settled the dispute by degrading the three rivals and electing Martin V.

The new pontiff was installed by an imposing ceremony. Arrayed in pontifical vestments, he mounted a richly-caparisoned mule, which was led by the reins, with due solemnity, by the Emperor and the Elector of Brandenburg. A magnificent canopy was held over the Pope’s head by four Counts; several princes walked around; and forty thousand equestrians took part in the procession. The Council then went to more serious work, and summoned John Huss, a disciple of Wicliffe. Huss, after defending the articles of his faith, was declared a heretic, stripped of his sacerdotal habit, crowned with a mitre of paper, on which were painted three devils, and condemned to be burned with his writings. The victim died praising God, and was followed to the stake by Jerome of Prague.

When Sigismund went down to his tomb in 1436, his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, who inherited the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, was raised to the Imperial throne; and after dividing Germany into six circles, each regulated by a Diet, he was succeeded by his cousin, Frederick III. At the beginning of this long and languid reign, while war was raging between the Turks and Hungarians, John Guttenberg invented at Strasburg the art of printing, which brought into operation the power of the pen; and that potent weapon being, on the revival of learning, directed first against spiritual, and then against temporal despotism, materially influenced those revolutions which have gradually removed ancient landmarks, and changed the face of Continental Europe.

Maximilian I succeeded his brother Frederick in 1493, and, to terminate the calamities created by private feuds, instituted, at the stately city of Frankfort, the Imperial Chamber, consisting of a president appointed by the Emperor, and sixteen judges, chosen by him and the States; and he prevailed on the Diet to consent to the Aulic Council as the Emperor’s Court, and without appeal. After wearing the crown with honor, and exhibiting much enthusiasm for science and literature, Maximilian, in 1519, disappeared from the stage of affairs on the eve of great events; and his grandson Charles, the juvenile King of Spain, who inherited Austria, became a candidate for the Imperial dignity. In this he was opposed by Francis I, whose ambassadors impressed upon the Electors the necessity of showing that the empire was not an heir-loom in the house of Austria; and the Electors, with whom it was a rule not to select any prince already occupying an important position, caring little for either candidate, laid the diadem at the feet of Frederick of Saxony, a man of great prudence and popularity. Frederick, however, declined the distinction, and recommended them to choose the King of Spain, who was accordingly elected on 28th June, 1520, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle in the following October.

Thirty-seven years before that important event, the wife of a miner, named Luther, (a worthy, studious, and stubborn man), had, in the little town of Eisleben, become the mother of a boy, who was named Martin, from having been born on St. Martin’s Eve. Removed in infancy to Mansfeld, on the banks of the Vipper, young Luther, while standing by his father’s forge, or accompanying his mother to gather fagots in the forest, indulged in the anticipation of becoming a scholar, and being sent, after some preparatory training, to Erfurt, he excited by his intellectual powers the admiration of the whole university. One day, while reading keenly in the library, he came upon a Latin copy of the Bible, the pages of which he perused with breathless interest; and resolving upon a monastic life, he entered the Convent of St. Augustine at the age of twenty-one. After spending three years in the cloister, Luther accepted a professorship in the University of Wittemberg, which Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, had founded. And in 1512 being sent as envoy to Rome, where Pope Julius then reigned, and his monastic illusions vanishing into air, he commenced his career as a Reformer, and was excommunicated by Leo X, who did not like his hunting, shooting, and fishing to be disturbed by heretics. Luther retaliated by publishing the ‘Babylonish Captivity;’ and the book being burned, he, in 1520, publicly committed to the flames the Pope’s bull and decretals.

The popular spirit in Germany was in Luther’s favor; for though, from the days of Louis of Bavaria, the Emperors had acknowledged the ascendancy of the Popes, the people had exhibited an increasing dislike to the yoke of Rome, and in 1512 the populace of the Rhenish provinces had displayed their discontent by forming the League of Shoes. Maximilian, it appears, had not manifested any dislike to the new faith; but Charles V had inherited enough of Spanish bigotry to decide his opinions, and in 1521 he summoned Luther to appear before the Diet of Worms, and answer for his doctrines. The bold Reformer soon arrived from Wittemberg in a wagon, defended himself with great spirit, and afterward escaped into Saxony, where, secured by his friend the Elector in the fortress of Wartberg, while branded by the Pope as ‘a viper of hell,’ he commenced his translation of the Bible. And matters did not rest here, for the mind of Europe was in agitation.

While, in England, Henry was attacking alike the Catholics and Protestants; while, in Scotland, Cardinal Beaton was feasting his eyes with the burning of heretics; while, in France, the brave and glory-loving Francis was sullying his fame by consenting to the villages of the Vaudois being converted into a desert waste; the Emperor Charles was by no means indifferent to the interest of the Romish Church within the Imperial dominions. And when freed by the death of his impetuous rival from apprehensions of war, he gained, at Muhlberg, a victory over the Confederates at Smalcalde, which placed the venerable Frederick of Saxony in his power. Strangely, at that crisis, the Lutherans turned for aid to Henry II of France, who, though bent on persecution at home, on certain conditions proclaimed himself their champion. But ere his services could be rendered, Maurice of Saxony, to whom Charles had given the Electorate, preferring to be a chief of the Protestants to figuring as the Emperor’s creature, after much dissimulation marched on Inspruck, and almost succeeded in capturing Charles, who, after escaping over the Alps in a litter, sick and solitary, signed the Convention of Passau, which was converted into a definitive peace in 1552――the era of religious liberty in Germany.

At the close of this war, weary of the world, the great Emperor, having previously abdicated the Spanish throne in favor of his son Philip, resigned the Imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans. After a reign of eight years, that prince was succeeded by his son, Maximilian II, who died in 1596, while preparing to support his election as King of Poland.

Rodolph II, son of Maximilian, was so entirely devoted to the study of astronomy and astrology that he saw with indifference his dominions usurped by his brother Matthias, who, succeeding to the Empire in 1612, procured the election of his cousin Ferdinand to the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia. Both nations revolted, and the Hungarians were appeased; but Ferdinand was a pupil of the Jesuits, and the Bohemian Protestants, to whom he was obnoxious, advanced in arms to the gates of Vienna; and, while Matthias was on his dying bed, commenced that terrible conflict known in history as the Thirty Years’ War.

Ferdinand, though elevated to the Imperial throne, was sternly rejected by the Bohemians, who offered their crown to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, and son-in-law of the first James of England. Frederick, proceeding to Prague, accepted the gift, but rashly, as it soon appeared; for in November, 1620, the Imperialists coming thither, under Tilly, inflicted a defeat, which made the Elector and his fair spouse, whom men called the Queen of Hearts, fly to the Hague, while their friends surrendered town after town in the Palatinate to the Italian general Spinola. The Duke of Batavia, ere long, took possession of the Electorate; and its hereditary sovereign, homeless and houseless, in spite of the alliance of the King of Denmark, remained a pensioner on Dutch bounty at the Hague.

The tyranny of Ferdinand speedily led to the confederacy of Leipsic, of which Gustavus Adolphus, the heroic King of Sweden, was chief. After bearing the banner of Protestantism in triumph through Germany, that Lion of the North fell in the battle of Lutzen, and the fortunes of the Elector seemed desperate. But when the Emperor had closed his checkered career, and been succeeded by his son Ferdinand III, and when Germany was suffering from famine and poverty, the consequence of the long war, the Protestants, with the aid of France, found matters assuming a more favorable aspect. Turenne won the battle of Sommerhausen; Wrangel captured Prague; and the great Condé’s victory at Lens, where the Archduke Leopold, brother of the Emperor, had his army routed, compelled Ferdinand to consent to the Peace of Westphalia, by which the Palatine family were restored and religious equality decreed.

The peace was grateful to the inhabitants after their long struggle. Their losses were gradually repaired, their lands cultivated, and their towns rebuilt; but on the death of Ferdinand, and the accession of his unamiable son, Leopold, in 1658, the Hungarians rose in insurrection, made Tekeli their prince, and called in the Turks to their aid. The reigning Sultan, in 1683, raised the most formidable force ever sent against Christendom; and Lorrain, the Imperial general, retired before the Turkish crescent. Leopold and his household fled from Vienna; two-thirds of the inhabitants followed; the city was besieged, and it would have fallen but for the timely arrival of John Sobieski, king of Poland, who defeated the invaders, and took the famous standard of Mohammed, which was sent as a present to the Pope. Fearful was the vengeance which Leopold now took on the Hungarians. A scaffold, erected in the market-place of Eperies, stood there so many months, that the executioners were weary of victims. At length, the Hungarian nobles having been summoned to Vienna, declared the crown hereditary: the States at Presburg confirmed the decree; and the Emperor’s son, Joseph, at the age of nine, was acknowledged as King of Hungary.

When Charles, king of Spain, breathed his last, without heirs, and Louis XIV sent his grandson Philip V to Madrid, Leopold, whose mother was daughter of Philip III, claimed the Spanish throne for his second son, the Archduke Charles. England supported the Austrian claim, and the war was still raging when, in 1705, Leopold dying, was succeeded on the Imperial throne by his son Joseph, who seized Mantua and Milan, assailed the temporal power of the Pope, and made everything bend to his power. In the midst of his successes he expired, in 1711, and Charles VI, whom the allies were attempting to place on the Spanish throne, having obtained the Imperial crown, the treaty of Utrecht terminated the War of Succession. To that treaty Charles at first refused his assent; but when a French army under Marshal Villars had passed the Rhine, he acceeded to the views of the allies, and obtained Milan, Naples, and the Netherlands.

One of the greatest and most successful captains of that age was Prince Eugène. His father being a member of the house of Savoy, and his mother a niece of Cardinal Mazarin, he applied to Louis XIV first for an abbey, and then for a regiment. The Grand Monarch, little understanding the applicant’s character, refused in both cases. Prince Eugène, taking service with the Emperor, was associated with the illustrious Marlborough in those brilliant victories that have made the name of the ‘handsome Englishman’ immortal, had the distinction of expelling the French from Italy, and in 1717, undertook the memorable siege of Belgrade, the strongest castle in Europe. Surrounded in his camp by a hundred and fifty thousand Turks, he routed them with immense slaughter, and captured the place, which remained in possession of Austria for twenty-two years.

Charles, anxious that the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria should be settled on his daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, obtained the assent of the European powers to a pragmatic sanction. But hardly had his eyes closed in 1740, when events verified the observation of Prince Eugène: ‘The best guarantee in this case would be an army of a hundred thousand men.’ Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, claimed Selesia, captured Breslau, after winning the battle of Molwitz; while Charles of Bavaria, whom Louis XV had caused to be crowned as King of Bohemia, was chosen Emperor, with the title of Charles VII. But Maria Theresa, though deserted by her allies, was a woman of too high spirit to be daunted by adverse circumstances. She convoked the States of Hungary, and taking her infant son in her arms, addressed the assembly in Latin, the idiom of the States――‘I place in your hands,’ she said, ‘the daughter and son of your kings. They look to you for succor, and depend on you for safety.’

The Hungarian nobles, too chivalrous to resist such an appeal from such lips, drew their glittering swords, and exclaimed with one accord, ‘we will die for our Queen,’ and levied an army which brought her enemies to reason. At length, after an English army had won the battle of Dettingen, and Charles VII had been removed by death, peace was restored, and the husband of the popular Queen was raised, in 1745, to the Imperial throne, with the title of Francis I. But, in 1756, the Seven Years’ War breaking out between France and England, Maria Theresa, regretting the cession of Selesia to the Prussian King, flattered the vanity of Madame Pompadour, and secured the aid of France. The skill and intrepid courage of Frederick prevailed, and after seven bloody campaigns, he signed a peace with the Empress-Queen.

On the death of his father, Joseph, the son of Maria Theresa, ascended the Imperial throne, and issued some oppressive edicts against the Netherlands, which his grandfather had acquired at the close of the Spanish war. The inhabitants had been contented under the rule of Maria Theresa, but revolted at Joseph’s tyranny; and terrible was the punishment. Their houses were ruthlessly entered at midnight; women and their infants were slain with one bayonet, and their husbands were, without trial, carried off prisoners to Vienna on the banks of the Danube. These cruelties prompted the Netherlands to declare themselves forever released from Austrian sway, and to treat every offer of indemnity with contempt.

This Emperor’s conduct was otherwise praiseworthy; he abolished the system of torture, with servitude and villeinage, granted a liberal toleration in religion, and was easy and affable in communicating with his subjects. He was succeeded in 1790 by his brother Leopold, who, during his brief reign, restored tranquillity in the Netherlands, and was hesitating about the course he should pursue toward revolutionary France, when he died in 1792.

Francis II then succeeded his father, and took a conspicuous part in the struggle, as has already been related. But in 1806, when fourteen princes of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine, and acknowledged the victorious Napoleon as their protector, Francis, finding himself deprived of all his honors as head of the Germanic body, abandoned the ancient title, and styled himself Emperor of Austria.

When Napoleon, after making the kings of the earth bow down before his mighty energies, fell in 1814, Vienna, the capital of the new empire, was the scene of one of the most important assemblies of modern days. There the Emperors of Austria and Russia, the King of Prussia, and many of the Germanic princes, met the representatives of England and France, to establish the territorial limits of the Continental States upon recognized principles of international policy. That was the celebrated Congress of Vienna; and while withholding the Netherlands from Austria, it restored Lombardy, and added thereto all the ancient possessions of the far-famed Venetian republic. The Germanic Confederation was likewise dealt with, and something done toward harmonizing the interests of the independent states into a nationality.

The Emperor Francis died in 1835, after an eventful reign of forty-three years, leaving his dominions to his son Ferdinand, under the auspices of the profound Metternich. But during the revolutionary epoch of 1848, while the Hungarians were in arms to assert their independence, he abdicated; and his brother declining to accept the Imperial crown, it came to the son of the latter, Francis Joseph, who thereupon assumed the titles of Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

While England, under the first of her Scottish kings, was falling from the high estate she had occupied under her native princes; while in France the genius of Richelieu was making itself felt; while the glory was departing from the Spanish monarchy; while the Thirty Years’ War was beginning to desolate Germany; while the illustrious career of Gustavus Adolphus was opening upon Sweden; and while the warriors of Turkey were yet terrible to the nations of Europe, Michael Theodoriwitz, earliest of the dynasty of Romanoff, became Czar of Muscovy. His dominions were uncultivated, his subjects barbarous, and the country was in the utmost disorder; for on the extinction of the male line of the former Czars――the posterity of John Basilowitz, who had redeemed Russia from the Tartars――no fewer than five pretenders had aspired to the vacant throne, and involved the realm in civil war. But Michael, proving worthy of his elevation, reigned for more than thirty years, maintained his position with dignity, and beqeathed the crown to his heir.

Alexis, the son of Michael, succeeded in 1645, and applied himself with vigor to the harsh duties of reform. The necessity was indeed pressing; for Muscovy was still little better than a ferocious anarchy; and the capital was kept in perpetual consternation by the capricious violence of the Strelitzes――a militia formed in imitation of the celebrated Turkish Janizaries. But the new Czar proved himself an able ruler, and did much to create order. He published a code of laws, purified the courts of justice, restrained the power of the boyards over their serfs, and afforded much encouragement to agriculture and manufactures.

Toward the close of his reign Alexis was deprived by death of his first wife; and though he had a family of sons and daughters, the Czar determined upon a second matrimonial speculation. According to the fashion then pursued by the rulers of Russia, Alexis issued a proclamation inviting all the most beautiful damsels in his dominions, irrespective of their social condition, to repair to Moscow that he might select a fitting bride. Among the rest came a lady named Natalie. She, having attracted the eye of Alexis, was forthwith exalted to the dignity of Czarina; and, in due time, she became the mother of a prince who afterward rendered himself famous as Peter the Great.

When Alexis expired in 1676, he left, besides Peter, then a mere child, two sons, Theodore and Ivan, and a daughter, Sophia, who ere long played a conspicuous part in Russian affairs. Theodore, a sickly youth, inherited his father’s crown, but did not survive to wear it more than a few years. On his death-bed he summoned the boyards to his presence, and recommended them to set aside Ivan on account of his bodily infirmities, and intrust the sceptre to the youthful Peter. To this scheme Sophia, who united much personal beauty with a strong will and a vaulting ambition, was vehemently opposed; and her smiles so completely won over the Captain of Strelitzes, and fascinated the populace, that the incapable Ivan was seated on the throne, while she assumed the functions of government. The widowed Czarina and her son, after being besieged in their palace, fled from the city, and sought an asylum in the Convent of Trinity; but they had scarcely taken refuge within its walls, when the soldiers of Sophia were heard clamoring at the outer gate. At this crisis a lucky thought crossed the agitated brain of the trembling Czarina. She placed her son on the high altar; and when the soldiers effected an entrance, the Superior of the Convent, pointing to the boy, exclaimed, ‘Behold him! there he is with God.’ The soldiers were touched with awe, till one of them, less scrupulous than his fellows, after a pause stepped forward, and brandished his weapon to strike the child. But a monk, arresting his arm, thrust him back, saying with calm solemnity, ‘Not in this sacred place.’ At that moment the tread of cavalry was again heard, and the Superior having exclaimed, ‘Here come our friends at last; let the enemies of God and the Czar tremble,’ the edifice was speedily cleared of intruders, and the royal boy’s life providentially saved.

The son of Natalie had other perils to encounter on the threshold of life. At an obscure village, situated at a distance from Moscow, he was surrounded by a number of most profligate youths to corrupt his morals and debase his mind. But, instead of falling into the snare, Peter persuaded his comrades to have recourse to manly sports and martial exercises; he formed them into a small military force; and in this juvenile regiment, taking rank only as a private, he wrought his way gradually to command.

About this time Le Fort and Gordon, two adventurers of mark and likelihood, appeared in Russia. Le Fort was a native of Geneva, and had been originally destined for commercial pursuits; but with a soul above such matters, he had followed the bent of his inclination, and betaken himself to a military career. Gordon was of a different stamp, being the cadet of a Cavalier family in Scotland, who had in youth left his native soil to win fame and fortune, and who had served with the Swedes and Poles. Peter now attached these distinguished soldiers of fortune to his cause; and they rendered him most valuable aid in his schemes for the creation of that power which is now regarded as one of the most pernicious elements in European society.

When Peter had attained his seventeenth year he took to himself a wife; and this step so alarmed the aspiring Sophia, that in her haste she assumed the title of Empress, and dispatched a force to arrest the bridegroom. But her indications of enmity created such a ferment among the young hero’s friends, that, in 1689, they compelled the haughty princess to abandon the struggle and retired to a convent, while Peter was installed as Czar.

Ambitious of learning the art of governing his people and of ameliorating their condition, Peter, in the company of Le Fort, who figured as ambassador, left his dominions to acquire information in foreign lands. After visiting Berlin, he repaired to Holland, studied commerce at Amsterdam, and wrought as an ordinary shipwright in the docks of Saardam. He then passed over to England to complete his knowledge; and carried with him from Deptford, which he visited as a simple mechanic, sailors and artificers, whom he afterward promoted to places of honor and command in Russia.

On returning home it became the chief object of the Czar Peter to teach his barbarous subjects the art of civilized war, and to form a regularly disciplined army. And in Charles XII of Sweden he found an antagonist whose courage and enthusiasm called forth all his genius. In their first conflicts the Swedish monarch was triumphant, but Peter did not therefore blanch. ‘I knew,’ said he, after being defeated at Narva, ‘that the Swedes would beat us; but in time they will teach us to become their conquerors.’ He soon after recovered Narva by a skillful assault, and then applied his energies to the building of that remarkable town so intimately associated with his celebrity as a ruler.

The Czar, in realizing his project, made choice of a singular site. Between Finland and Ingria was a marshy island, which during summer was a heap of mud and in winter a frozen pool. Growling bears and howling wolves had hitherto haunted the spot; but, resolute in his purpose, the Czar, bringing men from all parts of his realm, cleared forests, formed roads, erected mounds, and laid the foundation of St. Petersburg. Though inundations demolished the works, and fever carried off the workmen, the Czar persevered in the undertaking; and in 1714 he removed the council thither from Moscow, the ancient capital.

A few years passed over; and Peter assuming the title of Emperor of all the Russias, was formally acknowledged as such by the various powers of Europe. He established order throughout his dominions, provided education for youth, and adopted many useful reforms. But his temper was still so despotic, and his nature so fierce, that when Alexis, his son and heir, offended him by a dissolute life, and by opposing his schemes of civilization, the Czar ordered that he should suffer death. Peter himself expired in 1725, and was succeeded on the throne by his second spouse, the Czarina.

Catharine, originally a Livonian captive, exercised the functions of government with credit for the next three years, and was succeeded by Peter II, a son of the murdered Alexis. This Czar only reigned for a brief period; and the male line of the Romanoffs thus becoming extinct, the Russians elevated to the vacant throne Anne, duchess of Courtland, the second daughter of the Czar Peter’s brother. The reign of Anne was happy and prosperous; but on her decease there took place a struggle for the succession, which terminated in the proclamation of Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great, and in the imprisonment of her rivals. Her reign was particularly fortunate. A war with Sweden was brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and the Czarina’s fleets and armies were every where victorious. Russia, under the auspices of Elizabeth, took an important part in the Seven Years’ War, and the position of Frederick the Great had gradually become one of the extreme peril, when the Empress died in 1762, and the throne was inherited by her nephew Peter III.

Peter who was animated by an enthusiastic admiration of the Prussian King’s talent and courage, immediately consented to a peace, and the new reign commenced auspiciously. The nobles and gentry were freed from vassalage, and placed on an equality with those in other countries; and the laborers were, to some extent, relieved from the burden of taxation. But being a Lutheran, Peter shocked the clergy by his contempt for the Greek Church, while he offended the army by his partiality for the Holstein Guards, and thus raised up a host of foes. The unfortunate Emperor had made another enemy, still more uncompromising. Before coming to the throne he had espoused Catharine, a princess of Anhalt Zerbst, a woman of great ability and boundless ambition. Their tastes, habits, and dispositions, were, however, utterly dissimilar; and fierce quarrels arising between them, Peter became so deeply enamored of the Countess of Woronzoff, that ere long a rumor crept about of his intention to shut up the Empress in prison and raise the Countess to share his throne. The rumor cost him dear; for while he was seeking consolation in the society of the lady of his heart, Catharine marched against the devoted Czar at the head of a strong party, proclaimed that he had ceased to reign, and threw him into prison, where he soon after breathed his last, under suspicious circumstances.

The masculine Empress then ascended the Russian throne with the title of Catharine II, and commenced her reign by flattering the prejudices which her illfated husband had so fatally wounded. But a large share of her attention was speedily bestowed upon the affairs of Poland. When Augustus, king of that illfated country, expired at Dresden in 1763, the Empress, by the influence of Russian bayonets, procured the election of Stanislaus Augustus, one of her former favorites. Almost from the opening of the reign, Poland was the scene of disorder and desolation; for Catherine, having transported to Siberia a number of senators hostile to her designs, roused the indignant spirit of the nation. A band of patriotic Poles, seizing on Cracow and Bar, formed a league for their deliverance from a foreign yoke, and implored assistance from Louis XV. Fifteen hundred Frenchmen, under Dumouriez, marched to the assistance of the confederates, and Turkey took part in the quarrel. But the Russians were completely victorious; Bender was captured; the Turkish fleet was destroyed; and the Crimea was annexed to Catherine’s dominions. Flushed with success, and unscrupulous by nature, the Empress projected the dismemberment of Poland, forced her scheme upon Maria Theresa, and in 1772 entered into a treaty of partition with the rulers of Austria and Prussia. The Polish Diet was intimidated by menaces; and the several provinces, about one-third of the Polish territory, which had been allotted to the spoilers, were surrendered.

Scarcely had the Russian Empress perpetrated this piece of ruthless injustice, when she was alarmed by the serious rebellion of a Cossack, who, assuming the name and character of her dead husband, pretended that he had escaped from the hands of those employed to assassinate him. The Cossack bore a striking resemblance to the deceased Czar, and was successful in arraying a considerable band of followers under his banner. He boldly took the field, and, possessing both skill and valor, was for a time victorious over the generals of Catherine. But at length he was totally defeated, taken prisoner, carried to Moscow in an iron cage, and beheaded as a traitor.

Danger soon arose from another quarter. After undertaking one of the most pompous processions on record to be crowned at Cherson, Catharine, on her return to St. Petersburg, was disturbed by a declaration of war on the part of Turkey: but the Ottoman power lost considerably by the operations, and the Dneister was henceforth recognized as the frontier of the hostile empires.

Soon after this Catharine was startled with the outbreak of the French revolution, and against it she issued a strong declaration. But she refrained from taking any active part in opposition to its promoters; for while other countries were binding themselves up for the fierce struggle that ensued, the Czarina seized the occasion to make a second onslaught on devoted Poland. In 1788 the Poles, in their aspirations after liberty, increased their army, and framed a new constitution, which rendered the crown hereditary in the family of the Elector of Saxony. The Empress thereupon sent an army into Poland, under pretense of maintaining the settlement of 1772, but in reality to complete the subjugation of the unhappy country, which, in 1793, she effected, with the aid of the King of Prussia. The Polish nobles, however, took up arms to rescue their native land, and, under the brave Kosciusko, were at first victorious, but the defeat and captivity of their general rendered further resistance unavailing.

Warsaw still holding out, and refusing to surrender, the Russians, under Suwarrow, assailed the town; and there ensued a fierce conflict, in which the Poles perished by thousands. After a resistance of eight hours they laid down their arms; but even then a multitude of unarmed and defenseless human beings were mercilessly sacrificed by fire and sword. Suwarrow entered with the pride of a victor; and the Te Deum was sung to celebrate his triumph. Next year Stanislaus made a formal resignation of his thorny crown. ‘I can cheerfully,’ he said, ‘surrender what has brought me so much calamity.’

With insatiable ambition the Czarina next cast her eyes longingly on Courland, and allured its Duke to her court. During his absence the nobles of that fertile and populous district assembled the states, to annex their country to Russia. To this scheme there was at first serious opposition; but a Russian general suddenly appearing in the assembly silenced all objections, and the deposed Duke retired to extensive estates which he had purchased in Prussia.

In 1796, after a successful war with Persia, Catherine was summoned to another state of existence; and the empire which she had rendered so extensive, was inherited by her son Paul. The deceased Czarina had confined herself to verbal denunciations in her hostility to revolutionary France; but her successor, eager to signalize his ascension by some brilliant exploit, entered――with singular zeal for the cause of sovereigns――into a confederation against the Republic. After setting the brave Kosciusko at liberty, and making peace with Persia, he took an active part in the war against France, and sent a powerful force into Italy to the aid of Austria. Under Suwarrow the Russian army afterward entered Switzerland, and menaced that Republic; but the veteran conqueror of Poland was there utterly unsuccessful, and, depressed with the loss of renown, he returned with his shattered army to die of despair, under the frowns of his despotic sovereign.

Jealous of the maritime greatness and naval ascendency of England, and swayed by a chivalrous admiration of Napoleon, the capricious Czar changed his politics, allied himself with France, seized the British ships in his ports, and organized the Northern Confederacy, which was dissolved by the victory of Copenhagen. But ere the news of that event could reach his ear, Paul had met a terrible fate; for his tyrannies had so provoked his courtiers, that they declared his death to be essential to the welfare of the empire. At dead of night, in March 1801, the Emperor, in his regimentals, was reposing on a sofa, when the conspirators glided into his apartments. A hussar, who kept guard, opposing their entrance, was cut down with the stroke of a sabre; and the Emperor, awakening at the noise, sprang to his feet, and endeavored to intrench himself behind chairs and tables. Finding his assailants resolute, the Emperor implored mercy, and even promised to make them all princes; but observing that they were inexorable, he sprang forward to escape through a high window. At length a blow prostrated him on the floor, and a young Hanoverian, twining his sash round the victim’s neck, and giving one end to an accomplice, twisted with all his might till the life of the miserable Emperor was extinct. The conspirators then retired, without molestation, from the palace. At early morn the intelligence was bruited about that Paul had died of appoplexy; and, in the course of the day, his eldest son, Alexander, was proclaimed Emperor of all the Russias.

The new Czar, for awhile, maintained neutrality between contending nations; but in 1804, when the Duke d’Enghien was seized at Ettenheim, carried to Paris, and shot in the wood of Vincennes, he assumed an attitude of hostility toward Bonaparte, formed a coalition with Austria and England, and undertook a campaign. The rapid successes of the French so bewildered Mack that he capitulated at Ulm; and Napoleon, after his entry into Vienna, marching into Moravia to meet the Russians, encountered their army, with the remains of the Austrians, at Austerlitz, and obtained one of the most glorious victories on record. Another coalition was soon formed; and Napoleon, appearing in Poland, fought at Eylau a battle bloody and indecisive; but at Friedland he completely vanquished the Russians, and forced the Czar to sue for peace. On a raft on the river Niemen, a conference was held between Napoleon and the vanquished sovereigns of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. This resulted in the Peace of Tilsit, in the erection of the Duchy of Warsaw, and in the acknowledgment of the elector of Saxony as its sovereign.

Continental Europe was now at Napoleon’s feet; but against his prodigious power and inordinate ambition another confederation was formed; and, in this league, Russia took a conspicuous part. The Emperor of the French thereupon repaired to Dresden, and fruitlessly attempted to lure back the Czar to his interests. But failing in that object, Napoleon took the field at the head of four hundred thousand men, crossed the Niemen, and advanced to Wilna. The Diet of Warsaw, after proclaiming the liberation of their country, demanded that the invader should recognize the independence of Poland; and Napoleon, returning an evasive answer, drove the Russians before him to Smolensko, where preparations had been made to arrest his progress.

On the 16th of August, 1812, Napoleon was before the ancient city, and at noon next day the conflict began. The French, at the point of the bayonet, drove the Russians within the walls, and the battle raged fiercely till sunset; but, when night set in, the city was in flames. Next morning the French, entering without resistance, found the place abandoned, save by men who were yielding their latest breath amidst the glare of the conflagration; and Smolensko was soon a heap of ruins. The Russians, laying waste the country, retreated towards Moscow, and the command of their army was transferred to Prince Kutosoff, a hoary and experienced general, whose arrival was hailed with delight. He announced that no more retrograde movements should be made, encouraged the troops by his presence, and exhorted them to defend Moscow to the last. This place was the ancient and venerable capital of their Empire; and its vast suburbs, its magnificent buildings, its towers, its domes, its spires, and its terraces, rendered Moscow one of the most interesting places in Europe, and the pride of the Russian Empire.

Both leaders exercised their utmost ingenuity, and made their dispositions with military skill. Along the Russian lines priests bore the sacred relics that had been saved at Smolensko, and inspired the soldiers with religious enthusiasm; and while their breasts were yet glowing with excitement, Prince Kutosoff implored them, in lofty and inspiriting words, ‘to think of their wives, their children, and their Emperor, and to write their faith and fealty on the field of their country with the life’s blood of the invader and his legions.’

On the morning of the 7th of September, Napoleon, who, aware of his veteran antagonist’s genius, had become more cautious in his operations, issued from his tent, and addressed his officers and soldiers in befitting terms. The hostile armies then met at Borodino, and the contest was maintained for hours with desperate valor. At one time the victor of Austerlitz had the mortification to see the choicest of his troops driven from the field. Bayonets and sabres flashed, and artillery thundered till night arrived, when both parties laid claim to the victory. But the Russian general decided on leaving Moscow to its fate; the inhabitants precipitately abandoned their houses; and the governor formally evacuated the city at the head of forty thousand persons.

Next morning the French, glowing with exultation, presented themselves at the gate, and forced an entrance; but scarcely had they done so, when they became aware that Moscow was in a blaze. The Exchange, an extensive building, containing warehouses stored with valuable merchandise, was first consigned to the flames, and, subsequently, a strong wind prevailing, the whole city was a sheet of fire, and the sky was obscured by volumes of smoke. The pillage soon commenced, and Napoleon’s camp in the fields was filled with rich spoil.

But now, deprived of the prospect of wintering at Moscow, the position of the Emperor of the French became perilous in the extreme; for he had penetrated into the heart of a hostile country; the cold season was approching; and the ruined city offered no asylum from the rigor of the climate. He, therefore, humbled his pride so far as to commence negotiations with Alexander; but finding his efforts fruitless, after forty days he abandoned his scheme of conquest, and issued orders for a retreat. But the Russians, believing the conqueror of Europe to be at length in their power, were bent upon revenge; and Kutosoff remarked――‘The French have proclaimed the campaign terminated at Moscow, but on our part the warfare is about to begin.’

The retreat of Napoleon was disastrous beyond all precedent. The Russian armies seized every opportunity of attacking his troops; the winter set in with unusual severity and the troops were paralyzed with cold. The Cossacks, whose sole delight was war, under their celebrated leader, the Hetman Platoff, now mercilessly assailed the retiring legions, wrought fearful havoc, broke down bridges in the line of march, and harassed them on all sides. Scarcely had the French, after a day’s toilsome march, stretched themselves on the ground to enjoy a little repose, when these vigilant foes rushed impetuously into the camp, and, ere the sleepers could resist, slaughtered them in heaps, and carried off stores and artillery. A scene of unparalleled horrors ensued; and the situation of the French forces became quite desperate. Cold and famine preyed upon the troops; flights of ravens hovered over their line of march; and troops of dogs followed in the rear to consume their remains. The horses perished by thousands; the cannon and wagons were abandoned; and all military order was at an end.

With his army in this evil plight, Napoleon, on the 23d of November, had to cross the Beresina in presence of the enemy, and a scene, replete with horrors, occurred. The river, though covered with floating ice, was not yet frozen over, and rafts had to be constructed and launched under the enemy’s fire. Multitudes were engulfed in the waters; and the passage of the Beresina proved more fatal than the most sanguinary field.

On the 5th of December, Napoleon, mortified and sick at heart, abandoned the miserable wreck of his once magnificent army, and repaired to Paris.

Though the mighty Emperor had been defeated more by the elements than the Russian foe, the result of the campaign was to raise the renown of the Czar’s arms; and Alexander, to complete the work thus begun, called upon the other powers of Europe to vindicate their independence against his former ally. The invitation was not unavailing; for with the reverses of the French arms commenced the defection of Napoleon’s allies. A triple alliance was formed between Russia, Austria, and Prussia; the Emperor of the French was designated as the common enemy; the allied sovereigns undertook their campaign for the liberties of Europe, and their army marched triumphantly into Paris.

The Congress of Vienna assembled in 1814; and while Prussia was bent on the acquisition of Saxony, Alexander applied his energies to obtaining the duchy of Warsaw, which was still occupied by his troops. He was successful in his object; and what remained of Poland was handed over to the Czar, on condition of his ruling it by a special and constitutional government.

Ten years passed over; Alexander, in 1825, died of a fever at Taganrog; Constantine, the next son of the murdered Paul, a man of savage spirit, renounced his hereditary claim to the crown, and the vacant throne was ascended by his younger brother, Nicholas. That daring autocrat, within a year of his accession, undertook against Persia a war, which terminated in his favor; and, in 1828, he availed himself of the temporary weakness of Turkey to commence hostilities, to cross the Balkan mountains, and to impose upon the Sultan, among other hard terms, the Protectorate of the Danubian Principalities.

Meanwhile, the policy of Nicholas, and the personal character of the Grand Duke Constantine, rendered the condition of the Poles intolerable; a general insurrection took place in 1830; and the Czar, deeming that this outbreak released him from his engagements, determined upon the extirpation of Polish nationality. His army marched with that object into Poland; the nobles of the unhappy nation were exiled to Siberia; the patrician ladies were given as helpmates to the invading soldiers; and their infants were conveyed away to be educated with Russian ideas, and inspired with Russian sentiments. The constitution of Poland was then withdrawn; her laws were abrogated; and the ancient nation, over which John Sobieski had reigned, and for which Kosciusko had fought, was declared an integral part of an Empire that had been fostered into importance by the genius of Peter the Great, extended in its limits by the lawless appropriations of the second Catherine, and aggrandized by the unscrupulous ambition of her despotic descendants. The death of Nicholas took place in 1855, at the time when the combined armies of Turkey, England, and France, were besieging Sebastopol, the details of which are given in the preceding pages. He was succeeded by his son Alexander II.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

COLONIAL HISTORY

North America, with the exception of Mexico, was not colonized by Europeans so early as the southern part of the Continent. The discoveries of Cabot, A. D. 1497, had given England a valid claim to the whole coast from Labrador to Florida; but the country presented none of the allurements that had incited and rewarded the Spanish adventurers. Fertile and well wooded, indeed, intersected by noble rivers, and inclosing safe and capacious harbors and bays, it seemed a promising region for permanent settlements and agricultural industry, but offered only a faint prospect of wealth to be obtained from gold and silver mines, or from plundering the native inhabitants. A party of French Huguenots attempted to colonize Florida; but the Spaniards, who claimed the country, surprised the infant settlement, and massacred nearly all its inhabitants, not sparing even the women and children, A. D. 1564. This slaughter was soon avenged by a Frenchman, Dominique de Gourges, who captured Fort Carolina, where the victors had established themselves, and hanged all his prisoners; but he made no attempt to form another colony, and did not even disturb the little Spanish city of St. Augustine, which remained, but did not flourish, as the only permanent settlement of Europeans on the coast north of the Gulf of Mexico during the sixteenth century.

The English, under the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh and his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, attempted to create a settlement on the coast of what was subsequently called North Carolina. Three parties of colonists were sent thither, A. D. 1583-1587, but they were few in number, and ill provided with necessaries; one returned, and the other two perished, either from starvation or the hostility of the natives. Early in the seventeenth century, the French, under de Monts and Champlain, explored the country around the Bay of Fundy and that bordering on the St. Lawrence, laying claim to Acadie (Nova Scotia) and Canada, which together were called New France. In 1609, the Dutch sent out Henry Hudson, who explored the American coast for a considerable distance, entered New York harbor, and sailed up the river which now bears his name. Stimulated by a feeling of rivalry with the French, the English renewed their attempts at colonization on a larger scale. James I granted the whole country, from Cape Fear to Passamaquoddy Bay, to two companies of merchants and adventurers. The southern portion, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude, was given to the London Company; and the northern part, from the thirty-eighth to the forty-fifth degree, was to be colonized by the Plymouth Company.

VIRGINIA. The first band of colonists sent out by the London Company, A. D. 1607, established themselves on a spot which they called Jamestown, on the James river, about fifty miles above its entrance into Chesapeake Bay. The direction of affairs had been given to a council, consisting of seven persons, nominated by the Company in England. John Smith, a military adventurer of great courage, enterprise, and sagacity, was one of them; and the incompetency of his colleagues soon becoming manifest, he gradually assumed the lead, and several times rescued the feeble settlements from the imminent perils of savage warfare and famine. Half of the emigrants perished during the first six months; and if the colony had not been fed by frequent supplies of food and additional settlers from England, the enterprise must soon have been abandoned. In spite of Smith’s remonstrances, the settlers wasted their time in seeking for gold and silver, instead of cultivating the ground; and they actually sent a vessel to England laden with dirt, in which glittering specks had been discovered, which they mistook for gold. Smith explored the country, and coasted the bay in an open boat, entering the principal rivers and inlets, and thus obtaining the requisite information for the construction of a chart, which was transmitted to England and published. In one of these expeditions, he fell into the hands of the savages, and was on the point of being put to death, when he was rescued by the chieftain’s daughter, Pocahontas, and after an imprisonment of a few weeks, was sent back to Jamestown. But the colony was soon deprived of his invaluable services; in 1609, he was severely injured by the accidental explosion of his powder bag, and was compelled to return to England for surgical aid. After his departure, the affairs of the colony again declined, and the settlers more than once determined to abandon the undertaking, and return home. But they were prevented by the seasonable arrival of ships, bringing fresh supplies and a reinforcement of men, whose broken fortunes in their native land made them eager to brave the perils of a desperate enterprise. Thus often rescued from the brink of ruin, the colony struggled on, till its members at last became inured to their novel situation, and acquired the habits of life which alone could meet its exigencies. Novel recruits were sent out from time to time to keep up their numbers. In 1619, ninety young women arrived, of irreproachable character, who were sold at the price of their passage, to become wives to the planters. Many cargoes of vagrants, thieves, and jail-birds also came, to serve as indented servants for a term of years, and afterwards to become free colonists. Then a more lasting impression was made on the future character and fortunes of the settlement by the introduction of twenty negro slaves, who were brought by a Dutch trading vessel, and readily purchased by the settlers. Tobacco had now become the staple product of the colony, and slaves were profitably employed in its cultivation.

The savages had occasionally given much trouble, and in 1622, they were nearly successful in a plot which they had formed for the entire destruction of the settlements. In one day, they killed three hundred and forty-seven of the whites. A furious war succeeded, in which the Indians, indeed, were defeated and driven back with great slaughter, so that they never became formidable again. But the colony had received a fearful blow, from which it recovered with slowness and difficulty. The number of settlements was reduced from eighty to eight, and a famine ensued that destroyed many lives. The first colonial assembly was called by Governor Yeardley in 1619, and two years afterwards, a special ordinance confirmed the right of holding such a local legislature.

The proceedings of the Company in England had now awakened the jealousy of the crown; and these misfortunes gave King James the pretext that he wanted for depriving them of their charter, and taking the government into his own hands. Of course, it was administered on the arbitrary principles which were then in favor at court. Complete legislative and executive power was given to a governor and council of twelve persons, all nominated by the crown; and this power was tyrannically exercised. Yet the General Assembly, though not formally authorized, was still permitted to meet, though it was much restricted in the exercise of its functions. At one time, in 1635, the patience of the settlers gave way, and they seized their governor, Sir John Harvey, and sent him a prisoner to England to answer for his misconduct. With the native obstinacy of his character, Charles I resented this act as savoring of audacity and rebellion, and sent back the obnoxious governor, with a fresh commission, under which he ruled more tyrannically than ever. Still, the prevailing sentiment in the colony was eminently loyal, and during the English Civil War, they took sides, as long as they durst, with the king, against the Parliament. Many of the settlers were decayed gentlemen and unportioned sons of noble families, in whose minds the prejudices of rank were rather heightened than diminished by the want of fortune. The Church of England was established by law, regular stipends being allotted to its ministers in every parish, and the preachers of any other persuasion were not allowed to exercise their functions. The English law of primogeniture and entail regulated the descent of property; and the wealthier colonists, directing the labor of many indented servants and slaves, lived apart on their plantations, affecting something of the state of a landed aristocracy. After the ruin of the king’s cause at home, in 1645, many of the disbanded cavaliers found refuge in Virginia, bringing with them their sentiment of chivalrous attachment to Church and King.

In 1671, Governor Berkeley estimated the population of the colony at 40,000, including 2,000 negro slaves, and 6,000 indented white servants. The character of his administration may be inferred from a communication made by him, this year, to the English Privy Council. ‘I thank God,’ he wrote, ‘there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!’ Yet a few years afterwards, discontent had become so general that a rebellion broke out, and for a few months the insurgents had entire control of the government. Nathaniel Bacon, a young lawyer, distinguished for his talents and activity, was the popular leader in this movement.

In the midst of his successes, Bacon was suddenly taken sick and died; and no proper person being found to take his place, the army was dispersed, and the insurrection abandoned. Berkeley punished the rebels with great rigor, some of their leaders being condemned and executed and others were sentenced to pay heavy fines. He then went to England, where, instead of the praise and rewards that he expected, he was severely censured for his cruelty. He died a few months afterwards, as it was reported, of chagrin. An act of general pardon and oblivion was sent out from England, and other mild and popular measures soon wiped out the memory of Bacon’s rebellion. Needy and covetous governors still provoked occasional discontent; but the spirit of the people was eminently loyal, so that they were tardy and reluctant to acknowledge the revolution of 1688, and only after repeated commands was a proclamation issued announcing the succession of William and Mary to the English throne.

Far different was the character of the emigrants who founded the New England Colonies, under grants from the Plymouth Company. These were Puritans of the straitest sect, Independents in their notions of Church government, and now fast verging toward republicanism, in consequence of their long continued opposition to the constituted authorities of Church and State at home. The intolerant spirit of the English hierarchy and the arbitrary proceedings of the court made their residence in England uncomfortable, if not perilous; and they looked to voluntary exile for deliverance. A company of them, under the Rev. John Robinson as pastor, and William Brewster as ruling elder, embarked for Holland in 1608, carrying their wives, children, and little property along with them. They were kindly received by the Dutch, who were Protestants, and they remained over ten years in peace at Leyden. But Puritans as they were, they were still Englishmen; they disliked the sound of a foreign language, and the prospect that their children would intermarry with the Dutch, and forget their English parentage and the customs of their forefathers. The greater part of them, therefore, determined to emigrate to America, and for this purpose, returned first to England, where they easily procured the promise of a grant of land from the London Company, as they intended to establish themselves within what were then the limits of Virginia. They sailed from Plymouth in the ship Mayflower, and after a tedious and stormy voyage of over two months, arrived at Cape Cod, nearly two degrees north of the place they had aimed at. The lateness of the season, however, the fatigues of the voyage, and the perils of coasting along a shore which had been but imperfectly explored, preventing them from putting to sea again, they sought a spot for their settlement in that neighborhood. But as they were then without the limits of the Virginia Company, and the Crown had refused to grant them a charter, they deemed it necessary, before leaving the vessel, to sign an agreement, promising to submit to whatever ‘just and equal laws and ordinances might be thought convenient for the general good.’ They selected Plymouth, which offered a tolerable good harbor in the southwestern part of Massachusetts Bay, as a suitable place for the commencement of a colony; and on the 22d of December, 1620, the PILGRIMS, as they might now well be termed, landed there, numbering only one hundred and one, including the women and children. John Carver was chosen the first governer, and Miles Standish their military leader, as they had some apprehensions of the savages. Divided into nineteen families, they immediately began to fell trees and construct houses, in which to find shelter against the rigors of winter. But their exposure was necessarily great, and they had but a slender stock of provisions and other necessaries. Sickness came upon them, and during the first five months, they lost more than half of their number.

One of their associates, who had been left behind in England, obtained for them a grant of land from the Company which was now incorporated, under a new charter, as ‘The Council established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, (England,) for the Planting, Ruling, Ordering, and Governing of New England in America.’ This grant authorized the colonists to choose a governor, council, and general court, for the enactment and execution of laws. Strictly speaking, however, the Company had no right to give them any thing more than the property of the soil. A charter from the Crown was necessary to complete their political organization; and this they never obtained. But the necessity of the case compelled them to act as if they had received full powers; and their remoteness and insignificance prevented the authorities at home from questioning their right. The agreement which they had signed on board the Mayflower was the basis of their legislation; and for some time, all the settlers came together in a general assembly, to enact the necessary laws. Thus, in its origin, the colony was the purest democracy on earth. Time showed the inconveniences of such an arrangement, and the legislative power was then delegated to an Assembly, composed of representatives from the several towns. Land and other property were at first held in common, the Company in England being entitled to a specified share of the total profits. But this experiment turned out like the similar one in Virginia; finding that industry was discouraged by it, the Colonists succeeded in purchasing, on credit, the share of the London partners. A division was then made of the land and movable property, and henceforth each one reaped the fruits of his own toil. The people were united in religious faith, and wished not to be disturbed by theological controversies; so, when one Lyford, a clergyman of the Church of England, was sent out to them as a suitable pastor, in place of Robinson, who had died at Leyden, they refused him, and exercised their undoubted right of ownership of the soil, by expelling him, and two who adhered to him, Oldham and Conant, from their territory. These banished persons established themselves at Nantasket, just beyond the limits of the Plymouth colonists. The soil around Plymouth was thin and poor, and the people had brought but few worldly goods along with them; thus, the progress of the settlement was slow. Some of their old companions, who had been left behind in Holland, now came out to join them; and a few others, attracted by similarity of worship, and by the prospect of driving a little traffic in fish and peltry, were added to their number. But ten years after the landing at Plymouth, the population numbered only three hundred. Their territory, indeed, was but small, being bounded on the land side by a line drawn northerly from the mouth of Narraganset river, till it met one carried westerly from Cohasset rivulet, ‘at the uttermost limits of a place called Pocanoket.’

But encouraged by the growth of this colony, feeble as it was, the Council of New England proceeded to make lavish grants of their remaining lands, and to send out other bands of emigrants, taking little care to define the boundaries of the new grants, or to avoid ceding to one company or individual the very tract already bestowed upon another. This negligence was the cause of much subsequent dispute and difficulty. A few persons also established themselves at various points along the coast, who had no formal title to any land, but who were afterwards generally admitted to have an imperfect right, founded on occupancy and prescription. Some few fishing settlements were thus established; but their inhabitants had not the disposition to toil, the habits of order and self-denial, or the indomitable perseverance which characterized the Puritans. All their establishments were subsequently absorbed by the Massachusetts colony, which became the chief agent in the settlement of New England.

The persecution of all who would not conform to the Established Church still continuing in England, and king Charles having avowed his purpose to govern without a Parliament, many of the wealthier class of Puritans now determined to emigrate to America. A company was formed at the instigation of Mr. White, a clergyman of Dorchester; among its members were John Humphrey and Isaac Johnson, two brothers-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, John Winthrop, a gentleman of landed property in Suffolk, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Endicott, Thomas Dudley, William Coddington, Richard Bellingham, Matthew Cradock, and other merchants and lawyers of wealth and influence in London and some of the northern and midland counties. They obtained from the Council for New England a grant of a tract of land, bounded by two parallel lines running westward to the Pacific Ocean, one drawn three miles north of any part of the Merrimac river, and the other, three miles south of any portion of the Charles. Soon afterwards, their organization was completed by a charter from the Crown, which incorporated them under the title of the ‘Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England,’ with power to admit what new members or freemen they might choose. They were supposed to be a private trading corporation, resident in England, where they were to make laws and regulations for the government of their colony in America. A governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants were to have the management of their affairs; and these officers were to be chosen, and all important laws enacted, at a ‘Great and General Court’ of all the freemen, to be held quarterly. A company of sixty or seventy persons, under John Endicott, were sent out in 1628, who commenced a settlement at Salem; and these were followed, the next year, by six ships, bringing about two hundred colonists, of whom many were indented servants, together with a stock of cattle and other necessaries. It was soon manifest, however, that a colony, to be prosperous, must have the management of its own affairs, without being obliged to wait for orders from a distance. John Winthrop and many other leading stockholders offered to emigrate, if they were allowed to carry the charter and the government along with them. The legality of such a measure was at least doubtful; but the urgency of the case removed all scruple, and the colonists probably hoped that the remoteness of their new home would screen their procedings from public notice. New officers were therefore chosen from those who were disposed to emigrate; and in 1630, a fleet of fifteen ships, equipped at an expense of £20,000, sailed from the Isle of Wight, having on board Winthrop and Dudley as governor and deputy-governor, together with most of the assistants, and a company of about one thousand persons. They began a settlement at Charlestown, but soon removed to the neighboring peninsula of Trimountain, which they named Boston, after the English town whence some of the chief emigrants came. The hardships of the first winter, which was a severe one, caused disease to break out among them, and over two hundred died, among whom were Isaac Johnson, and his wife, Arabella. But after this period, the order and industry which prevailed in the colony, the commencement of trade with Virginia and the Dutch at Manhattan (New York), and the rapid influx of settlers, driven away from England by the religious and political persecution which still raged there, laid the foundations of steady growth and permanent prosperity. During the first ten years after the settlement of Massachusetts, about twenty-five thousand persons left their native land to find a home in New England.

The government of the colony was theocratic in many of its features, modified at first by an aristocratic or patriarchal element, which was soon eliminated, however, by the force of circumstances, that set strongly towards republican institutions. The few men of wealth and consideration, who were the leaders of the emigration, naturally strove to retain the chief power and influence in their own hands, and to govern according to their notions of what religion and the word of God required; and in this attempt they were strongly seconded by the ministers of the churches. At first, the people, with the instinctive respect of Englishmen for rank and station, gave way to them, and conferred the whole power of legislation on the governor and the assistants, who were familiarly known as ‘the magistrates.’

Even a council for life at one time was instituted, but it continued only for a few years, and the freemen also resumed the power of enacting laws. Still, they were moderate in the exercise of their functions; and persons once chosen to the board of magistrates were usually reäppointed, no one being left out but for some extraordinary cause. Purity of faith and worship was the chief motive for establishing the colony. The people wished to be free, not only from persecution, but from the presence of other sects and from theological controversies. Only such persons were to be admitted to be freemen, or voters, as those who were already freemen should designate; and this privilege was soon confined by law to those who were members of the churches. But as there was little difference among them in point of religious opinion, and as most of the adult males, or at least, nearly all the heads of families, were church members, this exclusive privilege created no general discontent. The magistrates exercised their large powers resolutely to keep out heretics and schismatics, and to maintain religious worship and practice in all their purity. Those who did not agree with them were required to go elsewhere, and establish a colony for themselves. Roger Williams, and some followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, did so, and founded a new settlement in Rhode Island. Others took refuge in New Hampshire; but Massachusetts claimed the land there as a part of her own territory, and from 1640 to 1680, the claim was made good. A few Quakers gave great annoyance by their fanatical and outrageous conduct; they were once and again dismissed, with threats in case they returned. They did come again, and then three of them were hanged. The magistrates, on this occasion, published a defense of their conduct, dwelling especially on the case of Mary Dyre, who was a third comer, and had been once reprieved when already on the gallows, as a proof they desired, not the death, but the absence, of the Quakers. Some adherents of the Church of England, who had come out without invitation to join them, were summarily sent back to the mother country. Two hundred years ago, the principles of religious toleration were but little understood; yet as the Company owned the territory, and had emigrated for the avowed purpose of forming a religious community by themselves, it is perhaps harsh in us to charge them with intolerance. They had a right to expel intruders.

Of course, great severity of manners and punctiliousness of religious observances were enjoined. Various sumptuary laws were enacted; the Sabbath was observed with Jewish strictness; blasphemy, witchcraft, and adultery, were punished with death; slanderers were whipt, cropped, and banished. But except in these particulars, and a few others of no great importance, the Mosaic law was not established in the colony. The people had good sense enough to see that it was not adapted to the circumstances and the times. No restriction was imposed upon them except that contained in the Charter, that no laws should be made repugnant to the laws of England; and this was construed, very liberally, to mean that no part of the English law was in force there till it was expressly reenacted. At first the magistrates governed without any other rule than their own sense of right and their interpretation of the law of God. But the people becoming jealous of so large a discretion, a code, or ‘Body of Liberties,’ was established in 1641, consisting of one hundred articles, drawn up with singular brevity and clearness, embracing many of the best and most liberal provisions of the English Common Law, and, in some respects, in advance both of English and American law of the present day. This code became the basis of legislation, not only in Massachusetts, but throughout New England, the other colonies adopting many of its most important provisions. In one important respect, the Mosaic rule was followed in preference to the English law; the estates of persons dying without a will were divided equally among the children, except that the eldest son received a double share. This law, favoring the distribution rather than the aggregation of property, made the establishment of a territorial aristocracy impossible, kept up the idea of equality among the people, and tended strongly to the development of republican sentiments.

Another circumstance, which silently fostered the democratic spirit of the people, was the great extent of their territory in comparison with their numbers, and the disposition that has characterized them from that day to this, to spread themselves over the face of the country, instead of remaining together on one spot. When as yet they were only a few hundred in number, instead of seeking protection against the savages and other perils of the wilderness by union and concentration, they colonized a dozen or twenty distinct townships, the extremes of which were some thirty miles apart. Eight townships were represented in a General Court held only two years after Winthrop landed; and before the colony was ten years old, or contained in all more than 15,000 settlers, at least twenty distinct settlements were formed. But the most remarkable instance of this tendency to segregation took place as early as 1634, when Mr. Hooker and his whole church at Newtown petitioned for leave to remove to Connecticut, the avowed reason for this step being the want of pasturage for their cattle; and ‘it was alleged by Mr. Hooker as a fundamental error, that the towns were set so near to each other.’ The settlements being thus scattered, and the colony as a whole being imperfectly organized, each town was obliged from the first to direct its own expenditures and manage its own affairs. The inhabitants held town-meetings, levied taxes to provide for their common wants, chose executive officers, afterwards termed ‘selectmen,’ and in fact created a little republic nearly complete in organization. It is now generally admitted, that the tone of American politics and the general character of American institutions have been more controlled by the influences of the township-system of New England than by all other causes united.

In the main, also, there was great equality among the colonists in point of fortune and social position. Many English gentlemen and wealthy merchants, as we have seen, favored the emigration, and some embarked in it. But the happy and the powerful do not often go into exile, and the perils and hardships of a home in the wilderness prevented many persons of wealth from joining in the enterprise, and caused others to leave it after a brief sojourn in New England. Humphrey, Saltonstall, Vane and Vassal returned to their native land after a short stay, and the Johnsons died. The great bulk of the colonists were middling and lower classes of English society; very few were wealthy, nearly all were dependent on the labor of their hands. Equality of social claims was the natural basis of equality of political rights. There was a germ of republicanism in the colony from the outset,――a natural tendency towards universal eligibility and universal suffrage.

The first care of the settlers of Massachusetts was to provide for universal education and worship. The several townships that were organized were so many distinct churches, which admitted their own members, chose their own pastors, and managed their own affairs. Each town, either by levying a tax or by voluntary contributions, provided buildings for public worship and salaries for their ministers. When Boston was but six years old, the General Court passed an order, appropriating a sum, equal to the amount raised by a year’s taxation to defray all the public expenditures of the colony, for the establishment of a college at Newtown; and two years afterwards, John Harvard, a clergyman of Charlestown, bequeathing half of his estate for the same object, Harvard College was founded. Free schools were established in several of the towns; and in 1649, a general system of popular education was established throughout the colony, each township being required to maintain a free school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a grammar school, ‘to fit youths for the university.’ The preamble of this law declares that the motive for passing it was to provide ‘that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers,’――‘it being one chief project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures; as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading men from the use of tongues.’ The grim Puritan of those days believed his child’s soul would be in danger if he were not enabled to read the Bible for himself; and thus care for general education naturally grew out of care for the interests of religion. As the democratic spirit spread among the people, they reclaimed the legislative authority for themselves; and a body of representatives, consisting of two or three delegates from each town, were united with ‘the magistrate’ for the purpose of enacting laws. At first, the representatives sat and voted in the same chamber with the assistants; but in 1644, a division was made, and the two classes afterwards formed separate houses of legislation.

During the first few years in the history of the settlement, the Indians had given no cause for alarm. Just before the arrival of the whites, a contagious disease had raged among the native tribes, nearly exterminating some of them, so that the territory seemed providentially left vacant for occupation by the English. But as the white settlements increased in number, the jealousy of the Indians was aroused; and in 1637, the Pequods, a tribe dwelling on the banks of what is now called the Thames river, Connecticut, began hostilities. But as they were yet very imperfectly provided with fire-arms, they formed but a contemptible enemy. A band of eighty men, under Captain Mason, were sent against them, who, with the aid of a few friendly Indians, attacked their palisadoed village in the gray of the morning, forced their way into it, set fire to the wigwams, and killed about six hundred of the savages. The next month, another band attacked the remainder of the tribe, who had taken refuge in a swamp, killed many of them, and took about two hundred prisoners, who were afterwards kept as slaves, a portion being sent to the West Indies to be sold. The few who escaped found a home among the Narraganset and Mohegan Indians, and the Pequod tribe ceased to exist.

To guard against the dangers apprehended not only from the Indians, but from the Dutch and the French, a confederacy was formed in 1643, between the four colonies of Masachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, to form rules for regulating intercourse with the savages, and to render mutual aid if a war should break out. In consequence of this union, the whites became more respected and feared by the native tribes, several of whom sought their alliance and protection. But in 1675, Philip of Mount Hope, a chief of the Wampanoags in Rhode Island, began hostilities, in which he was soon joined by nearly all the native tribes in New England. The Indians were now well supplied with fire-arms, and were expert in the arts of ambush and forest warfare, in which as yet the whites were very deficient. A fearful contest ensued, which brought all the white settlements to the verge of destruction. It lasted nearly a year, in the course of which, upwards of two thousand Indians were killed or taken, and some of the New England tribes were exterminated. The whites suffered terribly; twelve or thirteen of their towns were entirely ruined, six hundred houses had been burned, and about six hundred men had fallen in battle. No assistance was received from England, and the expenses of the war burdened Massachusetts with a heavy debt. But henceforward, no great danger was apprehended from the Indians, except when they acted as allies of the French.

Frequent complaints were made to the Privy Council in England, that the acts of trade were generally disregarded by Massachusetts, and that the conduct and laws of the colony in many other respects were in violation of the charter and subversive of the authority of the crown. Commissioners were sent out to make inquiries respecting these subjects of complaint. But the breach was only widened by this measure, as the commissioners were captious and insolent in their language and conduct, and the General Court was obstinate and not over respectful. Charles II, had just triumphed after a long contest with the popular party at home, had taken away the franchises of the city of London, and confiscated the charters of nearly all the boroughs in the realm, was in no humor to be bearded by a few daring sectaries in New England. Legal proceedings were instituted, and before Massachusetts could engage counsel in her defense, judgment was entered by default, and the charter declared to be forfeited. The government of the colony was thus thrown entirely into the hands of the king; and James II, who had now come to the throne, appointed Sir Edmund Andros to be governor of all New England, the charters of the other colonies being either forfeited or in abeyance. The popular legislative assemblies were dissolved, and Sir Edmund, with authority to appoint and remove the members of his council at pleasure, enacted laws and governed as he saw fit. For more than two years, his yoke was heavy upon the necks of the people. Then came a rumor that a revolution had taken place in England, and that the Prince of Orange already was, or would soon be, on the throne, in place of the deposed James II; and without waiting to learn whether it was any thing more than a rumor, the inhabitants of Boston seized their arms, imprisoned Andros and his chief adherents, and reinstated their beloved charter government, with the venerable Simon Bradstreet at its head, April, 1689. Then ensued a negotiation with the government of William and Mary, for the restoration of the old charter. But the king and his ministers were determined to strengthen the royal prerogative, and they would only offer a new charter, far less liberal in its provisions than the old one, with the significant intimation that the colony might take that or none. Finding that they would otherwise be governed at the royal pleasure, the people very reluctantly accepted the new instrument, by which Plymouth and Maine were united to Massachusetts, and the appointment of the governor, secretary, and all admiralty officers was reserved to the crown. The governor might convoke and adjourn the General Court at pleasure; he had a negative upon the election of counsellors and the enactment of laws, and a right to nominate all judges and military officers. The laws were to be transmitted to England, even after he had sanctioned them; and if disapproved by the king within three years from the time of their enactment, they became void. The right of suffrage was no longer confined to church members, but was given to all who had 40 shillings income from freehold property, or 40 pounds of personal estate.

The first royal governor appointed was Sir William Phips, whose administration was distinguished only by the unhappy popular delusion, usually called the Salem Witchcraft, A. D. 1692. Some children were, or pretended to be, thrown into convulsions; and they accused certain persons of bewitching them. The mania spread; others declared that they were afflicted, pinched, and bruised, and when the witnesses and the accused were confronted in open court, the former seemed to be thrown into an agony and charged the latter with tormenting them by diabolical means. Every one against whom they ‘cried out’ was arrested, and the prisons were soon filled. Some weak-minded persons among the prisoners were persuaded or terrified into a confession of guilt, and then bore witness against others; and upon this accumulation of evidence, many were convicted. Twenty persons were hanged, among whom was Mr. Burroughs, a clergyman; and one old man, aged eighty years, was pressed to death. Many others were cried out against, and fled for their lives. At last, the extravagance of the evil began to work its cure. The witnesses accused some persons who stood so high in character and station, that the belief even of the credulous mob was shocked. A reaction took place, juries refused to convict, the jails were emptied, and some of the judges and those who had been active in the prosecutions made a public profession of their errors and their penitence.

Having sketched the history of Virginia, Plymouth, and Massachusetts, during the seventeenth century, a few words must suffice for the other Colonies. Roger Williams and some other religious exiles from Massachusetts, colonized RHODE ISLAND in 1638, having purchased the land of the Narraganset Indians. They obtained a patent from the Long Parliament six years afterwards, and in 1663, Charles II granted them a very liberal charter, under which they chose their own officers and enacted their own laws with almost as much freedom as if they had been an independent republic. By the influence of Williams, perfect religious toleration was established in this Colony, men being held responsible for their religious opinions and practice only to their God. The territory of CONNECTICUT was granted, in 1630, to the Earl of Warwick, who soon assigned his right to Lord Say and Seale, Lord Brook, and others. Several settlements were formed on the Connecticut river, in 1635-6, by Mr. Hooker and other emigrants from Massachusetts, who at first acknowledged the authority of the Colony they had just left, but soon established a government for themselves, modeled on that of Massachusetts. Hartford was their chief town. About the same time, Lord Say and Seale with his associates sent over John Winthrop the younger, with instructions to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut, and erect buildings to accommodate such settlers as might come thither. This was the origin of Saybrook. In 1637, Mr. Davenport, with a company of emigrants, some of them men of wealth, arrived in New England, and after some hesitation as to the choice of a place, they founded a settlement at New Haven. They were rigid Puritans, who wished to establish a community conforming in all things to their peculiar principles. They admitted only church members to be freemen, and resolved that the Word of God should be the only rule in their administration. The Dutch laid claim to the whole country, and the dispute between them and the English settlers was more than once on the verge of breaking out into open war. Charles II, soon after his restoration, granted to Connecticut a charter quite as liberal as that given to Rhode Island; but as this instrument brought together the two distinct settlements of Hartford and New Haven, the people of the latter place were very reluctant to accept it, and only yielded, after some years’ delay, to the fear that a general governor might be sent out from England to rule them. From the period of this union, 1665, the progress of the Colony was steady and prosperous. The territory of NEW HAMPSHIRE was granted by the Plymouth Company to Capt. John Mason, in 1629. But few settlements were formed under his management, principally by fishermen and exiles from Massachusetts, who remained for some time without any government but such as they established for themselves. Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth, then called Strawberry Bank, were the only towns that contained many inhabitants. In 1641, they voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of Massachusetts, who had always claimed the land, and who continued to govern them till 1679, when, by a decree of the king in council, New Hampshire was made a separate province, to be governed by a President and Council, appointed by the king, and a House of Representatives elected by the people. Frequent disputes ensued, both with their rulers, and with Mason and his heirs respecting the titles to their lands. But after the Revolution of 1688, most of these controversies were quieted, and excepting frequent hostilities with the Indians, the people prospered. MAINE was originally granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and was purchased of his heirs, in 1677, by Massachusetts, for £1,200, it having been governed by that Colony for many years previous, under a disputed title. The controversy ending with this purchase, Maine remained a part of Massachusetts till a very recent period.

NEW YORK. The Dutch, founding on the explorations of Henry Hudson a claim to the Hudson river and an indefinite extent of territory through which it flows, built some fortified trading posts near its mouth as early as 1613. They also explored the northern coast of Long Island Sound, and both shores of Delaware Bay; and on the strength of these discoveries, an Amsterdam company obtained from the States General an exclusive grant to trade along the coast between the 40th and 45th degrees of latitude, a region by them called New Netherland. The English never allowed their claim, which only became important when, in 1621, it passed into the hands of the Dutch West India Company, a wealthy association with large privileges, and capable of conducting extensive operations. Under their direction, Fort Orange was built where Albany now stands; and in 1626, the island of Manhattan was purchased of the Indians, and Fort Amsterdam erected at its southern extremity. As yet, traffic with the savages in peltry was the only object of these establishments; but in 1629, a scheme was matured for forming Dutch settlements in the country. Extensive grants of land were offered to any member of the Company, who, under the name of Patroon, should establish a colony of at least fifty persons upon it; and as much land as they could cultivate was offered to any free settlers who should remove thither at their own expense. Under these offers, some of the most inviting lands were taken up; but the progress of colonization was slow, agriculture being made secondary to trade with the Indians. A port was established on the Connecticut, near Hartford, which soon led to a sharp dispute with the English settlers in that region. The Swedes also came into collision with the Dutch, by attempting, under the sanction of the renowned Gustavus Adolphus, to found a settlement and trading post on the west shore of Delaware Bay, a region claimed by the Hollanders. The Swedes bought some land of the Indians, and built a fort called Christina,――the germ of the Colony of New Sweden, now the State of DELAWARE. The infant settlement was prudently managed, and might in a few years have become prosperous, if the Dutch had not attacked it, in 1655, with a force of six hundred men, who captured all the Swedish posts, and the region was again absorbed into New Netherland.

A destructive Indian war was added to the other embarassments of the Dutch. The latter showed themselves as great savages as their red opponents, who nearly overmatched them, and destroyed many of their most flourishing ‘boweries,’ or plantations. The people were harshly governed, being allowed no voice in the administration, and they complained that ‘under a king they could not be worse treated.’ The English were determined to monopolize the coast, and in 1664, Charles II granted to his brother a large region, including New Netherland, to be called, in future, NEW YORK. An expedition of six hundred men, under Sir Robert Nicholls, was fitted out to take possession; and so many English were now settled in the Colony, the Dutch also being lukewarm towards their own government, that no opposition was offered. Liberal terms of capitulation were granted, and the territory was annexed without a blow to the domain of England. No popular representation in the government was allowed till 1684, the Duke of York appointing a governor who reigned arbitrarily; and even after that period, the administration continued to be distasteful to the people. When the news of the revolution in 1688 arrived, the inhabitants of New York rose in arms, like their brethren of Boston, and under the guidance of Jacob Leisler, a wealthy German merchant, deposed the former authorities of the place, and instituted a government of their own. The colony remained under Leisler’s rule till March, 1691, when Col. Slaughter arrived, with a commission as governor, and his agent demanded peremptorily the surrender of the fort. Leisler hesitated and delayed, and when at last he did obey, he was seized, together with his son-in-law, Milbourne, tried for rebellion, and executed. This proceeding was a harsh and hasty one; and the king subsequently restored their confiscated estates to their heirs, and allowed their bodies to be taken up and reinterred with pomp, while the people cherished their memory with affection and respect.

MARYLAND. George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic by religion, obtained from Charles I, in 1630, a grant of the then uninhabited shores of Chesapeake Bay, as an asylum for the persecuted Papists. The charter, which secured liberty of conscience, and equal privileges to the members of all Christian sects, was not issued until after this lord’s death, and was then given to Cecil, his eldest son and heir. He sent out his brother, Leonard Calvert, as governor, in 1633, with about two hundred emigrants, mostly Roman Catholics, and a settlement was formed at St. Mary’s, the new colony being called MARYLAND, in honor of queen Henrietta Maria. The proprietary had full power to enact all necessary laws, not repugnant to the laws of England, and not without the advice and approbation of the freemen of the province or their representatives;――this being the first provision in any colonial charter for giving a legislative power to the people. The province was wisely and moderately governed, liberal grants of land being offered to all comers, to be held by the payment of a quit rent to the proprietor. Baltimore did not wish to shut out heretics from his colony; Puritans and Church of England men were invited to come, under a promise of enjoying equal privileges with the Catholics; thus Maryland became a general asylum for the persecuted of all sects. We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that, before Lord Baltimore’s death in 1676, he was in receipt of a considerable income from the province, which then contained about sixteen thousand inhabitants, most of whom were Protestants. The people wisely sought support from agriculture rather than mining and trade. Yet they did not pass through the time of the Civil War and the domination of the Long Parliament without annoyances and contests. During this period, of course, Lord Baltimore’s principles were not in favor, and his colony was regarded with a jealous eye. William Clayborne had obtained a royal license to trade in all those parts, and he and his associates denied the legality of the Maryland grant. The Parliament sent out commissioners who displaced the officers of the proprietary, and put the government into the hands of the Puritans, who soon passed an act that excluded papists and prelatists from the benefit of the act of toleration. A civil war at one time raged in the colony, Roundheads and Cavaliers being opposed to each other, as in the mother land. But with the restoration of Charles II, these troubles ceased, and the prosperity of the settlement for a long period suffered but little interruption. Yet an order was passed in 1681, for intrusting all offices to Protestants, so that the Catholics were disfranchised a second time in the colony they had founded.

THE CAROLINAS. The territory on the coast south of Virginia, extending nominally as far south as St. Augustine, was granted, in 1663, to the great Lord Clarendon, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and six other eminent individuals. The whole region was to constitute one province, under the name of Carolina, the proprietors receiving, together with the grant of the land, ample powers of government. But a settlement had already been formed near Albemarle Sound by some religious exiles from Virginia, and another one near the mouth of Cape Fear river, by some adventurers from New England, afterwards reinforced by a band of emigrants from Barbadoes. In 1670, three ships were fitted out with colonists from England, under the command of William Sayle, who formed a settlement at Port Royal, which he soon removed to the peninsula at the mouth of the Ashley and the Cooper rivers, giving to the town that he founded there the name of Charleston. As this place was remote from Albemarle, it obtained a separate government, and thus were created the two colonies of North and South Carolina. The proprietors gave public assurance that the settlers should enjoy unrestricted religious liberty, and that their representatives should have a voice in the enactment of laws. Unluckily they employed the celebrated philosopher, John Locke, to devise a scheme of government for the colony; and he gave them, under the name of the ‘Grand Model,’ the most complicated and fanciful system that the wit of man ever contrived, and which was a perpetual source of trouble and confusion for the quarter of a century during which it was in partial operation. It established two orders of nobility, landgraves and caciques; it assigned two fifths of the land for seignories, baronies, and manors, to be cultivated by a race of tenants attached to the soil, and the remaining three fifths were allotted to private freeholders; and it erected a formidable bureaucracy, with officers and titles enough for a populous kingdom of the Old World. This rickety system could never be put into full operation, and in 1693, it was entirely abrogated. The motley population was swelled by two ship-loads of Dutch emigrants from New York, and by a cargo of slaves from Barbadoes. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many Huguenots came to South Carolina, and settled along the Santee; they had been preceded by some Presbyterian settlers from the north of Ireland, and by a Scotch colony led by lord Cardross. Religious toleration and the prospect of obtaining land on easy terms were the lures which drew so many different classes of immigrants. The population thus formed did not show themselves very tractable. They persisted in keeping up an illegal traffic with New England, they grumbled at paying quit rent to the proprietaries, and they quarreled with the arbitrary and rapacious governors who were sent to rule over them. But in spite of these interruptions, the two colonies prospered, advancing steadily, though not rapidly, both in population and wealth.

NEW JERSEY. The territory between the Delaware and Hudson rivers, being included in the surrender by the Dutch to the English in 1664, was granted by the duke of York, under the name of NEW JERSEY, to lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. They sent over Philip Carteret as governor, with a liberal constitution for the new colony, and bountiful offers of land to all settlers who would come thither. Lord Berkeley sold his right, after he had held it ten years, to a company of Quakers, who, wishing to govern separately a region which might be an asylum for the persecuted of their sect, made an agreement with Carteret, for the partition of the territory. The western portion was assigned to them, the eastern to Carteret. A large company, consisting principally of Quakers, then came from England, and settled in Burlington and its neighborhood, ample privileges being secured to them by a new constitution. A dispute ensued with the duke of York respecting the title to their lands, as he pretended that, under a new patent which he had obtained from the crown, his original rights were restored. But the commissioners in England, to whom the matter was referred, adjudged his claim to be invalid, and new settlers continuing to arrive, the colony became very prosperous. East Jersey, also, in 1682, was sold by the heirs of Carteret to William Penn and twenty-three associates, mostly Quakers, who appointed Robert Barclay governor, and endeavored to attract emigrants thither. Many of the Scottish Covenanters, now suffering a deplorable persecution under Lauderdale and Claverhouse, fled from their native land, and found a pleasant and safe asylum in East Jersey. The numerous proprietors, weary of quarreling with each other and with the people, surrendered their rights to the crown in 1702; and the two divisions united under one government.

PENNSYLVANIA. Another Quaker colony was established, on a larger scale, by the celebrated William Penn, a man of great ability and integrity, resolute in purpose and energetic in conduct, a keen controversialist, and one who displayed on many occasions more shrewdness, knowledge of the world, and practical talent than are often found united with a fervor and sincerity of religious belief which had the appearance of an unruly fanaticism. The Quakers, indeed, while preserving with great steadfastness most of their inoffensive external peculiarities, had quietly undergone a considerable change in the manner and spirit of their proceedings,――a change attributable in some degree to the influence of Penn himself. They were no longer the wild and extravagant sectaries, whose outrageous conduct, twenty years before, had troubled the peace of Massachusetts. Their manners had become quiet and discreet, and though they remained fearless of persecution, they no longer courted it. In consideration of the services of his father, a distinguished admiral, Penn obtained from Charles II, in 1681, a grant of the territory on the west bank of the river Delaware, extending five degrees in longitude, and bounded by the 40th and 43d parallels of latitude; and the king insisted on naming it PENNSYLVANIA. The charter gave him the absolute property of the soil and ample powers of government, but required the advice and consent of the freemen of the province for the enactment of laws. The sturdy and independent spirit of the New England colonies having taught the crown lawyers a lesson of caution in drawing up colonial charters, it was stipulated in this case that the king might negative any enactment of the assembly, that parliament might levy taxes, and that an appeal might be made to the crown from the decisions of the courts of justice.

Acting under this charter, Penn drew up a very liberal ‘Frame of Government,’ and also published a body of laws that had been examined and approved by a company of proposed emigrants in England. He also advertised the lands for sale, asking forty shillings, besides a perpetual quitrent of one shilling, for every hundred acres. Unlimited freedom of conscience, and the right to be governed by laws enacted by themselves, were secured to the people. As the terms were liberal, and the advantages of the territory, in respect to climate, situation, fertility of the soil, and the friendly disposition of the neighboring Indians, were considerable, a crowd of emigrants presented themselves, comprising many Quakers and a number from Holland and Germany. The Duke of York, afterwards James II, with whom Penn was high in favor, made over to him all his own right to the three lower counties on the Delaware, first peopled by the Swedes, which had lately been governed as an appendage to the Duke’s province of New York. These counties belonged geographically rather to Pennsylvania than New York, and possession of them was important for the new colony, as they already contained about 3,000 inhabitants, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, steady and industrious in their habits, and inured to their situation. Besides these, a number of Swedish, Dutch, and English settlers were already established in other portions of the territory, by whom the new government was favorably received. William Markham, one of Penn’s kinsmen, was sent out in 1681, with three ships and about three hundred emigrants, bearing a plan of the city which was to be founded at the confluence of the Schuylkill with the Delaware, and a very friendly message to the Indians, whose good will the new proprietor was anxious to conciliate. Penn himself came out the next year, in the course of which twenty-three vessels arrived laden with goods and emigrants. He held a friendly conference with the savages, under a large elm at Kensington, which afterwards became an object of much curiosity and respect, as marking the site of this famous interview. A treaty was made by which the Indians sold their lands on terms satisfactory to them, and stipulated to maintain peace and friendship, which promise was long religiously observed. The savages named him Onas, and though they gave the same title to the subsequent governors of the colony, they always referred to him as the great and good Onas. After laying out the new city of Philadelphia, so called from the spirit of brotherly love which was to animate its inhabitants, and holding a conference with Lord Baltimore about the disputed boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania, Penn returned, in 1684, to England. He did not visit America again till 1699, and then made but a short stay. The progress of the new province was as rapid as its commencement had been auspicious. In 1684, it contained twenty settled townships and seven thousand inhabitants; and not many years afterwards, the population was estimated at thirty thousand. Some of the laws proposed by Penn and adopted by the Assembly bore the imprint of his quaint and benevolent disposition. To prevent law-suits, three arbitrators were to be appointed by the county courts, to hear and determine small controversies; children were to be taught some useful trade, to the end that none might be idle; agents who wronged their employers should make restitution and one-third over; and the property of intestates was to be divided equally among the children, except that the eldest son should receive a double share.

GEORGIA was founded in 1732, under a plan formed by General Oglethorpe and some other benevolent gentlemen, in order to establish a place of refuge for poor debtors and other indigent persons from Great Britain, and for persecuted Protestants from all nations. A grant was obtained from the king of the unoccupied territory on the right bank of the Savannah river, the land to be apportioned gratuitously among the settlers, charitable donations being made to defray the expense of transporting them across the Atlantic, and supporting them during the first season. Funds were freely contributed for this generous purpose, under the hope that the measure would reduce the poor rates in England, and empty the workhouses and debtors’ jails. But the class of persons thus sent out were very unfit for the work of creating a new settlement and subduing the wilderness. They were chiefly broken-down tradesmen and impoverished debauchees; while sailors, agriculturists, and laborers from the country were needed. A company of persecuted Lutherans from Salzburg, and one of Scotch Highlanders, who settled respectively the towns of Ebenezer and New Inverness, formed industrious and thriving colonists. Oglethorpe brought over the first band of emigrants, and founded the city of Savannah. The colony being regarded as in a state of pupilage, its affairs were administered, for the first twenty years, by a board of trustees, nominated in the charter, who were to appoint their associates and successors, and had the exclusive right of legislation. The generous motto on their official seal, non sibi, sed aliis, (not for themselves, but for others,) showed the benevolent purposes with which they acted. Some of their measures were wise, others were preposterous. They strictly forbade the introduction of negro slaves; the use of rum was prohibited; no grant of land was to exceed five hundred acres; the land was not to be sold or devised by the holders, but was to descend to male children only, and in case of the failure of such heirs, was to revert to the trustees. But these laws did not long remain in force; slavery was introduced from the neighboring province of Carolina; females were allowed to inherit, and the land became subject to the same regulations as other property. So long as the colony was managed by trustees, and considered as an object of charity, it languished, and large sums were expended upon it in vain. At last, the government was abandoned to the crown, its institutions were assimilated to those of the other colonies, and it then had a steady and prosperous growth. The Methodists and Moravians were numerous in Georgia, two renowned preachers of the former denomination, Wesley and Whitefield, residing in it for several years.

It is apparent from this review, that the English colonies in North America, with the exception of Virginia and New York, were founded and peopled chiefly by religious exiles. The English Puritans were most numerous in New England, the Quakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Roman Catholics in Maryland, Scotch Presbyterians, French Huguenots and Methodists in the south, and German Lutherans in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Earnestness, sobriety, an independent spirit, and a determined hatred of oppression thus characterized the people from the beginning. Whatever emigrants came out solely in quest of wealth were soon disabused of their error, and either returned to the Old World, or learned to labor and to endure in their new home. Property was very evenly distributed, and there were no marked inequalities of rank or social position. Protected by their feebleness and insignificance in the outset, and by their distance from the mother country, the colonists were, in the main, allowed to enact their own laws, and manage their own affairs. Without any marked purpose of deviating from the policy, or shaking off the yoke, of England, they were, from the commencement, semi-republican and semi-independent. Disciplined by privation, exile, and peril, thrown on their own resources, governing themselves, their situation developed in them the elements of a thoughtful, vigorous, and resolute character. After they had overcome the first difficulties and obstructions in the way of founding a new home in the wilderness, their habits of endurance, industry, and frugality soon gave prosperity to their undertakings. Agriculture and commerce flourished, and they increased rapidly in population and wealth. They were no longer the feeble dependencies of a remote power; they could boast that they had laid the foundations of a great empire.

CONTEST OF THE ENGLISH WITH THE FRENCH FOR THE POSSESSION OF NORTH AMERICA.

The English revolution, which placed William III on the throne, while it freed the colonies from the oppressions they endured during the reign of his predecessor, involved them in the calamities of the war between France and England, which lasted from 1690 to the peace of Ryswick in 1697. The French in Canada directed an expedition against the English colonies, instigating the Indians to join them in their hostilities. In return, an armament was fitted out by Massachusetts for the invasion of the French settlements. Port Royal in Nova Scotia was taken. A second expedition was undertaken by the colonies of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, for the reduction of Montreal and Quebec. It failed in its object, and had the effect of producing dissatisfaction among the Indian tribes in New York, who were the allies of the English. This war, commonly called King William’s war, was marked by the most savage atrocities on the part of the French and Indians.

Scarcely had the colonies begun to recover from this war, when in 1702 they were plunged into another with the French, Indians, and Spaniards, commonly called Queen Anne’s war, arising from disputes about the boundaries, which had been left unsettled at the peace of Ryswick. The colonies of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were the chief sufferers, being most exposed to the devastating and murderous incursions of the French and Indians from Canada. Several expeditions were sent into Canada; but the only success that attended the English arms was the taking again of Port Royal, which had been restored to the French at the close of the former war. It was now named Annapolis. The peace of Utrecht, in 1713, put an end to the war in the northern colonies; but South Carolina continued to be annoyed for some time by the Indians. By the treaty of Utrecht, France ceded Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to England.

In 1744, England again declared war against France and Spain, which again involved the colonies in hostilities with the enemies of the mother-country and with their Indian allies. The principal event of this war, in America, was the capture of Louisburg from the French by forces from New England. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 again gave peace to the colonies. Prisoners were to be released on both sides without ransom, and all conquests to be mutually restored.

This war was extremely disastrous to the colonies. Many lives were lost; the growth of population was checked; great losses were sustained in the commercial interests of the country; and finally a burdensome debt of several millions had been incurred to defray the expenses of the war. With the return of peace, however, commerce revived; the settlements began to extend, and public credit was restored.

But only a brief interval of repose was allowed to the colonies. In 1756, eight years from the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Great Britain again declared war against France, on the ground of the encroachments of the French upon the English territories in America.

Some years previous to this war the French had commenced a chain of posts, designed to extend from the head of the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, with a view to maintain a communication between their northern possessions and Louisiana.

In 1750, the English government granted a large tract of land on the Ohio river to a company called the Ohio company, formed for the purpose of settling the country, and carrying on a trade in furs with the Indians. The French governor of Canada, apprehending both the loss of the fur-trade and the interruption of his communications with Louisiana, claimed the whole country between the Ohio and the Alleghanies, and prohibited the further encroachments of the English. He also opened a new communication between Lake Erie and the Ohio, and stationed troops at posts along the line. The Ohio company, thus threatened in their trade, persuaded Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, in 1753, to send a remonstrance to the French commandant. GEORGE WASHINGTON was the bearer. The commandant returned for answer that he had taken possession of the country by order of the governor-general of Canada, whose orders alone he could regard.

The British government, on learning the claim set up by the French, directed the Virginians to resist it by force. In 1754, an expedition was conducted against the French by Washington; but the superior force of the French obliged him to capitulate, with the privilege of returning with his troops to Virginia. This was properly the commencement of what is commonly styled the French war, although the formal declaration was not yet made.

In the meantime, the British government recommended the colonies to unite for their common defense. A convention of delegates from all of the northern colonies accordingly met at Albany in 1754, and adopted a plan of union: but it was rejected, both by the provincial assemblies and by the home government: by the former because it gave too much power to the crown, and by the latter because it gave too little.

In the spring of 1755, vigorous preparations were made for carrying on the war. An expedition was sent against Nova Scotia, which met with entire success: the colonial forces, with trifling loss, subdued the French, and gained complete and permanent possession of the whole country.

An expedition under General Braddock, directed against the French on the Ohio, was unfortunate. Owing to the arrogance and rashness of the commander, the British troops were surprised and defeated with great loss by a very inferior force of French and Indians. General Braddock was mortally wounded, and the conduct of the retreat devolved on Washington, who was in command of the colonial militia, and by whom the army was saved from total destruction.

The American arms were more successful in the north. The French were signally defeated on the borders of Lake George, and their commander, Baron Dieskau, was mortally wounded. The moral effect of this victory, following within a few weeks the discomfiture of Braddock, was very great and salutary in its influence upon the colonies.

In the year, 1756, war was formally declared between Great Britain and France; and in Europe began what is called the seven years’ war, in which Prussia was united with England against France. In America the campaign of 1756 was very disastrous to the colonists; they were unable even to attempt gaining of Niagara and Crown Point, places of great importance in the hands of the French, and the reduction of which was in the plan of operations. The French, under Montcalm, took Fort Oswego, thus gaining entire command of the Lakes Ontario and Erie, besides inflicting upon the English a very severe loss, amounting to sixteen hundred men made prisoners, one hundred and twenty cannon, with fourteen mortars, two sloops-of-war, and two hundred bateaux.

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