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HE STORY

iA^:%\N juo

OF THE A

UNIVERSITY ))

OF J

^4LJFORT^^V^

THE STORY OF MANKIND

By HENDRIK VAN LOON, AB. Ph.D.

Author of The Fall of the Dutch RepuUic, The Rise of the Dutd)

Klagdom, The Golden Book of the Dutdi Navicaton.

A Short Story of Diacovery, Ancient Mao.

This book is fully illustrated with eight three-color

pages, over one hundred black and white pictures and

numerous animated maps and half-tones drawn by the

author.

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;{Wii|, '-,1, 'i ' A. ^mt-mmm

'//,/, J -^lii. 'II'.' V\iM.

THE SCENE OF OUR HISTORY IS LAID UPON A LITTLE PLANET, LOST IN THE VASTNESS

OF THE UNIVERSE.

PSYCH.

-!Q

T^ESERVE DOPlit

First Printing, November, 1921
Second Printing, December, 1921
Third Printing, January, 1922
Fourth Printing, February, 1922
Fifth Printing, February, 1922
Sixth Printing, March, 1922
Seventh Printing, April, 1922
Eighth Printing, May, 1922
Nintli Printing, May, 1922
Tenth Printing, June, 1922
Eleventh Printing, July, 1922
Twelfth Printing, July, 1922
Thirieenth Printing, August, 1922
Fourteenth Printing, August, 1922
Fifteenth Printing, September, 1922
Sixteenth Printing, September, 1922
Seventeenth Printing, September, 1922

THE STORY OF MANKIND

BONI & LiVERIGHT, InC.

Printed in the United States of America

To JIMMIE

**What is the use of a book without pictures?" said Alice

FOREWORD

For Hansje and Willem:

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of
mine who gave me my love for books and pictures promised
to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with
him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotter-
dam.

And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that
of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell,"
he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and with
a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the
noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and
strange experiences.

For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phe-
nomenon of audible silence. When we had climbed the first
flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited knowl-
edge of natural phenomena — that of tangible darkness. A
match showed us where the upward road continued. We went
to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had
lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly
we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with
the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Cov-
ered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols
of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good
people of the city many years ago. That which had meant life
and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rub-

X FOREWORD

bish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved
images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop be-
tween the outspread arms of a kindly saint.

The next floor showed us from where we had derived our
light. Enormous open windows with heavy iron bars made
the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of
pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was
filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the
town below us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed
by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking
of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing
sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work
of man in a thousand different ways — they had all been
blended into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beau-
tiful background for the trembling cooing of the pigeons.

Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And
after the first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel
his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even greater
wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear
the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds — one — ^two — three —
up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels
seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eter-
nity. Without pause it began again — one — ^two — three — until
at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels
a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was
the hour of noon.

On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and
their terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made
me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the
night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it
seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which
it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of
Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in
an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who
twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the
country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear
what the big world had been doing. But in a corner — all alone

FOREWORD xi

and shunned by the others — a big black bell, silent and stem,
the bell of death.

Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and
even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and
suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached
the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city —
a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither
and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business,
and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the
open country.

It was my first glimpse of the big world.

Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have
gone to the top of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard
work, but it repaid in full the mere physical exertion of climb-
ing a few stairs.

Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the
land and the sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind
friend the watchman, who lived in a small shack, built in a
sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock
and was a father to the beUs, and he warned of fires, but he
enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and
thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school al-
most fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he
had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had
absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him
on all sides.

History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him.
"There," he would say, pointing to a bend of the river, "there,
my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of
Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden."
Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad
river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a wonder-
ful highroad, carr)nng the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon
that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the
sea might be free to all.

Then there were the little villages, clustering around the
protecting church which once, many years ago, had been the

xn FOREWORD

home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see the
leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches,
William the Silent had been murdered and there Grotius had
learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still further
away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home
of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of
many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to
know as Erasmus.

Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast,
immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys
and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and rail-
ways, which we called our home. But the tower showed us
the old home in a new light. The confused commotion of the
streets and the market-place, of the factories and the work-
shop, became the well-ordered expression of human energy
and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past,
which surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face
the problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily
tasks.

History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time
has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy
task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the bene-
fit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are
strong and it can be done.

Here I give you the key that will open the door.

When you return, you too will understand the reason for
my enthusiasm.

Hendrik Willem van Loon.

CONTENTS

FMP

1. The Scttino of the Staob 8

2. Our Earliest Ancestors 9

S. Prehistoric Man Begins to Make Things roR Himsblp . . IS

4. The Egyptians Intent the Art of Writing and the Record

OF History Begins 17

5. The Beginning of Citilisation in the Valley of the Nile . 22

6. The Rise and Fall of Egypt 27

7. Mesopotamia, the Second Centre of Eastern Civilisation . 29

8. The Sumerian Nail Writers, Whose Clay Tablets Tell Us

THE Story of Assyria and Babylonia, the Great Semitic

Melting-Pot 52

9- The Story of Moses, the Leader of the Jewish People . . S8

10. The Phcenicians, Who Gate Us Our Alphabet ... 42

11. The Indo-European Persians Conquer the Semitic and the

EoYPTLAN World . 44

12. The People of the £oean Sea Carried the Civilisation

of Old Asia. Into the Wilderness of Europe ... 48

18. Meanwhile the Indo-European Tribe of the Hellenes Was

Taking Possession of Greece 54

14. The Greek Cities That Were Really States .... 59

15. The Greeks Were the First People to Try the Difficult

Experiment of Self-Government 62

16. How the Greeks Lived 66

17. The Origins of the Theatre, the First Form* of Public

Amusebcent .,,..««..* ^ 71

XIV CONTENTS

18. How THE Greeks Defended Europe Against an Asiatic In-

vasion AND Drove the Persians Back Across the £gean Sea 74

19. How Athens and Sparta Fought a Long and Disastrous War

FOR the Leadership of Greece 81

20. Alexander the Macedonian Establishes a Greek World-

Empire, AND What Became of This High Ambition . . 83

21. A Short Summary of Chapters 1 to 20 85

22. The Semitic Colony of Carthage on the Northern Coast of

Africa and the Indo-European City of Rome on the West
Coast of Italy Fought Each Other for the Possession of
the Western Mediterranean and Carthage Was Destroyed 88

23. How Rome Happened 105

24. How the Republic of Rome, After Centuries of Unrest and

Revolution, Became an Empire 109

25. The Story of Joshua of Nazareth, Whom the Greeks Called

Jesus 119

26. The Twilight of Rome 124

27. How Rome Became the Centre of the Christian World . 131

28. Ahmed, the Camel Driver, Who Became the Prophet of the

Arabian Desert, and Whose Followers Almost Conquered
THE Entire Known World for the Greater Glory of
Allah, the "Only True God" 1S8

29. How Charlemagne, the King of the Pranks, Came to Bear

the Title of Emperor and Tried to Revive the Old Ideal

of World-Empire 144

50. Why the People of the Tenth Century Prayed the Lord

to Protect Them from the Fury of the Norsemen . .150

51. How Central Europe, Attacked from Three Sides, Became

AN Armed Camp and Why Europe Would Have Perished
Without Those Professional Soldiers and Administrators
Who Were Part of the Feudal System 155

82. Chivalry 159

8S. The Strange Double Loyalty of the People of the Middlb
Ages, and How It Led to Endless Quarrels Between the
Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors l62

CONTENTS XV

FAOl

84. But All These Different Quarrels Were Forgotten When

THE Turks Took the Holy Land, Desecrated the Holy
Places and Interfered Seriously with the Trade from
East to West. Europe Went Crusadino . . . .168

85. Why the Peoplk of the Middle Ages Said That "City Air

Ii Free Air" 174

86. How THE People of the Cities Asserted Their Right

TO Be Heard in the Royal Councils of Their Country . 184

$7. What the Peoplk of the Middle Aobs Thought of th«

World in Which They Happened to Live . . .191

88. How the Crusades Once More Made the Mediterranean a

Busy Centre of Trade and How the Cities of the Italian
Peninsula Became the Great Distributing Centre for the
Commerce with Asia and Africa 198

89. People Once More Dared to Be Happy Just Because They

Were Alive. They Tried to Save the Remains of the
Older and More Agreeable Civilisation of Rome and
Greece and They Were so Proud of Their Achievements
That Thvt Spokb of a "Renaissance" or Re-birth of
Citilisation 206

40. The People Began to Feel the Need of Giving Expression

TO Their Newly Discovered Joy of Living. Thev Ex-
pressed Their Happiness in Poetry and in Sculpture and
in Architecture and Painting, and in the Books They
Printed S19

41. But Now That People Had Broken Through the Bonds of

Their Narrow Medi^bval Limitations, They Had to Have
More Room for Their Wanderings. The European World
Had Grown Too Small for Their Ambitions. It was the
Time of the Great Voyages of Discovery .... 224

42. Concerning Buddha and Confucius 241

48. The Progress of the Human Race is Best Compared to a
Gigantic Pendulum Which Forever Swings Forward and
Backward. The Religious Indifference and the Artistic
AND Literary Enthusiasm of the Renaissance Werk Fol-
lowed by the Artistic and Literary Indifference and the
Religious Enthusiasm of the Reformation .... 251

44. Thx Aok of the Grxat Religious Controversies . . . 262

xvi CONTENTS

PAQB

45. How THE Struggle Between the "Divine Right of Kings"

AND the Less Divine but More Reasonable "Right of
Parliament" Ended Disastrously for King Charles I . 279

46. In France, on the Other Hand, the "Divine Right of Kings"

Continued with Greater Pomp and Splendor Than Ever
Before and the Ambition of the Ruler Was Only Tempered
BY THE Newly Invented Law of the "Balance of Power" . 296

47. The Story of the Mysterious Muscovite Empire Which Sud-

denly Burst upon the Grand Political Stage of Europe 301

48. Russia and Sweden Fought Many Wars to Decide Who

Shall Be the Leading Power of Northeastern Europe SOS

49. The Extraordinary Rise of a Little State in a Dreary Part

of Northern Germany, Called Prussia S13

50. How the Newly Founded National or Dynastic States of

Europe Tried to Make Themselves Rich and What Was
Meant by the Mercantile System 817

51. At the End of the Eighteenth Century Europe Heard

Strange Reports of Something Which Had Happened in
the Wilderness of the North American Continent. The
Descendants of the Men Who Had Punished King Charles
FOR His Insistence upon His "Divine Rights" Added a
New Chapter to the Old Story of the Struggle for Self-
Government 823

52. The Great French Revolution Proclaims the Principles

of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality Unto All the People

OF the Earth 334

53. Napoleon 349

54. As Soon as Napoleon Had Been Sent to St. Helena, the

Rulers Who So Often Had Been Defeated by the Hated
"Corsican" Met at Vienna and Tried to Undo the Many
Changes Which Had Been Brought About by the French
Revolution 36l

55. They Tried to Assure the World an Era of Undisturbed

Peace by Suppressing All New Ideas. They Made the
Police-Spy the Highest Functionary in the State and
Soon the Prisons of All Countries Were Filled With
Those Who Claimed That People Have the Right to
Govern Themselves as They See Fit 873

5t, CONTENTS xvii

i$ The Love of National Independence, However, Was Too
Strong to Be Destroyed in This Way. The South Ameri-
cans Were the First to Rebel Against the Reactionary
Measures of the Congress of Vienna. Greece and Bel-
gium AND Spain and a Large Number of Other Countries
OF the European Continent Followed Suit and the
Nineteenth Century Was Filled with the Rumor of Many
Wars of Independence 381

67* But While the People of Europe Were Fighting for Their
National Independence, the World in Which They Lived
Had Been Entirely Changed by a Series of Inventions,
Which Had Made the Clumsy Old Steam-Enoine of the
Eighteenth Century the Most Faithful and Efficient
Slave of Man 402

58. The New Engines Were Very Expensive and Only Peoplk

OF Wealth Could Afford Them. The Old Carpenter or
Shoemaker Who Had Been His Own Master in His Little
Workshop Was Obliged to Hire Himself Out to the Own-
ers of the Bio Mechanical Tools, and While He Made
More Money than Before, He Lost His Former Independ-
ence AND He Did Not Like That 418

59. The General Introduction of Machinery Did Not Bring

About the Era of Happiness and Prosperity Which Had
Been Predicted by the Generation Which Saw the Stage
Coach Replaced by the Railroad. Several Remedies
Were Suggested, but None or These Quite Solved the
Problem 420

60. But the World Had Undergone Another Change Which Was

OF Greater Importance Than Either the Political or the
Industrial Revolutions. After Generations of Oppres-
sion AND Persecution, the Scientist Had at Last Gained
Liberty of Action and He Was Now Trying to Discover
THE Fundamental Laws Which Govern the Universe . 427

61. A Chapter of Art 438

62. The Last Fifty Years, Including Several Explanations

AND A Few Apologies 446

6S. The Great War, Which Was Really the Struggle for a

New and Better Would • . 456

64. Animated Chronology ........ 467

65. Concerning the Pictures ....... 478

66. An Historical Reading List for Children .... 476

67. Index 484

LIST OF COLORED PICTURES

The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon a Little Planet, Lost in the

Vastness of the Universe • . FrontUpiece

PACixa

FAflB

Greece 84

Rome 126

The Norsemen Are Coming . • • •»••• • .156

The Castic 164

The Medieval World » 19*

A New World 238

Buddha Goes into the Mountains .•••••«■•. 246

^foscon ••••••i*A**»»* 306

LIST OF HALF TONE PICTURES

rieoM

The Temple 68

The Mountain-pass •....148

The Medieval Town 180

The Cathedral 220

The Blockhouse in the Wilderness 828

Off for Trafalgar 862

The Modem City 404

The Dirigible ••«... >#•••• 480

LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS

1. High Up in the North 1

2. It Rained Incessantly 4

S. The Ascent of Man . • • • 5

4. The Plants Leave the Sea 6

5. The Growth of the Human Skull 9

6. Prc-history and History 11

7. Prehistoric Europe 15

8. The Valley of Egypt 28

9. The Building of the Pyramids 25

10. Mesopotamia, the Melting-pot of the Ancient World ... 80

11. A Tower of Babel 84

12. Nineveh 85

18. The Holy City of Babylon 86

14. The Wanderings of the Jews 89

15. Moses Sees the Holy Land 41

16. The Phoenician Trader 42

17. The Story of a Word 45

18. The Indo-Europeans and Their Neighbours 46

19. The Trojan Horse 48

20. Schliemann Digs for Troy 49

21. Mycene in Argolis ••..50

22. The ^gean Sea 51

28. The Island-Bridges Between Asia and Europe . • • • 52

xziii

xxiv LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS

TaOB

24. An Mgean City oh the Greek Mainland . . . . «. 54

25. The Achaeans Take an -Slgean City 55

26. The Fall of Cnossus 56

27. Mount Olympus, Where the Gods Lived ..... 59

28. A Greek City-State 63

29. Greek Society 67

30. The Persian Fleet is Destroyed Near Mount Athos ... 75

31. The Battle of Marathon 76

32. Thermopylae 78

83. The Battle of Thermopylae 78

34. The Persians Burn Athens 79

35. Carthage 89

36. Spheres of Influence 90

37. How the City of Rome Happened 92

38. A Fast Roman Warship . 97

39> Hannibal Crosses the Alps 99

40. Hannibal and the CEF , . 101

41. The Death of Hannibal . , .103

42. How Rome Happened . , . 105

43. Civilisation Goes Westward 107

44. Caesar Goes West 114

45. The Great Roman Empire 117

46. The Holy Land 121

47. When the Barbarians Got Through With a Roman City . .126

48. The Invasions of the Barbarians 128

49. A Cloister , . 133

50. The Goths Are Coming! 134

LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS xxv

PAai

51. The Flight of Mohammed 139

52. The Struggle Between the Cross and the Crescent . . .148
58. The Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality . .147

54. The Home of the Norsemen 151

55. The Norsemen Go to Russia 152

56. The Normans Look Across the Channel M2

57. The World of the Norsemen 15S

58. Henry IV at Canossa l65

59. The First Crusade 170

60. The World of the Crusaders 171

61. The Crusaders Take Jerusalem 172

62. The Crusader's Grave 17S

63. The Castle and the City 179

64. The Belfry 182

65. Gunpowder 18S

66. The Spreading of the Idea of Popular Sovereignty . . .185

67. The Home of Swiss Liberty 188

68. The Abjuration of Philip II 189

69. Medieval Trade 199

70. Great Nowgorod 202

71. The Hansa Ship 204

72. The Medieval Laboratory 209

73. The Renaissance 210

74. Dante . . 212

75. John Huss 220

76. The Manuscript and the Printed Book .... . . 222

77. Marco Polo ,,.... 22*

xxn LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS

r^QE

78. How the World Grew Larger ........ 227

79. The World of Columbus 230

80. The Great Discoveries. Western Hemisphere .... 23S

81. The Great Discoveries. Eastern Hemisphere .... 234

82. Magellan . ■„■. 237

88. The Three Great Religions 243

84. The Great Moral Leaders 249

85. Luther Translates the Bible 257

86. The Inquisition 263

87. The Night of St Bartholomew . . ... . .268

88. Leyden Delivered by the Cutting of the Dikes .... 269

89. The Murder of William the Silent ....... 270

90. The Armada is Coming! 271

91. The Death of Hudson 273

92. The Thirty Years War 275

98. Amsterdam in 1648 277

94. The English Nation 280

95. The Hundred Years War . .281

96. John and Sebastian Cabot See the Coast of Newfoundland . . 284

97. The Elizabethan Stage 285

98. The Balance of Power 299

99. The Origin of Russia 303

100. Peter the Great in the Dutch Shipyard 308

101. Peter the Great Builds His New Capital 310

102. The Voyage of the Pilgrims 318

103. How Europe Conquered the World 321

104. Sea Power .,.•.. 322

LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS xxvli

105. The Fight for Liberty 828

106. The Pilgrims 884

107. How the White Man Settled in North America . , . . 8S5

108. In the Cabin of the Mayflower 827

109. The French Explore the West 828

110. The First Winter in New England 829

111. George Washington 881

112. The Great American Revolution 882

118. The Guillotine 887

114. Louis XVI 889

115. The Bastille 842

116. The French Revolution Invades Holland . • • • r 847

117. The Retreat from Moscow 895

118. The Battle of Waterloo 858

119. Napoleon Goes Into Exile 959

120. The Spectre Which Frightened the Holy Alliance . . .864

121. The Real Congress of Vienna 867

122. The Monroe Doctrine 885

128. Giuseppe Mazzini 895

124. The First Steamboat 407

125. The Origin of the Steamboat 408

126. The Origin of the Automobile 409

127. Man-power and Machine-power . . . . • • .414

128. The Factory 416

129. The Philosopher 427

180. Galileo 429

181. Gothic Architecture 487

xxviii LIST OF PICTURES AND ANIMATED MAPS

PAOB

132. The Troubadour 442

133. The Pioneer 44'/

134. The Conquest of the West . .451

135. War 457

137. Animated Chronology ....... 467

142. The End 472

THE STORY OF MANKIND

High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there
stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles
wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this
rock to sharpen its beak.

When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day
of eternity will have gone by.

We live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark.

Who are we?

Where do we come from?

Whither are we bound?

Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing
this question mark further and further towards that distant
line, beyond the horizon, where we hope to find our answer.

We have not gone very far.

We still know very little but we have reached the point
where (with a fair degree of accuracy) we can guess at many
things.

In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best
belief) the stage was set for the first appearance of man.

If we represent the time during which it has been possible for
animal life to exist upon our planet by a line of this length,

then the tiny line just below indicates the age during which
man (or a creature more or less resembling man) has lived
upon this earth.

r Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for
^he purpose of conquering the forces of nature. That is the
reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or
dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in their
own way, have a very interesting historical development behind
them.

THE STORY OF MANKIND

IT RAINED INCESSANTLY

In the beginning, the planet
upon which we live was (as far
as we now know) a large ball of
flaming matter, a tiny cloud of
smoke in the endless ocean of
space. Gradually, in the course
of millions of years, the surface
burned itself out, and was cov-
ered with a thin layer of rocks.
Upon these lifeless rocks the
rain descended in endless tor-
rents, wearing out the hard
granite and carrying the dust to
the valleys that lay hidden be-
tween the high cliffs of the steaming earth.

Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the
clouds and saw how this little planet was covered with a few
small puddles which were to develop into the mighty oceans of
the eastern and western hemispheres.

Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been
dead, gave birth to life.

The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea.
For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents.
But during all that time it was developing certain habits that
it might survive more easily upon the inhospitable earth. Some
of these cells were happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and
the pools. They took root in the slimy sediments which had
been carried down from the tops of the hills and they became
plants. Others preferred to move about and they grew
strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along
the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things
that looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales)
depended upon a swimming motion to go from place to place
in their search for food, and gradually they populated the ocean
with myriads of fishes.

Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had
to search for new dwelling places. There was no more room

THE SETTING OF THE STAGE

for them at the bottom of the sea. Reluctantly they left the
water and made a new home in the marshes and on the mud-
banks that lay at the foot of the mountains. Twice a day the
tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For the rest
of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable
situation and tried to survive in the thin air which surrounded
the surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they
learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in
the water. They increased in size and became shrubs and trees
and at last they learned how to grow lovely flowers which
attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the

THE ASCENT OF MAN

THE STORY OF MANKIND

THE PLANTS LEAVE THE SEA

birds who carried the seeds far
and wide until the whole earth
had become covered with gi-een
pastures, or lay dark under the
shadow of the big trees.

But some of the fishes too
had begim to leave the sea, and
they had learned how to breathe
with lungs as well as with gills.
.We call such creatures amphibi-
ous, which means that they are
able to live with equal ease on
the land and in the water. The
first frog who crosses your path
can tell you all about the pleasures of the double existence of
the amphibian.

Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted
themselves more and more to life on land. Some became rep-
tiles (creatures who crawl like lizards) and they shared the
silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move
faster through the soft soil, they improved upon their legs
and their size increased until the world was populated with
gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list under
the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaui'us and Bron-
tosaurus) who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who
could have played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with
her kittens.

Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in
the tops of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred
feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose
of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from
branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin
into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of
their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually
they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made
their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and
developed into true birds.

THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 7

Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles
died within a short time. We do not know the reason. Per-
haps it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they
had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor
crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within
reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the
million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over.

The world now began to be occupied by very different
creatures. They were the descendants of the reptiles but they
were quite unlike these because they fed their young from the
"mammce" or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern
science calls these animals "mammals." They had shed the
scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of the bird,
but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals how-
ever developed other habits which gave their race a great ad-
vantage over the other animals. The female of the species
carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were
hatched and while all other living beings, up to that time, had
left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and heat,
and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young
with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were
still too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young
mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because
they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know
if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take
care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to
catch mice.

But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you
know them well. They surround you on all sides. They are
your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you
can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zo-
ological garden.

And now we come to the parting of the ways when man
suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and
dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the
destiny of his race.

One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in

8 THE STORY OF MANKIND

its ability to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its
fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of
practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumer-
able attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the
body upon the hind legs. ( This is a difficult act, which every
child has to learn anew although the human race has been
doing it for over a million years.)

This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to
both, became the most successful hunter and could make a
living in every clime. For greater safety, it usually moved
about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to
warn its young of approaching danger and after many hun-
dreds of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises
for the purpose of talking.

This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your
first "man-hke" ancestor.

OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS

We know very little about the first "true" men. We have
never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an
ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones.
These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals
that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.
Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to
the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have
taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our
earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.

THE GROWTH OF THE HUMAN SKULL

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very
ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much

10 THE STORY OF MANKIND

smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the
biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark
brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too,
were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but
strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a mon-
key. His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a
wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He
wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the
rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke
and their lava.

He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the
pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the
pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or
he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his
own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase,
he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a
rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered
that food tasted better when it was cooked.

During the hours of day, this primitive human being
prowled about looking for things to eat.

When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and
his children in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders,
for he was surrounded on all sides by ferocious animals and
when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking
for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and
they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world where
you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy
because it was full of fear and misery.

In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the
sun, and during the winter his children would freeze to death
in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting
animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their
ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a
horrible death.

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their
strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he
endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it

OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS

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12 THE STORY OF MANKIND

pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he
learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow
beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little
shrieks which came to mean "there is a tiger!" or "here come
five elephants." Then the others grunted something back at
him and their growl meant, "I see them," or "let us run away
and hide." And this was probably the origin of all language.

But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know
so very little. Early man had no tools and he built himself
no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his exist-
ence except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull.
These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was
inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from
all the other animals — who had probably developed from an-
other unknown ape-like animal which had learned to walk on
its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands — and who were
most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be
our own immediate ancestors.

It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.

PREHISTORIC MAN

PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE
THINGS FOR HIMSELF

Early man did not know what time meant. He kept
no records of birthdays or wedding anniversaries or the hour
of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or even years.
But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had
noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild
spring — that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits
ripened and the wild ears of com were ready to be eaten and
that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves
from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready
for the long hibernal sleep.

But now, something unusual and rather frightening had
happened. Something was the matter with the weather. The
warm days of sunmier had come very late. The fruits had
not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be cov-
ered with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a heavy
burden of snow.

Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different
from the other creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came
wandering down from the region of the high peaks. They
looked lean and appeared to be starving. They uttered sounds
which no one could understand. They seemed to say that
they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the
old inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay

i4j the story of mankind

more than a few days there was a terrible battle with claw-like
hands and feet and whole famihes were killed. The others fled
back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard.

But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All
the time the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than
diey ought to have been.

Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a
tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A
gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were
being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thun-
derstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite sud-
denly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them
while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling
wood. And then it began to snow.

It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and
the animals fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted
his young upon his back and followed them. But he could not
travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to
choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to
have preferred the former for he has managed to survive the
terrible glacial periods which upon four different occasions
threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth.

In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself
lest he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover
them with branches and leaves and in these traps he caught
bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy stones and
whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family.

Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many
animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now
followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm
homes and claimed them for his own.

Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and
the old and the young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius
bethought himself of the use of fire. Once, while out hunting,
he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he
had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire
had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree

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16 THE STORY OF MANKIND

was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smoulder-
ing branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into
a cozy little room.

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It
was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered
that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there
discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the
other animals and began to prepare his food.

In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people
with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day
and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent
tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how
to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores
of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that
clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the
rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threat-
ened to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher
because it forced man to use his brain.

HIEROGLYPHICS

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF

WRITING AND THE RECORD OF

HISTORY BEGINS

These earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great
European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things
It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have
given up the ways of savages and would have developed a
civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to
their isolation. They were discovered.

A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to
cross the sea and the high mountain passes had found his way
to the wild people of the European continent. He came from
Africa. His home was in Egypt.

The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civili-
sation thousands of years before the people of the west had
dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house.
And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in
their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of
the ^Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the
human race.

The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were
excellent farmers. They knew all about irrigation. They built
temples which were afterwards copied by the Greeks and which
served as the earliest models for the churches in which we wor-
ship nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved

18 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

such a useful instrument for the purpose of measuring time
that it has survived with a few changes until today. But most
important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to preserve
speech for the benefit of future generations. They had in-
vented the art of writing.

We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and maga-
zines that we take it for granted that the world has always been
able to read and write. As a matter of fact, writing, the most
important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written
documents we should be like cats and dogs, who can only teach
their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who,
because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can
make use of the experience of those generations of cats and
dogs that have gone before.

In the first century before our era, when the Romans came
to Egypt, they found the valley full of strange little pic-
tures which seemed to have something to do with the history
of the country. But the Romans were not interested in "any-
thing foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer
figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of
the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the
papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had
understood the holy art of making such pictures had died sev-
eral years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had
become a store-house filled with important historical documents
which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly use
to either man or beast.

Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land
of mystery. But in the year 1798 a French general by the
name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern Africa to pre-
pare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did
not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But,
quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved the
problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language.

One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary
life of his little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the
Nile) decided to spend a few idle hours rummaging among

HIEROGLYPHICS 19

the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone
which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Eg}^pt
it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of
black basalt was different from anything that had ever been
discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was
in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is
necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with
the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets."

The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than
twenty years to solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French
professor by the name of ChampoUion began to compare the
Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone. In
the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the mean-
ing of fourteen little figures. A short time later he died from
overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had
become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is
better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River.
We possess a written record which covers four thousand years
of chronicled history.

As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means
"sacred writing") have played such a very great role in his-
tory, (a few of them in modified form have even found their
way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something
about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago
to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming
generations.

Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every
Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to
strange messages written in the form of little pictures which
tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters
there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to
understand the meaning of such messages.

Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The
clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long
before. Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object
which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now.

THE STORY OF MANKIND

Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were
examining a stack of papyrus sheets, all covered v/ith hiero-
glyphics. Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with
a saw. "Very well," you would say, "that means of course that
a farmer went out to cut down a tree." Then you take another
papjrrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the age
of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture
of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle
saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But
what?

That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved.
He discovered that the Egyptians were the first to use what
we now call "phonetic writing" — a system of characters which
reproduce the "sound" (or phone) of the spoken word and
which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words
into a written form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes
and pothooks.

Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw.
The word "saw" either means a certain tool which you will find
in a carpenter's shop, or it means the past tense of the verb
"to see."

This is what had happened to the word during the course
of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool
which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it
had become the past participle of a verb. After several hun-
dred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and

the picture

came to stand for a single letter, the

letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here
is a modem English sentence as it would have been written in

hieroglyphics.

HIEROGLYPHICS

The

either means one of these two round objects

in your head, which allow you to see or it means "I," the per-
son who is talking.

is either an insect which gathers honey, or it

represents the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it
may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have.**

In this particular instance it is followed by

which

means a "leaf* or "leave" or "lieve" (the sound of all three
words is the same).

The "eye" you know all about.

Finally you get the picture of a

It is a giraffe.

It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyph-
ics developed.

You can now read that sentence without much difficulty.

**I believe I saw a giraffe."

Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it
during thousands of years until they could write anjiihing they
wanted, and they used these "canned words" to send messages
to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the
history of their country, that future generations mig^t benefit
by the mistakes of the past.

THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE
VALLEY OF THE NILE

The history of man is the record of a hungry creature in
search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither Qian has
travelled to make his home.

The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at
an early date. From the interior of Africa and from the desert
of Arabia and from the western part of Asia people had
flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms.
Together these invaders had formed & new race which called
itself "Remi" or "the Men" just as we sometimes call America
"God's own country." They had good reason to be grateful
to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land.
In the summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a
shallow lake and when the waters receded all the grainfields
and the pastures were covered with several inches of the most
fertile clay.

In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and
made it possible to feed the teeming population of the first
large cities of which we have any record. It is true that all
the arable land was not in the valley. But a complicated
system of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from
the river-level to the top of the highest banks and an everi
more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it through-
out the land.

THE NILE VALLEY

THE VALLEY OF EGYPT

While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend
sixteen hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for him-
self and the members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the
inhabitant of the Egj^ptian city found himself possessed of a
certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many
things that were merely ornamental and not the least bit
useful.

More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was
capable of thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing
to do with the problems of eating and sleeping and finding a
home for the children. The Egyptian began to speculate upon
many strange problems that confronted him. Where did the
stars come from? Who made the noise of the thunder which

24 THE STORY OP MANKIND

frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile rise
with such regularity that it was possible to base the calendar
upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual
floods? Who was he, himself, a strange little creature sur-
rounded on all sides by death and sickness and yet happy and
full of laughter?

He asked these many questions and certain people oblig-
ingly stepped forward to answer these inquiries to the best of
their ability. The Egyptians called them *'priests" and they
became the guardians of his thoughts and gained great respect
in the community. They were highly learned men who were
entrusted with the sacred task of keeping the written records.
They understood that it is not good for man to think only of
his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his at-
tention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell
beyond the mountains of the west and must give an account
of his deeds to Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of
the Living and the Dead and who judged the acts of men
according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much
of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the
Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation
for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile
into a land devoted to the Dead.

In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that
no soul could enter the realm of Osiris without the possession
of the body which had been its place of residence in this world.
Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives took his
corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a
solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch. The
Persian word for pitch was "Mumiai" and the embalmed body
was called a "Mummy." It was wrapped in yards and yards
of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a specially
prepared coffin ready to be removed to its final home. But
an Egyptian grave was a real home where the body was sur-
rounded by pieces of furniture and musical instruments (to
while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little statues
of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this

THE NILE VALLEY

«5

THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS

dark home might be decently provided with food and need not
go about unshaven).

Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the
western mountains but as the Egj^ptians moved northward
they were obliged to build their cemeteries in the desert. The
desert however is full of wild animals and equally wild robbers
and they broke into the graves and disturbed the mummy or
stole the jewelry that had been buried with the body. To pre-
vent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build small
mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds
gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher
mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competi-
tion to see who could make the highest hill of stones. The

26 THE STORY OF MANKIND

record was made by King Khufu, whom the Greeks called
Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His
mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the
Egyptian word for high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred
feet high.

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three
times as much space as that occupied by the church of St.
Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world.

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were
busy carrying the necessary stones from the other side of the
river — ferrying them across the Nile (how they ever managed
to do this, we do not understand), dragging them in many in-
stances a long distance across the desert and finally hoisting
them into their correct position. But so well did the King's
architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow
passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the
stone monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the
weight of those thousands of tons of stone which press upon
it from all sides.

THE STORY OF EGYPT

THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT

The river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was
a hard taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its
banks the noble art of "team-work." They depended upon
each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their
dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along
with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association quite
easily developed into an organised state.

Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neigh-
bours and he became the leader of the community and their
commander-in-chief when the envious neighbours of western
Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course of time
he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediter-
ranean to the mountains of the west.

But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the
word meant "the Man who lived in the Big House") rarely
interested the patient and toiling peasant of the grain fields.
Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King
than he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he
accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.

It was different however when a foreign invader came
and robbed him of his possessions. After twenty centuries of
independent life, a savage Arab tribe of shepherds, called the
Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they were
the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly un-

28 THE STORY OF MANKIND

popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who
came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long
wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign
usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants.

But shortly after the year 1700 b.c. the people of Thebes
began a revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were
driven out of the country and Egypt was free once more.

A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of
western Asia, Egypt became part of the empire of Sardan-
apalus. In the seventh century B.C. it became once more an
independent state which obeyed the rule of a king who lived in
the city of Sais in the Delta of the Nile. But in the year 525
B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession of
Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was con-
quered by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Mace-
donian province. It regained a semblance of independence
when one of Alexander's generals set himself up as king of a
new Egyptian state and founded the djniasty of the Ptolemies,
who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria.

Finally, in the year 39 B.C., the Romans came. The last
Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country.
Her beauty and charm were more dangerous to the Roman
generals than half a dozen Egyptian army corps. Twice she
was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her Roman
conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew
and heir of Cesar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share
his late uncle's admiration for the lovely princess. He de-
stroyed her armies, but spared her life that he might make her
march in his triumph as part of the spoils of war. When
Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by taking poi -
son. And Egypt became a Roman province.

MESOPOTAMIA

MESOPOTAMIA— THE SECOND CENTRE OF
EASTERN CIVILISATION

I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid
and I am going to ask that you imagine yourself possessed
of the eyes of a hawk. Way, way off, in the distance, far
beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you will see something
green and shimmering. It is a valley situated between two
rivers. It is the Paradise of the Old Testament. It is the
land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called Meso-
potamia— the "country between the rivers."

The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the
Babylonians called the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was
known as the Diklat). They begin their course amidst the
snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah's Ark found
a resting place and slowly they flow through the southern
plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf.
They perform a very useful sers'ice. They turn the arid
regions of western Asia into a fertile garden.

The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had
offered them food upon fairly easy terms. The "land be-
tween the rivers" was popular for the same reason. It was a
country full of promise and both the inhabitants of the north-
ern mountains and the tribes which roamed through the
southern deserts tried to claim this territory as their own and
most exclusive possession. The constant rivalry between the

THE STORY OF I^IANKIND

MESOPOTAMIA 81

mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare.
Only the strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and
that will explain why Mesopotamia became the home of a very
strong race of men who were capable of creating a civilisation
which was in every respect as important as that of Egypt.

THE SUMERIANS

THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY
TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA
AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC
MELTING-POT

The fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries.
Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and
stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent. An Aus-
trian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel east-
ward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a
voyage which led to complete failure, for Moscow was not
visited by western men until a generation later. Meanwhile
a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had explored the
ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most
curious language which he had found carved in the rocks of
the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of
baked clay.

But Europe was busy with many other things and it was
not until the end of the eighteenth century that the first
"cuneiform inscriptions" (so-called because the letters were
wedge-shaped and wedge is called "Cuneus" in Latin) were
brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr.
Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-
master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four
letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Per-
sian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by

THE SUMERIANS

until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous
inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to the nail-
writing of western Asia.

Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writ-
ings, the job of Champollion had been an easy one. The
Egyptians used pictures. But the Sumerians, the earliest
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of
scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures
entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which
showed little connection with the pictures out of which they
had been developed. A few examples will show you what I
mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into

a brick looked as follows :

This sign however was too

cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of
"heaven" was added to that of star the picture was simplified

in this way

which made it even more of a puzzle.

In the same way an ox changed from
and a fish changed from

was originally a plain circle
If we were using the Sumerian script today we would make an
look like

. This system of writing down our

THE STORY OF MANKIND

ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty cen-
turies it was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and
the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races
which forced their way into the fertile valley.

The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and
conquest. First the Sumerians came from the North. They
were a white people who had lived in the mountains. They

A TOWER OF BABEL

had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of
hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed arti-
ficial little hills on top of which they built their altars. They
did not know how to build stairs and they therefore sur-
rounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers
have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad
stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to an-
other. We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumeri-
asis but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely ab"

THE SUMERIANS

sorbed by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later
date. Their towers however still stand amidst the ruins of
Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went into exile
in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of Bab-
Illi, or towers of Babel.

In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had
entered Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over-

NINEVEH

powered by the Akkadians, one of the many tribes from the
desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and who are
known as the "Semites," because in the olden days people be-
lieved them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the
three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians
were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another
Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built him-
self a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who
gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state

THE STORY OF IMANKIND

the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next the
Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, over-
ran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not
carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers
of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyr-
ians and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast
and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and
Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until
the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when

■■m^m.

THE HOLY CITY OF BABYLON

THE SUMERIANS S7

the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and
made that city the most important capital of that day.
Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged
the study of science, and our modem knowledge of astronomy
and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which
were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C. a
crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and
overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years
later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great,
who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many
Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the Romans
and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the sec-
ond centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness
where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.

MOSES

THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE
JEWISH PEOPLE

Some time during the twentieth century before our era,
a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left
its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth
of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within
the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven
away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward
looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they
might set up their tents.

This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as
we call them, the Jews. They had wandered far and wide,
and after many years of dreary peregrinations they had been
given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries they
had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted coun-
try had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told
you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make them-
selves useful to the foreign invader and had been left in the
undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a
long war of independence the Egyptians had driven the
Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had
come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank
of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the
royal roads and on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were

MOSES

40 THE STORY OF IMANKIND

guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it had been impossible for
the Jews to escape.

After many years of suffering they were saved from their
miserable fate by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long
time had dwelt in the desert and there had learned to appre-
ciate the simple virtues of his earliest ancestors, who had kept
away from cities and city-life and had refused to let them-
selves be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a foreign
civilisation.

Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways
of the patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian
troops that were sent after him and led his fellow tribesmen
into the heart of the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. Dur-
ing his long and lonely life in the desert, he had learned to
revere the strength of the great God of the Thunder and the
Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the shep-
herds depended for life and light and breath. This God, one
of the many divinities who were widely worshipped in western
Asia, was called Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses,
he became the sole Master of the Hebrew race.

One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews.
It was whispered that he had gone away carrying two tablets
of rough-hewn stone. That afternoon, the top of the mountain
was lost to sight. The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from
the eye of man. But when Moses returned, behold ! there stood
engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah had spoken
unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder and
the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment,
Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master
of their Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how
to live holy lives when he bade them to follow the wise lessons
of his Ten Commandments.

They followed Moses when he bade them continue their
journey through the desert. They obeyed him when he told
them what to eat and drink and what to avoid that they might
keep well in the hot climate. And finally after many years of
wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and

MOSES

prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country
of the "Pilistu" the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who
had settled along the coast after they had been driven away
from their own island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Pales-
tine, was already inhabited by another Semitic race, called the
Canaanites. But the Jews forced their way into the valleys
and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty temple

MOSES SEES THE HOLY LAND

in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace.
As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He
had been allowed to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from
afar. Then he had closed his tired eyes for all time. He had
worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah. Not only had
he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free and
independent life of a new home but he had also made the Jews
the first of all nations to worship a single God.

THE PHCENICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR
ALPHABET

The Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews,
were a Semitic tribe which at a very early age had settled along
the shores of the Mediterranean. They had built themselves
two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within a short
time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western
seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and Italy and

THE PHCENICIAN TRADER
i2

THE PH(ENICIANS 48

Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar
to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever
they went, they built themselves small trading stations, which
they called colonies. Many of these were the origin of mod-
ern cities, such as Cadiz and Marseilles.

They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a
good profit. They were not troubled by a conscience. If we
are to believe all their neighbours they did not know what the
words honesty or integrity meant. They regarded a well-filled
treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed
they were very unpleasant people and did not have a single
friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming genera-
tions one service of the greatest possible value. They gave
us our alphabet.

The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing,
invented by the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks
as a clumsy waste of time. They were practical business men
and could not spend hours engraving two or three letters.
They set to work and invented a new system of writing which
was greatly superior to the old one. They borrowed a few
pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number of
the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed
the pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed
and they reduced the thousands of different images to a short
and handy alphabet of twenty-two letters.

In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the
iEgean Sea and entered Greece. The Greeks added a few
letters of their own and carried the improved system to Italy.
The Romans modified the figures somewhat and in turn taught
them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those wild
barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why
this book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin
and not in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-
script of the Sumerians.

THE INDO-EUROPEANS

THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER

THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN

WORLD

The world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoe-
nicia had existed almost thirty centuries and the venerable
races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their
doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared
upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race,
because it conquered not only Europe but also made itself the
ruling class in the country which is now known as British India.

These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites
but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the
common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception
of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of North-
ern Spain.

When we first hear of them, they had been living along the
shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day
they had packed their tents and they had wandered forth in
search of a new home. Some of them had moved into the
mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had
lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and
that is why we call them Aryans. Others had followed the
setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains of
Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece
and Rome.

THE INDO-EUROPEANS

For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the
leadership of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great
teacher many of them had left their mountain homes to follow
the swiftly flowing Indus river on its way to the sea.

Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western
Asia and there they had founded the half-independent com-
munities of the Medes and the Persians, two peoples whose

THE STORY OF A WORD

names we have copied from the old Greek history-books. In
the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the Medes had
established a kingdom of their own called Media, but this
perished when Cyrus, the chief of a clan known as the Anshan,
made himself king of all the Persian tribes and started upon
al career of conquest which soon made him and his children the
undisputed masters of the whole of western Asia and of Egj^pt.
Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians
push their triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon

THE STORY OF MANKIND

THE INDO-EUROPEANS 47

found themselves in serious difficulties with certain other Indo-
European tribes which centuries before had moved into Europe
and had taken possession of the Greek peninsula and the islands
of the -^gean Sea.

These difficulties led to the three famous wars between
Greece and Persia during which King Darius and King
Xerxes of Persia invaded the northern part of the peninsula.
They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and tried very hard to
get a foothold upon the European continent.

But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens
proved unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies
of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the
Asiatic rulers to return to their base.

It was the tirst encounter between Asia, the ancient
teacher, and Europe, the young and eager pupil. A great
many of the other chapters of this book will tell you how the
struggle between east and west has continued until this very
day.

THE .EGEAN SEA

THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED

THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO

THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE

When Heinrich Schlie-
mann was a little boy his
father told him the story of
Troy. He liked that story
better than anything else he
had ever heard and he made
up his mind, that as soon as he
was big enough to leave home,
he would travel to Greece and
"find Troy." That he was the
son of a poor country parson
in a Mecklenburg village did
not bother him. He knew
that he would need money but
he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging after-
wards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune
within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to
equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia
Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated.

In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high
mound covered with grainfields. According to tradition it had
been the home of Priamus the king of Troy.. Schliemann,

THE TROJAN HORSE

THE ^GEAN SEA

7if4 /J T**B C*Ty

Mt> This fS

SCHLIEMANN DIGS FOR TROY

whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge,
wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he began
to dig. And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his
trench went straight through the heart of the city for which he
was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried
to>\Ti which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy
of which Homer had written. Then something very interest-
ing occurred. If Schliemann had found a few polished stone
hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one
would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such ob-
jects, which people had generally associated with the prehis-
toric men who had lived in these regions before the coming of
the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very
costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was
unknown to the Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that

THE STORY OF MANKIND

fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of
the iEgean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men
who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek
tribes who had invaded their country and had destroyed their
civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost all trace of origi-
nality. And this proved to be the case. In the late seventies of

1^'''^''^^

Dj^

'^^mm

^EK

>3iS%

MYCEN^ IN ARGOLIS

the last century, Schhemann visited the ruins of Mycenee, ruins
which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their
antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a
small round enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful
treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those mysterious
people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and
who had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that
the Greeks called them the work of the Titans, those god-hke

THE JSGEAN SEA

giants who in very olden days had used to play ball with
mountain peaks.

A very careful study of these many relics has done away
with some of the romantic features of the story. The makers
of these early works of art and the builders of these strong
fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders.
They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the

THE iEGEAN SEA

^gean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they had
turned the iEgean into a center of commerce for the exchange
of goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly de-
veloping wilderness of the European mainland.

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an
island empire which had developed a very high form of art.
Indeed their most important city, Cnossus, on the northern
coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its insistence upon
hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly drained
and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians

THE STORY OP MANKIND

Al(Kfif

^'''W4 --^^

T/fS '/SJLAa/J>J i^ff/CM
Of

^^J3

C^/»

t^J^-^

^■•-<i^-''^

JA^os

KHq^os

2^^»£><7e 3

#iJiw'iiiniIil*'i|P~'TTiw'''7»^^

THE ISLAND-BRIDGES BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE

THE iEGEAN SEA 53

had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto
unknown bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous
for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall. The
cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain
and the olive-oil were stored, had been so vast and had so
greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that they had given
rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we give
to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is
almost impossible to find our way out, once the front door has
closed upon our frightened selves.

But what finally became of this great JEgean Empire and
what caused its sudden downfall, that I can not tell.

The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no
one has yet been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their
history therefore is unknown to us. We have to reconstruct
the record of their adventures from the ruins which the
iEgeans have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the
iEgean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised race
which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe.
Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were
responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the iEgean
civilisation were none other than certain tribes of wandering
shepherds who had just taken possession of the rocky penin-
sula between the Adriatic and the iEgean seas and who are
known to us as Greeks.

THE GREEKS

MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE

OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING

POSSESSION OF GREECE

The Pyramids were a thousand years old and were begin-
ning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the
wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several cen-
turies, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along

AN vEGEAN CITY ON THE GREEK MAINLAND
54

THE GREEKS

THE ACHiGANS TAKE AN iEGEAN CITY

the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in
search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes,
after Hellen, the son of Deucahon and Pyrrha, According
to the old mj-ths these were the only two human beings who
had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had
destroyed all the people of the world, when they had grown
so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God, who lived
on Mount Olympus.

Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides,
the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest an-
cestors, said that they "did not amount to very much," and
this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They
lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild
dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little respect
for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the
Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole
their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and
daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage
of the clan of the Achaeans, who had led the Hellenic advance-
guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Pelopcmnesui.

56 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw
the castles of the iEgeans and those they did not attack for
they feared the metal swords and the spears of the -^gean
soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them with
their clumsy stone axes.

For many centuries they continued to wander from valley
to valley and from mountain side to mountain side. Then the
whole of the land had been occupied and the migration had
come to an end.

That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The
Greek farmer, living within sight of the ^gean colonies,
was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours.
He discovered that he could learn many useful things from
the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycense and
Tiryns.

He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered
the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the
iEgeans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes. He
came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began
to build little boats for his own use.

And when he had learned everything the iEgeans could

THE FALL OF CNOSSUS

THE GREEKS 67

teach him he turned upon his teachers and drove them back
to their islands. Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the
sea and conquered all the cities of the ^gean. Finally in the
fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged
Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon
the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece,
of the ^gean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy,
the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation,
was destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history
was to begin in all seriousness.

THE GREEK CITIES

THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY

STATES

We modern people love the sound of the word "big." We
pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the "biggest"
country in the world and possess the "biggest" navy and grow
the "biggest" oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in
cities of "millions" of inhabitants and when we are dead we
are buried in the "biggest cemetery of the whole state."

A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk,
would not have known what we meant. "Moderation in all
things" was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress
him at all. And this love of moderation was not merely a
hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the
life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of
their death. It was part of their literature and it made them
build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the
clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets
of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the thea-
tre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to
sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense.

The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their poli-
ticians and in their most popular athletes. When a powerful
runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer
on one foot than any other man in Hellas the people drove him
from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplish-

THE GREEK CITIES 59

ment at which he could be beaten by any common goose.

"That is all very well," you will say, "and no doubt it is a
great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection,
but why should the Greeks have been the only people to de-
velop this quality in olden times?" For an answer I shall
point to the way in which the Greeks lived.

The people of Egjrpt or Mesopotamia had been the "sub-
jects" of a mysterious Supreme Ruler who lived miles and

MOUNT OLYMPUS WHERE THE GODS LIVED

miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the
masses of the population. The Greeks on the other hand,
were "free citizens" of a hundred independent httle "cities"
the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large
modem village. When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he
was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of milhons of
other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular
moment happened to be master of western Asia. But when
a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian or a Theban
he spoke of a small town, which was both his home and his

60 THE STORY OF MANKIND

country and which recognised no master but the will of the
people in the market-place.

To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was
born; where he had spent his earliest years playing hide and
seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis ; where he had
grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and girls,
whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own
schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father
and mother lay buried. It was the small house within the high
city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was
a complete world which covered no more than four or five
acres of rocky land. Don't you see how these surroundings
must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and
thought? The people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt
had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in the multi-
tude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with
his immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a
little town where everybody knew every one else. He felt
that his intelligent neighbours were watching him. Whatever
he did, whether he wrote plays or made statues out of marble
or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going
to be judged by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who
knew about such things. This knowledge forced him to strive
after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from
childhood, was not possible without moderation.

In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many
things. They created new forms of government and new forms
of literature and new ideals in art which we have never been
able to surpass. They performed these miracles in little vil-
lages that covered less ground than four or five modern city
blocks.

And look, what finally happened!

In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Mace-
donia conquered the world. As soon as he had done with
fighting, Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits
of the true Greek genius upon all mankind. He took it away
from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make

THE GREEK CITIES «1

it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of
his newly acquired Empire. But the Greeks, removed from
the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the well-
known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once
lost the cheerful joy and the marvellous sense of moderation
which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while
they laboured for the glory of their old city-states. They be-
came cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The day
the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and
were forced to become part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit
died. And it has been dead ever since.

GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT

THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO

TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF

SELF-GOVERNMENT

In the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and
equally poor. Every man had owned a certain number of
cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his castle. He had
been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever it was nec-
essary to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens
had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the
village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that
everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of war,
a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen
commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily
given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal
right to deprive him of his job, once the danger had been
averted.

But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some
people had worked hard and others had been lazy. A few
had been unlucky and still others had been just plain dishon-
est in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth.
As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men
who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited
by a small class of very rich people and a large class of very
poor ones.

There had been another change. The old commander-in-

GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT

chief who had been willingly recognised as "headman" or
"King" because he knew how to lead his men to victorj-, had
disappeared from the scene. His place had been taken by the
nobles — a class of rich people who during the course of time
had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates.

These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common
crowd of freemen. They were able to buy the best weapons
which were to be found on the market of the eastern Mediter-
ranean. They had much spare time in which they could prac-

A GREEK CITY-STATE

tise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built houses
and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were con-
stantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should
rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of
Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until
he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious
nobleman.

Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a
"Tyrant" and during the seventh and sixth centuries before
our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants,
many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly capa-

64 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ble men. But in the long run, this state of aifairs became un-
bearable. Then attempts were made to bring about reforms
and out of these reforms grew the first democratic government
of which the world has a record.

It was early in the seventh century that the people of
Athens decided to do some housecleaning and give the large
number of freemen once more a voice in the government as
they were supposed to have had in the days of their Achaean
ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to pro-
vide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against
the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to work. Unfortu-
nately he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch
with ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when
he had finished his code, the people of Athens discovered that
these Draconian laws were so severe that they could not pos-
sibly be put into effect. There would not have been rope
enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of
jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital
offence.

The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer.
At last they found some one who could do that sort of thing
better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged
to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and
had studied the forms of government of many other countries.
After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set
of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of
moderation which was part of the Greek character. He tried
to improve the condition of the peasant without however de-
stroying the prosperity of the nobles who were (or rather who
could be) of such great service to the state as soldiers. To pro-
tect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges
(who were always elected from the class of the nobles because
they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a
citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before
a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians.

Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman
to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city.

GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT 65

No longer could he stay at home and say "oh, I am too busy
today" or "it is raining and I had better stay indoors." He
was expected to do his share; to be at the meeting of the town
council; and carry part of the responsibility for the safety and
the prosperity of the state.

This government by the "demos," the people, was often far
from successful. There was too much idle talk. There were
too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official
honor. But it taught the Greek people to be independent and
to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that was a very
good thing.

GREEK LIFE

HOW THE GREEKS LIVED

But how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time
to look after their families and their business if they were
forever rimning to the market-place to discuss affairs of state?
In this chapter I shall tell you.

In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recog-
nised only one class of citizens — the freemen. Every Greek
city was composed of a small number of free bom citizens, a
large number of slaves and a sprinkling of foreigners.

At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were
needed for the army) the Greeks showed themselves willing to
confer the rights of citizenship upon the "barbarians" as they
called the foreigners. But this was an exception. Citizenship
was a matter of birth. You were an Athenian because your
father and your grandfather had been Athenians before you.
But however great your merits as a trader or a soldier, if you
were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained a "for-
eigner" until the end of time.

The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a
king or a tyrant, was run by and for the freemen, and this
would not have been possible without a large army of slaves
who outnumbered the free citizens at the rate of six or five
to one and who performed those tasks to which we modem
people must devote most of our time and energy if we wish to
provide for our families and pay the rent of our apartments.

GREEK LIFE

The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick
making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the car-
penters and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the book-
keepers and they tended the store and looked after the factory
while the master went to the public meeting to discuss ques-
tions of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest
play of iEschylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas

GREEK SOCIETY

of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon
the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.

Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modern club. All the
freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves
were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their
masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the or-
ganisation.

But when we talk about slaves, we do not mean the sort of

68 THE STORY OF JVIANKIND

people about whom you have read in the pages of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin." It is true that the position of those slaves who
tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average
freeman who had come down in the world and who had been
obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miser-
able a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were
more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For
the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to
treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so
common in Rome, where a slave had as few rights as an engine
in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals
upon the smallest pretext.

The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution,
without which no city could possibly become the home of a truly
civilised people.

The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are
performed by the business men and the professional men. As
for those household duties which take up so much of the time
of your mother and which worry your father when he comes
home from his office, the Greeks, who understood the value of
leisure, had reduced such duties to the smallest possible mini-
mum by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity.

To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich
nobles spent their lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked
all the comforts which a modern workman expects as his natu-
ral right. A Greek home consisted of four walls and a roof.
There was a door which led into the street but there were no
windows. The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping quar-
ters were built around an open courtyard in which there was a
small fountain, or a statue and a few plants to make it look
bright. Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not
rain or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the
cook (who was a slave) prepared the meal and in another
corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children
the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in
still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her

THE TRVJPI.R

GREEK LIFE 69

domain (since it was not considered good form for a married
woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her
husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and
in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting
the accounts which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave)
had just brought to him.

When dinner was ready the family came together but the
meal was a very simple one and did not take much time. The
Greeks seem to have regarded eating as an unavoidable evil
and not a pastime, which kills many dreary hours and eventu-
ally kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and on
wine, with a little meat and some green vegetables. They
drank water only when nothing else was available because
they did not think it very healthy. They loved to call on each
other for dinner, but our idea of a festive meal, where every-
body is supposed to eat much more than is good for him, would
have disgusted them. They came together at the table for
the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water,
but as they were moderate people they despised those who
drank too much.

The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room
also dominated their choice of clothes. They liked to be clean
and well groomed, to have their hair and beards neatly cut,
to feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the swimming
of the gymnasium, but they never followed the Asiatic fashion
which prescribed loud colours and strange patterns. They
wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart as
a modern Italian officer in his long blue cape.

They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they
thought it very vulgar to display their wealth (or their wives)
in public and whenever the women left their home they were as
inconspicuous as possible.

In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of mod-
eration but also of simplicity. "Things," chairs and tables and
books and houses and carriages, are apt to take up a great
deal of their owner's time. In the end they invariably make

70 THE STORY OF MANKIND

him their slave and his hours are spent looking after their
wants, keeping them polished and brushed and painted. The
Greeks, before everything else, wanted to be "free," both in
mind and in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and
be truly free in spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the
lowest possible point.

THE GREEK THEATRE

THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST
FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT

At a very early stage of their history the Greeks had be-
gun to collect the poems, which had been written in honor of
their brave ancestors who had driven the Pelasgians out of
Hellas and had destroyed the power of Troy. These poems were
recited in public and everybody came to listen to them. But
the theatre, the form of entertainment which has become almost
a necessary part of our own lives, did not grow out of these
recited heroic tales. It had such a curious origin that I must
tell you something about it in a separate chapter.

The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every
year they held solemn processions in honor of Dicwiysos the
God of the wine. As everj'body in Greece drank wine (the
Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose of swimming
and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a God
of the Soda-Fountain would be in our own land.

And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the
vineyards, amidst a merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures
who were half man and half goat), the crowd that joined the
procession used to wear goat-skins and to hee-haw like real
billy-goats. The Greek word for goat is "tragos" and the
Greek word for singer is "oidos." The singer who meh-mehed
like a goat therefore was called a "tragos-oidos" or goat singer,
and it is this strange name which developed into the modern

72 THE STORY OF MANKIND

word "Tragedy," which means m the theatrical sense a piece
with an unhappy ending, just as Comedy (which really means
the singing of something "comos" or gay) is the name given
to a play which ends happily.

But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masquer-
aders, stamping around like wild goats, ever develop into the
noble tragedies which have filled the theatres of the world for
almost two thousand years?

The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is
really verj^ simple as I shall show you in a moment.

The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and
attracted large crowds of spectators who stood along the side
of the road and laughed. But soon this business of hee-hawing
grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an evil only
comparable to ugliness or sickness. They asked for some-
thing more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from
the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved
a tremendous success. He made one of the members of the
goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the
leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade
playing upon their pipes of Pan. This individual was al-
lowed to step out of line. He waved his arms and gesticulated
while he spoke (that is to say he "acted" while the others merely
stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the
bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon
which the poet had written down these answers before the
show began.

This rough and ready conversation — ^the dialogue — which
told the story of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became
at once popular with the crowd. Henceforth every Diony-
sian procession had an "acted scene" and very soon the "acting"
was considered more important than the procession and the
meh-mehing.

iEschylus, the most successful of all "tragedians" who wrote
no less than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455)
made a bold step forward when he introduced two "actors"
instead of one. A generation later Sophocles increased the

THE GREEK THEATRE 75

number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write
his terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C.,
he was allowed as many actors as he liked and when Aristo-
phanes wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun at
everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olym-
pus, the chorus had been reduced to the role of mere by-
standers who were lined up behind the principal performers
and who sang "this is a terrible world" while the hero in the
foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods.

This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a
proper setting, and soon everj' Greek city owned a theatre, cut
out of the rock of a nearby hill. The spectators sat upon
wooden benches and faced a wide circle (our present orches-
tra where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for a seat).
Upon this half-circle, which was the stage, the actors and the
chorus took their stand. Behind them there was a tent where
they made up with large clay masks which hid their faces and
which showed the spectators whether the actors were supposed
to be happy and smiling or unhappy and weeping. The Greek
word for tent is "skene" and that is the reason why we talk
of the "scenery" of the stage.

When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the
people took it very seriously and never went to the theatre to
give their minds a vacation. A new play became as impor-
tant an event as an election and a successful plaj'wright was
received with greater honors than those bestowed upon a gen-
eral who had just returned from a famous victory.

THE PERSIAN WARS

HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE
AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE
THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE .EGE AN
SEA

The Greeks had learned the art of trading from the
iEgeans who had been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They
had founded colonies after the Phoenician pattern. They had
even improved upon the Phoenician methods by a more general
use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In the sixth
century before our era they had established themselves firmly
along the coast of Asia ]Minor and they were taking away
trade from the Phoenicians at a fast rate. This the Phoeni-
cians of course did not like but they were not strong enough to
risk a war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited
nor did they wait in vain.

In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe
of Persian shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and
had conquered the greater part of western Asia. The Per-
sians were too civilised to plunder their new subjects. They
contented themselves with a yearly tribute. When they
reached the coast of Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek
colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian Kings as their over-
Lords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies
objected. The Persians insisted. Then the Greek colonies

THE PERSIAN WARS

appealed to the home-country and the stage was set for a
quarrel.

For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the
Greek city-states as very dangerous political institutions and
bad examples for all other people who were supposed to be the
patient slaves of the mighty Persian Kings.

Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety be-
cause their country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the

THE PERSIAN FLEET IS DESTROYED NEAR MOUNT ATHOS

iEgean. But here their old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped
forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians. If the
Persian King would provide the soldiers, the Phoenicians would
guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry them to
Europe. It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and
Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe.

As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers
to the Greeks asking for "earth and water" as a token of their
submission. The Greeks promptly threw the messengers into
the nearest well where they would find both "earth and water"
in large abundance and thereafter of course peace was im-
possible.

THE STORY OF MANKIND

But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their chil-
dren and when the Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops
was near Mount Athos, the Storm-God blew his cheeks until
he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet was de-
stroyed by a terrible hurricane and the Persians were all
drowned.

Two years later more Persians came. This time they
sailed across the iEgean Sea and landed near the village of

THE BATTLE OF MARATHON

Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this they sent
their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that sur-
rounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they des-
patched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta
was envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come to her
assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with
the exception of tiny Plataea which sent a thousand men. On
the twelfth of September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athen-
ian commander, threw this little army against the hordes of the

THE PERSIAN WARS 77

Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian barrage of
arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disor-
ganised Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to re-
sist such an enemy.

That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow
red with the flames of burning ships. Anxiously they waited
for news. At last a little cloud of dust appeared upon the
road that led to the North. It was Pheidippides, the runner.
He stumbled and gasped for his end was near. Only a few
days before had he returned from his errand to Sparta. He
had hastened to join Miltiades, That morning he had taken
part in the attack and later he had volunteered to carry the
news of victory to his beloved city. The people saw him fall
and they rushed forward to support him. "We have won,"
he whispered and then he died, a glorious death which made him
envied of all men.

As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land
near Athens but they found the coast guarded and disap-
peared, and once more the land of Hellas was at peace.

Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks
were not idle. They knew that a final attack was to be expected
but they did not agree upon the best way to avert the danger.
Some people wanted to increase the army. Others said that
a strong fleet was necessary for success. The two parties led by
Aristides (for the army) and Themistocles (the leader of the
bigger-navy men) fought each other bitterly and nothing was
done until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his
chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus
into a strong naval base.

In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared
in Thessaly, a province of northern Greece. In this hour of
danger, Sparta, the great military city of Greece, was elected
commander-in-chief. But the Spartans cared little what hap-
pened to northern Greece pro\nded their own country was not
invaded. They neglected to fortify the passes that led into
Greece.

THE STORY OF IVL\NKIND

A small detachment of Spar«
tans under Leonidas had been
told to guard the narrow road be-
tween the high mountains and
the sea which connected Thessaly
with the southern provinces.
Leonidas obeyed his orders. He
fought and held the pass with
unequalled bravery. But a
traitor by the name of Ephialtes
who knew the little bj^vays of
Malis guided a regiment of Per-
sians through the hills and made
it possible for them to attack
Leonidas in the rear. Xear the
Warm Wells — the Thermopylae
— a terrible battle was fought.

When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead

under the corpses of their enemies.

But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece

fell into the hands of the Persians. They marched upon

Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of the Acropolis and

THERMOPYLAE

ncHBi T*inQ**cM The /lOov^r^ »a/s

THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE

THE PERSIAN WARS

burned the city. The people fled to the Island of Salamis. All
seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480
Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the
narrow straits which separated the Island of Salamis from the
mainland and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters
of the Persian ships.

In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught.

THE PERSIANS BURN ATHENS

Xerxes was forced to retire. The next year, so he decreed,
would bring a final decision. He took his troops to Thessaly
and there he waited for spring.

But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of
the hour. They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had
built across the isthmus of Corinth and under the leadership
of Pausanias they marched against Mardonius the Persian
general. The united Greeks (some one hundred thousand men
from a dozen different cities) attacked the three hundred thou-

80 THE STORY OF MANKIND

sand men of the enemy near Plataea. Once more the heavy
Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows.
The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and
this time they left for good. By a strange coincidence, the
same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea,
the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape My-
cale in Asia Minor.

Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end.
Athens had covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought
bravely and well. If these two cities had been able to come to
an agreement, if they had been willing to forget their little
jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and
united Hellas.

But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm
to slip by, and the same opportunity never returned.

HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG
AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADER-
SHIP OF GREECE

Athens and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people
spoke a common language. In every other respect they were
different. Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city
exposed to tlie fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at
the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other
hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the
surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought.
Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp
where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The
people of Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or
listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the
other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered litera-
ture, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they
sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military pre-
paredness.

No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success
of Athens with malicious hate. The energy which the defence of
the common home had developed in Athens was now used for
purposes of a more peaceful nature. The Acropolis was re-
built and was made into a marble shrine to the Goddess Athena.
Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and
wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists to

82 THE STORY OF MANKIND

make the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more
worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful
eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens
with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day.

An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led
to the final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens
and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for
Athens.

During the third year of the war the plague had entered
the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great
leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period
of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fel-
low by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the
popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan
colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and
everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street
brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him
was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his
army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the
stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and
thirst.

The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens.
The city was doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered
in April of the year 404. The high walls were demolished.
The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to
exist as the center of the great colonial empire which it had
conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that won-
derful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which
had distinguished her free citizens during the days of great-
ness and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the
ships. It continued to live. It became even more brilliant.

Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece.
But now, as the home of the first great university the city be-
gan to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond
the narrow frontiers of Hellas.

ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTAB-
LISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND
WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION

When the Achseans had left their homes along the banks of
the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some
time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the
Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations
with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians
from their side had kept themselves well informed about con-
ditions in Greece.

Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had fin-
ished their disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that
Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by
the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and
art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political
affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its
men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the
difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then
he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he
meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes
had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before.

Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start
upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the
destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the
beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers.

84 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the
year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached India. In the
meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek
merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped
by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the
Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king — he had
overthrown the Persian empire — he had given orders to re-
build Babylon — he had led his troops into the heart of the
Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a JMace-
donian province and dependency. Then he stopped and an-
nounced even more ambitious plans.

The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influ-
ence of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek
language — they must live in cities built after a Greek model.
The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master. The mili-
tary camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the
newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher did the
flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when sud-
denly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old
palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323.

Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile
clay of a higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish
ambitions and his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable
service. His Empire did not long survive him. A number of
ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves.
But they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world
brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge.

They maintained their independence until the Romans
added western Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The
strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek,
part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the
Roman conquerors. During the following centuries, it got
such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel its in-
fluence in our own lives this very day.

GREECE

A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20

Thus far, from the top of our high tower we have been
looking eastward. But from this time on, the history of Egypt
and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must
take you to study the western landscape.

Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to
ourselves what we have seen.

First of all I showed you prehistoric man — a creature very
simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I
told you how he was the most defenceless of the many animals
that roamed through the early wilderness of the five continents,
but being possessed of a larger and better brain, he managed to
hold his own.

Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold
weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was
obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished
to survive. Since, however, that "wish to survive" was (and is)
the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to
the last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to
work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people man-
age to exist through the long cold spells which killed many
ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and com-
fortable once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of
things which gave him such great advantages over his less in-
telligent neighbors that the danger of extinction (a very serious

86 THE STORY OF IMANKIND

one during the first half million years of man's residence upon
this planet) became a very remote one.

I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly
plodding along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not
wxll understood) the people who lived in the valley of the Nile
rushed ahead and almost over night, created the first centre of
civilisation.

Then I showed you Mesopotamia, "the land between the
rivers," which was the second great school of the human race.
And I made you a map of the little island bridges of the iEgean
Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of the old
east to the young west, where lived the Greeks.

Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hel-
lenes, who thousands of years before had left the heart of
Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed
their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who, since
then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told
you the story of the little Greek cities that were really states,
where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured
(that is a big word, but you can "figure out" what it means)
into something quite new, something that was much noblpir and
finer than anything that had gone before.

When you look at the map j^ou will see how by this time
civilisation has described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt,
and by way of Mesopotamia and the JEgean Islands it moves
westward until it reaches the European continent. The first
four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoeni-
cians and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember
that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peo-
ples) have carried the torch that was to illuminate the world.
They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who be-
come the teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the
Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward
along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves
the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when
the eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) pos-
session.

A SUMMARY 87

This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible con-
flict between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises
the victorious Roman Empire, which is to take this Egj-ptian-
Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost corners of
the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon
which our modem society is based.

I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold
of these few principles, the rest of our history will become a
great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words
fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go back to
our storj' and give you an account of the famous war between
Carthage and Rome.

THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE
NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE
INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE
WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH
OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE
WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTH-
AGE WAS DESTROYED

The little Phoenician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood
on a low hill which overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of
water ninety miles wide which separates Africa from Europe.
It was an ideal spot for a commercial centre. Almost too ideal.
It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the sixth cen-
tury before our era, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed
Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with the Mother
Country and became an independent state — the great western
advance-post of the Semitic races.

Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits
which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the
Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a
strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life.
The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies
were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group of
rich men. The Greek word for rich is "ploutos" and the Greeks

ROME AND CARTHAGE

called such a government by "rich men" a "Plutocracy." Car-
thage was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in
the hands of a dozen big ship-owners and mine-owners and
merchants who met in the back room of an office and regarded
their common Fatherland as a business enterprise which ought

CARTHAGE

to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide awake
and full of energy and worked very hard.

As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her
neighbours increased until the greater part of the African
coast, Spain and certain regions of France were Carthaginian
possessions, and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the mighty
city on the African Sea,

Of course, such a "plutocracy** was forever at the mercy of

THE STORY OF MANKIND

the crowd. As long as there was plenty of work and wages
were high, the majority of the citizens were quite contented,
allowed their "betters" to rule them and asked no embarrassing
questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore
was brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and

THE
or

U o M e

AMJ»

carthace .

SPHERES OF INFLUENCE

stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were
grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly
be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had
been a self-governing republic.

To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged
to keep the business of the town going at full speed. They
had managed to do this very successfully for almost five hun-

ROME AND CARTHAGE 91

dred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain rumors
which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was
said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had sud-
denly risen to great power and was making itself the acknowl-
edged leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy.
It was also said that this village, which by the way was called
Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of
Sicily and the southern coast of France.

Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The
young rival must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers
lose their prestige as the absolute rulers of the western Medi-
terranean. The rumors were duly investigated and in a gen-
eral way these were the facts that came to light.

The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civili-
sation. Whereas in Greece all the good harbours faced east-
ward and enjoyed a full view of the busy islands of the ^gean,
the west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting
than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country
was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants
and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession
of their hills and their marshy plains.

The first serious invasion of this land came from the north.
At an unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had man-
aged to find their way through the passes of the Alps and had
pushed southward until they had filled the heel and the toe of
the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks.
Of these early conquerors we know nothing. No Homer sang
their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome
(written eight hundred years later when the little city had be-
come the centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not be-
long in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each
other's walls (I always forget who jumped across whose wall)
make entertaining reading, but the foundation of the City of
Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a thou-
sand American cities have done, by being a convenient place
for barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains

THE STORY OF MANKIND

tl&IA. "^fS CtTjf Of r^OMe. HA f>^tF/^B^.

JBL TMC FoRTine^ CiTy J>o f»t i az/at e,^^n e Ro^j>.

,j36^^^V

HOW THE CITY OF ROME HAPPENED

ROME AND CARTHAGE 9S

of central Italy. The Tiber provided direct access to the sea.
The land-road from north to south found here a convenient
ford which could be used all the year around. And seven little
hills along the banks of the river oflPered the inhabitants a safe
shelter against their enemies who lived in the mountains and
those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea.

The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a
rough crowd with an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they
were very backward. They used stone axes and wooden
shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel
swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous
foes. They were called the Etruscans and they were (and
still are) one of the great mysteries of history. Nobody knew
(or knows) whence they came; who they were; what had driven
them away from their original homes. We have found the re-
mains of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks
all along the Itahan coast. We are familiar with their inscrip-
tions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the Etrus-
can alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely an-
noying and not at all useful.

Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from
Asia Minor and that a great war or a pestilence in that coun-
try had forced them to go away and seek a new home elsewhere.
Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans played a
great role in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient
civilisation from the east to the west and they taught the
Romans who, as we know, came from the north, the first prin-
ciples of architecture and street-building and fighting and art
and cookery and medicine and astronomy.

But just as the Greeks had not loved their JEge&n teachers,
in this same way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters.
They got rid of them as soon as they could and the oppor-
tunity offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the
commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek
vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they
stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inliabited the

94 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Roman country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite
willing to learn such things as might be of practical use. At
once they understood the great benefit that could be derived
from a written alphabet and they copied that of the Greeks.
They also understood the commercial advantages of a well-
regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventu-
ally the Romans swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and
sinker.

They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their
country. Zeus was taken to Rome where he became known as
Jupiter and the other divinities followed him. The Roman Gods
however never were quite like their cheerful cousins who had ac-
companied the Greeks on their road through life and through
history. The Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each
one managed his own department with great prudence and a
deep sense of justice, but in turn he was exact in demanding the
obedience of his worshippers. This obedience the Romans ren-
dered with scrupulous care. But they never established the
cordial personal relations and that charming friendship which
had existed between the old Hellenes and the mighty residents
of the high Olympian peak.

The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of govern-
ment, but being of the same Indo-European stock as the peo-
ple of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of
Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it diffi-
cult to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient
tribal chieftains. But once the kings had been driven from
the city, the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the
nobles, and it took many centuries before they managed to
establish a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a
chance to take a personal interest in the affairs of his town.

Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over
the Greeks. They managed the affairs of their country with-
out making too many speeches. They were less imaginative
than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a
pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multi-

ROME AND CARTHAGE 95

tude (the "plebs," as the assemblage of free citizens was called)
only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They
therefore placed the actual business of running the city into
the hands of two "consuls" who were assisted by a council of
Elders, called the Senate (because the word "senex" means an
old man) . As a matter of custom and practical advantage the
senators were elected from the nobility. But their power had
been strictly defined.

Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of
struggle between the poor and the rich which had forced
Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon. In Rome this
conflict had occurred in the fifth century b. c. As a result the
freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected
them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the
institution of the "Tribune." These Tribunes were city-magis-
trates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect
any citizen against those actions of the government officials
which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to
condemn a man to death, but if the case had not been abso-
lutely proved the Tribune could interfere and save the poor
fellow's life.

But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little
city of a few thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of
Rome lay in the country districts outside her walls. And it
was in the government of these outlying provinces that Rome
at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonising
power.

In very early times Rome had been the only strongly for-
tified city in central Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable
refuge to other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of
attack. The Latin neighbours had recognised the advantages
of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried
to find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alli-
ance. Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians,
even Greeks, would have insisted upon a treaty of submission
on the part of the "barbarians." The Romans did nothing of

96 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the sort. They gave the "outsider" a chance to become part-
ners in a common "res pubhca" — or common-wealth.

"You want to join us," they said. "Very well, go ahead
and join. We shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citi-
zens of Rome. In return for this privilege we expect you to
fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be nec-
essary."

The "outsider" appreciated this generosity and he showed
his gratitude by his unswerving loyalty.

Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign resi-
dents had moved out as quickly as they could. Why defend
something which meant nothing to them but a temporary
boarding house in which they were tolerated as long as they
paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates
of Rome, all the Latins rushed to her defence. It was their
Mother who was in danger. It was their true "home" even if
they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the walls
of the sacred Hills.

No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In
the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced
their way into Italy. They had defeated the Roman army near
the River Allia and had marched upon the city. They had
taken Rome and then they expected that the people would
come and sue for peace. They waited, but nothing happened.
After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by
a hostile population which made it impossible for them to obtain
supplies. After seven months, hunger forced them to with-
draw. The policy of Rome to treat the "foreigner" on equal
terms had proved a great success and Rome stood stronger than
ever before.

This short account of the early history of Rome shows you
the enormous difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy
state, and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the
town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful
and hearty co-operation between a number of "equal citi-
zens." The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt

ROME AND CARTHAGE

and western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and there-
fore unwilling) obedience of "Subjects" and when these failed
they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them.

You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear
such a clever and powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of
Carthage was only too willing to pick a quarrel that they might
destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late.

But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that

A FAST ROMAN WARSHIP

it never pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans
that their respective cities draw two circles on the map and
that each town claim one of these circles as her own ''sphere
of influence" and promise to keep out of the other fellow's cir-
cle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken just
as promptly when both sides thought it wise to send their
armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government in-
vited foreign interference.

The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War)
lasted twenty-four years. It was fought out on the high seas
and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Car-

98 THE STORY OF MANKIND

thaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet.
Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would
either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side
they would break their oars and would then kill the sailors of
the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls. But
Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a board-
ing bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the
hostile ship. Then there was a sudden end to Carthaginian
victories. At the battle of Mylae their fleet was badly defeated.
Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and Sicily became part
of the Roman domains.

Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in
quest of copper) had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage
(in quest of silver) thereupon occupied all of southern Spain.
This made Carthage a direct neighbour of the Romans. The
latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to
cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian army of occu-
pation.

The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two
rivals. Once more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war.
The Carthaginians were besieging Saguntum on the east coast
of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and Rome, as
usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of
the Latin armies, but the preparation for this expedition took
some time, and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had
been destroyed. This had been done in direct opposition to
the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman
army was to cross the African sea and make a landing on Car-
thaginian soil. A second division was to keep the Carthaginian
armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing to the
aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and every-
body expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided
otherwise.

It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ
and the Roman army which was to attack the Carthaginians in
Spain had left Italy. People were eagerly waiting for news of

ROME AND CARTHAGK

HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS

100 THE STORY OF IMANKIND

an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumour began to
spread through the plain of the Po. Wild mountaineers, their
lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of
brown men accompanied by strange beasts "each one as big as
a house," who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow
which surrounded the old Graian pass through which Hercules,
thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on
his way from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of
bedraggled refugees appeared before the gates of Rome, with
more complete details. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, with
fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and thirty-
seven fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had
defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone
and he had guided his army safely across the mountain passes
of the Alps although it was October and the roads were thickly
covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with
the Gauls and together they had defeated a second Roman
army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege to
Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which connected
Rome with the province of the Alpine districts.

The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual,
hushed up the news of these many defeats and sent two fresh
armies to stop the invader. Hannibal managed to surprise
these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the Trasi-
mene Lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most
of their men. This time there was a panic among the people
of Rome, but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was
organised and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Max-
imus with full power to act "as was necessary to save the state."

Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost.
His raw and untrained men, the last available soldiers, were
no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle
but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eat-
able, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and gen-
erally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a
most distressing and annoying form of guerilla warfare.

ROME AND CARTHAGE

101

lOa THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds
who had found safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted
"action." Something must be done and must be done quickly.
A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of man who
went about the city telling everybody how much better he could
do things than slow old Fabius, the "Delayer," was made
commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the battle of
Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman
histor}^ More than seventy thousand men were killed. Han-
nibal was master of all Italy.

He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other,
proclaiming himself the "deliverer from the yoke of Rome"
and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon
the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore
noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all
Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer,
found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pre-
tended to be. He was far away from home and did not like
the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh
supplies and new men. Alas, Carthage could not send him
either.

The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the mas-
ters of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best he could.
He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out
against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and
the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed "de-
liverer."

After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal
found himself besieged in the country which he had just con-
quered. For a moment, the luck seemed to turn. Hasdnibal,
his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had
crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's assistance. He sent
messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and ask the other
army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unfortunately the
messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal
waited in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly

ROME AND CARTHAGE

103

packed in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him
of the fate of the last of the Carthaginian troops.

With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio
easily reconquered Spain and four years later the Romans
were ready for a final attack upon Carthage. Hannibal was
called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to organise
the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle
of Zama, the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to
Tyre. From there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians
and the Macedonians against Rome. He accomplished very
little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the
Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of
the east and annex the greater part of the ^gean world.

Driven from one city to an-
other, a fugitive without a home.

mrn^ : ^--.i^

Hannibal at last knew that the
end of his ambitious dream had
come. His beloved city of Car-
thage had been ruined by the
war. She had been forced to
sign a terrible peace. Her navy
had been sunk. She had been
forbidden to make war without
Roman permission. She had
been condemned to pay the Ro-
mans millions of dollars for end-
less years to come. Life offered
no hope of a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took
poison and killed himself.

Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon
Carthage. Three long years the inhabitants of the old Phoeni-
cian colony held out against the power of the new republic.
Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women
who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city was
set on fire. For two whole weeks the store-houses and the pal-

THE DEATH OF HANNIBAL

104 THE STORY OF MANKIND

aces and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was
pronounced upon the blackened ruins and tlie Roman legions
returned to Italy to enjoy their victory.

For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained
a European sea. But as soon as the Roman Empire had been
destroyed, Asia made another attempt to dominate this great
inland sea, as you will learn when I tell you about Mohammed.

HOW ROJME HAPPENED

The Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it.
It "happened." No famous general or statesman or cut-
throat ever got up and said "Friends, Romans, Citizens, we
must found an Empire. Follow me and together we shall con-
quer all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Tau-
rus."

Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished
statesmen and cut-throats, and Roman armies fought all over
the world. But the Roman empire-making was done without

/*/«W f?OM£ H/^/*/>e a/ 6J>

,.-•»';.• V""«'''

HOW ROME HAPPENED

106 THE STORY OF MANKIND

a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very matter-
of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When
someone began to recite "eastward the course of Roman Em-
pire, etc., etc.," he hastily left the forum. He just continued
to take more and more land because circumstances forced him
to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both
by nature and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay
at home. But when he was attacked he was obliged to defend
himself and when the enemy happened to cross the sea to ask
for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched
many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this
had been accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster his
newly conquered provinces lest they fall into the hands of
wandering Barbarians and become themselves a menace to
Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated and yet to the
contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a mo-
ment.

In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea
and had carried the war into Africa. Carthage had called Han-
nibal back. Badly supported by his mercenaries, Hannibal
had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for his
surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of
Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter.

The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire
of Alexander the Great) just then were contemplating an ex-
pedition against Egypt. They hoped to divide the rich Nile
valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of
this and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage
was set for a number of highly interesting plots and counter-
plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang
the curtain down before the play had been fairly started.
Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx
which was still used by the Macedonians as their battle forma-
tion. That happened in the year 197 B.C. at the battle in the
plains of Cynoscephalae or "Dogs' Heads," in central Thessaly.

The Romans then marched southward to Attica and in-
formed the Greeks that thev had come to "deliver the Hellenes

THE RISE OF ROME 107

from the Macedonian yoke." The Greeks, having learned
nothing in their years of semi-slaverj% used their new freedom
in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more
began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good
old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less
love for these silly bickerings of a race which they rather de-
spised, showed great forbearance. But tiring of these endless

CIVILIZATION GOES WESTWARD

dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down
Corinth (to ''encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman
governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this
way, Macedonia and Greece became buflFer states which pro-
tected Rome's eastern frontier.

Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of
Syria, and Antiochus III, who niled that vast land, had shown
great eagerness when his distinguished guest, General Han-

108 THE STORY OF MANKIND

nibal, explained to him how easy it would be to invade Italy
and sack the city of Rome.

Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who
had defeated Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was
sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed the armies of the Syrian
king near Magnesia (in the year 190 B.C.) Shortly after-
wards, Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor
became a Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of
Rome was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon
the Mediterranean.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE

HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CEN-
TURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION BE-
CAME AN EMPIRE

When the Roman armies returned from these many vic-
torious campaigns, they were received with great jubilation.
Alas and alack! this sudden glory did not make the country any
happier. On the contrary. The endless campaigns had ruined
the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of Em-
pire making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the
successful generals (and their private friends) who had used
the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery.

The old Roman Republic had l)een proud of the simplicity
which had characterised the lives of her famous men. The
new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high
principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grand-
fathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people
for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to dis-
astrous failure, as I shall now tell you.

Within less than a century and a half. Rome had become
the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediter-
ranean. In those early days of history a prisoner of war lost
his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war as
a very serious business and he sliowed no mercy to a conquered
foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and
children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves.

109

110 THE STORY OF MANKIND

And a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and
Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt
against the Roman power.

Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of
machinery. Nowadays a rich man invests his money in fac-
tories. The rich people of Rome (senators, generals and war-
profiteers) invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land
they bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces. The
slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to
be cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries
before Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the
landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their
tracks, when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-coun-
ter of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives.

And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer!

He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her
battles without complaint. But when he came home after ten,
fifteen or twenty years, his lands were covered with weeds and
his family had been ruined. But he was a strong man and
willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited
for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together
with his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large landowners
who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all
along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own.
Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went
to the nearest city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been
before on the land. But he shared his misery with thousands
of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy
hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt
to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all pro-
foundly discontented. They had fought for their country and
this was their reward. They were always wilKng to listen to
those plausible spell-binders who gather around a public griev-
ance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a
grave menace to the safety of the state.

But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders.
"We have our army and our policemen," they argued, "they

THE ROMAN EMPIRE 111

will keep the mob in order." And they hid themselves behind
the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their gar-
dens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek
slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters.

In a few famihes however the old tradition of unselfish
service to the Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daugh-
ter of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the
name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gaius.
When the boys grew up they entered politics and tried to bring
about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown
that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by
two thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been
elected a Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two
ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a sin-
gle owner might possess. In this way he hoped to revive the
valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The
newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state.
There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the
popular Tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he
entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later
his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation
against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He
passed a "poor law" which was meant to help the destitute
farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman
citizens into professional beggars.

He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts
of the empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right
sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm he
too was murdered and his followers were either killed or exiled.
The first two reformers had been gentlepien. The two who
came after were of a very different stamp. They were pro-
fessional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the
other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following.

Sulla was the leader of the landowners. ^larius, the vic-
tor in a great battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teu-
tons and the Cimbri had been annihilated, was the popular hero
of the disinherited freenuen,

112 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Now it happened in the year 88 b.c. that the Senate of
Rome was greatly disturbed by rumours that came from Asia.
Mithridates, king of a country along the shores of the Black
Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side, had seen the possibility
of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire. He began his
campaign for world-domination with the murder of all Roman
citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women and
children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate
equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and
punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander-in-
chief? "Sulla," said the Senate, "because he is Consul."
"Marius," said the mob, "because he has been Consul fiv-e times
and because he is the champion of our rights."

Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be
in actual command of the army. He went cast to defeat
Mithridates and Marius fled to Africa. There he waited
until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then re-
turned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents,
marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional
highwaymen, spent five days and five nights, slaughtering his
enemies in the Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and
promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight.

There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having
defeated ]Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return
to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own. He was as
good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy executing
those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic
sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who
had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were
going to hang him when some one interfered. "The boy is too
young," he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius
Cassar. You shall meet him again on the next page.

As for Sulla, he became "Dictator," which meant sole and
supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome
for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the
last year of his life tenderly raising bis cabbages, as was the

THE HUMAN EMFIKE 11»

custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing
their fellow-men.

But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they
grew worse. Another general, Gn»us Pompeius, or Pompey,
a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the
ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic poten-
tate into the mountains where Mitliridates took poison and
killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman
captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over
Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia,
trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last
(in the year 62) returned to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of
defeated Kings and Princes and Generals, all of whom were
forced to march in the triumphal procession of this enormously
popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty
million dollars in plunder.

It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed
in the hands of a strong man. Only a few months before, the
town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing
young aristocrat by the name of Catiline, who had gambled
awaj^ his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by
a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had dis-
covered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Cati-
line to flee. But there were other young men with similar am-
bitions and it was no time for idle talk.

Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge
of affairs. He became the leader of this Vigilante Commit-
tee. Gains Julius Ca?sar, who had made a reputation for him-
self as governor of Spain, was the second in command. The
third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus.
He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been
a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon
an expedition against the Parthians and was killed.

As for Cassar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he
decided that he needed a little more military glory to become
a popular hero. He crossed the Alps and conquered that part
of the world which is now called France. Then he hammered

114 THE STORY OF MANKIND

a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land
of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and visited England,
Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been
forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had
been appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that
Caesar was to be placed on the list of the "retired officers," and
the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had
begim life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the

CiESAR GOES WEST

Senators and their "dictator" another lesson. He crossed the
Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul
from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the "friend of the
people." Without difficulty Caesar entered Rome and Pompey
fled to Greece. Caesar followed him and defeated his followers
near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and
escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order
of young king Ptolemy. A few days later Caesar arrived.
He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and

THE ROMAN £MPIR£ 116

the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey,
attacked his camp.

Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to
the Egyptian fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning
vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria
(which was just off the water front,) and destroyed it. Next
he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the
Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new government
under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then word
reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates,
had gone on the war-path. Caesar marched northward, de-
feated Pharnaces in a war which lasted five days, sent word of
his victory to Rome in the famous sentence "veni, vidi, vici,"
which is Latin for *'I came, I saw, I conquered," and returned
to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who
followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the
government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not
less than four different victory-parades, having won four dif-
ferent campaigns.

Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his ad-
ventures, and the grateful Senate made him "dictator" for
ten years. It was a fatal step.

The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the
Roman state. He made it possible for freemen to become
members of the Senate. He conferred the rights of citizenship
upon distant communities as had been done in the early days
of Roman history. He permitted "foreigners" to exercise in-
fluence upon the government. He reformed the administra-
tion of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic families
had come to regard as their private possessions. In short he
did many things for the good of the majority of the people but
which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful
men in the state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a
plot "to save the Republic." On the Ides of March (the fif-
teenth of March according to that new calendar which Caesar
had brought with him from Egypt) Caesar was murdered when
he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a master.

THE STORY OF jVIANKIND

2>jss£'^r

OLT/Af/1 T/iUL£

The ea/2> of
The. v\/'o/^l2>

The noMAN

EMPIRE _,^^

THE CHEAT ROMAN EMPIRE

THE ROMAN EMPIRE 117

There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of
C«?.sar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The
other was Octavian, Ca?sar's grand-nephew and lieir to his es-
tate. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to Egypt
to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love, as
seems to have been the habit of Roman generals.

A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Ac-
tium, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and
Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy. She tried very
hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she
saw that she could make no impression upon this very proud
aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman prov-
ince.

As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did
not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how
people will shy at words. He was very modest in his demands
when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a "dicta-
tor." He would be entirely satisfied with the title of "the Hon-
ourable." But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed
him as Augustus — the Illustrious — he did not object and a few
years later the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser,
while the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their Com-
mander-in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or
Emperor. The Republic had become an Empire, but the aver-
age Roman was hardly aware of the fact.

In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the
Roman people had become so well established that he was made
an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been re-
served for the Gods. And his successors were true "Emper-
ors"— the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world had
ever seen.

If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired
of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him pro-
vided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and
without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his
subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the
frontiers of his domains. In the year 9 a.d. he had contem-

118 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

plated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was
inhabited by the Teutons. But Varus, his general, had been
killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that
the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild
people.

They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem
of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two
centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed
the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined
the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor,
against which no freeman could hope to compete. It had
turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and
unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large
bureaucracy — petty officials who were underpaid and who were
forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for
their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to vio-
lence, to blood-shed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and
suffering of others.

Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our
era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alex-
ander's empire became one of its minor provinces. Underneath
this glory there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired
human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest under-
neath a hea\y stone. They worked for the benefit of some one
else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields.
They lived in stables. They died without hope.

It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the
founding of Rome. Gains Julius Caisar Octavianus Augustus
was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged
upon the task of ruling his empire.

In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph
the Carpenter, was tending her little boy, bom in a stable of
Bethlehem.

This is a strange world.

Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open
tombat.

And the stable was to emerge victorious.

JOSHUA OF NAZARETH

THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM
THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS

In the autumn of the year of the city 815 (which would be
62 A.D., in our way of counting time) iEsculapius Cultellus, a
Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army
in Syria as follows:

My dear Nephew,

A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man
named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish
parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had
been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an ap-
peal from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea or some such
place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to
me as a "wild and violent" fellow who had been making
speeches against the People and against the Law. I found him
very intelligent and of great honesty.

A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia
Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus
where he was preaching sermons about a strange new God. I
asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the
people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul
answered me that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was
not of this world and he added many strange utterances which
I did not understand, but which were probably due to his
fever,

119

120 THE STORY OF MANKIND

His personality made a great impression upon me and I
was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few
days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When
next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something
about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who
seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much
excited about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, who
openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that means) have
been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these
rumours and I am

Your devoted Uncle,

iEsCULAPIUS CULTELLUS.

Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the
VII Gallic Infantry, answered as follows:

My dear Uncle,

I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions.

Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There
have been several revolutions during the last century and there
is not much left of the old city. We have been here now for a
month and to-morrow we shall continue our march to Petra,
where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I
shall use this evening to answer your questions, but pray do
not expect a detailed report.

I have talked with most of the older men in this city but
few have been able to give me any definite information. A
few days ago a pedler came to the camp. I bought some of
his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the
famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said
that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had
taken him to Golgotha (a hill just outside the city) to see
the execution, and to show him what became of the enemies of
the laws of the people of Judasa. He gave me the address of
one Joseph, who had been a personal friend of the Messiah
and told me that I had better go and see him if I wanted to
know more.

JOSHUA OF NAZARETH

121

This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an
old man. He had been a fisherman on one of the fresh-water
lakes. His memory was clear, and from him at last I got a
fairly definite account of what had happened during the trou-
blesome days before I was born.

Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne,
and an officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of

THE HOLY LAND

Judaea and Samaria. Joseph knew little about this Pilatus.
He seemed to have been an honest enough official who left a
decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year
783 or 784 (Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus was called to
Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man (the
son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning a
revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough
our own intelligence officers, who are usually well informed,

12* THE STORY OF MANKIND

appear to have heard nothing about it, and when they inves-
tigated the matter they reported that the carpenter was an
excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed against
him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, accord-
ing to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his
popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The
"Nazarene" (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a
Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a de-
cent and honourable life, was quite as good as a Jew who spent
his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not
seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when the
crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and kill
all his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody
to save his life.

He does not appear to have understood the real nature of
the quarrel. Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain
their grievances, they shouted "heresy" and "treason" and got
terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for
Joshua (that was the name of the Nazarene, but the Greeks
who live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus)
to examine him personally. He talked to him for several
hours. He asked him about the "dangerous doctrines" which
he was said to have preached on the shores of the sea of Galilee.
But Jesus answered that he never referred to politics. He was
not so much interested in the bodies of men as in Man's soul.
He wanted all people to regard their neighbours as their
brothers and to love one single God, who was the father of all
living beings.

Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines
of the Stoics and the other Greek philosophers, does not ap-
pear to have discovered anji;hing seditious in the talk of Jesus.
According to my informant he made another attempt to save
the life of the kindly prophet. He kept putting the execution
off. Meanwhile the Jewish people, lashed into fury by their
priests, got frantic with rage. There had been many riots in
Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman sol-
diers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the

JOSHUA OF NAZARETH 123

Roman authorities in Caesarea that Pilatus had "fallen a vic-
tim to the teachings of the Nazarene." Petitions were being
circulated all through the city to have Pilatus recalled, because
he was an enemy of the Emperor. You know that our gov-
ernors have strict instructions to avoid an open break with
their foreign subjects. To save the country from civil war,
Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner, Joshua, who behaved
with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him.
He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the
Jerusalem mob.

That is what Joseph told me, with tears nmning down his
old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he
refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself.
I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He
had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker
who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of
a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from
that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all
the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much
in Asia Minor and in Greece, telling the slaves that they were
all children of one loving Father and that happiness awaits all,
both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives and have
done good to those who were suffering and miserable.

I hope that I have answered your questions to your satis-
faction. The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as
the safety of the state is concerned. But then, we Romans
never have been able to imderstand the people of this province.
I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that
I were at home again, and 1 am, as ever,

Your dutiful nephew,

Gladius Ensa.

THE FALL OF ROME

THE TWILIGHT OF ROME

The text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the
year in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor
was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in
a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and
so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old
world was coming to an end. They complained about the un-
rest of the times — ^they grumbled about the high prices of food
and about the low wages of the workmen — ^they cursed the
profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and
the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually
rapacious governor. But the majority of the people during the
first four centuries of our era ate and drank (whatever their
purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to
their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a
free show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the
big cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had
outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish.

How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome
made a fine showing of outward glory. Well-paved roads con-
nected the different provinces, the imperial police were active
and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier
was closely guarded against the savage tribes who seemed to
be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole
world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a

124

THE FALL OF ROME 125

score of able men were working day and night to undo the
mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier
conditions of the early Republic.

But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of
which I have told you in a former chapter, had not been
removed and reform therefore was impossible.

Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as
Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It
had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome
as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political impos-
sibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in
her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military
service and by taxation. They either became professional
beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave
them board and lodging in exchange for their services and
made them "serfs," those unfortunate human beings who are
neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the
soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees.

The Empire, the State, had become everything. The com-
mon citizen had dwindled down to less than nothing. As for
the slaves, they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul.
They had accepted the message of the humble carpenter of
Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the
contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed
their superiors. But they had lost all interest in the aflFairs
of this world which had proved such a miserable place of abode.
They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to
engage in warfare for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who
aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of
the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.

And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by.
The first Emperors had continued the tradition of "leader-
ship" which had given the old tribal chieftains such a hold upon
their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and third
centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional soldiers, who
existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called Prae-

126

THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

torians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity,
murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out
of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe
the guards into a new rebellion.

3Ieanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of
the northern frontier. As there were no longer any native
Roman armies to stop their progress, foreign mercenaries had
to be hired to fight the invader. As the foreign soldier hap-
pened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was

WHEN THE BARBARIANS GOT THROUGH WITH A ROMAN CITY

apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle. Finally,
by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle
within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon
these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-
gatherers, who took away their last penny. When they got
no redress they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that
they be heard.

This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial resi-
dence. Constantine (who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for
a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the gate-way for the
commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed

ROME

THE FALL OF ROME 127

Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When Con-
stantine died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient
administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder
lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in
Constantinople and was master of the east.

Then came the fourth century and the terrible ^'isitation
of the Huns, those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more
than two centuries maintained themselves in Northern Europe
and continued their career of bloodshed until they were de-
feated near Chalons-sur-Mame in France in the year 4.51.
As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begim
to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save
themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The
Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near
Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under
their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward
and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and destroyed
only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less
respect for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the
Burgundians. Then the East Goths. Then the Alemanni.
Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions. Rome
at last was at the mercy of everj' ambitious highway robber
who could gather a few followers.

In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was
a sea-port and strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475,
Odoacer, commander of a regiment of the German mercen-
aries, who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among them-
selves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the
last of the emperors who ruled the western division, from his
throne, and proclaimed himself Patrician or ruler of Rome.
The eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs,
recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was
left of the western provinces.

A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths,
invaded the newly formed Patriciate, took Ravenna, murdered
Odoacer at his own dinner table, and established a Gothic

128

THE STORY OF IMANKIND

THE FALL OF ROME 129

Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the Empire.
This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a
motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars
invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established
a new state of which Pavia became the capital.

Then at last the imperial cit^' sank into a state of utter
neglect and despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered
time and again. The schools had been burned down. The
teachers had been starved to death. The rich people had been
thrown out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil-
smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen into
decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce hud come
to a standstill. Civilisation — the product of thousands of years
of patient labor on the part of Egj'ptians and Babylonians and
Greeks and Romans, which had lifted man high above the
most daring dreams of his earliest ancestors, threatened to
perish from the western continent.

It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to
be the centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But
it hardly counted as a part of the European continent. Its
interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin.
Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek.
The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was writ-
ten in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The
Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like
kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the
Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the
Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went
eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the
vast wilderness of Russia.

As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians.
For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were
the order of the da5^ One thing — and one thing alone — saved
Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days
of cave-men and the hyena.

This was the church — tlie flock of humble men and women

130 THE STORY OF AL\NKIND

who for many centuries had confessed themselves the fol-
lowers of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, who had been
killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved the
trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the
Syrian frontier.

RISE OF THE CHURCH

HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE
CHRISTIAN WORLD

The average intelligent Roman who lived under the Em-
pire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers.
A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a
matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people
celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he
regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as
something rather childish, a sur\'ival from the crude days of
the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man
who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans
and the other great philosophers of Athens.

This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The
government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners,
Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward re-
spect to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to stand
in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the
United States is apt to hang in an American Post Office. But
this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally
speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore wliatever
gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all
sorts of queer little temples and synagogues, dedicated to the
worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities.

When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began
to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man,

131

18« THE STORY OF IMANKIND

nobody objected. The man in the street stopped and listened,
Rome, the capital of the world, had always been full of wander-
ing preachers, each proclaiming his own "mystery." Most of
the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses — promised
golden rewards and endless pleasm-e to the followers of their
own particular god. Soon the crowd in the street noticed
that the so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or
"anointed") spoke a very different language. They did not
appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position.
They extolled the beauties of poverty and humihty and meek-
ness. These were not exactly the virtues which had made
Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to
listen to a "mystery" which told people in the hey-day of their
glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them
lasting happiness.

Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dread-
ful stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to
the words of the true God. It was never wise to take chances.
Of course the old Roman gods still existed, but were they
strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of
this new deity who had been brought to Europe from distant
Asia? People began to have doubts. They returned to listen
to further explanations of the new creed. After a while they
began to meet the men and women who preached the words of
Jesus. They found them very different from the average
Roman priests. They were all dreadfully poor. They were
kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to gain riches,
but gave away whatever they had. The example of their un-
selfish lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion.
They joined the small communities of Christians who met in
the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field,
and the temples were deserted.

This went on year after year and the number of Christians
continued to increase. Presbyters or priests (the original
Greek meant "elder") were elected to guard the interests of
the small churches. A bishop was made the head of all the
communities within a single province. Peter, who had fol-

RISE OF THE CHURCH

133

lowed Paul to Rome, was the first Bishop of Rome. In due
time his successors (who were addressed as Father or Papa)
came to be known as Popes.

The church became a powerful institution within the Em-
pire. The Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired
of this world. They also attradPed many siErong men who
found it impossible to make a career under the Imperial gov-

A CLOISTER

emment, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among
the humble followers of the Xazarene teacher. At last the
state was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire ( I have
said this before ) was tolerant through indifference. It allowed
everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But
it insisted that the different sects keep the peace among them-
selves and obey the wise rule of "live and let live."

The Christian communities however, refused to practise any

134!

THE STORY OF MANKIND

sort of tolerance. They publicly declared that their God, and
their God alone, was the true ruler of Heaven and Earth,
and that all other gods were impostors. This seemed unfair
to the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances.
The Christians persisted.

Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused
to go through the formalities of paying homage to the em-
peror. They refused to appear when they were called upon
to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to

THE GOTHS ARE COMING

punish them. The Christians answered that this miserable
world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant Heaven and
that they were more than willing to suffer death for their
principles. The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes
killed the offenders, but more often they did not. There was
a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the
church, but this was the work of that part of the mob which
accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable
crime, (such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about
sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of dan-
ger) because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger, as
the Christians refused to fight back.

RISE OF THE CHURCH 1S5

Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbar-
ians and when her armies failed, Christian missionaries went
forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Teutons.
They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a
language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant
sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed. They still
had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome.
Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth.
Soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage
regions of the Teutons and the Franks. Half a dozen mis-
sionaries were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers.
The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might
be of great use to them. In some of the provinces they were
given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old
gods. The great change however came during the last half
of the fourth century.

Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Con-
stantine the Great, was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian,
but people of tender qualities could hardly hope to survive
in that hard-fighting age. During a long and checkered career,
Constantine had experienced many ups and downs. Once,
when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would
try the power of this new Asiatic deity of whom everybody was
talking. He promised that he too would become a Christian
if he were successful in the coming battle. He won the victory
and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian
God and allowed himself to be baptised.

From that moment on, the Christian church was officially
recognised and this greatly strengthened the position of the
new faith.

But the Christians still formed a very small minority of
all the people, (not more than five or six percent,) and in order
to win, they were forced to refuse all compromise. The old
gods must be destroyed. For a short spell the emperor Julian,
a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan Gods
from further destruction. But Julian died of his wounds dur-
ing a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established

136 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the church in all its glory. One after the other the doors of the
ancient temples were then closed. Then came the emperor
Justinian (who built the church of Saint Sophia in Constan-
tinople), who discontinued the school of philosophy at Athens
which had been founded by Plato.

That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man
J had been allowed to think his own thoughts and dream his own
dreams according to his desires. The somewhat vague rules
of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass
by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery
and ignorance had swept away the established order of things.
There was need of something more positive and more definite.
This the Church provided.

During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood
like a rock and never receded from those principles w^hich it
held to be true and sacred. This steadfast courage gained the
admiration of the multitudes and carried the church of Rome
safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state.

There was however, a certain element of luck in the final
success of the Christian faith. After the disappearance of
Theodoric's Roman-Gothic kingdom, in the fifth century,
Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion. The
Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were
weak and backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was
possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence
of their city. Soon the remnants of the empire, scattered
throughout the peninsula, recognised the Dukes of Rome (or
bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers.

The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man.
He came in the year 590 and his name was Gregory. He be-
longed to the ruling classes of ancient Rome, and he had
been "prefect" or mayor of the city. Then he had become
a monk and a bishop and finally, and much against his will,
(for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to
the heathen of England,) he had been dragged to the Church
of Saint Peter to be made Pope. He ruled only fourteen
years but when he died the Christian world of western Europe

RISE OF THE CHURCH 187

had officially recognised the bishops of Rome, the Popes, as
the head of the entire church.

This power, however, d'ul not extend to the east. In Con-
stantinople the Emperors continued the old custom which had
recognised the successors of Augustus and Tiberius both as
head of the government and as High Priest of the Established
Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire was
conquered by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Con-
stantine Paleologue, the last Roman Emperor, was killed on
the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia.

A few j'^ears before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother
Thomas, had married Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the
grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constan-
tinople. The double-eagle of old Bj'zantium (reminiscent of
the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a
western part) became the coat of arms of modem Russia.
The Tsar who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles,
assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman emperor
before whom all subjects, both high and low, were incon-
siderable slaves.

The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which
the eastern Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt
and which (so they flattered themselves) resembled the court
of Alexander the Great. This strange inheritance which the
dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an unsuspecting world
continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries,
amidst the vast plains of Russia. The last man to wear the
crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas,
was murdered only the other day, so to speak. His body was
thrown into a well. His son and his daughters were all killed.
All his ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished, and the
church was reduced to the position which it had held in Rome
before the days of Constantine.

The western church however fared very differently, as we
shall see in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is
going to be threatened with destruction by the rival creed of
an Arab camel-driver.

AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME
THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT,
AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CON-
QUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD
FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE
ONLY TRUE GOD

Since the days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said
nothing of the Semitic people. You will remember how they
filled all the chapters devoted to the story of the Ancient World.
The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Jews,
the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all of them Semites, had been
the rulers of western Asia for thirty or forty centuries. They
had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had
come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who
had come from the west. A hundred years after the death of
Alexander the Great, Carthage, a colony of Semitic Phoeni-
cians, had fought the Indo-European Romans for the mastery
of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been defeated and de-
stroyed and for eight hundred years the Romans had been mas-
ters of the world. In the seventh centuiy, however, another
Semitic tribe appeared upon the scene and challenged the
power of the west. They were the Arabs, peaceful shepherds
who had roamed through the desert since the beginning of time
without showing any signs of imperial ambitions.

Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and

138

MOHAMMED

1S9

in less than a century they had pushed to the lieart of Europe
and proclaimed the glories of Allah, "the only God,'* and
Mohammed, "the prophet of the only God," to the frightened
peasants of France.

The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah,
(usually known as Mohammed, or "he who will be praised,")
reads like a chapter in the "Thousand and One Nights." He
was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been an
epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when
he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel
Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book
called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him
all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish
merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see tliat
the worship of a single Grod was a very exceUent thing. His
own people, the Arabs, still revered queer stones and trunks
of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of thousands of
years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little square
building, the Kaaba, full of idols and strange odds and ends
of Hoo-doo worship.

Mohammed decided to be the
Moses of the Arab people. He
could not well be a prophet and
a camel-driver at the same time.
So he made himself independent
by marrying his employer, the
rich widow Chadija. Then he
told his neighbours in Mecca
that he was the long-expected
prophet sent by Allah to save the
world. The neighbours laughed
most heartily and when Moham-
med continued to annoy them
with his speeches they decided to
kill him. They regarded him as

a lunatic and a public bore who deserved no mercy. Mohammed
heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to Medina

THE FLIGHT OF MOHAMMED

140 THE STORY OF MANKIND

together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened
in the year 622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan
history and is known as the Hegira — the year of the Great
Flight.

In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, f oimd it easier
to proclaim himself a prophet than in his home city, where
every one had known him as a simple camel-driver. Soon he
wa^ surrounded by an increasing number of followers, or
Moslems, who accepted the Islam, "the submission to the will
of God," which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues.
For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then
he believed himself strong enough to begin a campaign against
his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him and his
Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of
an army of Medinese he marched across the desert. His fol-
lowers took Mecca without great difficulty, and having slaught-
ered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy to
convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet.

From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed
was fortunate in everji;hing he undertook.

There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the
first place, the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers
was very simple. The disciples were told that they must love
Allah, the Ruler of the World, the Merciful and Compas-
sionate. They must honour and obey their parents. They
were warned against dishonesty in dealing with their neigh-
bours and were admonished to be humble and charitable, to the
poor and to the sick. Finally they were ordered to abstain
from strong drink and to be very frugal in what they ate. That
was all. There were no priests, who acted as shepherds of
their flocks and asked that they be supported at the common
expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques were merely
large stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faith-
ful could gather (if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss
chapters from the Koran, the Holy Book. But the average
Mohammedan carried his religion with him and never felt
himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations of an

MOHAMMED 141

established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards
Mecca, the Holy City, and said a simple prayer. For the
rest of the time he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and
accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation.

Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage
the Faithful to go forth and invent electrical machinerj' or
bother about railroads and steamship lines. But it gave every
Mohammedan a certain amount of contentment. It bade
him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he
Hved and that was a very good thing.

The second reason which explains the success of the Mos-
lems in their warfare upon the Christians, had to do with the
conduct of those Mohammedan soldiers who went forth to do
battle for the true faith. The Prophet promised that those
who fell, facing the enemy, would go directly to Heaven.
This made sudden death in the field preferable to a long but
dreary existence upon this earth. It gave the Mohammedans
an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in con-
stant dread of a dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good
things of this world as long as they possibly could. Incident-
ally it explains why even to-day Moslem soldiers will charge
into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to
the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous
and persistent enemies.

Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now
began to enjoy his power as the undisputed ruler of a large
number of Arab tribes. But success has been the undoing of
a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity.
He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a num-
ber of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth.
He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife
was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were
bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive
kixury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries
and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion
which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the
liigii-skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs

14^ THE STORY OF MANKIND

of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities.
It was a regrettable change from the original program and it
did very little good to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for
the prophet himself, he went on preaching the truth of Allah
and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died, quite
suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632.

His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was
his father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers
of the prophet's life. Two years later, Abu-Bekr died and
Omar ibn Al-Khattab followed him. In less than ten years
he conquered Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine
and made Damascus the capital of the first Mohammedan world
empire.

Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed's
daughter, Fatima, but a quarrel broke out upon a point of
Moslem doctrine and Ali was murdered. After his death,
the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faith-
ful who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a re-
ligious sect became the rulers of a vast empire. They built
a new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near the ruins of
Babylon and called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horse-
men into regiments of cavalry, they set forth to bring the
happiness of their Moslem faith to all unbelievers. In the
year 700 a.d. a Mohammedan general by the name of Tarik
crossed the old Gates of Hercules and reached the high rock
on the European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the
Hill of Tarik or Gibraltar.

Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera,
he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem
army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal,
they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the
Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bor-
deaux, and marched upon Paris. But in the year 732 (one
hundred years after the death of the prophet,) they were
beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers. On that
day, Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer), the Prank-
ish chieftain, saved Europe from a Mohammedan con-

MOHAMMED

14d

quest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they main-
tained themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the
Caliphate of Cordova, which became the greatest centre of
science and art of mediseval Europe.

This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came
from Mauretania in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was
only after the capture of Granada, the last Moslem stronghold.

i*i 7

i^S> y^^--.

,v/ .-♦..»

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT

in the year 1492, that Columbus received the royal grant which
allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery. The Moham-
medans soon regained their strength in the new conquests
which they made in Asia and Africa and to-day there are as
many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ.

CHARLEMAGNE

HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE
FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF
EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD
IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE

The battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the Mo-
hammedans. But the enemy within — the hopeless disorder
which had followed the disappearance of the Roman police
officer — that enemy remained. It is true that the new converts
of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep respect
for the mighty Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did
not feel any too safe when he looked toward the distant moun-
tains. Heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians were
ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome. It
was necessary — ^very necessary — for the spiritual head of the
world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful
fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case of dan-
ger.

And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but
also very practical, cast about for a friend, and presently
they made overtures to the most promising of the Germanic
tribes who had occupied north-western Europe after the fall
of Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their earliest
kings, called Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of
the Catalaunian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the
Huns. His descendants, the Merovingians, had continued to

144

CHARLEMAGNE 145

take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when
king Clovis (the old French word for "Louis") felt himself
strong enough to beat the Romans in the open. But his
descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to
their Prime minister, the "Major Domus" or Master of the
Palace.

Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel,
who succeeded his father as Master of the Palace, hardly
knew how to handle the situation. His royal master was a
devout theologian, without any interest in politics. Pepin
asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical
person answered that the "power in the state belonged to him
who was actually possessed of it." Pepin took the hint. He
persuaded Childeric, the last of the Merovingians to become
a monk and then made himself king with the approval of the
other Germanic chieftains. But this did not satisfy the shrewd
Pepin. He wanted to be something more than a barbarian
chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface,
the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed
him and made him a "King by the grace of God." It was
easy to slip those words, "Dei gratia," into the coronation
service. It took almost fifteen hundred years to get them out
again.

Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part
of the church. lie made two expeditions to Italy to defend
the Pope against his enemies. He took Ravenna and several
other cities away from the Longobards and presented them
to His Holiness, who incorporated these new domains into
the so-called Papal State, which remained an independent
country until half a century ago.

After Pepin's death, the relations between Rome and Aix-
la-Chapelle or Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Prankish Kings
did not have one official residence, but travelled from place to
place with all their ministers and court officers,) became more
and more cordial. Finally the Pope and the King took a step
which was to influence the history of Europe in a most pro-
found way.

Charles, commonly known as Carolus ^lagnus or Char-

146 THE STORY OF jVIANKIND

lemagne, succeeded Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered
the land of the Saxons in eastern Germany and had
built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of north-
ern Europe. At the request of certain enemies of Abd-ar-
Rahman, he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in
the Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and
had been forced to retire. It was upon this occasion that Ro-
land, the gi'eat Margrave of Brittany, showed what a Prankish
chieftain of those early days meant when he promised to be
faithful to his King, and gave his life and that of his trusted
followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army.

During the last ten years of the eighth century, however,
Charles was obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of
the South. The Pope, Leo III, had been attacked by a band
of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street.
Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had helped
him to escape to the camp of Charles, where he asked for
help. An army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo
back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of Con-
stantine, had been the home of the Pope. That was in Decem-
ber of the year 799. On Christmas day of the next year,
Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service
in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer,
the Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of
the Romans and hailed him once more with the title of "Augus-
tus" which had not been heard for hundreds of years.

Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire,
but the dignity was held by a German chieftain who could
read just a little and never learned to write. But he could
fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival
emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of approval to his
"dear Brother."

Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814.
His sons and his grandsons at once began to fight for the
largest share of the imperial inheritance. Twice the Caro-
lingian lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the
year 843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the

CHARLEMAGNE

147

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF GERMAN NATIONALITY

148 THE STORY OF ^lANKIND

year 870. The latter treaty divided the entire Frankish King-
dom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the western
half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where
the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized.
The Franks soon learned to speak this language and this
accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land
like France should speak a Latin tongue.

The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which
the Romans had called Germania. Those inhospitable re-
gions had never been part of the old Empire. Augustus had
tried to conquer this "far east," but his legions had been annihi-
lated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had
never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They
spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for
"people" was "thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore
called the German language the "lingua theotisca" or the
"lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect" and this word "teu-
tisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for the name
"Deutschland."

As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped
off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto
the Italian plain, where it became a sort of plaything of a
number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other
amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or without the per-
mission of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more am-
bitious neighbour. The Pope, once more sorely beset by his
enemies, sent north for help. He did not appeal to the ruler
of the west-Frankish kingdom, this time. His messengers
crossed the Alps and addressed themselves to Otto, a Saxon
Prince who was recognised as the greatest chieftain of the
different Germanic tribes.

Otto, who shared his people's affection for the blue skies
and the gay and beautiful people of the Italian peninsula,
hastened to the rescue. In return for his services, the Pope,
Leo VIII, made Otto "Emperor," and the eastern half of
Charles* old kingdom was henceforth known as the "Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation."

THE MOUNTAIN-PASS

CHARLEMAGNE 149

This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe
old age of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year
1801, (during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was
most unceremoniously relegated to the historical scrapheap.
The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was
the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilliant
career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler
of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but
he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the
Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon
placed the imperial crown upon his own head and proclaimed
himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history is
like life. The more things change, the more they remain
the same.

THE NORSEMEN

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY
PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM
FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN

In the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of
central Europe had broken through the defences of the Em-
pire that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the
land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans
to be the "plundered-ones." They did not like this at all, even
if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who
lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norwaj'.

What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not
know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleas-
ures of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop
them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful Prank-
ish or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of a river. They
would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they
would sail away in their fast-sailing ships and when the sol-
diers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the rob-
bers were gone and nothing remained but a few smouldering
ruins.

During the days of disorder which followed the death of
Charlemagne, the Northmen developed great activity. Their
fleets made raids upon every country and their sailors estab-
lished small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland
and France and England and Germany, and they even found

ISO

THE NORSEMEN

1«1

their way into Italy. The Northmen were very intelligent.
They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and
gave up the uncivilised ways of the early Vikings (or Sea-
Kings ) who had been very picturesque but also ver>' unwashed
and terribly cruel.

THE HOME OF THE XORSEMEX

Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of Rollo
had repeatedly attacked the coast of France. The king of
France, too weak to resist these northern robbers, tried to
bribe them into "being good." He offered them the province
of Normandy, if they would promise to stop bothering the rest
of his domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and became "Duke
of Normandy."

159

THE STORY OF IHANKIND

•WMRHM

THE NORSEMEN GO TO RUSSIA

But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his
children. Across the channel, only a few hours away from the
European mainland, they could see the white cliffs and the
green fields of England. Poor England had passed through
difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman
colony. After the Romans left, it had been conquered by the

THE NORMANS LOOK ACROSS THE CHANNEL

THE NORSEAfEN

153

55
M

S
u

O
2;

S
H

b
O

154 THE STORY OF IVtANKIND

Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig.
Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country
and had established the kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had
been driven away and now (it was early in the eleventh cen-
tury) another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, was on the
throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he
had no children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious
dukes of Normandy.

In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Nor-
mandy crossed the channel, defeated and killed Harold of
Wessex (who had taken the crown) at the battle of Hastings,
and proclaimed himself king of England.

In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a
German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in
the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised
as King of England.

Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth
of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

FEUDALISM

HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM
THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP
AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PER-
ISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL
SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS WHO
WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

The following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one
thousand, when most people were so unhappy that they wel-
comed the prophecy foretelling the approaching end of the
world and rushed to the monasteries, that the Day of Judge-
ment might find them engaged upon devout duties.

At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old
home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe. By
sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the
Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western em-
pire, but the eastern part, being off the main route of the
great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued
the traditions of Rome's ancient glory.

During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true
"dark ages" of history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our
era,) the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the
Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of Rome
as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the ninth cen-
tury, the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the
Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western

las

166 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Europe into a single state. During the tenth century this
empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a
separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the
Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the rulers of
this federation of states then pretended that they were the
direct heirs of Csesar and Augustus.

Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not
stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence, while the
Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful
subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit.

To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the tri-
angle of western Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever
exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived the
ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged
by the Northmen. The eastern frontier (defenceless except
for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains) was at
the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars.

The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream
of the "Good Old Days" that were gone for ever. It was a
question of "fight or die," and quite naturally people preferred
to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an armed
camp and there was a demand for strong leadership. Both
King and Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen (and
most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help
themselves. They wilhngly submitted to the representatives
of the king who were sent to administer the outlying dis-
tricts, provided they could protect them against their enemies.

Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities,
each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as
the case might be, and organised as a fighting unit. These
dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the
king who had given them their "feudum" (hence our word
"feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a certain
amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the
means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal
or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independ-
ence, and within the boundaries of their own province they

THE NORSEMEN ARE COMING

FEUDALISM 167

assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king.

But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the
people of the eleventh century objected to this form of gov-
ernment. They supported Feudalism because it was a very
practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master
usually lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep
rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his
subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind
the walls of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried
to live as near the castle as possible and it accounts for the
many European cities which began their career around a feudal
fortress.

But the knight of the early middle ages was much more
than a professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that
day. He was the judge of his community and he was the
chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected
the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of the eleventh
century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside
should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done
in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before). He
encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to place
telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the
great wars of the migrations. Besides, he protected the churches
and the monasteries within his territory, and although he could
neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know
such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his
accounts and who registered the marriages and the births and
the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal do-
mains.

In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong
enough to exercise those powers which belonged to them because
they were "anointed of God." Then the feudal knights lost
their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country
squires, they no longer filled a need and soon they became a
nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the "feu-
dal system" of the dark ages. There were many bad knights
is there are many bad people to-day. But generally speaking.

158 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century
were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful
service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble
torch of learning and art which had illuminated the world of
the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning
very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the
monks, civihsation would have been extinguished entirely, and
the human race would have been forced to begin once more
where the cave-man had left oif.

CHIVALRY

It was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of
the Middle Ages should try to establish some sort of organisa-
tion for their mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need
for close organisation. Knighthood or Chivalry was born.

We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But
as the system developed, it gave the world something which it
needed very badly — a definite rule of conduct which softened
the barbarous customs of that day and made life more livable
than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark
Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the rough frontiers-
men who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans
and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of back-
sliding, and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and
charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners
before evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and
ceaseless labour, and finally the most unscrupulous of knights
was forced to obey the rules of his "class" or suffer the con-
sequences.

These rules were different in the various parts of Europe,
but they all made much of "service" and "loyalty to duty." The
Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and
beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you
were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for
loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful per-

160 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

formance of manj^ unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue
of the fighting man.

A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would
be faithful as a servant to God and as a servant to his King.
Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose need
was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would
be humble in his personal behaviour and would never boast of
his own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of all
those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans,
whom he was expected to kill on sight).

Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Command-
ments expressed in terms which the people of the Middle Ages
could understand, there developed a complicated system of
manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to model
their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur's
Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom the Trouba-
dours had told them and of whom you may read in many de-
lightful books which are enumerated at the end of this volume.
Thej^ hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and
as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity
and they spoke careful and gracious words that they might be
known as True Knights, however humble the cut of their coat
or the size of their purse.

In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those
good manners which are the oil of the social machinery. Chiv-
alry came to mean courtesy and the feudal castle showed the
rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask
a lady for a dance and the thousand and one Httle things of
every-day behaviour which help to make life interesting and
agreeable.

Like all human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to
perish as soon as it had outlived its usefulness.

The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells,
were followed by a great revival of trade. Cities grew over-
night. The townspeople became rich, hired good school teach-
ers and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention
of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed "Chevalier" of his

CHIVALRY 161

former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impos-
sible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess
tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he be-
came a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no
longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don
Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights.
After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were sold
to pay his debts.

But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into
the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during
the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defence
of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had
been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the
besieged fortress of Khartoum.

And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable
strength in winning the Great War,

THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE
PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND HOW
IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN
THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EM-
PERORS

It is verj'' difficult to understand the people of by-gone
ages. Your own grandfather, whom you see every day, is a
mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and
clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story of some
of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations removed,
and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write
without re-reading this chapter a number of times.

The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple
and uneventful hfe. Even if he was a free citizen, able to
come and go at will, he rarely left his own neighbourhood.
There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts.
Here and there, a small band of industrious monks taught
reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and his-
torj^ and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and
Rome.

Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by
listening to stories and legends. Such information, which goes
from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but
it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing accu-
racy. After more than two thousand years, the mothers of
India still frighten their naughty children by telling them that

102

POPE vs. EMPEROR 168

*'Iskan<ier will get them," and Iskander is none other than
Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before
the birth of Christ, but whose story has hved through all these
ages.

The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a text-
book of Roman history. They were ignorant of many tilings
which every school-boy to-day knows before he has entered
the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a
name to you, was to them something very much ahve. They
felt it. They willingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual
leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of
the Roman super-power. And they were profoundly grate-
ful when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great, re-
vived the idea of a world-empire and created the Holy Roman
Empire, that the world might again be as it always had been.

But the fact that there were two different heirs to the
Roman tradition placed the faithful burghers of the Middle
Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the mediaeval
political system was both somid and simple. While the worldly
master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of
his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded their
souls.

In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The
Emperor invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the
church and the Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how
he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind
their own business in very unceremonious language and the
inevitable end was war.

Under those circumstances, what were the people to do?
A good Chi-istian obeyed both the Pope and his King. But
the Pope and the Emperor were enemies. Which side should
a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian take?

It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the
Emperor happened to be a man of energy and was sufficiently
well provided with money to organise an arm5% he was very
apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope

164 THE STORY OF MANKIND

in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to obey
the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences.

But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the
Emperor or the King together with all his subjects was excom-
municated. This meant that all churches were closed, that no
one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given abso-
lution— in short, that half of the functions of mediaeval govern-
ment came to an end.

More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of
loyalty to their sovereign and were urged to rebel against their
master. But if they followed this advice of the distant Pope
and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by Liege
Lord and that too was very unpleasant.

Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and
none fared worse than those who lived during the latter half of
the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry IV of Ger-
many and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which
decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty
years.

In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a
strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the
Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the
advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a well-dis-
posed priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came
to Home at the time of election and used their influence for
the benefit of one of their friends.

In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of
Pope Nicholas II the principal priests and deacons of the
churches in and around Rome were organised into the so-
called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent
chiu'chmen (the word "Cardinal" meant principal) was given
the exclusive power of electing the future Popes.

In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest
by the name of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in
Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory VII.
His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme powers
of his Holy Office was built upon a granite rock of conviction

THE CASTLE

POPE tw. EMPEROR

165

and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only
the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest
Court of Appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had
elevated simple German princes to the dignity of Emperor
could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by
duke or king or emperor, but whosoever should question a
papal decree, let him beware, for the punishment would be
swift and merciless.

Gregorj' sent ambassadors to all the European courts to
inform the potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked
them to take due notice of their contents. William the Con-
queror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age
of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of
submitting to the Papal will. He called together a college of
German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the
sun and then had him deposed by the council of Worms.

The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand
that the German princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler.
The German princes, only too happy to be rid of Henry, asked
the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect a new Em-
peror.

Gregorj' left Rome and
travelled northward. Henry,
who was no fool, appreciated
the danger of his position. At
all costs he must make peace
with the Pope, and he must do
it at once. In the midst of win-
ter he crossed the Alps and
hastened to Canossa where the
Pope had stopped for a short
rest. Three long days, from
the 25th to the 28th of January
of the year 1077, Henry,
dressed as a penitent pilgrim
(but with a warm sweater un-

HENRY IV AT CANOSSA

166 THE STORY OF MANKIND

derneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the
castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was
pardoned for his sins. But the repentance did not last long.
As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved
exactly as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the
second time a council of German bishops deposed Greg-
ory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at
the head of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory
to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent
outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in
Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor was con-
tinued.

The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial
German Throne shortly afterwards, were even more independ-
ent than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed that the
Popes were superior to all kings because they (the Popes) at
the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour
of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a king
was one of that faithful herd.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barba-
rossa or Red Beard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire
had been bestowed upon his predecessor "by God himself"
and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a cam-
paign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the northern
country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor
during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilUant
young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisa-
tion of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The
Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seiems
to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Chris-
tian world of the ^orth, for the boorish German Knights and
the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went
on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was
duly crowned as King of the Holy Citj% Even this act did not
placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his
Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that
King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis.

POPE vs. EMPEROR 167

This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV,
and the last of the Hohenstauf ens, tried to regain the kingdom,
and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years
later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly un-
popular in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sici-
lian Vespers, and so it went.

The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was
never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to
leave each other alone.

In the year 1273, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Em-
peror. He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be
crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept
away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire cen-
turies which might have been used for the purpose of internal
organisation had been wasted in useless warfare.

It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one.
The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing,
had managed to increase their power and their independence
at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush
for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the trans-
portation problem of the tliousands of eager pilgrims who were
clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they
had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold
that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indif-
ference.

Church and State fought each other and a third party — the
mediaeval city — ran away with the spoils.

THE CRUSADES

BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS
WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS
TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE
HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERI-
OUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO
WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING

During three centuries there had been peace between Chris-
tians and Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman
Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Europe.
The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh
century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they re-
garded Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great
as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims
who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the
mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of
the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar
tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks,
became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia and
then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took
all of Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors
and they made an end to the trade between east and west.

Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Chris-
tian neighbours of the west, appealed for help and pointed to
the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take
Constantinople.

THE CRT'SADER 169

The Italian cities which had t tablished colonies along the
coast of Asia Minor and Palestin ', in fear for their posses-
sions, reported terrible stories of Ti.rkish atrocities and Chris-
tian suffering. All Europe got excited.

Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been
educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had
trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for
action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory.
The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged
since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There
was unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to
discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed mil-
lions. It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration.

Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year
1095 the Pope arose, described the terrible horrors which the
infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing de-
scription of this countr}' which ever since the days of Moses
had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the
knights of France and the people of Europe in general to
leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks.

A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent.
All reason stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw,
walk out of their shop and take the nearest road to the east
to go and kill Turks. Children would leave their homes to "go
to Palestine" and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by
the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety.
Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within
sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were
forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger
to the safety of the highroads and they were killed by the
angry country people.

The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, default-
ing bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice,
following the lead of half -crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter-
without-a-Cent, began their campaign against the Infidels by
murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They
got as far as Hungary and then they were all killed.

170

THE STORY OF MANKIND

This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm
alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organisation was
as necessary as good-will and courage. A year was spent in
training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were
placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke
of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of
other noblemen, all experienced in the art of war.

In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long
voyage. At Constantinople the knights did homage to the

THE FIRST CRUSADE

Emperor. (For as I have told you, traditions die hard, and
a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was still held
in great respect) . Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the
Moslems who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, mas-
sacred the Mohammedan population, and marched to the Holy
Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and
gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arri-
val of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn
killed the faithful followers of the Cross.

THE CRUSADER

171

172

THE STORY OF MANKIND

During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took
place. Gradually the Crusaders learned the technique of the
trip. The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous.
They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice
where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Vene-
tians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very
profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and when
the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money) could not
pay the price, these Italian "profiteers" kindly allowed them
to "work their way across." In return for a fare from Venice
to Acre, the Crusader imdertook to do a stated amount of
fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this way Venice greatly
increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in
Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the
islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes.

All this, however, helped
little in settling the question
of the Holy Land. After
the first enthusiasm had
worn off, a short crusading
trip became part of the lib-
eral education of every well-
bred young man, and there
never was any lack of can-
didates for service in Pales-
tine. But the old zeal was
gone. The Crusaders, who
had begun their warfare
with deep hatred for the
Mohammedans and great
love for the Christian peo-
ple of the eastern Roman
Empire and Armenia, suf-
fered a complete change of heart. They came to despise the
Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and frequently be-
trayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and all the
other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the vir-

THE CRUSADERS TAKE JERUSALEM

THE CRUSADER

178

tues of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair
opponents.

Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when
the Crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the man-
ners which he had learned from his heathenish foe, compared
to whom the average western knight was still a good deal of a
country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new
food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his
garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the bar-
barous custom of wearing a load of hea\y armour and appeared
in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional
habit of the followers of the Prophet and were originally worn
by the Turks. Indeed the Crusades, which had begun as a
punitive expedition against the Heathen, became a course of
general instruction in civilisation for millions of young Euro-
peans. iflP^

From a military and politi- 1^^
cal point of view the Crusades
were a failure. Jerusalem and
a number of cities were taken
and lost. A dozen little king-
doms were established in Syria
and Palestine and Asia Minor,
but they were re-conquered by
the Turks and after the year
1244 (when Jerusalem became
definitely Turkish) the status
of the Holy I^and was the same
as it had been before 1095.

But Europe had undergone a
great change. The people of
the west had been allowed a glimpse of the light and the sim-
shine and the beauty of the east. Their dreary castles no
longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither
Church nor State could give this to them.

They found it in the cities. -i

THE CRUSADER'S GRAVE

WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
SAID THAT ''CITY AIR IS FREE AIR"

The early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of
pioneering and of settlement. A new people, who thus far
had lived outside the wild range of forest, mountains and
marshes which protected the north-eastern frontier of the Ro-
;man Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western
Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They
were restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of
time. They liked to be "on the go." They cut down the
forests and they cut each other's throats with equal energy.
Few of them wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being
"free," they loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their
lungs while they drove their herds across the wind-swept pas-
tures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled
up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures.

The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the cou-
rageous women who had followed their men into the wilder-
ness survived. In this way they developed a strong race of
men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too
busy to play the fiddle or vn-ite pieces of poetry. They had
little love for discussions. The priest, "the learned man" of the
village (and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a lay-
man who could read and write w^as regarded as a "sissy") was
supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical

174

THE MEDIAEVAL CITY 176

value. Meanwhile the German chieftam, the Frankish Baron,
the Northman Duke (or whatever their names and titles) occu-
pied their share of the territory which once had been part of
the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past glory,
they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily
and which they considered quite perfect.

They managed the affairs of their castle and the surround-
ing country to the best of their ability. They were as faithful
to the commandments of the Church as any weak mortal could
hope to be. They were sufficiently loyal to their king or em-
peror to keep on good terms with those distant but always dan-
gerous potentates. In short, they tried to do right and to be
fair to their neighbours without being exadtly unfair to their
own interests-
It was not an ideal world in whidi they found themselves.
The greater part of the people were serfs or "villeins," farm-
hands who were as much a part of the soil upon which they
lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared. Their
fate was not particularly happy nor was it particularly un-
happy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled
the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered every-
thing for the best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided that
there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of
these faithful sons of the church to question the arrangement.
The serfs therefore did not complain but when they were too
hard driven, they would die off like cattle which are not fed
and stabled in the right way, and then something would be has-
tily done to better their condition. But if the progress of the
world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would
still be li\ing after the fashion of the twelfth centur}% saying
'*a.bracadatea'* when we tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling
a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help
us witih hiB "science," wWch most likely was of Mohammedan
or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and useless.

When you grow up you will discover that many people do
not believe in "progress'* and they will prove to you by the
terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that "the

176 THE STORY OF MiANKIND

world does not change." But I hope that you will not pay
much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors
almost a milHon years to learn how to walk on their hind legs.
Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts
developed into an understandable language. Writing — ^the art
of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations,
without which no progress is possible — was invented only four
thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature
into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of
your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are
making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we
have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical com-
forts of life. That will change in due course of time and we
shall then attack the problems which are not related to health
and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general.

But please do not be too sentimental about the "good old
days.'* Many people who only see the beautiful churches and
the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind
grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilisa-
tion with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of back-
firing motor trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago.
But these mediaeval churches were invariably surrounded by
miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house
stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble
Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero
who went in search of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by
the odor of gasoline. But there were other smells of the barn-
yard variety — odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown
into the street — of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop's palace —
of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats
from their grandfathers and who had never learned the bless-
ing of soap. I do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture.
But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King of
France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at
the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris,
when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epi-
demic of the plague or of small-pox, then you be^Q to under-

THE MEDIAEVAL CITY 177

stand that "progress" is something more than a catchword used
by modem advertising men.

No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not
have been possible without the existence of cities. I shall,
therefore, have to make this chapter a little longer than many
of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or
four pages, devoted to mere political events.

The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria
had been a world of cities. Greece had been a country of City-
States. The history of Phoenicia was the history of two cities
called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the "hinter-
land" of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, ar-
chitecture, literature, the theatre — the list is endless — have all
been products of the city.

For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which
we call a town had been the workshop of the world. Then came
the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed.
The cities were burned down and Europe once more became a
land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the
Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow.

The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It
was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the
burghers of the free cities.

I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries,
with their heavy stone enclosures — the homes of the knights
and the monks, who guarded men's bodies and their souls.
You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers and an
occasional candle-stick maker) came to live near the castle
to tend to the wants of their masters and to find protection
in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these
people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they
were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the
mighty Seigneur of the castle. When he went about they knelt
before him and kissed his hand.

Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The
migrations had driven people from the north-east to the west.
The Crusades made millions of people travel from the west to

178 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They discovered
that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little
settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more com-
fortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient.
After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they
be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack
upon his back — ^the only merchant of the Dark Ages — added
these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few
ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which fol-
lowed this great international war, and went forth to do busi-
ness upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was
not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of an-
other Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business
was profitable all the same and the peddler continued to make
his rounds.

Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods
which they had always imported from afar could be made at
home. They turned part of their homes into a workgshop.
They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers. They
sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the
abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns.
The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms,
eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was
used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged
to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to
own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position
in the society of the early Middle Ages.

It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money.
In a modern city one cannot possible live without money. All
day long you carry a pocket full of small discs of metal to
*'pay your wiay." You need a nickel for the street-car, a dollar
for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many
people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined
money from the time they were bom to the day of their deatis..
The gold end silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath
the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which

THE MEDIEVAL CITY

179

had succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every
farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough
cows for his own use.

The mediaeval knight was a country squire and was rarely
forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced

THE CASTLE AND THE CITY

everji;hing that he and his family ate and drank and wore on
their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the
banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall
was cut from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to
come from abroad were paid for in goods — ^in honey — in eggs
— ^in fagots.

180 THE STORY OF MANKIND

But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural
life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hil-
desheim was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thou-
sands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills.
At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he
could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of
hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of
Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentle-
men insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obHged
to take a small quantity of gold with him upon liis voyage.
Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the
Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had
turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their
exchange-table (commonly known as "banco" or bank) were
glad to let his Grace have a few hundred gold pieces in ex-
change for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might be re-
paid in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks.

That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end,
the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the Kjiight
became a bankrupt, who hired himself out as a fighting man to
a more powerful and more careful neighbour.

His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the
Jews were forced to live. There he could borrow money at a
rate of fifty or sixty percent, interest. That, too, was bad
business. But was there a way out ? Some of the people of the
little city which surrounded the castle were said to have monej^.
They had known the young lord all his life. His father and
their fathers had been good friends. They would not be un-
reasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's
clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note
to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan. The
townspeople met in the work-room of the jeweller who made
chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand.
They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to
ask for "interest." In the first place, it was against the re-
ligious principles of most people to take interest and in the

THE MEDIAEVAL TOWN

THE MEDIEVAL CITY 181

second place, it would never be paid except in agricultural
products and of these the people had enough and to spare.

"But," suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sit-
ting upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher,
"suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money.
We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won't let us
fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred
ducats and that he give us in return a \nntten guarantee al-
lowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets
the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be
good business all around.'*

The day his Lordship accepted this proposition -{it seemed
such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed
the death-warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the
agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not
sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years later
he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in
the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed
his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd
away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants
visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratu-
lated his Lordship upon his safe return. They were sorrj'^ his
Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his Lord-
ship might perhaps remember he had given them permission
to do so himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which
had been kept in the safe of the jeweller ever since the master
had gone to the Holy Land.

His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was
in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name
to certain documents which were now in the possession of Sal-
vestro dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents
were "promissory notes" and they were due two months from
date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty
pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble
knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and
his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The
merchants retired to discuss the matter.

182

THE STORY OF INIANKIND

After three daj^s they came back and said "y^s." They
were only too happy to be able to help their master in his diffi-
culties, but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give
them another written promise (another charter) that they,
the townspeople, might establish a council of. their own to be
elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city, said
council to manage civic affairs without interference from the
side of the castle?

His Lordship was con-
foundedly angry. But again,
he needed the money. He said
yes, and signed the charter.
Next week, he repented. He
called his soldiers and went to
the house of the jeweller and
asked for the documents which
his crafty subjects had cajoled
out of him under the pressure
of circumstances. He took
them away and burned them.
The townspeople stood by and
said nothing. But when next
his Lordship needed money to
pay for the dowry of his daugh-
ter, he was unable to get a
single penny. After that little
affair at the jeweller's his credit

was not considered good. He was forced to eat humble-pie
and offer to make certain reparations. Before his Lordship
got the first installment of the stipulated sum, the townsp^ple
^•fere once mcfre in possession of all their old charters and a
brand new one which p^eiiniftaed them to build a "city-hall" and
a strong tower wh^re all the charters might be kejrt prbtfectfed
against fire and theft, which really mea»t protected against
future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers.

This, in a very general way, is what happened during the
centuries which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process,

THE BELFRY

THE MEDIAEVAL CITY

188

this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city. There
was some fighting. A few tailors and jewellers were killed and
a few castles went up in smoke. But such occurrences were
not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer
and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves
they were for ever forced to excharge charters of civic liberty
in return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an
asylum to run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they
had lived a number of years behind the citj' walls. They came
to be the home of the more
energetic elements of the
surrounding country dis-
tricts. They were proud of
their new importance and
expressed their power in the
churches and public build-
ings which they erected
around the old market
place, where centuries be-
fore the barter of eggs and
sheep and honey and salt
had taken place. They
wanted their children to
have a better chance in life
than they had enjoyed
themselves. They hired
monks to come to their city and be school teachers. When
they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of
wood, they offered him a pension if he would come and cover
the walls of their chapels and their town hall with scenes from
the Holy Scriptures.

Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of
his castle, saw all this up-start splendour and regi-etted the
day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign
rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The towns-
people with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers
at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they
had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle
which had lasted for more than ten generations.

GUNPOWDER

MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED
THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE
ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY

As long as people were "nomads," wandering tribes of shep-
herds, all men had been equal and had been responsible for the
welfare and safety of the entire community.

But after they had settled down and some had become rich
and others had grown poor, the government was apt to fall into
the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living
and who could devote themselves to politics.

I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in
Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome. It occurred among
the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order
had been restored. The western European world was ruled
in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven
or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of
the German nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary
and very little actual power. It was ruled by a nuijiber of
kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day govern-
ment was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their
subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There
was hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth cen-
tury (after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle
class — ^the merchant class — once more appeared upon the his-

184

MEDLEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

185

186 THE STORY OF MANKIND

torical stage and its rise in power, as we saw in the last chapter,
had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk.

Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid
attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the
new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the
Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer
from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their
majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would
have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good
burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves.
They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not
without a struggle.

In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion
Hearted (who had gone to the Holy Land, but who was spend-
ing the greater part of his crusading voyage in an Austrian
jail) the government of the country had been placed in the
hands of John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior in
the art of war, but his equal as a bad administrator. John had
begun his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the
greater part of the French possessions. Next, he had man-
aged to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous
enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had excommunicated
John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor
Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had
been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV
had been obliged to do in the year 1077.

Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse
his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner
of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he
would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient
rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in
the Thames, near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of
June of the year 1215. The document to which John signed
his name was called the Big Charter — ^the Magna Carta. It
contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and
direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated
the privileges of his vassals. It paid little attention to the

MEDIiEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 187

rights (if any) of the vast majority of the people, the peasants,
but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the mer-
chants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined
the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been
done before. But it was still a purely mediaeval document. It
did not refer to common human beings, unless they happened to
be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows
were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the
roj''al foresters.

A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different
note in the councils of His Majesty.

John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly
had promised to obey the great charter and then had broken
every one of its many stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died
and was succeeded by his son Henry III, who was forced to
recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, the
Crusader, had cost the countrj' a great deal of money and the
king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his
obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-own-
ers and the bishops who acted as councillors to the king could
not provide him with the necessary gold and silver. The king
then gave orders that a few representatives of the cities be
called upon to attend the sessions of his Great Council. They
made their first appearance in the year 1265. They were sup-
posed to act only as financial experts who were not supposed
to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state, but
to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation.

Gradually, however, these representatives of the "commons"
were consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting
of noblemen, bishops and city delegates developed into a regu-
lar Parliament, a place "oil Ton parlait," which means in Eng-
lish where people talked, before important affairs of state were
decided upon.

But the institution of such a general advisory-board with
certain executive powers was not an English invention, as
seems to be the general belief, and government by a "king and

188 JHE STORY OF MANKIND

his parliament" was by no means restricted to the British Isles.
You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries,
like France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the
Middle Ages reduced the influence of the "parhament" to noth-
ing. In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been
admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five
centuries had to pass before this "Parliament" was strong
enough to assert the rights of the middle class, the so-called

THE HOME OF SWISS LIBERTY

Third Estate, and break the power of the king. Then they
made up for lost time and during the French Revolution, abol-
ished the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the repre-
sentatives of the common people the rulers of the land. In
Spain the "cortes" (the king's coimcil) had been opened to the
commoners as early as the first half of the twelfth century.
In the German Empire, a number of important cities had ob-
tained the rank of "imperial cities" whose representatives must
be heard in the imperial diet.

In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the ses-
sions of the Riksdag at the first meeting of the year 1359. In

MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

189

Denmark the Daneholf , the ancient national assembly, was re-
established in 1314, and, although the nobles often regained con-
trol of the country at the expense of the king and the people,
the representatives of the cities were never completely deprived
of their power.

In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative
government is particularly interesting. In Iceland, the "Al-
thing," the assembly of all free landowners, who managed the
affairs of the island, began to hold regular meetings in the ninth

THE ABJURATION OF PHILIP II

century and continued to do so for more than a thousand
years.

In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons de-
fended their assemblies against the attempts of a number of
feudal neighbours with great success.

Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of
the different duchies and counties were attended by represen-
tatives of the third estate as early as the thirteenth century.

In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces
rebelled against their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn
meeting of the "Estates General," removed the clergy from

190 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the discussions, broke the power of the nobles and assumed full
executive authority over the newly-established Republic of the
United Seven Netherlands. For two centuries, the representa-
tives of the town-councils ruled the country without a king,
without bishops and without noblemen. The city had become
supreme and the good burghers had become the rulers of the
land.

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD

VV^HAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH
THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE

Dates are a very useful invention. We could not do with-
out them but unless we are very careful, they wiU play tricks
with us. They are apt to make history too precise. For ex-
ample, when I talk of the point-of-view of mediaeval man, I
do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476,
suddenly all the people of Europe said, "Ah, now the Roman
Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle
Ages. How interesting!"

You could have found men at the Prankish court of Charle-
magne who were Romans in their habits, in their manners, in
their out-look upon life. On the other hand, when you grow
up you will discover that some of the people in this world have
never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times
and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations
play tag ^\nth each other. But it is possible to study the minds
of a gotod many true representatives of the Middle Ages and
then give you an idea of the a\n"rage man's attitude toward
life and the many difficult problems of h'ving.

First of all, remiember that the people of the Middle Ages
never thought of themselves as free-born citizens, who could
come and go at will and shape their fate according to their
ability or energy or luck. On the contrarj', they all considered

191

198 THE STORY OF MANKIND

themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included
emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbuck-
lers, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They ac-
cepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this,
of course, they differed radically from modem people who ac-
cept nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own
financial and pohtical situation.

To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world
hereafter — a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brim-
stone and suffering — ^meant something more than empty words
or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the
mediseval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their
time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble
death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient
Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and ef-
fort, we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.

But during the Middle Ages, the Eling of Terrors with
His grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady com-
panion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his
scratchy fiddle — he sat do^n with them at dinner — he smiled
at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl
out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising
yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when
you were very yoimg, instead of listening to the fairy stories
of Andersen and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your
days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of
Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the children of
the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks
and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of
the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often
it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and
sentimental. They would first df all murder all the women
and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly
march to a holy spot and with t-icir hands gory with the blood
of innocent victims, they would pi ay that a merciful heaven for-
give them tiieir sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they
would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most

THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD 198

wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more
butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy
in their hearts.

Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a some-
what different code of manners from the common men. But in
such respects the common man was just the same as his mas-
ter. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a
shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of exceUent and faith-
ful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when
his feverish imagiimtion saw a ghost.

In judging these good people, however, it is wise to re-
member the terrible disadvantages under which they lived.
They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people.
Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called "Roman Emper-
ors," but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Em-
peror (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba
Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers
of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst
glorious ruins but vho did not share the benefits of the civi-
lisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed.
They knew nothing;. They were ignorant of almost every fact
which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go
to one single book for all their information. That was the
Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the
history of the human race for the better are those chapters of
the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of
love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy,
zoology, botany, geometrj'^ and all the other sciences, the ven-
erable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a
second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great en-
cyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why
the Christian church should have been willing to accord such
high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas
they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of
their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to
the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher

194 THE STORY OF MANKIND

whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true
Christians.

His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout
way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had
then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language
by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh
century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and
the philoso]3hy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of
Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities
of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin
by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get
a liberal education and this much travelled version of the fa-
mous books was at last taught at the different schools of north-
western Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all
the more interesting.

With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant
men of the ]\Iiddle Ages now set to work to explain all things
between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed
will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholiasts or
Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained
their information exclusively from books, and never from ac-
tual observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and
Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books
had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons.
They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon.
They did not leave their hbraries and repair to the backyard
to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study
them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether
the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of
Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons
and the caterpillars of western Europe.

When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like
Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began
to experiment vriih magnif}ang glasses and funny little tele-
scopes and actually dragged the sturgen and the caterpillar

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 195

into the lecturing room and proved that they were different
from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by
Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon
was going too far. ^Vhen he dared to suggest that an hour
of actual observation was worth more than ten years ^ith
Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as
well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever
done, the scholasts went to the police and said, "This man is
a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study
Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original, '^^^ly should
he not be contented with our Latin- Arabic translation which
has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years?
Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides
of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset
the established order of things by his Black Magic." And so
well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians
of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more
than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned
a lesson. He wrote liis books in a queer cipher which made it
impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which
became common as the Church became more desperate in its
attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would
lead to doubts and infidelity.

This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to
keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic
hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly
believed — nay, they knew — that this life was but the prepara-
tion for our real existence in the next world. They felt con-
vinced that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable,
filled their minds ^vith dangerous opinions and led to doubt
and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one
of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the
Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt
as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child
approach a hot stove. She knows that he will bum his little
fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him
back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves

196 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him
as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guard-
ians of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters
pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the
greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They
held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society
of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and
pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal
as bearable as possible.

A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But
the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to
remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon
this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his
rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When
he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care
of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary hfe, was never
haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was "safe" —
that he could not be throM'^n out of employment, that he would
always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but
a roof all the same) , and that he would always have something
to eat.

This feeling of "stability" and of "safety" was found in all
classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans
established guilds which assured every member of a steady in-
come. It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than
their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to
the "slacker" who managed to "get by." But they estab-
lished a general feehng of content and assurance among the
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers
of what we modern people call "comers," when a single rich
man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or pickled her-
ring, and then forces the world to buy from him at his own
price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trad-
ing and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed
to sell their goods.

THE MEDI.«rV'AL WORLD 197

The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and
fill the world with hurry and rivahy and a multitude of push-
ing men, when the Day of Judgement was near at hand, when
riches would count for nothing and when the good serf would
enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was
sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?

In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to sur-
render part of their liberty of thought and action, that they
might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and pov-
erty- of the soul.

And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They
firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet —
that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more im-
portant life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a
world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and in-
justice. They pulled dowTi the blinds that the rays of the
sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was
to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close
their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived
that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near
future. They accepted life as a necessarj'' evil and welcomed
death as the beginning of a glorious day.

The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the
future but had tried to establish their Paradise right here upon
this earth. They had succeeded in making life extremely pleas-
ant for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be
slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages,
when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds
arid turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low,
for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was
time for the pendulum to swing back in the other directibn, as
I shall fell you in my next chapter.

HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE
MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF
TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE
ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT
DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COM-
MERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA

There were three good reasons why the Italian cities should
have been the first to regain a position of great importance
during the late Middle Ages. The Italian peninsula had been
settled by Rome at a very early date. There had been more
roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else
in Europe.

The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere,
but there had been so much to destroy that more had been able
to survive. In the second place, the Pope lived in Italy and
as the head of a vast political machine, which owned land and
serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts
of law, he was in constant receipt of a great deal of money.
The Papal authorities had to be paid in gold and silver as did
the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and Genoa. The
cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural
products of the north and the west must be changed into actual
cash before the debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome.

198

MEDIiEVAL TRADE

199

200 THE STORY OF MANKIND

This made Italy the one country where there was a compara-
tive abundance of gold and silv^er. Finally, during the Cru-
sades, the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation
for the Crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbeliev-
able extent.

And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same
Italian cities remained the distributing centres for those Orien-
tal goods upon which the people of Europe had come to de-
pend during the time they had spent in the near east.

Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was
a republic built upon a mud bank. Thither people from the
mainland had fled during the invasions of the barbarians in the
fourth century. Surrounded on all sides by the sea they had
engaged in the business of salt-making. Salt had been very
scarce during the Middle Ages, and the price had been high.
For hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of
this indispensable table commodity (I say indispensable, be-
cause people, like sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain amount
of salt in their food ) . The people had used this monopoly to
increase the power of their city. At times they had even dared
to defy the power of the Popes. The town had grown rich and
had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade with the
Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry
passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could
not pay for their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the
Venetians who were for ever increasing their colonies in the
^gean Sea, in Asia Minor and in Egypt.

By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had
grown to two hundred thousand, which made Venice the big-
gest city of the Middle Ages. The people were without in-
fluence upon the government which was the private affair of a
small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate
and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were
the members of the famous Coimcil of Ten, — ^who maintained
themselves with the help of a highly organised system of secret-
service men and professional murderers, who kept watch upon
all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous

MEDIAEVAL TRADE XOl

* to the safety of their high-handed and unscrupulous Commit-
tee of Public Safety.

The other extreme of government, a democracy of very
turbulent habits, was to be found in Florence. This city con-
trolled the main road from northern Europe to Rome and used
the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic
position to engage in manufacturing. The Florentines tried to
follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and mem-
bers of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs.
This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being di-
vided into political parties and these parties fought each other
with intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated
their possessions as soon as they had gained a victory in the
council. After several centuries of this rule by organised mobs,
the inevitable happened. A powerful family made itself master
of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country
after the fashion of the old Greek "tyrants.** They were called
the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians (medicus
is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had
turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be
found in all the more important centres of trade. Even to-
day our American pawn-shops display the three golden balls
which were part of the coat of arms of the mighty house of
the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and married their
daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves
worthy of a Roman Ca?sar.

Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where
the merchants specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and
the grain depots of the Black Sea. Then there were more than
two hundred other cities, some large and some small, each a per-
fect commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and
rivals with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving
each other of their profits.

Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been
brought to these distributing centres, they must be prepared
for the voyage to the west and the north.

Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where

202

THE STORY OF MANKIND

they were reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in
turn served as the market places of northern and western
France.

Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This an-
cient road led across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for
the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past Innsbriick, the
merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down
the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to

OHEAT NOVGOnoo

Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers
and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by "shaving'*
the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked after
the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the
cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland)
which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic and dealt
directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial
centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in
the middle of the sixteenth century.

The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had
an interesting story of their own. The mediaeval world ate a
great deal of fish. There were many fast days and then people

MEUIA!:\AL TKADE XOS

were not permitted to eat meat. For those who lived away
from the coast and from the rivers, this meant a diet of eggs
or nothing at all. But early in the thirteenth centurj- a Dutch
fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring, so that it
could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries
of the North Sea then became of great importance. But some
time during the thirteenth centur>% this useful httle fish (for
reasons of its own) moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and
the cities of that inland sea began to make money. All the
world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish
could only be caught during a few months each year (the rest
of the time it spends in deep water, raising large families of
little herrings) the ships would have been idle during the rest
of the time unless they had found another occupation. They
were then used to carr\^ the wheat of northern and central Rus-
sia to southern and western Europe. On the return voyage
they brought spices and silks and carpets and Oriental rugs
from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen.

Out of such simple beginnings there developed an impor-
tant system of international trade which reached from the
manufacturing cities of Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty
guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France and
England and establislied a labour tyranny which completely
ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic
of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until
Tsar Ivan, who distrusted all merchants, took the town and
killed sixty thousand people in less than a month's time and re-
duced the survivors to beggarj'.

That they might protect themselves against pirates and
excessive tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the
north founded a protective league which was called the
"Hansa." The Hansa, which had its headquarters in Liibeck,
was a voluntary association of more than one hundred cities.
The association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled
the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and
Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the
privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants.

£04;

THE STORY OF MANKIND

I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the won-
derful stories of this strange commerce which was carried on
across the high mountains and across the deep seas amidst
such dangers that everj^ voyage became a glorious adventure.
But it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here.

THE HANSA SHIP

Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle
Ages to make you curious to read more in the excellent books
of which I shall give you a list at the end of this volume.

The Ikliddle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a
period of very slow progress. The people who were in power
beUeved that "progress" was a very undesirable invention of
the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they hap-

MEDIAEVAL TRADE «05

pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce
their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights.
Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into
the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were
considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail
sentence of twenty years.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of inter-
national commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile
had swept across the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind
a fertile sediment of prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure
hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a
chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in literature
and art and music.

Then once more was the world filled with that divine curi-
osity which has elevated man from the ranks of those other
mammals who are his distant cousins but who have remained
dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and development I have
told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter to these
brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain
of the established order of things.

They set to work. They opened the windows of their
cloistered and studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the
dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs which had gathered
during the long period of semi-darkness.

They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gar-
dens.

Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crum-
bling town walls, and said, "This is a good world. We are
glad that we live in it."

At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new
world began.

THE RENAISSANCE

PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY
JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY
TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE
OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISA-
TION OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY
WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVE-
MENTS THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAIS-
SANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION

The Renaissance was not a political or religious move-
ment. It was a state of mind.

The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient
sons of the mother church. They were subjects of kings and
emperors and dukes and murmured not.

But their outlook upon Hfe was changed. They began to
wear different clothes — to speak a different language — ^to live
different lives in different houses.

They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their
efforts upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven.
They tried to establish their Paradise upon this planet, and,
truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable degree.

I have quite often warned you against the danger that
lies in historical dates. People take them too literally. They
think of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignor-

206

THE RENAISSANCE «07

ance. **Cb*ck," says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and
cities and pslaces are flooded with the brij^t sunlight of an
eager intellectual curiosity.

As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such
sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly
to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was
it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means.
People were tremendously alive. Great states were being
founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed.
High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked
roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built
Gothic cathedral. Everjnvhere the world was in motion. The
high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just be-
come conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently
acquired riches) were struggling for more power with their
feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just be-
come aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were
fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The
king and his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled
waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which they
proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and
disappointed councillors and guild brethren.

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening
when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political
and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told
their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure
and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth,
impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universi-
ties, and thereby hangs a storj'.

The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That
sounds difiicult, but wait until I explain it to you. We modern
people are "nationally minded." We are Americans or Eng-
lishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or Freoch
or Italian and go to English and French and Italian univer-
sities, unless we want to specialise in some particular branch
of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn

208 THE STORY OF MANKIND

another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow.
But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely
talked of themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians.
They said, "I am a citizen of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa.'*
Because they all belonged to one and the same church they felt
a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men could
speak Latin, they possessed an international language which
removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up
in modem Europe and which place the small nations at such
an enormous disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case
of Erasmus, the great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who
wrote his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native
of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin and aU the world
was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would write in
Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to
read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and Amer-
ica, his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into
twenty different languages. That would cost a lot of money
and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble
or the risk.

Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater
part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read
or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art
of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international repub-
lic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which
knew of no boundaries and respected no hmitations of lan-
guage or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of
this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not fol-
low the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher
and a few pupils happened to find themselves together. There
again the Middle A^es and the Renaissance differed from our
own time. Nowadays, when a new university is built, the
process (almost invariably) is as follows; Some rich man
wants to do something for the community in which he lives or
a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its
faithful children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc-

THE RENAISSANCE

209

tors and lawyers and teachers. The university begins as a
large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money
is then used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormi-
tories. FinaUy professional teachers are hired, entrance exami-
nations are held and the university is on the way.

But in the Middle
Ages things were done
differently. A wise man
said to himself, "I have
discovered a great truth.
I must impart my knowl-
edge to others." And he
began to preach his wis-
dom wherever and when-
ever he could get a few
people to listen to him,
like a modern soap-box
orator. If he was an in-
teresting speaker, the
crowd came and stayed.
If he was dull, they
shrugged their shoulders
and continued their way.

By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear
the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copy-
books with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and
wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained.
The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or
the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in his chair
and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the
University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and
students during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted
for everything and the building in which he taught counted for
very little.

As an example, let me tell you of something that happened
in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there
were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people

THE MEDIAEVAL LABORATORY

210

THE STORY OF MANKIND

desirous of learning the medical profession and for almost a
thousand years (until 1817) there was a university of Salerno
which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the great Greek doc-
tor who had practised his art in ancient Hellas in the fifth
century before the birth of Christ.

Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany,
who early in the twelfth century began to lecture on theology
and logic in Paris. Thousands of eager young men flocked
to the French city to hear him. Other priests who disagreed
with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris
was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and
Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary
and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in
the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris.

In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had
compiled a text -book for those whose business it was to know
the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen then
came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas.
To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers
and the boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a cor-
poration (or University) and behold the beginning of the uni-
versity of Bologna.

Next there was a quarrel in
the University of Paris. We do
not know what caused it, but a
number of disgruntled teachers
together with their pupils
crossed the channel and found a
hospitable home in a httle village
on the Thames called Oxford,
and in this way the famous Uni-
versity of Oxford came into be-
ing. In the same way, in the
j^ear 1222, there had been a split
in the University of Bologna.
The discontented teachers ( again
followed by their pupils) had THE RENAISSANCE

THE RENAISSANCE 2U

moved to Padua and their proud city thenceforward boasted
of a university of its own. And so it went from Valladolid in
Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from Poitiers in France
to Rostock in Germany.

It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these
early professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to
listen to logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point,
however, which I want to make is this — the Middle Ages and
especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the
world stood entirely still. Among the younger generation,
there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a restless
if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this
turmoil grew the Renaissance.

But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene
of the ^lediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of
whom you ought to know more than his mere name. This
man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine lawyer
who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of
day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors
while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St. Francis
of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but
often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the
puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare
that raged forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,
the followers of the Pope and the adherents of the Emperors.

When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father
had been one before him, just as an American boy might be-
come a Democrat or a Republican, simply because his father
had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But after a
few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single
head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jeal-
ousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbelline.

He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a
mighty emperor might come and re-establish unity and order.
Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of
Florence in the year 1802. From that time on until the day
of his death amidsf the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year
1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of

«12

THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

charity at the table of rich patrons whose names would have

sunk into the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact,

that they had been kind to a poet in his misery. During the

many years of exile, Dante felt compelled to justify himself

and his actions when he had

been a pohtical leader in his

home-town, and when he had

spent his days walking along

the banks of the Arno that he

might catch a glimpse of the

lovely Beatrice Portmari, who

died the wife of another man, a

dozen years before the Ghibel-

line disaster.

He had failed in the ambi-
tions of his career. He had
faithfully served the town of
his birth and before a corrupt
court he had been accused of
stealing the public funds and
had been condemned to be
burned alive should he venture
back within the realm of the
city of Florence. To clear
himself before his own con-
science and before his contem-
poraries, Dante then created
an Imaginary World and with
great detail he described the
circumstances which had led to
his defeat and depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust
and hatred which had turned his fair and beloved Italy into a
battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked and selfish
tyrants.

He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year
1300 he had lost his way in a dense forest and how he found
his path barred by a leopard and a Uon and a wolf. He gave
himself up for lost when a white figure appeared amidst the

DANTE

THE RENAISSANCE «15

trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and philosopher, sent
upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by Bea-
trice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her
true lover. Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatorj' and
through Hell. Deeper and deeper the path leads them until
they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer himself stands frozen
into the eternal ice surrounded by the most terrible of sinners,
traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame and
success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers
have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who
in some way or other have played a role in the history of his
beloved city. Emperors and Popes, dashing knights and
whining usurers, they are all there, doomed to eternal punish-
ment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when they shall
leave Purgatory for Heaven.

It is a curious stor}'. It is a handbook of everything the
people of the thirteenth century did and felt and feared and
prayed for. Through it all moves the figure of the lonely
Florentine exile, forever followed by the shadow of his own
despair.

And behold I when the gates of death were closing upon
the sad poet of the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung
open to the child who was to be the first of the men of the
Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca, the son of the
notary public of the little town of Arezzo.

Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party
as Dante. He too had been exiled and thus it happened that
Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him) was bom away from
Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier
in France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But
the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He
wanted to be a scholar and a poet — and because he wanted to
be a scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one,
as people of a strong will are apt to do. He made long
voyages, copying manuscripts in Flanders and in the cloisters
along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege and finally in Rome.
Then he went to live in a lonely vaUey of the wild mountains

214 THE STORY OF IMANKIND

of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he had
become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both
the University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him
to come and teach their students and subjects. On the way
to his new job, he was obliged to pass through Rome. The
people had heard of his fame as an editor of half-forgotten
Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the
ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with
the laurel wreath of the Poet.

From that moment on, his life was an endless career of
honour and appreciation. He wrote the things which people
wanted most to hear. They were tired of theological dispu-
tations. Poor Dante could wander through hell as much as
he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and the
sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed
to have been the stock in trade of the last generation. And
when Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out to
meet him and he was received like a conquering hero. If he
happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller,
with him, so much the better. They were both men of their
time, full of curiosity, wilhng to read evei'\i;hing once, digging
in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find si:ill an-
other manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucretius or any of the
other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course
they were ! Everyone was. But no need of going around with
a long face and wearing a dirty coat just because some day
or other you were going to die. Life was good. People were
meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very well.
Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find?
Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient
buildings. All these things were made by the people of the
greatest empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world
for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and hand-
some (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!) . Of
course, they were not Christians and they would never be
able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their days
in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit.

THE RENAISSANCE «16

But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of
ancient Rome was heaven enough for any mortal being. And
anj-way, we live but once. Let us be happy and cheerful for
the mere joy of existence.

Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the
narrow and crooked streets of the many little Italian cities.

You know what we mean by the "bicycle craze" or the
"automobile craze." Some one invents a bicycle. People who
for hundreds of thousands of years have moved slowly and
painfully from one place to another go "crazy" over the pros-
pect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill aiid dale. Then
a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is it
necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and
let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then every-
body wants an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-
Royces and Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil. Ex-
plorers penetrate into the hearts of unkno>vn countries that
they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise in Sumatra
and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil
become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession.
The whole world is "automobile mad" and little children can
say "car" before they learn to whisper "papa" and "mamma."

In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy
about the newly discovered beauties of the buried world of
Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was shared by all the people of
western Europe. The finding of an unknown manuscript be-
came the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a
grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents
a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his
time and his energies to a study of "homo" or mankind (instead
of wasting his hours upon fruitless theological investigations),
that man was regarded with greater honour and a deeper re-
spect than was ever bestowed upon a hero who had just con-
quered all the Cannibal Islands.

In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred
which greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers
and authors. The Turks were renewing" their attacks upon

216 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Europe. Constantinople, capital of the last remnant of the
original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In the year 1393
the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras
to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzan-
tium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman
Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic
world go to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics.
But however indifferent western Europe might be to the fate
of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in the ancient
Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus
five centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn
Greek that they might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato.
They wanted to learn it very badly, but they had no books and
no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates of Florence
heard of the \4sit of Chrj-soloras. The people of their city
were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and
teach them? He would, and behold! the first professor of
Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young
men, begging their way to the city of the Amo, Kving in stables
and in ding\^ attics that they night learn how to decline the verb
iraiSivo} iratSeucis TotScuet and enter into the companionship of
Sophocles and Homer.

Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching
their ancient theology and their antiquated logic; explaining
the hidden mysteries of the old Testament and discussing the
strange science of their Greek- Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of
Aristotle, looked on in dismay and horror. Next, they turned
angry. This thing was going too far. The young men were
deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to
go and listen to some wild-eyed "humanist" with his new-
fangled notions about a "reborn civilization."

They went to the authorities. They complained. But one
cannot force an unwilling horse to drink and one cannot
make unwilling ears listen to something which does not really
interest them. The schoolmen were losing ground rapidly. Here
and there they scored a short victory. They combined forces
with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy a

THE RENAISSANCE «17

happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence,
the centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought
between the old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour
of face and bitter in his hatred of beauty, was the leader of
the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought a valiant battle. Day
after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy wrath
through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. "Repent,'*
he cried, "repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things
that are not holy I" He began to hear voices and to see flaming
swords that flashed through the sky. He preached to the
little children that they might not faU into the errors of these
ways which were leading their fathers to perdition. He or-
ganised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service of the
great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden mo-
ment of frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance
for their wicked love of beauty and pleasure. They carried
their books and their statues and their paintings to the market
place and celebrated a wild "carnival of the vanities" with holy
singing and most imholy dancing, while Savonarola applied his
torch to the accumulated treasures.

But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise
what they had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them de-
stroy that which they had come to love above all things. They
turned against him, Savonarola was thrown into jail. He was
tortured. But he refused to repent for anj'thing he had done.
He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy life. He
had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to
share his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate
evil wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and
heathenish beauty in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church,
had been an evil. But he stood alone. He had fought the
battle of a time that was dead and gone. The Pope in Rome
never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he ap-
proved of his "faithful Florentines" when they dragged Savon-
arola to the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst
the clieerful howling and yelling of the mob.

It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola

218 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

would have been a great man in the eleventh centuiy. In the
fifteenth century he was merely the leader of a lost cause.
For better or worse, the Middle Ages had come to an end when
the Pope had turned humanist and when the Vatican became
the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities.

THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF
GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY
DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EX-
PRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY
AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITEC-
TURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE
BOOKS THEY PRINTED

In the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent
seventy-two of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls
of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes near the good town of
Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He
was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been bom
in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas a Kempis.
At the age of twelve he had been sent to Deventer, where
Gerhard Groot, a brilliant graduate of the universities of
Paris, Cologne and Prague, and famous as a wandering
preacher, had founded the Society of the Brothers of the
Common Life. The good brothers were humble laymen who
tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ
while working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house-
painters and stone masons. They maintained an excellent
school, that deserving boys of poor parents might be taught
the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. At this school,
little Thomas had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and
how to copy manuscripts. Then he had taken his vows, had

210

220

THE STORY OF IViANKIND

put his little bundle of books upon his back, had wandeied to
ZwoUe and with a sigh of relief he had closed the door upon a
turbulent world which did not attract him.

Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden
death. In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of
Johannes Huss, the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the
English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the
death of their beloved leader who had
been burned at the stake by order of
that same Coimcil of Constance,
which had promised him a safe-con-
duct if he would come to Switzerland
and explain his doctrines to the Pope,
the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals,
thirty-three archbishops and bishops,
one hundred and fifty abbots and
more than a hundred princes and
dukes who had gathered together to
reform their church.

In the west, France had been
fighting for a hundred years that
she might drive the English from
her territories and just then was
saved from utter defeat by the for-
tunate appearance of Joan of Arc.
And no sooner had this struggle come
to an end than France and Burgundy
were at each other's throats, engaged
upon a struggle of life and death
for the supremacy of western Europe.

In the south, a Pope at Rome was calhng the curses of
Heaven down upon a second Pope who resided at Avignon,
in southern France, and who retaliated in kind. In the
far east the Turks were destroying the last remnants of the
Roman Empire and the Russians had started upon a final
crusade to crush the power of their Tartar masters.

JOHN HUSS

THE CATHEDRAL

THE AGE OF EXPRESSION tSl

But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never
heard. He had his manuscripts and his own thoughts and
he was contented. He poured his love of God into a little
volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ. It has since
been translated into more languages than any other book
save the Bible. It has been read by quite as many people
as ever studied the Holy Scriptm-es. It has influenced the
lives of countless millions. And it was the work of a man
whose highest ideal of existence was expressed in the simple
wish that "he might quietly spend his days sitting in a httle
corner with a little book."

Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the
Middle Ages. Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the
victorious Renaissance, with the humanists loudly proclaim-
ing the coming of modem times, the Middle Ages gathered
strength for a last sally. Monasteries were reformed. Monks
gave up the habits of riches and vice. Simple, straight-
forward and honest men, by the example of their blameless
and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the ways of
righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But
all to no avail. The new world rushed past these good people.
The days of quiet meditation were gone. The great era of
"expression" had begun.

Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use
so many "big words." I wish that I could write this historj' in
words of one syllable. But it cannot be done. You cannot
write a text-book of geometry without reference to a hypote-
nuse and triangles and a rectangular parallelopiped. You
simply have to learn what those words mean or do without
mathematics. In history (and in all life) you will eventually
be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words of
Latin and Greek origin. Whj' not do it now?

AVhen I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression,
I mean this: People were no longer contented to be the
audience and sit still while the emperor and the pope told
them what to do and what to think. Thev wanted to be actors

S2«

THE STORY OF jVIANKIND

upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving "expression"
to their own individual ideas. If a man happened to be in-
terested in statesmanship like the Florentine historian, Niccolo
Macchiavelli, then he "expressed" himself in his books which
revealed his own idea of a successful state and an efficient
ruler. If on the other hand he had a liking for painting, he

THE MANUSCRIPT AND THE PRINTED BOOK

"expressed" his love for beautiful lines and lovely colours in
the pictures which have made the names of Giotto, Fra An-
gelico, Rafael and a thousand others household words wher-
ever people have learned to care for those things which express
a true and lasting beautj\

If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with
an interest in mechanics and hydrauHcs, the result was a Leo-
nardo da Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with
his balloons and flying machines, drained the marshes of the
Lombardian plains and "expressed" his joy and interest in all

THE AGE OF EXPRESSION «td

things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in
sculpture and in curiously conceived engines. When a man of
gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush and
the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture
and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out
of heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church
of St. Peter, the most concrete "expression" of the glories
of the triumphant church. And so it went.

All Italy (and verj- soon all of Europe) was filled with
men and women who lived that they might add their mite to
the sum total of our accumulated treasures of knowledge and
beauty and wisdom. In Germany, in the city of Mainz, Johann
zum Gansefleisch, commonly known as Johann Gutenberg, had
just invented a new method of copying books. He had studied
the old woodcuts and had perfected a system bj' which in-
dividual letters of soft lead could be placed in such a way that
they formed words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost
all his money in a law-suit which had to do with the original
invention of the press. He died in poverty, but the "expres-
sion" of his particular inventive genius lived after him.

Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in
Antwerp and Froben in Basel were flooding the world ^^nth
carefully edited editions of the classics printed in the Gothic
letters of the Gutenberg Bible, or printed in the Italian type
which we use in this book, or printed in Greek letters, or in
Hebrew.

Then the whole world became the eager audience of those
who had something to say. The day when learning had been
a monopoly of a privileged few came to an end. And the
last excuse for ignorance was removed from this world, when
Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his cheap and popular
editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and
Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and
philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful
friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had
made all men free and equal before the printed word.

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN
THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW
MEDIEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO
HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDER-
INGS. THE EUTIOPEAN WORLD HAD
GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBI-
TIONS. IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT
VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY

The Crusades had been a lesson in the Hberal art of travel-
ling. But very few people had ever ventured beyond the well-
known beaten track which led from Venice to Jaff e. In the
thirteenth century the Polo brothers, mercliants of Venice,
had wandered across the great ]Mongolian desert and after
climbing mountains as high as the moon, they had found their
way to the court of the great Khan of Cathay, the mighty
emperor of China. The son of one of the Polos, by the name
of Marco, had written a book about their adventures, which
covered a period of more than twenty years. The astonished
world had gaped at his descriptions of the golden towers of
the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian way of
speUing Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that
they might find this gold-land and grow rich. But the trip was
too far and too dangerous and so they siayed at home.

Of course, there was always the possibility of making the

224

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

t£5

voyage by sea. But the sea was very unpopular in the Middle
Ages and for many ver>'^ good reasons. In the first place, ships
were very small. The vessels on which Magellan made his
famous trip around the world, which lasted many years, were
not as large as a modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty
to fifty men, who lived in dingy quarters (too low to allow any
of them to stand up straight) and the sailors were obliged to

MARCO POLO

eat poorly cooked food as the kitchen arrangements were very
bad and no fire could be made whenever the weather was the
least bit rough. The mediaeval world knew how to pickle her-
ring and how to dry fish. But there were no canned goods
and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as
soon as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in
small barrels. It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten
wood and iron rust and was full of slimy growing things. As
the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes

226 THE STORY OF MANKIND

(Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century
seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept
his discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and
sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the
mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was
terrible. Of the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left
Seville to accompany Magellan on his famous voyage around
the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the seventeenth
century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe
and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual
for a trip from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater
part of these victims died of scun^y, a disease which is caused
by lack of fresh vegetables and which affects the gums and
poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion.

Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea
did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous
discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama
travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely com-
posed of ex- jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out
of a job.

These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the
courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their
hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of
our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their
ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle
of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a
compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of
Arabia and the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect
maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck
was with them they returned after one or two or three years.
In the other case, their bleeched bones remained behind on
some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gam-
bled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And
all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were
forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast
or the placid waters of an ocean that Had lain forgotten since
the beginning of time.

'- '.' i.i • -«-.■.

''■■i:

jiow Till; >\()i<i.D (iin:\\ i„vnci:h.

228 THE STORY OF ^LVNKIND

Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages
long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating.
But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be
like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should
cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which
are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow
or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I
can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries.

Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just one
thing — ^they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the
empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan)
and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which
the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the
Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very
quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of
pepper or nutmeg.

The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navi-
gators of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the
coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Por-
tugal were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old
struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such
energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels.
In the thirteenth century. King Alphonso III had conquered
the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the
Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the
next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the
Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had
taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa
(a word which in Arabic means "inventory" and which by way
of the Spanish language has come down to us as "tariff,") and
Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to
Algarve.

They were ready to begin their career as explorers.

In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES 229

Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the
daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in
Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make
preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern
Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited
by the Phoenicians and bj' the Norsemen, who remembered it
as the home of the hairy "wild man" whom we have come to
know as the gorilla. One after another. Prince Henry
and his captains discovered the Canary Islands — re-discovered
the island of Madeira whicli a century before had been visited
by a Genoese ship, carefully charted the Azores which had
been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the Spaniards,
and caught a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on
the west coast of Africa, which they supposed to be the western
mouth of the Nile. At last, by the middle of the Fifteenth
Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green Cape, and the
Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the
coast of Africa and Brazil.

But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to
the waters of the Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order
of Christ. This was a Portuguese continuation of the citi-
sading order of the Templars which had been abolished by
Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King
Philip the Fair of France, who had improved the occasion by
burning his own Templars at the stake and stealing all their
possessions. Prince Henry used the revenues of the domains
of his religious order to equip several expeditions which ex-
plored the hinterland of the Sahara and of the coast of Guinea.

But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and
spent a great deal of time and wasted a lot of money upon a
search for the mysterious "Prester John," the mythical Chris-
tian Priest who was said to be the Emperor of a vast empire
"situated somewhere in the east." The story of this strange
potentate had first been told in Europe in the middle of the
twelfth century. For three hundred years people had tried
to find "Prester John" and his descendants. Henry took part

230

THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

in the search. Thirty years after his death, the riddle was
solved.

In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land

THE WORLD OF COLUMBUS

of Prester John by sea, had reached the southernmost point
of Africa. At first he called it the Storm Cape, on account of
the strong winds which had prevented him from continuing Im

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES «81

voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon pilots who understood
the importance of this discovery in their quest for the India
water route, changed the name into that of the Caj>e of Good
Hope.

One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters
of credit on the house of Medici, started upon a similar mis-
sion by land. He crossed the Mediterranean and after leaving
Egypt, he travelled southward. He reached Aden, and from
there, travelling through the waters of the Persian Gulf which
few white men had seen since the days of Alexander the Great,
eighteen centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the
coast of India where he got a great deal of news about the
island of the Moon (Madagascar) which was supposed to lie
halfway between Africa and India. Then he returned, paid
a secret visit to Mecca and to Medina, crossed the Red Sea
once more and in the year 1490 he discovered the reabn of
Prester John, who was no one less than the Black Negus (or
King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianitj'
in the fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian
missionaries had found their way to Scandinavia.

These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geog-
raphers and cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies
by an eastern sea-route was possible, it was by no means easy.
Then there arose a great debate. Some people wanted to con-
tinue the explorations east of the Cape of Good Hope. Others
said, "Xo, we must sail west across the Atlantic and then we
shall reach Cathay."

Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that
day were firmly convinced that the earth was not as flat as a
pancake but was round. The Ptolemean system of the universe,
invented and duly described by Claudius Ptolemy, the great
Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the second century of
our era, which had served the simple needs of the men of the
Middle Ages, had long been discarded by the scientists of the
Renaissance. They had accepted the doctrine of the Polish
mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had con*

232 THE STORY OF MANKIND

vinced him that the earth was one of a number of round planets
which turned around the sun, a discovery which he did not ven-
ture to pubhsh for thirty-six years (it was printed in 1543,
the year of his death) from fear of the Holy Inquisition, a
Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth cen-
tury when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses
in France and in Itaty (very mild heresies of devoutly pious
people who did not believe in private property and preferred
to live in Christ-like poverty) had for a moment threatened the
absolute power of the bishops of Rome. But the belief in the
roundness of the earth was common among the nautical ex-
perts and, as I said, they were now debating the respective
advantages of the eastern and the western routes.

Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese
mariner by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son
of a wool merchant. He seems to have been a student at the
University of Pavia where he specialised in mathematics and
geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but soon we find
him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on busi-
ness. Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether
he went north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we
do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we
are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely
he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough
in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here
Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who
in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had
visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel
had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador.

What had become of those far western colonies no one
knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the hus-
band of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the
year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account
of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a
word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440.
Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death,

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

fSS

which had just killed half the people of Norway. Howe^'cr
that might be, the tradition of a "v^ast land in the distant west"
still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and

^^ /^FsJT

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further informa-
tion among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and
then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one

234

THE STORY OF IVJEANKIND

of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the
Navigator.

From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, EASTERN HEMISPHERE

to the quest of the western route to the Indies. He sent his
plans for such a voyage to the courts of Portugal and Spain.
The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a monop-

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES «85

oly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In
Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose
marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were
busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold, Granada,
They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every
peseta for their soldiers.

Few people were ever forced to fi^t as desperately for
their ideas as this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo
(or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,) is too well known to
bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Granada on the sec-
ond of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the
same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and
Queen of Spain. On Friday, the 8rd of August, he left Palos
with three httle ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom
were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment
if they joined the expedition. At two o'clock in the morning
of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus discovered land. On
the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus waved fare-
well to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none
of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward.
By the middle of February he reached the Azores where the
Portuguese threatened to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth
of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos and together with
his Indians ( for he was convinced that he had discovered some
outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red
Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons
that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and
the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their
most Catholic Majesties.

Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end
of his life, on his fourth voyage, when he had touched the main-
land of South America, he may have suspected that all was
I not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm belief
that there was no solid continent between Europe and Asia
and that he had found the direct route to China.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route.

236 THE STORY OF MANKIND

had been more fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama
had been able to reach the coast of Malabar and return safely
to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he had
repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of
exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498
John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan
but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the
rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the
Northmen, five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Floren-
tine who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and who gave his
name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil, but
had found not a trace of the Indies.

In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus,
the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of
Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of
Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had
looked down upon a vast expanse cf water which seemed to
suggest the existence of another ocean.

Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships
under command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de
Magellan, sailed westward (and not eastward since that route,
was absolutely in the hands of the Portuguese who allowed no
competition) in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan crossed
the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and sailed southward.
He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost point
of Patagonia, the "land of the people with the big feet," and
the Fire Island ( so named on account of a fire, the only sign of
the existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night).
For almost five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy
of the terrible storms and blizzards which swept through the
straits. A mutiny broke out among the sailors. Magellan
suppressed it with terrible severity and sent two of his men
on shore where they were left to repent of their sins at leisure.
At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened, and
Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and
placid. He caHed it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico.

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES

287

Then he continued in a western direction. He sailed for
ninety-eight days without seeing land. His people almost
perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that infested
the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of
sail to still their gnawing hunger.

In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called

MAGELLAN

it the land of the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the
natives stole everything they could lay hands on. Then fur-
ther westward to the Spice Islands!

Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Ma-
gellan called them the Philippines, after Philip, the son of his
master Charles V, the Philip II of unpleasant historical mem-
ory. At first Magellan was well received, but when he used
the gims of his ships to make Christian converts he was killed

238 THE STORY OF MANKIND

by the aborigines, together with a number of his captains and
sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining ships
and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the
famous Spice Islands ; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor.
There, one of the two ships, too leaky to be of further use,
remained behind with her crew. The "Vittoria," under Sebas-
tian del Cano, crossed the Indian Ocean, missed seeing the
northern coast of Australia (which was not discovered until
the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of the
Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable
land), and after great hardships reached Spain.

This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken
three j'^ears. It had been accomplished at a great cost both of
men and money. But it had established the fact that the earth
was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus were
not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that
time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their energies to the
development of their Indian and American trade. To prevent
an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the
only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy
office) had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts
by a line of demarcation which followed the oOth degree of
longitude west of Greenwich, the so-called division of Tor-
desillas of 1494. The Portuguese were to establish their colo-
nies to the east of this line, the Spaniards were to have theirs
to the west. This accounts for the fact that the entire Ameri-
can continent with the exception of Brazil became Spanish and
that all of the Indies and most of Africa became Portuguese
until the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect
for Papal decisions) took these possessions away in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries.

WTien news of the discovery of Columbus reached the
Rialto of Venice, the Wall street of the Middle Ages, there
was a terrible panic. Stocks and bonds went down 40 and 50
percent. After a short while, when it appeared that Columbus
had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian merchants

A XEW WORLD

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES JWU

recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and
Magellan proved the practical possibilities of an eastern water-
route to the Indies, Then the rulers of Genoa and Venice,
the two great commercial centres of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, began to be sorry that they had refused to listen
to Columbus. But it was too late. Their Mediterranean be-
came an inland sea. The overland trade to the Indies and
China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days
of Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new
centre of commerce and therefore the centre of civilisation.
It has remained so ever since.

See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those
early days, fifty centuries before, when the inhabitants of the
Valley of the Nile began to keep a written record of history.
From the river Nile, it went to Mesopotamia, the land be-
tween the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete and Greece and
Rome. An inland sea became the centre of trade and the cities
along the Mediterranean were the home of art and science and
philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth century it moved
westward once more and made the countries that border upon
the Atlantic become the masters of the earth.

There are those who say that the world war and the suicide
of the great European nations has greatly diminished the
importance of the Atlantic Ocean. They expect to see civilisa-
tion cross the American continent and find a new home in the
Pacific. But I doubt this.

The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in
the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navi-
gators. The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphra-
tes were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the
iEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans.
These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of
the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven
from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of the English and the
Dutch.

At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon

240 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ships. Aircraft has taken and will continue to take the place
of the sailing vessel and the steamer. The next centre of
civilisation will depend upon the development of aircraft and
water power. And the sea once more shall be the undisturbed
home of the little fishes, who once upon a time shared their deep
residence with the earliest ancestors of the human race.

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

The discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had
brought the Christians of western Europe into close contact
with the people of India and of China. They knew of course
that Christianity was not the only religion on this earth. There
were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern
Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But
in India and in China the Christian conquerors found new
millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want
to hear of Him, because they thought their own religion, which
was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West.
As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of
the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought
to know something of two men whose teaching and whose
example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts
of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.

In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious
teacher. His history is an interesting one. He was born in
the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ, within sight of the
mighty Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years before
Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of
the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch of the
Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his peo-
ple to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman,
and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's

241

242 THE STORY OF MANKIND

father was Suddhodana^ a mighty chief among the tribe of the
Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter of a
neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very
young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant
ridge of hills and still her husband was without an heir who
should rule his lands after him. At last, when she was fifty
years old, her day came and she went forth that she might be
among her own people when her baby should come into this
world.

It was a long trip to the land of the Kohyans, where Maha
Maya had spent her earliest years. One night she was resting
among the cool trees of the garden of Lumbini. There her son
was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we know
him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One.

In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young
prince and when he was nineteen years old, he was married to
his cousin Yasodhara. During the next ten years he lived
far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting
walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should
succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas.

But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove
outside of the palace gates and saw a man who was old and
worn out with labour and whose weak limbs could hardly carry
the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed him out to his coach-
man, Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of
poor people in this world and that one more or less did not
matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say
anything and went back to live with his wife and his father
and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he
left the palace a second time. His carriage met a man who
suffered from a terrible disease. Siddliartha asked Channa
what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the coach-
man answered that there were many sick people in this world
and that such things could not be helped and did not matter
very much. The young prince was very sad when he heard this
but again he returned to his people.

A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

243

K
H

j844 THE STORY OF MANKIND

carriage in order to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his
horses were frightened by the sight of a dead man whose rot-
ting body lay sprawling in the ditch beside the road. The young
prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was
frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The
world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all
things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave
awaited us all and there was no escape.

That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he
was received with music. While he was away his wife had
given birth to a son. The people were delighted because now
they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they cele-
brated the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha,
however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had been
lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The
sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream.

That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha
woke up and began to think of many things. Never again
could he be happy until he should have found a solution to the
riddle of existence. He decided to find it far away from all
those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where
Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for
his faithful Channa and told him to follow.

Together the two men went into the darkness of the night,
one to find rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant
unto a beloved master.

The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for
many years were just then in a state of change. Their ances-
tors, the native Indians, had been conquered without great diffi-
culty by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and there-
after the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of
millions of docile little brown men. To maintain themselves in
the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population into
different classes and gradually a system of "caste" of the most
rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descend-
ants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest
"caste," the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 246

of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the busi-
ness men. The ancient natives, however, who were called
Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and
never could hope to be anything else.

Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The
old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wan-
dering, had met with many strange adventures. These had
been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of
this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the
different languages of the European continent, to Greek and
Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The
three highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures.
The Pariah, however, the despised member of the lowest caste,
was not permitted to know its contents. Woe to the man of
noble or priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the
sacred volume!

The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in
misery. Since this planet offered them very little joy, salva-
tion from suffering must be foimd elsewhere. They tried to
derive a little consolation from meditation upon the bliss of
their future existence.

Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian
people as the supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped
as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to
lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most
exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded
as more important than holy deeds, and many people went
into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved
their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious
contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the
Good and the Merciful.

Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wan-
derers who were seeking the truth far away from the turmoil
of the cities and the villages, decided to follow their example.
He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies and sent
them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the

246 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single follower, the
young prince then moved into the wilderness.

Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the moun-
tains. Five young men came to him and asked that they might
be allowed to listen to his words of wisdom. He agreed to be
their master if they would follow him. They consented, and
he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them
all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains.
But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was still
far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to
tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then
he fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots
of an old tree. At last he received his reward. In the dusk of
the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed himself to his faithful
servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called Buddha
and he was revered as the Enlightened One who had come to
save men from their unhappy mortal fate.

The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within
the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of
submission and meekness unto all men. In the year 488 before
our era, he died, full of years and beloved by millions of people.
He had not preached his doctrines for the benefit of a single
class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple.

This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and
the merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which rec-
ognised the equality of all living creatures and offered men the
hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under happier circum-
stances. As soon as they could, thej^ encouraged the people of
India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed
with its fasting and its tortures of the sinful body. But
Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples of the
Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Hima-
layas, and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea
and preached the wisdom of their master unto the people of
Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their great mas-
ter, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day more people
recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their

BUDDHA GOES INTO THE MOUNTAINS

BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS «47

number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and
Mohammed.

As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his
story is a simple one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He
led a quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a time when China
was without a strong central government and when the Chinese
people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who
went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and murdering
and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into
a wilderness of starving people.

Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He
did not have much faith in the use of violence. He was a very
peaceful person. He did not think that he could make people
over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the only
possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he
set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing the char-
acter of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide plains
of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested
in religion as we understand that word. They believed in
devils and spooks as most primitive people do. But they had
no prophets and recognised no "revealed truth." Confucius
is almost the only one among the great moral leaders who did
not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the messenger
of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim
that he was inspired by voices from above.

He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given
to lonely wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful
flute. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that
any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us
of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic
School, men who believed in right living and righteous think-
ing without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of
the soul that comes with a good conscience.

Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his
way to visit Lao-Tse, the other great Chinese leader and the
founder of a philosophic system called ''Taoism," which was
merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule.

«48 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue
of supreme self-possession. A person of real worth, according
to the teaching of Confucius, did not allow himself to be
ruffled by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him with
the resignation of those sages who understand that everything
which happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best.

At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number
increased. Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the
kings and the princes of China confessed themselves his disci-
ples. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of
Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up
of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives
ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most reh-
gions change as time goes on. Christ preached humility and
meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen
centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was
spending millions upon the erection of a building that bore
little relation to the lonely stable of Bethlehem.

Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three
centuries the ignorant masses had made him into a real and
very cruel God and had buried his wise commandments under
a rubbish-heap of superstition which made the hves of the aver*
age Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors.

Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring
their Father and their Mother. They soon began to be more
interested in the memory of their departed parents than in the
happiness of their children and their grandchildren. Delib-
erately they turned their backs upon the future and tried tc
peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the
ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than
disturb a cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of
a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the
barren rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly
grow. And they preferred hunger and famine to the desecra-
tion of the ancestral grave.

At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite
lost their hold upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia^

FUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS

249

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yUK GKKAT MORAL LEADERS

260 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Confucianism, with its profound sayings and shrewd observa-
tions, added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul of
every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was
a simple laundryman in a steaming basement or the ruler of
vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded
palace.

In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivi-
lised Christians of the western world came face to face with
the older creeds of the East. The early Spaniards and Portu-
guese looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and con-
templated the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in
the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with
their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that
these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented
something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the
respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit
of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in
spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the "evil influence'*
with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very
definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage
of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.

THE REFORMATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST
COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND
BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFER-
ENCE AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY
ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE
WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND
LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RE-
LIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMA-
TION

Of course you have heard of the Reformation. You think
of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the
ocean to have "freedom of rehgious worship." Vaguely in the
course of time (and more especially in our Protestant coun-
tries) the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of
"liberty of thought." Martin Luther is represented as the
leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is
something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed
to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the
German historian Ranke, we try to discover what "actually
happened," then much of the past is seen in a very different
light.

Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely
bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of

251

252 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and
bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do
this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But
we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow
our prejudices to influence us too much.

Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very
Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw
any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt
very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid.
I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been
burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition
when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their
Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real
to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It
might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholo-
mew's night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my
nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as
had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny.

Much later I went to hve for a number of years in a Cath-
olic country. I found the people much pleasanter and much
more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former country-
men. To mj^ great surprise, I began to discover that there
was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a
Protestant.

Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did
not see things that way. They were always right and their
enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be
hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which
was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame.

When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500,
an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor
Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder
of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a num-
ber of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of
all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle.
He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maxi-

THE REFORMATION 253

milian of Habsburg, the last of the mediaeval knights, and of
his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious
Burgundian duke who had made successful war upon France,
but had been killed by the independent Swiss peasants. The
child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the greater part of
the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles,
cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in
Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain, together with all their colonies
in Asia, Africa and America. By a strange irony of fate, he
has been born in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of
Flanders, which the Germans used as a prison during their
recent occupation of Belgium, and although a Spanish king
and a German emperor, he receives the training of a Fleming.

As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is
never proved), and his mother has lost her mind (she is trav-
elling through her domains with the coffin containing the body
of her departed husband ) , the child is left to the strict disci-
pline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced to rule Germans and
Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles
grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church,
but quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather lazy,
both as a boy and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule
the w^orld when the world is in a turmoil of religious fervour.
Forever he is speeding from Madrid to Innsbruck and from
Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and he is always
at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon
the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much
stupidity. Three years later he dies, a very tired and disap-
pointed man.

So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church,
the second great power in the world ? The Church has changed
greatly since the early days of the Middle Ages, when it started
out to conquer the heathen and show them the advantages of
a pious and righteous life. In the first place, the Church has
grown too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of a flock
of humble Christians. He lives in a vast palace and surrounds
himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men

254 THE STORY OF jVIANKIND

His churches and chapels are covered with new pictures in
which the saints look more like Greek Gods than is strictly-
necessary. He divides his time unevenly between affairs of
state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent of his time.
The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman
statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new sum-
mer home, the rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and
the Cardinals follow the example of their Pope. The Bishops
try to imitate the Archbishops. The village priests, however,
have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves
aloof from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beauty
and pleasure. They stay away from the monasteries where
the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of sim-
plicity and poverty and live as happily as they dare without
causing too much of a public scandal.

Finally, there are the common people. They are much
better off than they have ever been before. They are more
prosperous, they live in better houses, their children go to bet-
ter schools, their cities are more beautiful than before, their
firearms have made them the equal of their old enemies, the
robber-barons, who for centuries have levied such heavy taxes
upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the
Reformation.

Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe,
and then you will understand how the revival of learning and
art was bound to be followed by a revival of religious inter-
ests. The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it spread
to France. It was not quite successful in Spain, where
five hundred years of warfare with the Moors had made the
people very narrow minded and very fanatical in all religious
matters. The circle had grown wider and wider, but once the
Alps had been crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change.

The people of northern Europe, living in a very different
climate, had an outlook upon life which contrasted strangely
with that of their southern neighbours. The Italians lived out
in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for them to laugh
and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the

THE REFORMATION «56

English, the Swedes, spent most of their time indoors, listen-
ing to the rain beating on the closed windows of their com-
fortable little houses. They did not laugh quite so much. They
took everything more seriously. They were forever conscious
of their inmiortal souls and they did not like to be funny about
matters which they considered holy and sacred. The "human-
istic" part of the Renaissance, the books, the studies of ancient
authors, the grammar and the text-books, interested them
greatly. But the general return to the old pagan civilisation
of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief results of the
Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror.

But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost
entirely composed of Italians and they had turned the Church
into a pleasant club where people discussed art and music and
the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the split
between the serious north and the more civilised but easy-going
and indifferent south was growing wider and wider all the
time and nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that threat-
ened the Church.

There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the
Reformation took place in Ciermany rather than in Sweden
or England. The Germans bore an ancient grudge against
Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and Pope had
caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European coun-
tries where the government rested in the hands of a strong
king, the ruler had often been able to protect his subjects
against the greed of the priests. In Germany, where a shadowy
emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good
burghers were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and
prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect large sums
of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which
were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans
felt that they were being mulcted and quite naturally they did
not like it.

And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany
was the home of the printing press. In northern Europe books
were cheap and the Bible was no longer a mysterious manu-

256 THE STORY OF MANKIND

script owned and explained by the priest. It was a household
book of many families where Latin was understood by the
father and by the children. Whole families began to read it,
which was against the law of the Church. They discovered that
the priests were telling them many things which, according to
the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat differ-
ent. This caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And
questions, when they cannot be answered, often cause a great
deal of trouble.

The attack began when the humanists of the North opened
fire upon the monks. In their heart of hearts they still had
too much respect and reverence for the Pope to direct their
sallies against his Most Holy Person. But the lazy, ignorant
monks, living behind the sheltering walls of their rich monas-
teries, offered rare sport.

The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very
faithful son of the church. Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius
Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a poor boy, born in
Rotterdam in Holland, and educated at the same Latin school
of Deventer from which Thomas a Kempis had graduated.
He had become a priest and for a time he had lived in a monas-
tery. He had travelled a great deal and knew whereof he wrote.
When he began his career as a public pamphleteer (he would
have been called an editorial writer in our day) the world was
greatly amused at an anonymous series of letters which had
just appeared under the title of "Letters of Obscure Men."
In these letters, the general stupidity and arrogance of the
monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange
German-Latin doggerel which reminds one of our modern
limericks. Erasmus himself was a very learned and serious
scholar, who knew both Latin and Greek and gave us the first
reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated
into Latin together with a corrected edition of the original
Greek text. But he beheved vnth Horace, the Roman poet,
that nothing prevents us from "stating the truth with a smile
upon our lips."

In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in Eng-

THE REFORMATION

257

land, he took a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book,
called the "Praise of Folly," in which he attacked the monks
and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all
weapons, humor. The booklet was the best seller of the six-
teenth century. It was translated into almost every language
and it made people pay attention to those other books of
Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of
the church and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him
in his task of bringing about a great rebirth of the Christian
faith.

But nothing came of these
excellent plans. Erasmus was
too reasonable and too tolerant
to please most of the enemies
of the church. They were wait-
ing for a leader of a more
robust nature.

He came, and his name was
Martin Luther.

Luther was a North-Ger-
man peasant with a first-class
brain and possessed of great
personal courage. He was a
imiversity man, a master of arts
of the University of Erfurt;
afterwards he joined a Domin-
ican monastery. Then he became a college professor at the
theological school of Wittenberg and began to explain the
scriptures to the indifferent ploughboys of his Saxon home. He
had a lot of spare time and this he used to study the original
texts of the Old and New Testaments. Soon he began to see
the great difference which existed between the words of Christ
and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops.

In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business.
Alexander VI, of the family of Borgia, who had enriched him-
self for the benefit of his son and daughter, was dead. But his

LUTHER TRANSLATES
THE BIBLE

g58 THE STORY OF MANKIND

successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal char-
acter, was spending most of his time fighting and building and
did not impress this serious minded German theologian with
his piety. Luther returned to Wittenberg a much disappointed
man. But worse was to follow.

The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had
wished upon his innocent successors, although only half begun,
was already in need of repair. Alexander VI had spent every
penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X, who succeeded Julius
in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He reverted
to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell
"indulgences." An indulgence was a piece of parchment which
in return for a certain sum of money, promised a sinner a de-
crease of the time which he would have to spend in purgatory.
It was a perfectly correct thing according to the creed of the
late ]SIiddle Ages. Since the church had the power to forgive
the sins of those who truly repented before they died, the
church also had the right to shorten, through its intercession
with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be puri-
fied in the shadowy realms of Purgatory.

It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for
money. But they offered an easy form of revenue and besides,
those who were too poor to pay, received theirs for nothing.

Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive terri-
tory for the sale of indulgences in Saxony was given to a
Dominican monk by the name of Johan Tetzel. Brother
Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the truth he was a
little too eager. His business methods outraged the pious
people of the little duchy. And Luther, who was an honest
fellow, got so angry that he did a rash thing. On the 31st of
October of the year 1517, he went to the court church and upon
the doors thereof he posted a sheet of paper with ninety-five
statements (or theses}, attacking the sale of indulgences.
These statements had been written in Latin. Luther had no
intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He
objected to the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his
fellow professors to know what he thought about them. But

THE REFORMATION «59

this was still a private affair of the clerical and professorial
world and there was no appeal to the prejudices of the com-
munity of laymen.

Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had
begun to take an interest in the religious affairs of the day,
it was utterly impossible to discuss an>i;hing, without at once
creating a serious mental disturbance. In less than two
months, all Europe was discussing the ninety-five theses of
the Saxon monk. Every one must take sides. Every obscure
little theologian must print his own opinion. The papal au-
thorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg
professor to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action.
Luther wisely remembered what had happened to Huss. He
stayed in Germany and he was punished with excommunica-
tion. Luther burned the papal bull in the presence of an
admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between him-
self and the Pope was no longer possible.

Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the
leader of a vast army of discontented Christians. German
patriots like Ulrich von Hutten, rushed to his defence. The
students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig offered to
defend him should the authorities try to imprison him. The
Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm
would befall Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground.

All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty
years old and as the ruler of half the world, was forced to
remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He sent out calls
for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on
the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an
account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now
was the national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to
take back a single word of what he had ever written or said.
His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He
would live and die for his conscience.

The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared
Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Ger-
mans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single

fteo THE STORY OF MANKIND

word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written.
But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority
of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most
unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther
was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector
of Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by trans-
lating the entire Bible into the German language, that all the
people might read and know the word of God for themselves.

By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual
and religious affair. Those who hated the beauty of the mod-
em church building used this period of unrest to attack and
destroy what they did not like because they did not understand
it. Impoverished knights tried to make up for past losses by
grabbing the territory which belonged to the monasteries.
Discontented princes made use of the absence of the Emperor
to increase their own power. The starving peasants, follow-
ing the leadership of half -crazy agitators, made the best of
the opportunity and attacked the castles of their masters and
plundered and murdered and burned with the zeal of the old
Crusaders.

A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the
Empire. Some princes became Protestants (as the "protest-
ing" adherents of Luther were called) and persecuted their
Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic and hanged their
Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year 1526
tried to settle this difficult question of allegiance by ordering
that "the subjects should all be of the same religious denomi-
nation as their princes." This turned Germany into a checker-
board of a thousand hostile little duchies and principalities and
created a situation which prevented the normal political
growth for hundreds of years.

In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put
to rest in the same church where twenty-nine years before he
had proclaimed his famous objections to the sale of Indul-
gences. In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and
laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into
the arguing, quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society of the

THE REFORMATION 261

Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes
came to a sudden end and the whole of western Europe was
turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics
killed each other for the greater glory of certain theological
doctrines which are as incomprehensible to the present genera-
tion as the mysterious inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans.

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS
CONTROVERSIES

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of
religious controversy.

If you will notice you will find that almost everybody
around you is forever "talking economics" and discussing
wages and hours of labor and strikes in their relation to the
hfe of the community, for that is the main topic of interest
of our own time.

The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared
worse. They never heard anything but "religion." Their
heads were filled with "predestination," "transubstanti-
tion," "free will," and a hundred other queer words, express-
ing obscure points of "the true faith," whether Catholic or
Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were
baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians
or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augs-
burg catechism, composed by Luther, or from the "institutes
of Christianity," written by Calvin, or they mumbled the
Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were printed in the Eng-
lish Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that these
alone represented the "True Faith."

They heard of the wholesale theft of church property per-
petrated by King Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of
England, who made himself the supreme head of the Enghsh

262

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

tes

church, and assumed the old papal rights of appointing bish-
ops and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one
mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its
many torture chambers, and they were treated to equally hor-
rible stories of how a mob of outraged Dutch Protestants had
got hold of a dozen defenceless old priests and hanged them
for the sheer pleasure of
killing those who professed ^^
a different faith. It was
unfortunate that the two
contending parties were so
equally matched. Other-
wise the struggle would
have come to a quick solu-
tion. Now it dragged on
for eight generations, and
it grew so complicated that
I can only tell you the most
important details, and
must ask you to get the
rest from one of the many
histories of the Reforma-
tion.

The great reform move-
ment of the Protestants
had been followed by a
thoroughgoing reform
within the bosom of the
Church. Those popes who
had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in Roman and
Greek antiquities, disappeared from the scene and their place
was taken by serious men who spent twenty hours a day ad-
ministering those holy duties which had been placed in their
hands.

The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monas-
teries came to an end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up
at sunrise, to study the Church Fathers, to tend the sick and

THE INQUISITION

264 THE STORY OF MANKIND

console the dying. The Holy Inquisition watched day and
night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by way of
the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor
Galileo, who was locked up because he had been a little too
indiscreet in explaining the heavens with his funny little tele-
scope and had muttered certain opinions about the behaviour
of the planets which were entirely opposed to the official views
of the church. But in all fairness to the Pope, the clergy and
the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the Protestants were
quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as the Cath-
olics and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intoler-
ance regarded the men who investigated things for themselves
as the most dangerous enemies of mankind.

And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant
(both political and spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the
French authorities when they tried to hang Michael Servetus
(the Spanish theologian and physician who had become famous
as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great anatomist), but
when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail and
had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison
and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the
stake on account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame
as a scientist.

And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the
subject, but on the whole, the Protestants tired of this game
long before the Catholics, and the greater part of honest men
and women who were burned and hanged and decapitated on
account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of the very ener-
getic but also very drastic church of Rome.

For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow
older) , is of very recent origin and even the people of our own
so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such
matters as do not interest them very much. They are tolerant
towards a native of Africa, and do not care whether he becomes
a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism nor
Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they
hear that their neighbour who was a Republican and believed

RELIGIOUS WARFARE «65

in a high protective tariff, has joined the Socialist party and
now wants to repeal all tariff laws, their tolerance ceases and
they use almost the same words as those employed by a kindly
Catholic (or Protestant) of the seventeenth century, who was
informed that his best friend whom he had always respected
and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the
Protestant (or Catholic) church.

"Heresy" until a very short time ago was regarded as a
disease. Nowadays when we see a man neglecting the per-
sonal cleanliness of his body and his home and exposing himself
and his children to the dangers of typhoid fever or another
preventable disease, we send for the board-of -health and the
health officer calls upon the police to aid him in removing this
person who is a danger to the safety of the entire community.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a man
or a woman who openly doubted the fundamental principles
upon which his Protestant or Catholic religion had been
founded, was considered a more terrible menace than a typhoid
carrier. Typhoid fever might (very likely would) destroy the
body. But heresy, according to them, would positively destroy
the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and
logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the
established order of things and those who failed to do so were
as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the
nearest doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are
suffering from cholera or small-pox.

In the years to come you will hear a great deal about pre-
ventive medicine. Preventive medicine simply means that our
doctors do not wait until their patients are sick, then step for-
ward and cure them. On the contrary, they study the patient
and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient)
is perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness
by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what
to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal
hygiene. They go even further than that, and these good
doctors enter the schools and teach the children how to use
tooth-brushes and how to avoid catching colds.

266 THE STORY OF MANKIND

The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to
show you) bodily illness as much less important than sickness
which threatened the soul, organised a system of spiritual pre-
ventive medicine. As soon as a child was old enough to spell
his first words, he was educated in the true (and the"only
true") principles of the Faith. Indirectly this proved to be a
good thing for the general progress of the people of Europe.
The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They
used a great deal of very valuable time to explain the Cate-
chism, but they gave instruction in other things besides the-
ology. They encouraged reading and they were responsible
for the great prosperity of the printing trade.

But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted
much time and thought to education. The Church, in this mat-
ter, found an invaluable friend and ally in the newly-founded
order of the Society of Jesus. The founder of this remarkable
organisation was a Spanish soldier who after a life of unholy
adventures had been converted and thereupon felt himself
bound to serve the church just as many former sinners, who
have been shown the errors of their way by the Salvation Army,
devote the remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding
and consoHng those who are less fortunate.

The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He
was born in the year before the discovery of America. He had
been wounded and lamed for life and while he was in the hos-
pital he had seen a vision of the Holy Virgin and her Son, who
bade him give up the wickedness of his former life. He de-
cided to go to the Holy Land and finish the task of the Cru-
sades. But a visit to Jerusalem had shown him the impossi-
bility of the task and he returned west to help in the warfare
upon the heresies of the Lutherans.

In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne.
Together with seven other students he founded a fraternity.
The eight men promised each other that they would lead holy
lives, that they would not strive after riches but after righteous-
ness, and would devote themselves, body and soul, to the serv-
ice of the Church. A few years later this small fraternity

RELIGIOUS WARFARE «67

had grown into a regular organisation and was recognised by
Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus.

Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline,
and absolute obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries
became one of the main causes for the enormous success of the
Jesuits. They specialised in education. They gave their
teachers a most thorough-going education before they allowed
them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with their students
and they entered into their games. They watched them with
tender care. And as a result they raised a new generation of
faithful Catholics who took their religious duties as seriously
as the people of the early Middle Ages.

The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts
upon the education of the poor. They entered the palaces
of the mighty and became the private tutors of future emperors
and kings. And what this meant you will see for yourself
when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But before
this terrible and final outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great
many other things had happened.

Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left
to his brother Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and
the Netherlands and the Indies and America had gone to his
son Philip. Philip was the son of Charles and a Portuguese
princess who had been first cousin to her own husband. The
children that are born of such a union are apt to be rather
queer. The son of Philip, the unfortunate Don Carlos, (mur-
dered afterwards with his own father's consent,) was crazy.
Philip was not quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered
closely upon religious insanity. He believed that Heaven had
appointed him as one of the saviours of mankind. Therefore,
whosoever was obstinate and refused to share his Majesty's
views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race and
must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of
his pious neighbours.

Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and
silver of the new world flowed into the Castilian and Ara-
gonian treasuries. But Spain suffered from a curious eco-

268

THE STORY OF MANKIND

nomic disease. Her peasants were hard working men and
even harder working women. But the better classes main-
tained a supreme contempt for any form of labour, outside of
employment in the army or navy or the civil service. As for
the Moors, who had been very industrious artisans, they had
been driven out of the country long before. As a result, Spain,
the treasure chest of the world, remained a poor country be-
cause all her money had to be sent abroad in exchange for the
wheat and the other necessities of life which the Spaniards
neglected to raise for themselves.

Philip, ruler of the most
powerful nation of the six-
teenth century, depended for
his revenue upon the taxes
which were gathered in the
busy commercial bee-hive of
the Netherlands. But these
Flemings and Dutchmen were
devoted followers of the doc-
trines of Luther and Calvin
and they had cleansed their
churches of all images and holy
paintings and they had in-
formed the Pope that they no
longer regarded him as their
shepherd but intended to follow
the dictates of their consciences and the conmiands of their
newly translated Bible.

This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could
not possibly tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but
he needed their money. If he allowed them to be Protestants
and took no measures to save their souls he was deficient in
his duty toward God. If he sent the Inquisition to the Neth-
erlands and burned his subjects at the stake, he would lose the
greater part of his income.

Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long
time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and

THE NIGHT OF
ST. BARTHOLOMEW

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

S69

threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to
sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and
Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his "man of
iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to
terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not
wisely left the country before his arrival. In the year 1572
(the same year that the French Protestant leaders were all
killed during the terrible night of Saint Bartholomew), he

LEYDEN DELIVERED BY THE CUTTING OF THE DYKES

attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred the inhabit-
ants as an example for the others. The next year he laid siege
to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland.
Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern
Netherlands had formed a defensive union, the so-called union
of Utrecht, and had recognised William of Orange, a German
prince who had been the private secretary of the Emperor
Charles V, as the leader of their army and as commander of

270

THE STORY OF MANKIND

their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars of
the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a
shallow inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a
strangely equipped navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed
barges which were rowed and pushed and pulled through the
mud until they reached the city walls.

It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish
king had suffered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the
world just as the Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian-
Japanese war, surprised our own generation. The Protestant
powers took fresh courage and
Philip devised new means for
the purpose of conquering his
rebellious subjects. He hired
a poor half-witted fanatic to
go and murder William of
Orange. But the sight of their
dead leader did not bring the
Seven Provinces to their knees.
On the contrary it made them
furiously angry. In the year
1581, the Estates General (the
meeting of the representatives
of the Seven Provinces) came
together at the Hague and
most solemnly abjured their
"wicked king Philip" and them-
selves assumed the burden of sovereignty which thus far had
been invested in their "King by the Grace of God."

This is a very important event in the history of the great
struggle for political liberty. It was a step which reached
much further than the uprising of the nobles which ended with
the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said
"Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understand-
ing that both sides shall perform certain services and shall
recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to live
up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it ter-

THE MURDER OF WILLIAM
THE SILENT

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

271

minated." The American subjects of King George III in
the year 1776 came to a similar conclusion. But they had three
thousand miles of ocean between themselves and their ruler
and the Estates General took their decision (which meant a
slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of the Spanish
guns and although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish
fleet.

The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to con-
quer both Holland and England, when Protestant Queen
Elizabeth had succeeded Catholic "Bloody Mary" was an old
one. For years the sailors of
the waterfront had talked
about it. In the eighties of
the sixteenth century, the
rumour took a definite shape.
According to pilots who had
been in Lisbon, all the Spanish
and Portuguese wharves were
building ships. And in the
southern Netherlands (in Bel-
gium) the Duke of Parma was
collecting a large expedition-
ary^ force to be carried from
Ostend to London and Am-
sterdam as soon as the fleet
should arrive.

In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north.
But the harbours of the Flemish coast were blockaded by a
Dutch fleet and the Channel was guarded by the English, and
the Spaniards, accustomed to the quieter seas of the south, did
not know how to navigate in this squally and bleak northern
climate. What happened to the Armada once it was attacked
by ships and by storms I need not tell you. A few ships, by
sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of
defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North
Seft.

Turn about is fair play. The British and the Dutch Prot-

THE ARMADA IS COMING

272 THE STORY OF MANKIND

estants now carried the war into the territory of the enemy.
Before the end of the century, Houtman, with the help of a
booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in
the Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to
the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East India Company
was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and
Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all serious-
ness.

It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a
curious lawsuit was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in
the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain by the name of van
Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the head
of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern
Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen
shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portu-
guese ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that
the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the
Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the
water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their
own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war
with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the
captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to
enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they
brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company
hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or
Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea
that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance
which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is
or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway
to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this
startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court
of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To
counteract the efi^ect of Grotius* famous plea for the "Mare
Liberum," or "Open Sea," John Selden, the Englishman,
wrote his famous treatise upon the "Mare Clausum" or "Closed
Sea" which treated of the nafural right of a sovereign to regard

RELIGIOUS WARFARE «7«

the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his terri-
tory. I mention this here because the question had not yet
been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of diffi-
culties and complications.

To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander
and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most
valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and
Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were
in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was
founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built

THE DEATH OF HUDSON

a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river
which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609.

These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch
Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign sol-
diers to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves
to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant
independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of
Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the
last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys.

The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618
and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648
was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing

«74 THE STORY OF MANKIND

religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Every-
body fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when
all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no
longer.

In less than a generation it turned many parts of central
Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought
for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf.
Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were de-
stroyed. The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered
twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million
people was reduced to four million.

The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of
the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was
the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most
obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had
made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and
all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of
his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent,
Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a
son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of
Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes.

At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The
young king looked in vain for assistance against this formid-
able enemy. The Dutch Repubhc was willing to help, but,
engaged in a desperate war of its own with the Spanish branch
of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in England
were more interested in strengthening their own absolute power
at home than spending money and men upon a forlorn adven-
ture in far away Bohemia. After a struggle of a few months,
the Elector of the Palatinate was driven away and his domains
were given to the Catholic house of Bavaria. This was the be-
ginning of the great war.

Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein,
fought their way through the Protestant part of Germany
until they had reached the shores of the Baltic. A Catholic
neighbour meant serious danger to the Protestant king of
Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by attacking

RELIGIOUS WARFARE

f75

M
S
H

«76 THE STORY OF MANKIND

his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The
Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated.
Wallenstein followed up his victory with such energy and vio-
lence that Denmark was forced to sue for peace. Only one
town of the Baltic then remained in the hands of the Protes-
tants. That was Stralsund.

There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King
Gustavus Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden,
and famous as the man who had defended his country against
the Russians. A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition,
desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern
Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant
princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He
defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Prot-
estant inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their
great march through the heart of Germany in an attempt to
reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy. Threatened in the
rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around and
defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Liitzen.
Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed
away from his troops. But the Habsburg power had been
broken.

Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once
began to distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his com-
mander-in-chief, was murdered at his instigation. When the
Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their Habs-
burg rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes.
The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Ger-
many, and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of
Baner and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pil-
laging and burning Habsbm'g property. This brought great
fame and riches to the Swedes and caused the Danes to become
envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon declared war upon
the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the Cathohc
French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had
just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those

RELIGIOUS WARFARE ST?

rights of public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year
1598 had guaranteed them.

The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide
anj^hing, when it came to an end with the treaty of West-
phalia in 1648. The Catholic powers remained Catholic and
the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of
Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Prot-
estants were recognised as independent republics. France
kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of
Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort
of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope
and without courage.

AMSTERDAM IN 1648

The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a
negative one. It discouraged both Catholics and Protestants
from ever trying it again. Henceforth they left each other in
peace. This however did not mean that religious feeling and
theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the
contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant
came to an end, but the disputes between the different Prot-
estant sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland
a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination
(a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important
in the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which

278 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the
Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of
the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence,
and who was the great organising genius of her Indian trading
company. In England, the feud led to civil war.

But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first
execution by process-of-law of a European king, I ought to
say something about the previous history of England. In this
book I am trying to give you only those events of the past
which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present
world. If I do not mention certain countries, the cause is not
to be found in any secret dislike on my part. I wish that I
could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and
Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influ-
ence upon the development of Europe in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite
and very respectful bow. England however is in a different
position. What the people of that small island have done dur-
ing the last five hundred years has shaped the course of history
in every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of
the background of English history, you cannot understand
what you read in the newspapers. And it is therefore necessary
that you know how England happened to develop a parliamen-
tary form of government while the rest of the European conti-
nent was still ruled by absolute monarchs.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE "DIVINE
RIGHT" OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE
BUT MORE REASONABLE 'RIGHT OF PAR-
LIAMENT" ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR
KING CHARLES I

CiESAE, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had
crossed the Channel in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered
England. During four centuries the country then remained
a Roman province. But when the Barbarians began to
threaten Rome, the garrisons were called back from the fron-
tier that they might defend the home country and Britannia
was left without a government and without protection.

As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon
tribes of northern Germany, they sailed across the North Sea
and made themselves at home in the prosperous island. They
founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
(so called after the original invaders, the Angles or English and
the Saxons) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with
each other and no King was strong enough to establish him-
self as the head of a united country. For more than five hun-
dred years, Mercia and Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex
and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever their names, were
exposed to attacks from various Scandinavian pirates. Finally
in the eleventh century, England, together with Norway and
northern Germany became part of the large Danish Empire

279

280

THE STORY OF MANKIND

of Canute the Great and the last vestiges of independence
disappeared.

The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no
sooner was England free, than it was conquered for the fourth
time. The new enemies were the descendants of another tribe
of Norsemen who early in the tenth century had invaded
France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy. William,

THE ENGLISH NATION

Duke of Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the
water with an envious eye, crossed the Channel in October
of the year 1066. At the battle of Hastings, on October the
fourteenth of that year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold
of Wessex, the last of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and established
himself as King of England. But neither William nor his
successors of the House of Anjou and Plantagenet regarded
England as their true home. To them the island was merely a

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

S81

part of their great inheritance on the continent — a sort of
colony inhabited by rather backward people upon whom they
forced their own language and civilisation. Gradually how-
ever the "colony" of England gained upon the "Mother
country" of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR

France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Nor-
man-English neighbours who were in truth no more than dis-
obedient servants of the French crown. After a century of war-
fare the French people, under the leadership of a yoimg girl by
the name of Joan of Arc, drove the "foreigners" from their
soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner at the battle of Compiegne

«82 THE STORY OF MANKIND

in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian captors to the
English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English
never gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were
at last able to devote all their time to their British possessions.
As the feudal nobility of the island had been engaged in one of
those strange feuds which were as common in the middle ages
as measles and small-pox, and as the greater part of the old
landed proprietors had been killed during these so-called Wars
of the Roses, it was quite easy for the Kings to increase their
royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth century, Eng-
land was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII
of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the
"Star Chamber" of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts
on the part of the surviving nobles to regain their old influence
upon the government of the country with the utmost severity.

In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son
Henry VIII, and from that moment on the history of Eng-
land gained a new importance for the country ceased to be a
mediaeval island and became a modern state.

Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a
private disagreement with the Pope about one of his many
divorces to declare himself independent of Rome and make
the church of England the first of those "nationalistic churches"
in which the worldly ruler also acts as the spiritual head of his
subjects. This peaceful reformation of 1534 not only gave
the house of Tudor the support of the English clergy, who
for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of many
Lutheran propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power
through the confiscation of the former possessions of the mon-
asteries. At the same time it made Henry popular with the
merchants and tradespeople, who as the proud and prosperous
inhabitants of an island which was separated from the rest of
Europe by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike for
everything "foreign" and did not want an Italian bishop to rule
their honest British souls.

In 1547 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son,
aged ten. The guardians of the child, favoring the modern

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION X8S

Lutheran doctrines, did their best to help the cause of Protes-
tantism. But the boy died before he was sixteen, and was suc-
ceeded by his sister Mary, the wife of Philip II of Spain, who
burned the bishops of the new "national church" and in other
ways followed the example of her royal Spanish husband.

Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded
by Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,
the second of his six wives, whom he had decapitated when she
no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who had spent some time in
prison, and who had been released only at the request of the
Holy Roman Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of every-
thing Catholic and Spanish. She shared her father's indiffer-
ence in the matter of religion but she inherited his ability as a
very shrewd judge of character, and spent the forty-five years
of her reign in strengthening the power of the dynasty and in
increasing the revenue and possessions of her merry islands.
In this she was most ably assisted by a number of men who
gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a
period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail
in one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the bibli-
ography at the end of this volume.

Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her
throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary,
of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a
Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and
daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised
the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night) , was the mother of
a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king
of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend
to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack
of political ability and the violent methods which she employed
to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scot-
land and forced Mary to take refuge on English territory. For
eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever and
a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who
was at last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted coun-
cilors "to cutte off the Scottish Queen's heade."

284

XHE STORY OF MANKIND

The head was duly "cutte oiF" in the year 1587 and caused
a war with Spain. But the combined navies of England and
Holland defeated Philip's Invincible Armada, as we have al-
ready seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy the
power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a
profitable business adventure.

For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the Eng-
lish as well as the Dutch thought it their good right to invade
the Indies and America and avenge the ills which their Protes-

JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT SEE THE COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND

tant brethren had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards. The
Enghsh had been among the earliest successors of Columbus.
British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot Giovanni Ca-
boto (or Cabot), had been the first to discover and explore the
northern American continent in 1496. Labrador and New-
foundland were of httle importance as a possible colony. But
the banks of Newfoundland offered a rich reward to the
English fishing fleet. A year later, in 1497, the same Cabot
had explored the coast of Florida.

Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry
VIII when there had been no money for foreign explorations.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

£85

But under Elizabeth, with the country at peace and Mary
Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave their harbour without
fear for the fate of those whom they left behind. While Eliza-
beth was still a child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past the
North Cape and one of his captains, Richard Chancellor, push-
ing further eastward in his quest of a possible road to the In-
dies, had reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established
diplomatic and commercial relations with the mysterious rulers
of this distant Muscovite Empire. During the first years of

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

Elizabeth's rule this voyage had been followed up by many
others. Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit of a
"joint stock Company" had laid the foundations of trading
companies which in later centuries were to become colonies.
Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a
single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be
loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise
with equal indifference to everything except their profit, the
sailors of Elizabeth had carried the English flag and the fame

286 THE STORY OF MANKIND

of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the Seven Seas.
Meanwhile Wilham Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at
home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-op-
erated with the queen in her attempt to change the feudal in-
heritance of Henry VIII into a modern national state.

In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy.
Her cousin, the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry
VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded
her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the
ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental
rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics were
killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power of
their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own
particular creed, England was at peace and "reformed" at
leisure without going to the extremes of either Luther or
Loyola. It gave the island kingdom an enormous advantage in
the coming struggle for colonial possessions. It assured Eng-
land a leadership in international affairs which that country
has maintained until the present day. Not even the disastrous
adventure with the Stuarts was able to stop this normal de-
velopment.

The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were "foreigners"
in England. They do not seem to have appreciated or under-
stood this fact. The native house of Tudor could steal a horse,
but the "foreign" Stuarts were not allowed to look at the
bridle without causing great popular disapproval. Old Queen
Bess had ruled her domains very much as she pleased. In
general however, she had always followed a policy which meant
money in the pocket of the honest (and otherwise) British mer-
chants. Hence the Queen had been always assured of the
wholehearted support of her grateful people. And small lib-
erties taken with some of the rights and prerogatives of Parlia-
ment were gladly overlooked for the ulterior benefits which
were derived from her Majesty's strong and successful foreign
policies.

Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he
lacked that personal enthusiasm which had been so very typical

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION «87

of his great predecessor. Foreign commerce continued to be
encouraged. The Catholics were not granted any liberties.
But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon England in an effort
to establish peaceful relations, James was seen to smile back.
The majority of the English people did not like this, but
James was their King and they kept quiet.

Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and
his son, Charles I, who succeeded him in the year 1625 both
firmly believed in the principle of their "divine right" to ad-
minister their realm as they thought fit without consulting the
wishes of their subjects. The idea was not new. The Popes,
who in more than one way had been the successors of the
Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman Imperial ideal of
a single and undivided state covering the entire known world),
had always regarded themselves and had been publicly rec-
ognised as the "Vice-Regents of Christ upon Earth.*' No one
questioned the right of God to rule the world as He saw fit.
As a natural result, few ventured to doubt the right of the
divine "Vice-Regent" to do the same thing and to demand the
obedience of the masses because he was the direct representa-
tive of the Absolute Ruler of the Universe and responsible
only to Almighty God.

When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those
rights which formerly had been vested in the Papacy were
taken over by the many European sovereigns who became
Protestants. As head of their own national or dynastic
churches they insisted upon being "Christ's Vice-Regents"
within the limit of their own territory. The people did not ques-
tion the right of their rulers to take such a step. They accepted
it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a representa-
tive system which to us seems the only reasonable and just
form of government. It is unfair therefore to state that either
Lutheranism or Calvinism caused the particular feeling of irri-
tation which greeted King James's oft and loudly repeated
assertion of his "Divine Right." There must have been other
grounds for the genuine English disbelief in the Divine Right
of Kings.

288 THE STORY OF MANKIND

The first positive denial of the "Divine Right" of sovereigns
had been heard in the Netherlands when the Estates General
abjured their lawful sovereign King Philip II of Spain, in the
year 1581. "The King,'* so they said, "has broken his contract
and the King therefore is dismissed like any other unfaithful
servant." Since then, this particular idea of a king's respon-
sibilities towards his subjects had spread among many of the
nations who inhabited the shores of the North Sea. They were
in a very favourable position. They were rich. The poor peo-
ple in the heart of central Europe, at the mercy of their
Ruler's body-guard, could not afford to discuss a problem
which would at once land them in the deepest dungeon of the
nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England
who possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of
great armies and navies, who knew how to handle the almighty
weapon called "credit," had no such fear. They were willing
to pit the "Divine Right" of their own good money against
the "Divine Right" of any Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart.
They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the
clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King.
They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer
in silence or run the risk of the scaffold.

When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England
with their claim that they had a right to do what they pleased
and never mind the responsibihty, the English middle classes
used the House of Commons as their first line of defence
against this abuse of the Royal Power. The Crown refused to
give in and the King sent Parhament about its own business.
Eleven long years, Charles I ruled alone. He levied taxes
which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his
British kingdom as if it had been his own country estate. He
had capable assistants and we must say that he had the cour-
age of his convictions.

Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support
of his faithful Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in
a quarrel with the Scotch Presbyterians. Much against his
}y\U, but forced by lain need for ready cash, Charles was at

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION iS»

last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in
April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved
a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November.
• This one was even less pliable than the first one. The mem-
' bers understood that the question of "Government by Divine
1 Right" or "Government by Parliament" must be fought out
^ for good and all. They attacked the King in his chief council-
lors and executed half a dozen of them. They announced that
they would not allow themselves to be dissolved without their
own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented
to the King a "Grand Remonstrance" which gave a detailed ac-
count of the many grievances of the people against their Ruler.
Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy
in the country districts, left London in January of 1642. Each
side organised an army and prepared for open warfare be-
tween the absolute power of the crown and the absolute power
of Parliament- During this struggle, the most powerful relig-
ious element of England,- called the Puritans, (they were
Anglicans who had tried to purify their doctrines to the most
absolute limits), came quickly to the front. The regiments of
"Godly men," commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their
iron discipline and their profound confidence in the holiness of
their aims, soon became the model for the entire army of the
opposition. Twice Charles was defeated. After the battle
of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch sold him
to the English.

There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising
of the Scotch Presbyterians against the English Puri-
|«n. In August of the year 1648 after the three-days* battle of
Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil war,
and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further
talk and wasted hours of rehgious debate, had decided to act
on their own initiative. They removed from Parliament all
those who did not agree with their own Puritan views. There-
upon the "Rump," which was what was left of the old Parlia-
ment, accused the King of high treason. The House of Lords
refused to sit as a tribunal. A special tribunal was appointed

;290 THE STUKY: UF MANKIND

and it condemned the King to death. On the 30th of January
of the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a win-
dow of White Hall onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign
People, acting through their chosen representatives, for the
first time executed a ruler who had failed to understand his own
position in the modern state.

The period which followed the death of Charles is usually
called after Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator
of England, he was officially made Lord Protector in the year
1653. He ruled five years. He used this period to continue
the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more became the arch
enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a na-
tional and sacred issue.

The commerce of England and the interests of the traders
were placed before everything else, and the Protestant creed of
the strictest nature was rigourously maintained. In maintaining
England's position abroad, Cromwell was successful. As a
social reformer, however, he failed very badly. The world is
made up of a number of people and they rarely think alike.
In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A govern-
ment of and by and for one single part of the entire commun-
ity cannot possibly survive. The Puritans had been a gi*eat
force for good when they tried to correct the abuse of the
royal power. As the absolute Rulers of England they became
intolerable.

When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the
Stuarts to return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were
welcomed as "deliverers" by the people who had found the
yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard to bear as that of auto-
cratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were willing to for-
get about the Divine Right of their late and lamented father
and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, tha
people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects.

Two generations tried to make a success of this new ar-
rangement. But the Stuarts apparently had not learned their
lesson and were unable to drop their bad habits. Charles II,
who came back in the year 1660, was an amiable but worthless

THE KXGUSH RKVoM'TlON «91

person. His indolence and his constitutional insistence upon
following the easiest course, together with his conspicuous suc-
cess as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between himself and
his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the
power of the Puritan clerg}'- by banishing all dissenting clergy-
men from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of
16C4 he tried to prevent the Dissenters from attending religious
meetings by a threat of deportation to the West Indies. This
looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right. Peo-
ple began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience,
and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing
the King with funds.

Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament,
Charles borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin.
King Louis of France. He betrayed his Protestant allies in
return for 200,000 pounds per year, and lauded at the poor
simpletons of Parliament.

Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith
in his own strength. He had spent many years of exile among
his Catholic relations and he had a secret liking for their reli-
gion. Perhaps he could bring JLngland back to Rome! He
passed a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the old
laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. This happened just
when Charles' younger brother James was said to have become
a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to the man in the street.
People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit
of unrest entered the land. ^lost of the people wanted to pre-
vent another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppres-
sion and a Catholic King — yea, even Divine Right, — were
preferable to a new struggle between members of the same
race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-
feared Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their con-
victions. They were led by several great noblemen who did
not want to see a return of the old days of absolute royal
power.

For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs
(the middle class element, called by this derisive name be-

292 THE STORY OF MANKIND

cause in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-
drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched to
Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet
originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now
applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but
neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to
die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II
to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threaten-
ing the country with the terrible foreign invention of a "stand-
ing army" (which was to be commanded by Catholic French-
men), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and
ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a
trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be
transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very ex-
ceptional circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply
with the Royal Command. They were accused of "seditious
libel." They were brought before a court. The jury which
pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a rich harvest
of popular approval.

At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second mar-
riage had taken to wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-
Este) became the father of a son. This meant that the throne
was to go to a Catholic boy rather than to his older sisters,
Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street
again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have
children! It was all part of a plot ! A strange baby had been
brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England
might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if
another civil war would break out. Then seven well-known
men, Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking the hus-
band of James" > oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadt-
holder or heac". of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and
deliver the jountry from its lawful but entirely undesirable
sovereign.

On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed
L t Torbay. As he did not wish to make a martyr out of his

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 298

father-in-law, he helped him to escape safely to France. On
the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parliament. On
the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife ^lary
were proclaimed joint sovereigns of Kngland and the country
was saved for the Protestant cause.

Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than
a mere advisory bexly to the King, made the best of its oppor-
tunities. The old Petition of Rights of the year 1628 was
fished out of a forgotten nook of the archives. A second and
more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the sovereign of
England should belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore
it stated that the king had no riglit to suspend the laws or
permit certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It
stipulated that "without consent of Parliament no taxes could
be levied and no army could be maintained." Thus in the year
1689 did England acquire an amount of liberty unknown in
any other country of Europe.

But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure
that the rule of WiHiam in England is still remembered. Dur-
ing his lifetime, government by a "responsible" ministry first
developed. No king of course can rule alone. He needs a few
trusted advisors. The Tudors had their Great Council which
was composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body grew too
large. It was restricted to the small "Privy Council." In the
course of time it became the custom of these councillors to meet
the king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called
the "Cabinet Council." After a short while they were known
as the "Cabinet."

AVilliam, like most English sovereigns before him, had
chosen his advisors from among all parties. But with the in-
creased strength of Parliament, he had found it impossible to
direct the politics of the country with the help of the Tories
while the Whigs had a majority in the house of Commons.
Therefore the Tories had been dismissed and the Cabinet Coun-
cil had been composed entirely of Whigs. A few years later
when the Whigs lost their power in the House of Commons, the

«94 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

king, for the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his
support among the leading Tories. Until his death in 1702,
William was too busy fighting Louis of France to bother much
about the government of England. Practically all important
affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council. When William's
sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition of
affairs continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately
not a single one of her seventeen children survived her) the
throne went to George I of the House of Hanover, the son of
Sophie, grand-daughter of James I.

This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word
of English, was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of Eng-
land's political arrangements. He left everything to his Cabi-
net Council and kept away from their meetings, which bored
him as he did not understand a single sentence. In this way
the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England and Scot-
land (whose Parliament had been joined to that of England
in 1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend
a great deal of his time on the continent.

During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of
great Whigs (of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for
twenty-one years) formed the Cabinet Council of the King.
Their leader was finally recognised as the official leader not
only of the actual Cabinet but also of the majority party in
power in Parhament. The attempts of George III to take
matters into his own hands and not to leave the actual busi-
ness of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that
they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the
eighteenth century on, England enjoyed representative govern-
ment, with a responsible ministry which conducted the affairs
of the land.

To be quite true, this government did not represent all
classes of society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right
to vote. But it was the foundation for the modern represent-
ative form of government. In a quiet and orderly fashion it
took the power away from the King and placed it in the hands

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION «9«

of an ever increasing number of popular representatives. It did
not bring the milleniuin to England, but it saved that coun-
try from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so
disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DI-
VINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH
GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN
EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF
THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY
THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE
"BALANCE OF POWER"

As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what
happened in France during the years when the English peo-
ple were fighting for their liberty. The happy combination
of the right man in the right country at the right moment is very
rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as
far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would
have been happier without him.

The country over which the young king was called to rule
was the most populous and the most brilliant nation of that
day. Louis came to the throne when Mazarin and Richelieu,
the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient French
Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seven-
teenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary abil-
ity. We, the people of the twentieth century, are still sur-
rounded by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King.
Our social life is based upon the perfection of manners and the
elegance of expression attained at the court of Louis. In in-
ternational and diplomatic relations, French is still the official

296

THE BALANCE OF POWER «97

language of diplomacy and international gatherings because
two centuries ago it reached a polished elegance and a purity
of expression which no other tongue had as yet been able to
equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons
which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the
French Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy
a position in the world of letters which other countries have
flattered by their imitation. We might continue this list for
many pages. It is no matter of mere chance that our modern
bill-of-fare is printed in French. The very difficult art of
decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of civilisation,
was first practised for the benefit of the great Monarch. The
age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can
still teach us a lot.

Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which
was far less encouraging. Glory abroad too often means
misery at home, and France was no exception to this rule.
Louis XIV succeeded his father m the year 1643. He died in
the year 1715. That means that the government of France
was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years,
almost two whole generations.

It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, "one single
man." Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in
many countries established that particular form of highly effi-
cient autocracy which we call "enlightened despotism." He
did not like kings who merely played at being rulers and
turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The Kings of
that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects.
They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else,
and felt their "divine responsibility" quite as strongly as their
"divine right" which allowed them to rule without consulting
their subjects.

Of course, the king could not attend to everything in per-
son. He was obliged to surround himself with a few helpers
and councillors. One or two generals, some experts upon for-
eign politics, a few clever financiers and economists would do
for this purpose. But these dignitaries could act only through

298 THE STORY Or ^MANKIND

their Sovereign. They had no individual existence. To the
mass of the people, the Sovereign actually represented in his
own sacred person the government of their country. The
glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single
dynasty. It meant the exact opposite of our own American
ideal. France was ruled of and by and for the House of Bour-
bon.

The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King
grew to be everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at
all. The old and useful nobility was gradually forced to give
up its former shares in the government of the provinces. A lit-
tle Royal bureaucrat, his fingers splashed with ink, sitting be-
hind the greenish windows of a government building in far-
awa\^ Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years
before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord,
deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best
he could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from
that very dangerous economic sickness, known as "Absentee
Landlordism." Within a single generation, the industrious
and useful feudal administrators had become the well-man-
nered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles.

Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was
concluded and the House of Habsburg, as a result of the
Thirty Years War, lost its predominant position in Europe.
It was ineiitable that a man with his ambition should use so
favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty the honours
which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year
1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King
of Spain. Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one
of the half-witted Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis
claimed the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) as part of his
wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have been disastrous
to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the safety
of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt,
Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven
Netherlands, the first great international alliance, the Triple
Alliance of Sweden, England and Holland, of the year 1664,

THE BALANCE OF POWER

t99

was concluded. It did not last long. With money and fair
promises Louis bought up both King Charles and the Swedish
Kstates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left to
her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low
coimtries. They marched to the heart of the country. For a
second time the dikes were opened and the Royal Sun of
France set amidst the mud of the Dutch marshes. The peace

THE BALANCE OF POWER

of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1078 settled nothing but
merely anticipated another war.

A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with
the Peace of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in
the affairs of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy,
Jan de Witt, had been murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his
successor, William III (whom you met in the last chapter),
had checkmated all efforts of liouis to make France the ruler of
Europe.

The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the

SOO THE STORY OF MANKIND

year 1701, immediately after the death of Charles II, the last
of the Spanish Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace
of Utrecht, remained equally undecided, but it had ruined the
treasury of Louis. On land the French king had been victor-
ious, but the navies of England and Holland had spoiled all
hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long struggle
had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of inter-
national politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the
world for any length of time.

That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a
written law but for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely
as are the laws of nature. The people who originated the idea
maintained that Europe, in its nationalistic stage of develop-
ment, could only survive when there should be an absolute bal-
ance of the many conflicting interests of the entire continent.
No single power or single djmasty must ever be allowed to
dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the
Habsburgs had been the victims of the application of this law.
They, however, had been unconscious victims. The issues dur-
ing that struggle were so clouded in a haze of religious strife
that we do not get a very clear view of the main tendencies
of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin to see
how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in
all matters of international importance. We discover the de-
velopment of a new type of statesman, the statesman with the
personal feelings of the slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan
de Witt was the first successful exponent of this new school
of politics. William III was the first great pupil. And Louis
XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first conscious victim.
There have been many others since.

THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE
EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON
THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EU^
ROPE

In the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered Amer-
ica. Early in the year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups,
travelling as the head of a scientific expedition for the
Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with the best letters
of introduction and excellent credit tried to reach the mythical
town of ]Moscow. He did not succeed. When he reached the
frontiers of this vast Moscovite state which was vaguely sup-
posed to exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he was
firmly turned back. No foreigners were wanted. And
Schnups went to visit the heathen Turk in Constantinople, in
order that he might have something to report to his clerical
master when he came back from his explorations.

Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to dis-
cover the North-eastern passage to the Indies, and blown by
an ill wind into the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Dwina
and found the Moscovite village of Kholmogory, a few hours
from the spot where in 1584 the town of Archangel was found-
ed. This time the foreign visitors were requested to come
to Moscow and sliow themselves to the Grand Duke. They
went and returned to England with the first commercial treaty
ever concluded between Russia and the western world. Other

3J1

202 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

nations soon followed and something became known of this
mysterious land.

Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural moun-
tains are low and form no barrier against invaders. The
rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an ideal territory for
nomads.

While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and
disappeared again, Slavic tribes, who had long since left their
homes in Central Asia, wandered aimlessly through the forests
and plains of the region between the Dniester and Dnieper
rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these Slavs and a few
travellers of the third and fourth centuries mention them.
Otherwise they were as little known as were the Nevada In-
dians in the year 1800.

Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a
very convenient trade-route ran through their country. This
was the main road from northern Europe to Constantinople.
It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was reached.
Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the
Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small
Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper
was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea.

The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In
the ninth century they began to settle in northern Russia, just
as other Norsemen were laying the foundation for independent
states in Germany and France. But in the year 862, three
Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and founded three small
dynasties. Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik, lived for a
number of years. He took possession of the territory of his
brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of this first Norse-
man, a Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its
capital.

From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the
existence of an organised Slavic State became known in Con-
stantinople. This meant a new field for the zealous mission-
aries of the Christian faith. Byzantine monks followed the
Dmeper on their way northward and soon reached the heart of

THE RISE OF RUSSIA

303

Ul/\RS>AW 0

THE ORIGIN 01 RUSSIA

304 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Russia. They found the people worshipping strange gods
who were supposed to dwell in woods and rivers and in moun-
tain caves. They taught them the story of Jesus. There was
no competition from the side of Roman missionaries. These
good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to
bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its reli-
gion and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture
from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a
rehc of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental
and had lost many of its European traits, the Russians suffered
in consequence.

Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian
plains did not fare well. It was the Norse habit to divide
every inheritance equally among all the sons. No sooner had
a small state been founded but it was broken up among eight
or nine heirs who in turn left their territory to an ever increas-
ing number of descendants. It was inevitable that these small
competing states should quarrel among themselves. Anarchy
was the order of the day. And when the red glow of the east-
ern horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a sav-
age Asiatic tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided
to render any sort of defence against this terrible enemy.

It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion
took place and that the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror
of China, Bokhara, Tashkent and Turkestan made their first
appearance in the west. The Slavic armies were beaten near
the Kalka river and Russia was at the mercy of the Mongo-
lians. Just as suddenly as they had come they disappeared.
Thirteen years later, in 1237, however, they returned. In less
than five years they conquered every part of the vast Russian
plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand
Duke of Moscow, beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the
Tartars were the masters of the Russian people.

All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to deliver
themselves from this yoke. For a yoke it was and a most
oflfensive and objectionable one. It turned the Slavic peasants
into miserable slaves. No Russian could hope tq survive un-

THE RISE OF RUSSIA SOS

less he was willing to creep before a dirty little yellow man who
sat in a tent somewhere in the heart of the steppes of southern
Russia and spat at him. It deprived the mass of the people of
all feeling of honour and independence. It made hunger and
misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state
of human existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he
peasant or nobleman, went about his business like a neglected
dog who has been beaten so often that his spirit has been broken
and he dare not wag his tail without permission.

There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan
were fast and merciless. The endless prairie did not give a
man a chance to cross into the safe territory of his neighbour.
He must keep quiet and bear what his yellow master decided
to inflict upon him or run the risk of death. Of course, Europe
might have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon busi-
ness of its own, fighting the quarrels between the Pope and
the emperor or suppressing this or that or the other heresy.
And so Europe left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to
work out his own salvation.

The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states,
founded by the early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart
of the Russian plain. Its capital, Moscow, was upon a steep
liill on the banks of the Moskwa river. This little principality,
by dint of pleasing the Tartar (when it was necessary to
please), and opposing him (when it was safe to do so), had,
during the middle of the fourteenth century made itself the
leader of a new national life. It must be remembered that the
Tartars were wholly deficient in constructive political ability.
They could only destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new
territories was to obtain revenue. To get this revenue in the
form of taxes, it was necessary to allow certain remnants of
the old political organization to continue. Hence there were
many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great Khan,
that they might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours
for the benefit of the Tartar treasury.

The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the
surrounding territor>% finally became strong enough to risk

306 THE STORY OF MANKIND

open rebellion against its masters, the Tartars. It was success-
ful and its fame as the leader in the cause of Russian inde-
pendence made Moscow the natural centre for all those who
still believed in a better future for the Slavic race. In the year
1-453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Ten years
later, under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the
western world that the Slavic state laid claim to the worldly
and spiritual inheritance of the lost Byzantine Empire, and
such traditions of the Roman empire as had survived in Con-
stantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan the Terrible,
the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the
title of Cffisar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the west-
em powers of Europe.

In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite
dynasty, descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to
an end. For the next seven years, a Tartar half-breed, by the
name of Boris Godunow, reigned as Tsar. It was during
this period that the future destiny of the large masses of the
Russian people was decided. This Empire was rich in land
but very poor in money. There was no trade and there were
no factories. Its few cities were dirty villages. It was com-
posed of a strong central government and a vast number of
illiterate peasants. This government, a mixture of Slavic,
Norse, Byzantine and Tartar influences, recognised noth-
ing beyond the interest of the state. To defend this state, it
needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary
to pay the soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many
officials it needed land. In the vast wilderness on the east
and west there was a sufficient supply of this commodity. But
land without a few labourers to till the fields and tend the
cattle, has no value. Therefore the old nomadic peasants
were robbed of one privilege after the other, until finally, dur-
ing the first year of the seventeenth century, they were formally
made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian
peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves
and they remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate
had become so terrible that they were beginning to die out.

MOSCOW

THE RISE OF RUSSIA 307

In the seventeenth century, tliis new state with its grow-
ing territory which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had be-
come a force with which the rest of Europe was obliged to
reckon. In 1613, after the death of Boris Godunow, the
Russian nobles had elected one of their own number to be
Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow fam-
ily of Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the
Kremlin.

In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of an-
other Feodor, was born. When the child was ten years old,
his step-sister Sophia took possession of the Russian throne.
The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs of
the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded
by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, Ital-
ian barbers, French dancing teachers and German school-mas-
ters, the young prince obtained a first but rather extraordinary
impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where
things were done differently.

When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed
Sister Sophia from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler
of Russia. He was not contented with being the Tsar of a
semi-barbarous and half- Asiatic people. He must be the sov-
ereign head of a civilised nation. To change Russia overnight
from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire was no
small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable
head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great op-
eration of grafting ^lodern Europe upon Ancient Russia was
performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over
the shock, as the events of the last five years have shown very
plainly.

RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO
DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING
POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE

In the year 1698, Tsar
Peter set forth upon his first
voyage to western Europe. He
travelled by way of Berlin and
went to Holland and to Eng-
land. As a child he had almost
been dro^vned sailing a home-
made boat in the duck pond of
his father's country home. This
passion for water remained
with him to the end of his hfe.
In a practical way it showed
itself in his wish to give his
land-locked domains access to
the open sea.

While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away
from home, the friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set
to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among
his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten
home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-
chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to
the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the
rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-

306

PETER THE GREAT IN
THE DUTCH SHIPYARD

RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN S09

gan in earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when
Peter had gone on his second western trip. That time the
reactionaries followed the leadership of Peter's half-witted
son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned in great haste. Alexis
was beaten to death in his prison cell and the friends of the
old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary
miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines.
After that, no further outbreaks of popular discontent took
place. Until the time of his death, Peter could reform in peace.

It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronologi-
cal order. The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed
no system. He issued his decrees with such rapidity that it is
difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that everything
that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole
of Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible
time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army of
200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of gov-
ernment had been abolished over night. The Duma, or con-
vention of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar
had surrounded himself with an advisory board of state offi-
cials, called the Senate.

Russia was divided into eight large "governments" or prov-
inces. Roads were constructed. Towns were built. Industries
were created wherever it pleased the Tsar, without any regard
for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and mines
were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiter-
ates, schools were founded and estabhshments of higher learn-
ing, together with Universities and hospitals and professional
schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans
from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia.
Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read
by the imperial censors. The duties of each class of society
were carefully written down in a new law and the entire system
of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a series of printed
volumes. The old Russian costumes were abolished by Im-
perial decree, and policemen, armed with scissors, watching
all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou-

810

THE STORY OF MANKIND

jiks suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west-
Europeans.

In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division oi
power. There must be no chance of a rivalry between an Em^
peror and a Pope as had happened in Europe. In the year
1721, Peter made himself head of the Russian Church. The
Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy Synod
made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all
matters of the Established Church.

Since, however, these many reforms could not be success-

PETER THE GREAT BUILDS HIS NEW CAPITAL

ful while the old Russian elements had a rallying point in the
town of Moscow, Peter decided to move his government to a
new capital. Amidst the mihealthy marshes of the Baltic Sea
the Tsar built this new citj\ He began to reclaim the land in
the year 1703^ Fortj^ thious^nd peasants woTked for years
to lay the foundatibns for this Iml^rial city. The Swedes at-
tacked Peter and tdeS t'o ies^pf his thwn a:rid illness and
misery killed tens &f tlie?iiSa:n3s 6f Ih^ jjfeaSaftts. B'^t ihie woi-k
wafs contlriii^, wiiit^ artd summer, tM the tes^f-ma.^ town
soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it was officially de-

RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN 311

clared to be the "Imperial Residence.'* A dozen years later
it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was
flooded by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar
created dykes and canals and the floods ceased to do harm.
When Peter died in 1725 he was the owner of the largest city
in northern Europe.

Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had
been a source of great worry to all the neighbours. From his
side, Peter had watched with interest the many adventures of
his Baltic rival, the kingdom of Sweden. In the year 1654,
Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero
of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne and had
gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protes-
tant nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last
Queen of the House of Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles
XI, the new dynasty had brought Sweden to its highest point
of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died suddenly and
was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII.

This was the moment for which many of the northern states
had waited. During the great religious wars of the seventeentli
century, Sweden had grown at the expense of her neighbours.
The time had come, so the owners thought, to balance the ac-
count. At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Den-
mark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other.
The raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beat-
en by Charles in the famous battle of Narva in November of
the year 1700. Then Charles, one of the most interesting mili-
tarj' geniuses of that centurj', turned against his other enemies
and for nine years he hacked and burned his way through the
villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and the Baltic
provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in distant
Russia.

As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the
Moscovites destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles
continued to be a highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero
of romance, but in his vain attempt to have his revenge, he
ruined his own country. In the year 1718, he was accidentally

S12 THE STORY OF MANKIND

killed or assassinated (we do not know which) and when peace
was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost all
of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new
Russian state, created by Peter, had become the leading power
of northern Europe. But already a new rival was on the
way. The Prussian state was taking shape.

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE
STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN
GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA

The history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district.
In the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old
centre of civilisation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions
of northwestern Europe. His Frankish soldiers had pushed
the frontier of Europe further and further towards the east.
They had conquered many lands from the heathenish Slavs and
Lithuanians who were living in the plain between the Baltic
Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks adminis-
tered those outlying districts just as the United States used
to administer her territories before they achieved the dignity
of statehood.

The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally
founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions
against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic
tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the
tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brcnna-
bor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new province
of Brandenburg.

During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of
imperial governor in this frontier state. Finally in the
fifteenth century, the House of Hohenzollem made its appear-

313

S14 THE STORY OF ]MANKIND

ance, and as Electors of Brandenburg, commenced to change a
sandy and forlorn frontier territory into one of the most ef-
ficient empires of the modem world.

These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from
the historical stage by the combined forces of Europe and
America, came originally from southern Germany. They were
of very humble origin. In the twelfth century a certain Fred-
erick of HohenzoUern had made a lucky marriage and had been
appointed keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His descendants
had used every chance and every opportunity to improve their
power and after several centuries of watchful grabbing, they
had been appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to
those sovereign princes who were supposed to elect the Em-
perors of the old German Empire. During the Reformation,
they had taken the side of the Protestants and the early seven-
teenth century found them among the most powerful of the
north German princes.

During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and
Catholics had plundered Brandenburg and Prussia with equal
zeal. But under Frederick William, the Great Elector, the
damage was quickly repaired and by a wise and careful use of
all the economic and intellectual forces of the country, a state
was founded in which there was practically no waste.

Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his
wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the
interests of the community as a whole — this Prussia dates back
to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick WilHam I was
a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great
love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense
disUke of all frills and feathers, (especially if they were of
French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea was
Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his
subjects, whether they be generals or common soldiers. The
relation between himself and liis son Frederick was never cor-
dial, to say the least. The boorish manners of the father of-
fended the finer spirit of the son. The son's love for French
manners, literature, philosophy and music was rejected by the

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA 815

father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed a ter-
rible outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Fred-
erick tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-
martialed and forced to witness the decapitation of his best
friend who had tried to help him. Thereupon as part of his
punishment, the young prince was sent to a Httle fortress some-
where in the provinces to be taught the details of his future
business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise.
When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his
country was managed from the birth certificate of a pauper*s
son to the minutest detail of a complicated amiual Budget.

As an author, especially in his book called the "Anti-
Macchiavelli," Frederick had expressed his contempt for the
political creed of the ancient Florentine historian, who had
advised his princely pupils to lie and cheat whenever it was
necessary to do so for the !)enefit of their country. The ideal
ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of his people,
the enhghtened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In
practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people
twenty hours a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a coun-
sellor. His ministers were superior clerks. Prussia was his
private possession, to be treated according to his own wishes.
And nothing was allowed to interfere with the interest of the
state.

In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria,
died. He had tried to make the position of his only daughter,
Maria Theresa, secure through a solemn treatj', written black
on white, upon a large piece of parchment. But no sooner had
the old emperor l^een deposited in the ancestral crj-pt of the
Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick were marching
towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of Silesia for
which (together with almost everj-thing else in central Eu-
rope) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very
doubtful rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick
conquered all of Silesia, and although he was often verj^ near
defeat, he maintained himself in his newly acquired territories
against all Austrian counter-attacks.

816 THE STORY OF JVIANKIND

-Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a
very powerful new state. In the eighteenth century, the Ger-
mans were a people who had been ruined by the great religious
wars and who were not held in high esteem by any one. Fred-
erick, by an eiFort as sudden and quite as terrific as that of
Peter of Russia, changed this attitude of contempt into one
of fear. The internal aifairs of Prussia were arranged so
skillfully that the subjects had less reason for complaint than
elsewhere. The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a
deficit. Torture was abolished. The judiciary system was im-
proved. Good roads and good schools and good universities,
together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the
people feel that whatever services were demanded of them,
they (to speak the vernacular) got their money's worth.

After having been for several centuries the battle field of
the French and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes
and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by the example of Prus-
sia, began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work of
the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms cov-
ered with snuif , who said very funny but very unpleasant things
about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of
eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth,
provided he could gain something by his hes. This in spite of
his book, "Anti-Macchiavelli." In the year 1786 the end
came. His friends were all gone. Children he had never had.
He died alone, tended by a single servant and his faithful
dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he
said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to their
friends.

THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR
DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO
MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS
MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

We have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape.
Their origins were different in almost every case. Some had
been the result of the deliberate effort of a single king. Others
had happened by chance. Still others had been the result of
favourable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had
been founded, they had all of them tried to strengthen their
internal administration and to exert the greatest possible in-
fluence upon foreign affairs. All this of course had cost a great
deal of money. The mediaeval state with its lack of centralised
power did not depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his
revenues from the crown domains and his civil service paid for
itself. The modern centralised state was a more complicated
affair. The old knights disappeared and hired government
officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy, and in-
ternal administration demanded millions. The question then
became — where was this money to be found?

Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle
ages. The average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold
piece as long as he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large

317

518

THE STORY OF MANKIND

THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 819

cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of America
and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines clianged all this.
The centre of trade was transferred from the Mediterranean to
the Atlantic sealx)ard. The old "conunercial cities" of Italy losi;
their financial importance. New "commercial nations" took
tJieir place and gold and silver were no longer a curiosity.

Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England,
precious metals began to find their way to Europe. The six-
teenth century had its own writers on the subject of political
economy and they evolved a theory of national wealth which
seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest possible
benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both
gold and silver were actual wealth. Therefore they beheved
that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in the
vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the
richest country. And since money meant armies, it followed
that the richest countr>' was also the most powerful and could
rule the rest of the world.

We call this sj'stem the "mercantile system," and it was
accepted with the same unquestioning faith with which the
early Christians believed in Miracles and many of the present-
day American business men believe in the Tariff. In practice,
the Mercantile system worked out as follows: To get the
largest surplus of precious metals a countr>' must have a
favom*able balance of export trade. If you can export more to
your neighbour than he exports to your own countrj', he will
owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his
gold. Hence you gain and he loses. As a result of this creed,
the economic program of almost every seventeenth centur>'
state was as follows :

1. Try to get possession of as many precious metals

as you can.

2. Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic

trade.

3. Encourage those industries which change raw ma-

terials into exportable finished products.

3«0 THE STORY OF MANKIND

4. Encourage a large population, for you will need work*

men for your factories and an agricultural com
munity does not raise enough workmen.

5. Let the State watch this process and interfere when*

ever it is necessary to do so.

Instead of regarding International Trade as something
akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain nat-
ural laws regardless of man's interference, the people of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their com-
merce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial
help on the part of the government.

In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercan-
tile System (which was then something entirely new) and in-
troduced it into his many possessions. Elizabeth of England
flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially King
Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine and Col-
bert, his great minister of finance, became the prophet of Mer-
cantilism to whom all Europe looked for guidance.

The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical ap-
plication of the Mercantile System. It was invariably directed
against the rich rival Republic of Holland. For the Dutch
shippers, as the common-carriers of the merchandise of Eu-
rope, had certain leanings towards free-trade and therefore had
to be destroyed at all cost.

It will be easily understood how such a system must affect
the colonies. A colony under the Mercantile System became
merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices, which was
to be tapped for the benefit of the home country. The Asiatic,
American and African supply of precious metals and the raw
materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of
the state which happened to own that particular colony. No
outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native
was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a for-
eign flag.

Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the de-
velopment of young industries in certain countries where there
never had been any manufacturing before. It built roads

THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM

321

HOW EUROPE CONQUERED THE WORLD

32^

THE STORY OF MANKIND

and dug canals and made for better means of transportation.
It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the
merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power
of the landed aristocracy.

On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made
the natives in the colonies the victims of a most shameless ex-
ploitation. It exposed the citizens of the home country to an
even more terrible fate. It helped in a great measure to turn

SEA POWER

every land into an armed camp and divided the world into little
bits of territorj% each working for its own direct benefit,
while striWng at all times to destroy the power of its neigh-
bours and get hold of their treasures. It laid so much stress
upon the importance of owning wealth that "being rich" came
to be regarded as the sole virtue of the averag-e citizen. Eco-
nomic systems come and go like the fashions in surgery and
in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth centiu*y the
Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of free
and open competition. At least, so I have been told.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF
SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN
THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMER-
ICAN CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS
OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING
CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS
"DIVINE RIGHTS" ADDED A NEW CHAP-
TER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUG-
GLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT

For the sake of conveni-
ence, we ought to go back a
few centuries and repeat tlie
early history of the great
struggle for colonial posses-
sions.

As soon as a number of
European nations had been
created upon the new basis of
national or dynastic interests,
that is to say, during and im-
mediately after the Thirty
Years War, their rulers,
backed up by the capital of
their merchants and the ships of
their trading companies, continued the fight for more terri-
tory in Asia, Africa and America.

THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY

THE STORY OF MANKIND

The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the
Indian Sea and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere
Holland and England appeared upon the stage. This proved
an advantage to the latter. The first rough work had already
been done. What is more, the earliest navigators had so often
made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and American and
African natives that both the English and the Dutch were
welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any

THE PILGRIMS

superior virtues for either of these two races. But they were
merchants before everything else. They never allowed religious
considerations to interfere with their practical common sense.
During their first relations with weaker races, all European na-
tions have behaved with shocking brutality. The English and
the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the line. Pro-
vided they got their spices and their gold and silver and their

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

325

F^^

'k% 4 4 ..

iiOW iili: WilllL MAN SETTLED IN NORTH AMERICA

326 THE STORY OF JMANKIND

taxes, they were willing to let the native live as it best pleased
him.

It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish
themselves in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as
this had been accomplished, they began to fight each other for
still further possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars
were never settled in the colonies themselves. They were de-
cided three thousand miles away by the navies of the contending
countries. It is one of the most interesting principles of an-
cient and modern warfare (one of the few reliable laws of
history) that "the nation which commands the sea is also the
nation which commands the land." So far this law has never
failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it.
In the eighteenth century, however, there were no flying ma-
chines and it was the British navy which gained for England
her vast American and Indian and African colonies.

The series of naval wars between England and Holland in
the seventeenth century does not interest us here. It ended as
all such encounters between hopelessly ill-matched powers will
end. But the warfare between England and France (her other
rival) is of greater importance to us, for while the superior
British fleet in the end defeated the French navy, a great deal
of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American
continent. In this vast country, both France and England
claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot more
which the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot
had landed in the northern part of America and twenty-seven
years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited these coasts. Cabot
had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed under the
French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed
themselves the owners of the entire continent.

During the seventeenth century, some ten small English
colonies had been founded between Maine and the Carolinas.
They were usually a haven of refuge for some particular sect
of EngHsh dissenters, such as the Puritans, who in the year
1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who settled in

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

827

Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communi-
ties, nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had
gathered to make a new home and begin life among happier
surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interfer-
ence.

The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained
a possession of the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were

IN THE CABIN OF THE MAYPLOWBB

allowed in these colonies for fear that they might contaminate
the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and
would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit
fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been founded
upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and
rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energj' of
the English middle classes, while the French settlements were
inliabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of

3S8

THE STORY OF MANKIND

the king and who expected to return to Paris at the first possi-
ble chance.

Politically, however, the position of the English colonies
was far from satisfactory. The French had discovered the
mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the sixteenth century. From
the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way south-
ward, had descended the Mississippi and had built several forti-
fications along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of explo-
ration, a line of sixty French forts cut off the English settle-
ments along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.

THE FRENCH EXPLORE THE WEST

The English land grants, made to the different colonial
companies had given them "all land from sea to sea." This
sounded well on paper, but in practice, British territory
ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break
through this barrier was possible but it took both men and
money and caused a series of horrible border wars in which
both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the
Indian tribes.

As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been
no danger of war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bour-
bons in their attempt to establish an autocratic form of govern-
ment and to break the power of Parliament. But in 1689 the
last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch

THE BLOCKHOUSE IN THE WILDERNESS

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

329

William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From
that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and
England fought for the possession of India and North Amer-
ica.

During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies
invariably beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France
lost most of her possessions, and when peace was declared, the
entire North American continent had fallen into British hands
and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La
Salle, Marquette and a score of others was lost to France.

THE FIRST WINTER IN NEW ENGLAND

Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited.
From Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect
of Puritans who were very intolerant and who therefore had
found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist
Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and
Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had been found-
ed entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of
sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this
new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from
their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they
had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the
sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous
people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American

830 THE STORY OF MANKIND

colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space
which had made their lives in the old country so very tinhappy.
They meant to be their own masters. This the ruling classes
of England did not seem to understand. The government an-
noyed the colonists and the colonists, who hated to be bothered
in this way, began to annoy the British government.

Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary
to repeat here in detail what actually happened and what might
have been avoided if the British king had been more intelli-
gent than George III or less given to drowsiness and indiffer-
ence than his minister, Lord North. The British colonists,
when they understood that peaceful arguments would not
settle the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal sub-
jects, they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to the pun-
ishment of death when they were captured by the German
soldiers, whom George hired to do his fighting after the pleas-
ant custom of that day, when Teutonic princes sold whole
regiments to the highest bidder.

The war between England and her American colonies
lasted seven years. During most of that time, the final suc-
cess of the rebels seemed very doubtful. A great number of
the people, especially in the cities, had remained loyal to their
king. They were in favour of a compromise, and would have
been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of Wash-
ington stood guard over the cause of the colonists

Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his stead-
fast but badly equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king.
Time and again when defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy
turned the tide of battle. Often his men were ill-fed. During
the winter they lacked shoes and coats and were forced to live
in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their great leader
was absolute and they stuck it out until the final hour of victory.

But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington
or the diplomatic triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was
in Europe getting money from the French government and
the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred early in
the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

331

had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common
importance. It was the first year of the Revolution. Most
of the big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of the
British. Reinforcements from England were arriving by the
ship load. Only men who were deeply convinced of the right-
eousness of their cause would have found the courage to take
the momentous decision of the months of June and July of
the year 1776.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a mo-
tion to the Continental Congress that "these united colonies
are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and
that all political connection between them and the state of
Great Britain is and ought to be, totally dissolved."

The motion was seconded by John Adams of ^lassachu-
setts. It was carried on July the second and on July fourth,
it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence,
which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and ex-
ceedingly capable student of both politics and government and

83S

THE STORY OF MANKIND

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THE GREAT AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION SS8

destined to be one of the most famous of our American presi-
dents.

When news of this event reached Europe, and was fol-
lowed by the final victory of the colonists and the adoption of
the famous Constitution of the year 1787 (the first of all writ-
ten constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic sys-
tem of the highly centralised states which had been developed
after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century had
readied the height of its power. Everj'where the palace of
the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities
of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing
acres of slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing
signs of restlessness. They were quite helpless. But the
higher classes, the nobles and the professional men, they too
were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and
political conditions under which they lived. The success of
the American colonists showed them that many things were
possible which had been held impossible only a short time
before.

According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle
of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit
of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the
Russians (not to speak of the Australians and the Hawaiians
who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they
had killed for his trouble) never heard of it at all. But it
carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder
house of European discontent and in France it caused an ex-
plosion which rocked the entire continent from Petrograd to
Madrid and buried the representatives of the old statecraft and
the old diplomacy under several tons of democratic bricks.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PRO--
CLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY,
FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL
THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH

Before we talk about a revolution it is just as well that
we explain just what this word means. In the terms of a
great Russian writer (and Russians ought to know what they
are talking about in this field) a revolution is "a swift over-
throw, in a few years, of institutions which have taken cen-
turies to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and immovable that
even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them in
their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence
of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation.''

Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth
centurj'' when the old civilisation of the country had grown
stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become
EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly
the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any
duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.

This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost
incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced
in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had
not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clerg>'
to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid

334

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 885

entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants
living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their
former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they
work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their
land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves
and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared.

Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour
through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by
hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue ob-
tained from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the
fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated.
There was, however, another side to the so-called "Ancien
Regime" which we must keep in mind.

A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility
(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying
the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most
entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of
graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains
of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with
questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours
upon the discussion of abstract ideas.

As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour
are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it
was natural that the most artificial society of that day should
take a tremendous interest in what they considered "the simple
life." The king and the queen, the absohite and unquestioned
proprietors of France, and all its colonies and dependencies, to-
gether with their courtiers, went to live in funny little coimtry
houses all dressed up as miJk-maids and stable-boys and played
at being shepherc^s in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musidans
composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more
and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer bore-
dom and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Ver-
sailles (the great show place which Louis XIV had built far
away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but

336 THE STORY OF MANKIND

those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except
food.

When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, play-
wright, historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all
religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of
criticism at everything connected with the Established Order
of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his
theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean
Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man
and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the
happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about
whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose
education he was the recognised authority,) all France read
his "Social Contract" and this society in which the king and
the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rous-
seau's appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real
sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the
king had been merely the servant of his people.

When Montesquieu published his "Persian Letters" in
which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole ex-
isting society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at every-
thing from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred
pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four
editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his
famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the
noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the
backward system of France and advocated instead of an abso-
lute monarchy the estabhshment of a state in which the Execu-
tive, the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in
separate hands and should work independently of each other.
When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that
Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other
distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopedia
which was to contain "all the new ideas and the new science
and the new knowledge," the response from the side of the
public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

SSI

the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the
somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress
the enthusiasm with which French society received this most
important but very dangerous contribution to the discussions
of the day.

Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a
novel about the French revolution or see a play or a movie,
you will easily get the impression that the Revolution was the

work of the rabble from the
Paris slums. It was nothing
of the kind. The mob appears
often upon the revolutionary
stage, but invariably at the in-
stigation and under the lead-
ership of those middle-class
professional men who used the
hungry multitude as an effi-
cient ally in their warfare upon
the king and his court. But
the fundamental ideas which
caused the revolution were in-
vented by a few brilliant minds,
and they were at first intro-
duced into the charming draw-
ing-rooms of the "Ancien
Regime" to provide amiable
diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his
Majesty's court. These pleasant but careless people played
with the dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks
fell through the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten
just like the rest of the building. Those sparks unfortunately
landed in the basement where age-old rubbish lay in great
confusion. Then there was a cry of fire. But the owner of
the house who was interested in everything except the manage-
ment of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze
out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was
consumed by the conflagration, which we call the Great French
Revolution.

THE GUILLOTINE

338 THE STORY OF ]MANKIND

For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French
Revolution into two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a
more or less orderly attempt to introduce a constitutional
monarchy. This failed, partly through lack of good faith and
stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly through
circumstances over which nobody had any control.

From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort
to establish a democratic form of government. But the actual
outbreak of violence had been preceded by many years of
unrest and many sincere but ineif ectual attempts at reform.

When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the
treasury was always empty and there was not a single thing
upon which new taxes could be levied, even good King Louis
(who was an expert locksmith and a great hunter but a very
poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done.
Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de I'Aulne, a man in the
early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing
class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a
province and was an amateur political economist of great abil-
ity. He did his best. Unfortunately, he could not perform
miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze more taxes out of
the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary funds
from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a centime.
This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles.
Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of jMarie
Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody who dared
to mention the word "economy" within her hearing. Soon
Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary" and a "theoreti-
cal professor" and then of course his position became unten-
able. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign.

After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Busi-
ness Sense. He was an industrious Swiss by the name of
Necker who had made himself rich as a grain speculator and
the partner in an international banking house. His ambitious
wife had pushed him into the government service that she
might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

339

the wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael,
became a famous literar>' figure of the early nineteenth cen-
tury.

Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot
had done. In 1781 he published a careful review of the French
finances. The king understood nothing of this "Compte
Rendu." He had just sent troops to America to help the colo-
nists against their common enemies, the English. This expe-
dition proved to be unexpect-
edly expensive and Necker was
asked to find the necessary
funds. When instead of pro-
ducing revenue, he published
more figures and made statistics
and began to use the dreary
warning about "necessary econ-
omies" his days were numbered.
In the year 1781 he was dis-
missed as an incompetent
servant.

After the Professor and the
Practical Business Man came
the delightful type of financier
who will guarantee everybody
100 per cent, per month on
their money if only they will
trust his own infallible system.

He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing otticial,
who had made his career both by his industry and his com-
plete lack of honesty and scruples. He found the country
heavily indebted, but he was a clever man, willing to oblige
everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He paid the
old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new.
The result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In
less than three years more than 800,000,000 francs had been
added to the French debt by this charming Minister of Finance
who never worried and smilingly signed his name to every
demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely

IX)UIS XVI

340 JHE STORY OF MANKIND

Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days
of her youth in Vienna.

At last even the Parhament of Paris (a high court of jus-
tice and not a legislative body) although by no means lacking
in loyalty to their sovereign, decided that something must be
done. Calonne wanted to borrow another 80,000,000 francs.
It had been a bad year for the crops and the misery and hunger
in the country districts were terrible. Unless something sensi-
ble were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as always
was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not
be a good idea to consult the representatives of the people?
Since 1614 no Estates General had been called together. In
view of the threatening panic there was a demand that the
Estates be convened. Louis XVI however, who never could
take a decision, refused to go as far as that.

To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting
of the Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gath-
ering of the best families who discussed what could and should
be done, without touching their feudal and clerical privilege
of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable to expect that a certain
class of society shall commit political and economic suicide for
the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens. The 127
Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their
ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceed-
ingly hungry, demanded that Necker, in whom they had confi-
dence, be reappointed. The Notables said "No." The crowd
in the street began to smash windows and do other unseemly
things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed.

A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal
Lomenie de Brienne, was appointed and Louis, driven by the
violent threats of his starving subjects, agreed to call together
the old Estates General as "soon as practicable." This vague
promise of course satisfied no one.

No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a
century. The crops had been either destroyed by floods or had
been frozen to death in the fields. All the olive trees of
Provence had been killed. Private charity tried to do some-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 841

thing but could accomplish little for eighteen million starring
people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation be-
fore these would have been put down by the army. But the
work of the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit.
People began to understand that a shotgun is no effective
remedy for a hungry stomach and even the soldiers (who came
from among the people) were no longer to be depended upon.
It was absolutely necessary that the king should do something
definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he hesitated.

Here and there in the provinces, little independent Repub-
lics were established by followers of the new school. The cry
of "no taxation without representation" (the slogan of the
American rebels a quarter of a century before) was heard
among the faithful middle classes. France was threatened with
general anarchy. To appease the people and to increase the
royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the
former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a
flood of ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or
low, criticised and was criticised. More than 2000 pam-
phlets were published. Lomcnic de Brienne was swept away
by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to placate,
as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock
market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, peo-
ple suspended judgment for a little while longer. In May of
1789 the Estates General were to assemble and then the wisdom
of the entire nation would speedily solve the difficult problem
of recreating the kingdom of France into a healthy and happy
state.

This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the
people would be able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous.
It lamed all personal effort during many important months.
Instead of keeping the government in his own hands at this
critical moment, Necker allowed everything to drift. Hence
there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the
best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power
of the police weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs,

342

THE STORY OF ]V1ANKIND

under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually be-
gan to discover their strength, and commenced to play the role
which was to be theirs all through the years of the great unrest,
when they acted as the brute force which was used by the actual
leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which could
not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.

As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de-

;|^^j^^;^^.dA^Mte^.b^^^

THE BASTILLE

cided that they should be allowed a double representation in
the Estates General. Upon this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then
wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what does the Third Estate
Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that the Third
Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to
everything, that it had not amounted to anj'thing in the past,
and that it now desired to amount to something. He expressed

THE FRENCH KEVOLUTION »«J

the sentiment of the great majority of the people who had the
best interests of the country at heart.

Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions
imaginable. When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noble-
men and 621 representatives of the Third Estate packed their
trunks to go to Versailles. The Third Estate was obliged to
carry additional luggage. This consisted of voluminous re-
ports called "cahiers" in which the many complaints and griev-
ances of their constituents had been written down. The stage
was set for the great final act that was to save France.

The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789.
The king was in a bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility
let it be known that they were unwilling to give up a single one
of their privileges. The king ordered the three groups of rep-
resentatives to meet in different rooms and discuss their griev-
ances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey the royal
command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash
court , (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meet-
ing) on the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three
Estates, Nobility, Clerg>' and Third Estate, should meet to-
gether and so informed His Majesty. The king gave in.

As the "National Assembly," the Estates (General began
to discuss the state of the French kingdom. The King got
angry. Then again he hesitated. He said that he would never
surrender his absolute power. Then he went hunting, forgot
all about the cares of the state and when he returned from the
chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to do the right
thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people
clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing.
Then, when the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude
of poor people, the king surrendered and gave his subjects
what they had asked for. By this time, however, the people
wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When the king
signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved
subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal
family unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on,
through the whole alphabet and up to the scaffold.

344 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind.
He never understood this. Even when he laid his head under
the guillotine, he felt that he was a much-abused man who had
received a most unwarrantable treatment at the hands of peo-
ple whom he had loved to the best of his limited ability.

Historical "ifs," as I have often warned you, are never of
any value. It is very easy for us to say that the monarchy
might have been saved "if" Louis had been a man of greater
energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone.
Eyen "if* he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon,
his career during these difficult days might have been easily
ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of
Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and
vices of a young girl who had been brought up at the most
autocratic and mediaeval court of that age.

She decided that some action must be taken and planned a
counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal
troops were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of
this, stormed the fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the
fourteenth of July of the year 1789, they destroyed this
familiar but much-hated symbol of Autocratic Power
which had long since ceased to be a political prison and
was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-
story men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the
country. But the king as usual did nothing. He had been
hunting on the day of the fall of the Bastille and he had shot
several deer and felt very much pleased.

The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of
August, with the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears,
they abolished all privileges. This was followed on the 27th
of August by the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," the
famous preamble to the first French constitution. So far so
good, but the court had apparently not yet learned its lesson.
There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was again
trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the
5th of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to
Versailles and the people were not pacified until they had

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION S46

brought the king back to his palace in Paris. They did not
trust him in Versailles. They liked to have him where they
could watch him and control his correspondence with his rela-
tives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.

In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who
had become leader of the Third Estate, was beginning to put
order into chaos. But before he could save the position of the
king he died, on the 2nd of April of the year 1791. The king,
who now began to fear for his own life, tried to escape on the
21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on a coin,
was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the
National Guard, and was brought back to Paris,

In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was
accepted, and the members of the National Assembly went
home. On the first of October of 1791, the legislative assem-
bly came together to continue the work of the National
Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives
there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The
boldest among these were known as the Jacobins, after the old
Jacobin cloister in which they held their political meetings.
These young men (most of them belonging to the professional
classes) made very violent speeches and when the newspapers
carried these orations to BerHn and Vienna, the King of
Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something
to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy
just then dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival politi-
cal factions had caused such a state of disorder that the country
was at the mercy of anj^body who wanted to take a couple of
provinces. But they managed to send an army to invade
France and deliver the king.

Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land
of France. All the pent-up hatred of years of hunger and
suffering came to a horrible chmax. The mob of Paris stormed
the palace of the Tuileries. The faithful Swiss bodyguards
tried to defend their master, but Louis, unable to make up his
mind, gave order to "cease firing" just when the crowd was
retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap

346 THE STORY OF MANKIND

wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the
palace, and went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting
hall of the Assembly, where he was immediately suspended of
his office, and from where he was taken as a prisoner to the
old castle of the Temple.

But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their ad-
vance and the panic changed into hysteria and turned men and
women into wild beasts. In the first week of September of
the year 1792, the crowd broke into the jails and murdered all
the prisoners. The government did not interfere. The Jaco-
bins, headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant either the
success or the failure of the revolution, and that only the most
brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly
was closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a
new National Convention came together. It was a body com-
posed almost entirely of extreme revolutionists. The king was
formally accused of high treason and was brought before the
Convention. He was found guilty and by a vote of 361 to 360
(the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of Orleans)
he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the
year 1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself
to be taken to the scaffold. He had never understood what all
the shooting and the fuss had been about. And he had been too
proud to ask questions.

Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate ele-
ment in the convention, the Girondists, called after their south-
ern district, the Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was
instituted and twenty-one of the leading Girondists were con-
demned to death. The others committed suicide. They were
capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate
to survive during these frightful years.

In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was
suspended by the Jacobins "until peace should have been
declared." All power was placed in the hands of a small com-
mittee of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its
leaders. The Christian religion and the old chronology were
abohshed. The "Age of Reason" (of which Thomas Paine had

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION S41

written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had
come and with it the "Terror" which for more than a year killed
good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or
eighty a day.

The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It
was succeeded by the tyranny of a few people who had such a
passionate love for democratic virtue that they felt compelled
to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was turned

THE FRENXH REVOLUTION
INVADES HOLLAND

into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else.
No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old
Convention, who knew that they were the next candidates for
the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who had
already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robes-
pierre, "the only true and pure Democrat," tried to kill him-
self but failed. His shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and
he was dragged to the guillotine. On the 27th of July, of the
year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year II, according to the
strange chronology of the revolution) , the reign of Terror came
to an end, and all Paris danced with joy.

348 THE STORY OF MANKIND

The dangerous position of France, however, made it neces-
sary that the government remain in the hands of a few strong
men, until the many enemies of the revolution should have been
driven from the soil of the French fatherland. While the
half-clad and half-starved revolutionary armies fought their
desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and Belgium and
Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great
Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled
France for four years. Then the power was vested in the hands
of a successful general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte,
who became "First Consul" of France in the year 1799. And
during the next fifteen years, the old European continent be-
came the laboratory of a number of political experiments, the
like of which the world had never seen before.

NAPOLEON

Napoleon was born in the year 1769, the third son
of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, an honest notary public of
the city of Ajaccio in the island of Corsica, and his good
wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not a Frenchman,
but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek, Cartha-
ginian and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had
for years been struggling to regain its independence,
first of all from the Genoese, and after the middle of the
eighteenth century from the French, who had kindly offered
to help the Corsicans in their struggle for freedom and had
then occupied the island for their own benefit.

During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon
was a professional Corsican patriot — a Corsican Sinn Feiner,
who hoped to deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the
bitterly hated French enemy. But the French revolution had
unexpectedly recognised the claims of the Corsicans and gradu-
ally Napoleon, who had received a good training at the military
school of Brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted coun-
try. Although he never learned to spell French correctly or
to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a French-
man. In due time he came to stand as the highest expression
of all French virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol
of the Gallic genius.

Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career

350 THE STORY OF MANKIND

does not cover more than twenty years. In that short span
of time he fought more wars and gained more victories and
marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers and
killed more people and brought about more reforms and gen-
erally upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (includ-
ing Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever man-
aged to do.

He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life
his health was not very good. He never impressed anybody
by his good looks and he remained to the end of his days very
clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social function.
He did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or
riches. For the greater part of his youth he was desperately
poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged
to make a few extra pennies in curious ways.

He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he com-
peted for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay
was found to be next to the last and he was number 15 out of
16 candidates. But he overcame all these difficulties through
his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in
his own glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring of his
life. The thought of self, the worship of that capital letter
"N" with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred
forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the
absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important
thing in the world next to the name of God, these desires car-
ried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no other man has
ever reached.

When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was
very fond of the "Lives of Famous Men" which Plutarch, the
Greek liistorian, had written. But he never tried to live up
to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the
older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those
considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men
different from the animals. It will be very difficult to decide
with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved anyone
besides himself. He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but

NAPOLEON 951

Letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the
fashion of Italian mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of
children and command their respect. For a few years he was
fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daugh-
ter of a French officer of Martinique and the widow of the
Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had been executed by Robes-
pierre when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But
the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son
and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor,
because it seemed good policy.

During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame
as commander of a battery. Napoleon studied Macchiavelli
with industrious care. He followed the advice of the Floren-
tine statesman and never kept his word when it was to his
advantage to break it. The word "gratitude" did not occur in
his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect
it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering.
He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had
been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded
in Syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to
transport them to his ships. He ordered the Duke of Enghien
to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to
be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the
"Bourbons needed a warning." He decreed that those Ger-
man officers who were made prisoner while fighting for their
country's independence should be shot against the nearest wall,
and when Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands
after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common
traitor.

In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we
begin to understand those anxious British mothers who used
to drive their children to bed with the threat that "Bonaparte,
who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come and get
them if they were not very good." And yet, having said these
many unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked
after every other department of his army with the utmost care,
but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his uniforms

352 THE STORY OF MANKIND

with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of
his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant
things and being fully prepared to add many more, I must
confess to a certain lurking feeling of doubt.

Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily
with books, with one eye on my typewriter and the other on
Licorice the cat, who has a great fondness for carbon paper,
and I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most
contemptible person. But should I happen to look out of
the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the end-
less procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and
should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little
man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uni-
form, then I don't know, but I am afraid that I would leave
my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to
follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather
did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero.
Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They re-
ceived no reward, but they expected none. They cheerfully
gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who took
them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched
them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish or
Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while
they were rolling in the agony of death.

If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I
have none. I can only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon
was the greatest of actors and the whole European conti-
nent was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances
he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators
most and he understood what words would make the deepest
impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before
the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed
his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no
difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even
at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic^
a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerably British gov^
ernor, he held the centre of the stage.

NAPOLEON 368

After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few
trusted friends ever saw the great Emperor. The people of
Europe knew that he was living on the island of St. Helena —
they knew that a British garrison guarded him day and night
— they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison which
guarded the Emperor on his farm at Longwood. But he was
never out of the mind of either friend or enemy. When illness
and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes contin-
ued to haunt the world. Even to-day he is as much of a force
in the life of France as a hundred years ago when people
fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who stabled
his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian Kremlin, and
who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if
they were his lackeys.

To give you a mere outline of his life would demand a
couple of volumes. To tell you of his great political reform
of the French state, of his new codes of laws which were
adopted in most European countries, of his activities in every
field of public activity, would take thousands of pages. But
I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during
the first part of his career and why he failed during the last
ten years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon
was the great leader of the P>ench revolution. He was not
merely fighting for the glory of his own name. He defeated
Austria and Italy and England and Russia because he, him-
self, and his soldiers were the apostles of the new creed of
"Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" and were the enemies of
the courts while they were the friends of the people.

But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary
Emperor of the French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come
and crown him, even as Leo III, in the year 800 had crowned
that other great King of the Franks, Charlemagne, whose ex-
ample was constantly before Napoleon's eyes.

Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain be-
came an unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He
forgot his spiritual Mother, the Political Club of the Jacobins.
He ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. He became the

354 THE STORY OF MANKIND

chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready
to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial will. No
one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of
the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin
and when the last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed
by the grandson of an Italian peasant. But when the Napo-
leonic armies had invaded Spain, had forced the Spaniards to
recognise a king whom they detested, had massacred the poor
Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers, then
public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and
Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then
and only then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the
revolution but the personification of all the bad traits of the
Old Regime, was it possible for England to give direction to
the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all
honest men into enemies of the French Emperor.

The English people from the very beginning had felt
deeply disgusted when their newspapers told them the grue-
some details of the Terror. They had staged their own great
revolution (during the reign of Charles I) a century before.
It had been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of
Paris. In the eyes of the average Englishman a Jacobin was
a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon was the Chief Devil.
The British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year
1798. It had spoiled Napoleon's plan to invade India by way
of Egypt and had forced him to beat an ignominious retreat,
after his victories along the banks of the Nile. And finally,
in the year 1805, England got the chance it had waited for so
long.

Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain,
Nelson annihilated the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible
chance of recovery. From that moment on, the Emperor was
landlocked. Even so, he would have been able to maintain
himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he under-
stood ciie signs of the times and accepted the honourable peace
which the powers offered him. But Napoleon had been blinded
by the blaze of his own glory. He would recognise no equals.

NAPOLEON

S5t

He could tolerate no rivals. And his hatred turned against
Russia, the mysterious land of the endless plains with its inex-
haustible supply of cannon-fodder.

As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son
of Catherine the Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with
the situation. But Paul grew more and more irresponsible
until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder him,
(lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines) and the son of

IP .ijiii.'T 1'^ . .1 nw ..."■II.' 'I) .1 ■ V ■ . ».v- i^wv if J V * '■'■>• * v'»>'X^B?W^CTn^!?^'^>TT'

THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW

Paul, the Emperor Alexander, did not share his father's affec-
tion for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of man-
kind, the eternal disturber of the peace. He was a pious man
who believed that he had been chosen by God to deliver the
world from the Corsican curse. He joined Prussia and Eng-
land and Austria and he was defeated. He tried five times
and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once more taunted
Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed
that he would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and
wide, from Spain and Germany and Holland and Italy and
Portugal, unwilling regiments were driven northward, that the

856 THE STORY OF MANKIND

wounded pride of the great Emperor might be duly avenged.

The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march
of two months, Napoleon reached the Russian capital and es-
tablished his headquarters in the holy Kremlin. On the night
of September 15 of the year 1812, Moscow caught fire. The
town burned four days. When the evening of the fifth day
came. Napoleon gave the order for the retreat. Two weeks
later it began to snow. The army trudged through mud and
sleet until November the 26th when the river Berezina was
reached. Then the Russian attacks began in all seriousness.
The Cossacks swarmed around the "Grande Armee" which
was no longer an army but a mob. In the middle of December
the first of the survivors began to be seen in the German cities
of the East.

Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt.
"The time has come," the people of Europe said, "to free our-
selves from this insufferable yoke." And they began to look
for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-present
French spies. But ere they knew what had happened, Napo-
leon was back with a new army. He had left his defeated sol-
diers and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to Paris, making
a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred
soil of France against foreign invasion.

Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he
moved eastward to meet the allied powers. On October 16,
18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible battle of Leipzig took
place where for three days boys in green and boj^s in blue
fought each other until the Elster ran red with blood. On the
afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Rus-
sian infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon
fled.

Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small
son, but the allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the
brother of the late king Louis XVI, should occupy the French
throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-eyed
Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris.

As for Napoleon, he was made the sovereign ruler of the

NAPOLEON S57

little island of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised
his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a
chess board.

But no sooner had he left France than the people began
to realise what they had lost. The last twenty years, however
costly, had been a period of great glory. Paris had been the
capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned
nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his
exile disgusted everybody by his indolence.

On the first of March of the year 1815, when the repre-
sentatives of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscram-
bling the map of Europe, Napoleon suddenly landed near
Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted
the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords
and bayonets to the "little Corporal." Napoleon marched
straight to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March.
This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the
allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against
the "perfidious Corsican." Rapidly the Emperor marched
northward that he might crush his enemies before they should
be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his
old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he
ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance-
guard. Besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals.
They were dead.

Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th
of that month he defeated the Prussians under Bliicher. But
a subordinate commander failed to destroy the retreating army
as he had been ordered to do.

Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo.
It was the 18th of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the
afternoon, the battle seemed won for the French. At three a
speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon
believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who
would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four o'clock
he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Bliicher drove
his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock

358

THE STORY OF MANKIND

broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further re-
serves. He told his men to save themselves as best they could,
and he fled.

For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just
one hundred days after his escape from Elba, he was making
for the coast. He intended to go to America. In the year
1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of

T*te Jv^t/fo* firm

ifirttt^Am^

^» ■am iivrs At^j\y, A/ey *v/«j

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by
the English ,) to the young American Republic. "The Ameri-
cans," so he said, "will be grateful and will give me a little bit
of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life
in peace and quiet." But the English fleet was watching all
French harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies
and the ships of the British, Napoleon had no choice. The
Prussians intended to shoot tea- The English mi^t be more

NAPOLEON

S59

generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something
might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders
from the new French government to leave French soil inside
of twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter
to the Prince Regent of England (George III, the king, was
in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his
intention to "throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and
like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his
foes ..."

NAPOLEON GOES INTO EXILE

On the 15th of July he went on board the "BeUeropkon,"
and surrendered his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth
he was transferred to the "Northumberland" which carried him
to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven years of his
life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his
keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he
returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of
departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the
battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that
he had always been the true friend of those great principles of
"Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" which the ragged soldiers
of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. He
liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and
Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he

360 TPIE STORY OF MANKIND

thought of his son, the Duke of Reiehstadt, the Httle eagle,
who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a "poor relation"
by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at
the very mention of the name of Him. When the end came,
he was leading his troops to victory. He ordered Ney to attack
with the guards. Then he died.

But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if
you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so
many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will,
do not read the books that have been written about him. Their
authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will
learn many facts, but it is more important to "feel history"
than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance
to hear a good artist sing the song called "The Two Grena-
diers." The words were written by Heine, the great German
poet who lived through the Napoleonic era. The music was
composed by Schumann, a German who saw the Emperor,
the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his im-
perial father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two
men who had every reason to hate the tyrant.

Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand
volumes could not possibly tell you.

THE HOLY ALLIANCE

AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO
ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN
HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED
"CORSICAN" MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED
TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD
BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION

The Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their
Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipo-
tentiary, together with the plain Excellencies and their army
of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had
been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible
Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena)
went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with
dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very
shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies
and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Regime.

For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At
last the danger was over. They were very eloquent upon the
subject of the terrible hardships which they had suffered.
And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they
had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had
dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and
who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles
for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums.

361

362 THE STORY OF MANKIND

You may think it absurd that I should mention such a
detail. But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one
long succession of such absurdities and for many months the
question of "short trousers vs. long trousers" interested the
delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or
Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so
far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public
evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary.

Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble
hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his sub-
jects had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second
time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar
while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on.
From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims
"but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people
object?" Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly
exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how
or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was
peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and
reform.

In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced
around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks
and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys
in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and Fra-
ternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of
the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary com-
missary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor
and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to
report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the
"liberated country" had received the Constitution, which the
French people had presented to their good neighbours.

When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary
disorder in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called
Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the
mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty, fraternity
and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the
young officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of

OFF FOR TRAFALGAR

THE HOLY ALLIANCE S68

the three consuls of the French Republic, then sole consul and
finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any
ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily
upon his poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He im-
pressed their sons into his armies, he married their daughters
to his generals and he took their pictures and their statues to
enrich his own museums. He turned the whole of Europe
into an armed camp and killed almost an entire generation of
men.

Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional
military men) had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone.
For awhile they had been allowed to rule themselves, to vote
for mayors and aldermen and judges. The system had been a
terrible failure. The new rulers had been inexperienced and
extravagant. From sheer despair the people turned to the
representative men of the old Regime. "You rule us," they
said, "as you used to do. Tell us what we owe you for taxes
and leave us alone. We are busy repairing the damage of the
age of liberty."

The men who stage-managed the famous congress cer-
tainly did their best to satisfy this longing for rest and quiet.
The Holy Alliance, the main result of the Congress, made the
policeman the most important dignitary of the State and held
out the most terrible punishment to those who dared criticise a
single official act.

Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery.

The three most important men at Vienna were the Em-
peror Alexander of Russia, Mettemich, who represented the
interests of the Austrian house of Habsburg, and Talleyrand,
the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to live
through the different changes in the French government by
the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who
now travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country
whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the
gay young man of the limerick, who never knew when he was
slighted, this unbidden guest came to the party and ate just as
heartily as if he had been really invited. Indeed, before long.

364

THE STORY OF IVMNKIND

THE SPECTRE WHICH FRIGHTENED THE HOLY ALLIANCE

THE HOLY ALLIANCE 865

he was sitting at the head of the table entertaining everybody
with his amusing stories and gaining the company's good will
by the charm of his manner.

Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew
that the allies were divided into two hostile camps. On the
one side were Russia, who wanted to take Poland, and Prussia,
who wanted to annex Saxony; and on the other side were
Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this grab
because it was against their own interest that either Prussia or
Russia should be able to dominate Europe. Talleyrand played
the two sides against each other with great skill and it was due
to his efforts that the French people were not made to suffer
for the ten years of oppression which Europe had endured at
the hands of the Imperial officials. He argued that the French
people had been given no choice in the matter. Napoleon had
forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon was gone and
Louis XVIII was on the throne. "Give him a chance," Talley-
rand pleaded. And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king
upon the throne of a revolutionary country, obligingly yielded
and the Bourbons were given their chance, of which they
made such use that they were driven out after fifteen years.

The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metter-
nich, the Austrian prime minister, the leader of the foreign
policy of the house of Habsburg. Wenzel Lothar, Prince of
Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly what the name suggests.
He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome gentleman with
very fine manners, immensely rich, and very able, but the
product of a society which lived a thousand miles away from
the sweating multitudes who worked and slaved in the cities
and on the farms. As a young man, Mettemich had been
studying at the University of Strassburg when the French
Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the city which gave birth
to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities.
Mettemich remembered that his pleasant social life had been
sadly interrupted, that a lot of incompetent citizens had sud-
denly been called forth to perform tasks for which they were
not tit, that the mob had celebrated the dawn of the new liberty

see THE STORY OF MANKIND

by the murder of perfectly innocent persons. He had failed to
see the honest enthusiasm of the masses, the ray of hope in the
eyes of women and children who carried bread and water to
the ragged troops of the Convention, marching through the
city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the
French Fatherland.

The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust.
It was uncivilised. If there were any fighting to be done it
must be done by dashing young men in lovely uniforms, charg-
ing across the green fields on well-groomed horses. But to
turn an entire country into an evil-smelling armed camp where
tramps were overnight promoted to be generals, that was both
wicked and senseless. "See what came of all your fine ideas,"
he would say to the French diplomats whom he met at a quiet
little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand-
dukes. "You wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you
got Napoleon. How much better it would have been if you
had been contented with the existing order of things." And
he would explain his system of "stabihty." He would advo-
cate a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the
war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense
about "everybody being as good as everybody else." In this
attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of
great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion,
he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary
ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore
lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies
when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848.
He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and
more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds
of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained stead-
fast in his belief that he had done the right thing.

He had always been convinced that people preferred peace
to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them.
And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to estab-
lish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers
did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed

THE HOLY ALLIANCE

867

not until the Crimean war between Russia and England,
France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means
a record for the European continent.

The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor
Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand-

THE REAL CONGRESS OF VIENNA

mother, the famous Catherine the Great. Between the lessons
of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard the glory
of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his
private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who
filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy grew
up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental
revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the
life of Ivis crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to wit-

868 THE STORY OF MIANKIND

ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields.
Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the
AlKes. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar
of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half -god who would
cure the world of its many ills.

But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know
men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them.
He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He
was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and
loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had
become the main "attraction" of the Congress while Metter-
nich and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British
representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay
and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed
Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but
the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the
Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged
his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied
while they were engaged upon the work at hand.

Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties
and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay
but there was a very different element in his character. He
tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the
night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting
in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for
the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to
sign the document which the drunken officers had placed be-
fore him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf
around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they
had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of
all the Russian lands.

The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar
who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in
the school of the great French philosophers who did not be-
lieve in God but in Human Reason. But Reason alone could
not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to
hear voices and see things. He tried to find a way by which

THE HOLY ALLIANCE 369

he could square himself with his conscience. He became verj'
pious and began to take an interest in mysticism, that strange
love of the mysterious and the unknomi which is as old as the
temples of Thebes and Babylon.

The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era
had influenced the character of the people of that day in a
strange way. Men and women who had lived through twenty
years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal. They
jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news
of the "death on the field of honour" of an only son. The
phrases about "brotherly love" and "liberty" of the Revolu-
tion were hollow words in the ears of sorely stricken peasants.
They clung to anything that might give them a new hold on
the terrible problems of life. In their grief and misery they
were easily imposed upon by a large number of impostors
who posed as prophets and preached a strange new doctrine
which they dug out of the more obscure passages of the Book
of Revelations.

In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a
large number of wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who
was foretelling the coming doom of the world and was exhort-
ing people to repent ere it be too late. The Baroness von
Kriidener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of uncer-
tain age and similar reputation who had been the wife of a
Russian diplomat in the days of the Emperor Paul. She had
squandered her husband's money and had disgraced him by
her strange love affairs. She had lived a very dissolute life
until her nerves had given way and for a while she was not in
her right mind. Then she had been converted by the sight of
the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she despised all
gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a
pious Moravian brother, a follower of the old reformer John
Huss, who had been burned for his heresies by the Council of
Constance in the year 1415.

The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making
a specialty of the "conversion" of kings and princes. To con-
vince Alexander, the Saviour of Europe, of the error of his

370 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ways was the greatest ambition of her life. And as Alexander,
in his misery, was willing to listen to anybody who brought him
a ray of hope, the interview was easily arranged. On the eve-
ning of the fourth of June of the year 1815, she was admitted
to the tent of the Emperor. She found him reading his Bible.
We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she
left him three hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed
that "at last his soul had found peace." From that day on the
Baroness was his faithful companion and his spiritual adviser.
She followed him to Paris and then to Vienna and the time
which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at the
Kriidener prayer-meetings.

You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail?
Are not the social changes of the nineteenth century of greater
importance than the career of an ill-balanced woman who had
better be forgotten? Of course they are, but there exist any
number of books which will tell you of these other things with
great accuracy and in great detail. I want you to learn some-
thing more from this history than a mere succession of facts.
I want you to approach all historical events in a frame of mind
that will take nothing for granted. Don't be satisfied with
the mere statement that "such and such a thing happened then
and there." Try to discover the hidden motives behind every
action and then you will understand the world around you
much better and you will have a greater chance to help others,
which (when all is said and done) is the only truly satisfac-
tory way of living.

I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece
of paper which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and
forgotten somewhere in the archives of state. It may be for-
gotten but it is by no means dead. The Holy Alliance was
directly responsible for the promulgation of the Monroe
Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the Ameri-
cans has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is
the reason why I want you to know exactly how this document
happened to come into existence and what the real motives were

THE HOLY ALLIANCE 871

underlying this outward manifestation of piety and Christian
devotion to duty.

The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate
man who had suffered a terrible mental shock and who was
trying to pacify his much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious
woman who after a wasted life had lost her beauty and her
attraction and who satisfied her vanity and her desire for noto-
riety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah of a
new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets
when I tell you these details. Such sober minded people as
Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand fully understood
the limited abilities of the sentimental Baroness. It would have
been easy for Metternich to send her back to her German
estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial
police and the thing was done.

But France and England and Austria depended upon the
good-will of Russia. They could not afford to offend Alex-
ander. And they tolerated the silly old Baroness because they
had to. And while they regarded the Holy Alliance as utte.«
rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was written,
they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first
rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men
upon a basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the
Holy Alliance tried to do, and the signers of the document
solemnly declared that they would "in the administration of
their respective states and in their political relations with every
other government take for their sole guide the precepts of that
Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice, Christian
Charity and Peace, which far from being applicable only to
private concerns must have an immediate influence on the
councils of princes, and must guide all their steps as being the
only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying
their imperfections." They then proceeded to promise each
other that they would remain united "by the bonds of a true
and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as
fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all places

878 THE STORY OF IVMNKIND

lend each other aid and assistance." And more words to the
same effect.

Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor
of Austria, who did not understand a word of it. It was signed
by the Bourbons who needed the friendship of Napoleon's old
enemies. It was signed by the King of Prussia, who hoped to
gain Alexander for his plans for a "greater Prussia," and by
all the little nations of Europe who were at the mercy of Rus-
sia. England never signed, because Castlereagh thought the
whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign because he
resented this interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox
and a Protestant. And the Sultan did not sign because he
never heard of it.

The general mass of the European people, however, soon
were forced to take notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the
Holy Alliance stood the armies of the Quintuple Alliance
which Metternich had created among the great powers. These
armies meant business. They let it be known that the peace
of Europe must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who
were in reality nothing but disguised Jacobins, and hoped for
a return of the revolutionary days. The enthusiasm for the
great wars of liberation of the years 1812, 1813, 1814 and
1815 had begun to wear off. It had been followed by a sincere
belief in the coming of a happier day. The soldiers who had
borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they said so.

But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy
Alliance and the Council of the European powers had now
bestowed upon them. They cried that they had been betrayed.
But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-police spy.
The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men
who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for
the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if
their intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal
of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly
progress of political development.

THE GREAT REACTION

THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA
OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESS-
ING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE
POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY
IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS
OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH
THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE
HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEM-
SELVES AS THEY SEE FIT

To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood
was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away.
The palaces of two score djTiasties had been damaged to such
an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable.
Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the ex-
pense of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends
of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding
waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire
community. But the political engineers of the Congress did
the best they could and this is what they accomplished.

France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many
years that people had come to fear that country almost in-
stinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth of Talleyrand,
had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught
Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for
a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed

373

874 THE STORY OF MANKIND

into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch
struggle for independence in the sixteenth century and since
then had been part of the Habsburg domains, first under Span-
ish rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part
of this new kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this
union either in the Protestant North or in the Catholic South,
but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the peace
of Europe and that was the main consideration.

Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince
Adam Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of
Tsar Alexander and had been his constant advisor during the
war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was made a
semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king.
This solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling
and three revolutions.

Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon
until the end, was severely punished. Seven years before, an
Enghsh fleet had sailed down the Kattegat and without a
declaration of war or any warning had bombarded Copenhagen
and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to
Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further.
It took Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year
1397 had been united with Denmark) away from Denmark
and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as a reward for his be-
trayal of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business.
This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French gen-
eral by the name of Bernadotte,who had come to Sweden as one
of Napolean's adjutants, and had been invited to the throne of
that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of
Hollstein-Gottorp had died without leaving either son or
daughter. From 1815 until 1844) he ruled his adopted country
(the language of which he never learned) with great abiHty. He
was a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish
and his Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed in joining
two countries which nature and liistory had put asunder. The
dual Scandinavian state was never a success and in 1905,
N<?rsvay, in a mosrt; peaceful and orderly manner, §^t up as a^

THE GREAT REACTION 875

independent kingdom and the Swedes bade her "good speed"
and very wisely let her go her own way.

The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had
been at the mercy of a long series of invaders, also had put
great hopes in General Bonaparte. The Emperor Napoleon,
however, had grievously disappointed them. Instead of the
United Italy which the people wanted, they had been divided
into a number of little principalities, duchies, republics and
the Papal State, which (next to Naples) was the worst gov-
erned and most miserable region of the entire peninsula. The
Congress of Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic repub-
lics and in their place resurrected several old principalities
which were given to deserving members, both male and female,
of the Habsburg family.

The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic
revolt against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood
of the country for their king, were punished severely when the
Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his domains. This
vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last
four years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had im-
proved his days by knitting garments for the statues of his
favourite patron saints. He celebrated h:s return by re-intro-
ducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which
had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting
person, despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives,
but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate
throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this
curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in
bloodshed and executions.

Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when
the royal family had fled to the colonies in Brazil. The coun-
try had been used as a base of supply for the armies of
Wellington during the Peninsula war, which lasted from 1808
until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be a sort of
British province until the house of Braganza returned to the
throne, leaving one of its members behind in Rio de Janeiro
as Emperor of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted

S76 THE STORY OF MANKIND

for more than a few years, and which came to an end in 1889
when the country became a repubhc.

In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible con-
ditions of both the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects
of the Sultan. In the year 1804 Black George, a Servian
swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty) had
started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated
by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed
friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich,
(who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty ) and the
Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the
Balkans.

The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two
thousand years before, had been subjects of the Macedonians,
the Romans, the Venetians and the Turks, had hoped that their
countryman. Capo dTstria, a native of Corfu, and together
with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friend of
Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress
of Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much
interested in keeping all "legitimate" monarchs. Christian,
Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. There-
fore nothing was done.

The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress
was the treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the
Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the prosperity of the
country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish
heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies,
a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, prin-
cipalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages,
ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever
seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had
changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state
had not survived him by many years.

Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence
of most of these little countries, and only fifty-two out of a
total of more than three hundred had survived the year 1806.
During the years of the great struggle for independence, many

THE GREAT REACTION 8T7

a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should
be strong and united. But there can be no union without a
strong leadership, and who was to be this leader?

There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands.
The rulers of two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by
the Grace of God. The rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony
and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Xapoleon, and
as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their
patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not verj'
good.

The Congress had established a new German Confedera-
tion, a league of thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chair-
manship of the King of Austria, who was now known as the
Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift arrange-
ment which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet,
which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been
created to discuss matters of "conmion policy and importance."
But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight
different interests and as no decision could be taken without a
unanimous vote (a parliamentary rule which had in previous
centuries ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous
German Confederation became very soon the laughing stock
of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to resemble
those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and
the fifties of the last century.

It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed
everjrthing for a national ideal. But the Congress was not
interested in the private feelings of "subjects," and the debate
was closed.

Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first
feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down — as soon
as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided — as soon as
the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had b.een
committed in the name of "peace and stability" they began to
murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what
could they do? They were powerless. They were at the mercy

378 THE STORY OF MANKIND

of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had
ever seen.

The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sin-
cerely believed that "the Revolutionary Principle had led to
the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor
Napoleon." They felt that they were called upon to eradicate
the adherents of the so-called "French ideas" just as Philip II
had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned
Protestants or hanged JMoors. In the beginning of the six-
teenth century a man who did not believe in the divine right
of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a "heretic"
and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the
beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Eu-
rope, a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to
rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a "heretic," and
it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the near-
est policeman and see that he got punished.

But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in
the school of Napoleon and they performed their task much
better than it had been done in the year 1517. The period
between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era of
the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in pal-
aces and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They
peeped through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and
they listened to the conversations of the people who were taking
the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded
the frontier so that no one might leave without a duly vis^d.
passport and they inspected all packages, that no books with
dangerous "French ideas" should enter the realm of their
Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture
hall and woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the
existing order of things. They followed the little boys and
girls on their way to church lest they play hookey.

In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy.
The church had suffered greatly during the days of the revolu-
tion. The church property had been confiscated. Several
priests had been killed and the generation that had learned its

THE GREAT REACTION 879

cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the other French
philosophers had danced around the Altar of Reason when
the Committee of Public Safety had abolished the worship of
God in October of the year 1793. The priests had followed the
"^migr^s" into their long exile. Now they returned in the
wake of the allied armies and they set to work with a ven-
geance.

Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their
former labours of educating the young. Their order had been
a little too successful in its fight against the enemies of the
church. It had established "provinces" in every part of the
world, to teach the natives the blessings of Christianity, but
soon it had developed into a regular trading company which
was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During the
reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister
of Portugal, they had been driv^en out of the Portuguese lands
and in the year 177o at the request of most of the Catholic
powers of Europe, the order had been suppressed by Pope
Clement XIV. Now they were back on the job, and preached
the principles of "obedience" and "love for the legitimate dyn-
asty" to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that
they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold
which was to end her misery.

But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were
not a whit better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812,
the poets and the writers who had preached a holy war upon the
usurper, were now branded as dangerous "demagogues." Their
houses were searched. Their letters were read. They were
obliged to report to the police at regular intervals and give an
account of themselves. The Prussian drill master was let loose
in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party of
students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with
noisy but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prus-
sian bureaucrats had visions of an imminent revolution. When
a theological student, more honest than intelligent, killed a
Russian government spy who was operating in Germany, the

380 THE STORY OF MANKIND

universities were placed under police-supervision and profes-
sors were jailed or dismissed without any form of trial.

Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revo-
lutionary activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack
of piety. He was gradually drifting toward melancholia. He
well knew his own limited abilities and understood how at
Vienna he had been the victim both of Metternich and the
Kriidener woman. More and more he turned his back upon the
west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in
Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher
of the Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the
less he was able to accomphsh. And while he sat in his study,
his ministers turned the whole of Russia into a land of mili-
tary barracks.

It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened
this description of the Great Reaction. But it is just as well
that you should have a thorough knowledge of this era. It was
not the first time that an attempt had been made to set the
clock of history back. The result was the usual one.

THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE,
HOWEVER WAS TOO STRONG TO BE DE-
STROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH
AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL
AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES
OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, GREECE
AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE
NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE
EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT
AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS
FILLED WITH THE RUMOUR OF MANY
WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

It will serve no good purpose to say "if only the Congress
of Vienna had done such and such a thing instead of taking
such and such a course, the history of Europe in the nineteenth
century would have been diiFerent." The Congress of Vienna
was a gathering of men who had just passed through a great
revolution and through twenty years of terrible and almost
continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of
giving Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought
that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call
reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the
mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the
map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest
possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through

381

ftSi THE STORY OF MANKIND

any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the
greater part, men of the old school who remembered the happier
days of their quiet youth and ardently wished a return of that
blessed period. They failed to recognise the strong hold which
many of the revolutionary principles had gained upon the peo-
ple of the European continent. That was a misfortune but
hardly a sin. But one of the things which the French Revolu-
tion had taught not only Europe but America as well, was the
right of people to their own "nationality."

Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly
ruthless in his dealing with national and patriotic aspirations.
But the early revolutionary generals had proclaimed the new
doctrine that "nationality was not a matter of political fron-
tiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the
heart and soul." While they were teaching the French children
the greatness of the French nation, they encouraged Spaniards
and Hollanders and Italians to do the same thing. Soon
these people, who all shared Rousseau's belief in the superior
virtues of Original Man, began to dig into their past and found,
buried beneath the ruins of the feudal system, the bones of the
mighty races of which they supposed themselves the feeble
descendants.

The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the
great historical discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy
publishing mediaeval charters and early mediaeval chronicles
and in every country the result was a new pride in the old
fatherland. A great deal of this sentiment was based upon the
wrong interpretation of historical facts. But in practical poli-
tics, it does not matter what is true, but everything depends
upon what the people believe to be true. And in most countries
both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory
and fame of their ancestors.

The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental.
Their Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the
best interests of half a dozen dynasties and put "national aspi-
rations" upon the Index, or list of forbidden books, together
with all other dangerous "French doctrines."

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 883

But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some rea-
son or other (it may be an historical law, which thus far has
escaped the attention of the scholars) "nations" seemed to be
necessary for the orderly development of human society and
the attempt to stem this tide was quite as unsuccessful as the
Metternichian effort to 'prevent people from thinking.

Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant
part of the world, in South America. The Spanish colonies
of that continent had been enjoying a period of relative inde-
pendence during the many years of the great Napoleonic wars.
They had even remained faithful to their king when he was
taken prisoner by the French Emperor and they had refused
to recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who had in the year 1808 been
made King of Spain by order of his brother.

Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset
by the Revolution was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of
Columbus' first trip. Here in the year 1791 the French Con-
vention, in a sudden outburst of love and human brotherhood,
had bestowed upon their black brethren all the privileges hither-
to enjoyed by their white masters. Just as suddenly thej" had
repented of this step, but the attempt to undo the original
promise led to many years of terrible warfare between General
Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint I'Ou-
verture, the negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was
asked to visit Leclerc and discuss terms of peace. He received
the solemn promise that he would not be molested. He trusted
his white adversaries, was put on board a ship and shortly
afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes gained
their independence all the same and founded a RepubUc. Inci-
dentally they were of great help to the first great South
American patriot in his efforts to deliver his native country
from the Spanish yoke.

Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in
the year 1783, had been educated in Spain, had visited Paris
where he had seen the Revolutionary gpveri;mient at work, had
lived for a while in the United States and had returned to his
native land wh^i:^ the widespread. 4iscgnt«nt against Sj aiQ,

384 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the mother country, was beginning to take a definite form.
In the year 1811, Venezuela declared its independence and
Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals. Within
two months, the rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled.

For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently
lost cause. He sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have
been able to begin his final and successful expedition without
the support of the President of Haiti. Thereafter the revolt
spread all over South America and soon it appeared that Spain
was not able to suppress the rebellion unaided. She asked for
the support of the Holy Alliance.

This step greatly worried England. The British shippers
had succeeded the Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world
and they expected to reap heavy profits from a declaration of
independence on the part of all South America. They had
hopes that the United States of America would interfere but
the Senate had no such plans and in the House, too, there were
many voices which declared that Spain ought to be given a
free hand.

Just then, there was a change of ministers in England.
The Whigs went out and the Tories came in. George Canning
became secretary of State. He dropped a hint that England
would gladly back up the American government with all the
might of her fleet, if said government would declare its disap-
proval of the plans of the Holy Alliance in regard to the
rebellious colonies of the southern continent. President Mon-
roe thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year 1823, ad-
dressed Congress and stated that: "America would consider
any attempt on the part of the allied powers to extend their
syst^n to any portion of this western hemisphere as dangerous
to our peace and safety," and gave warning that "the American
government would ccaisider such action on the part of the
Hply Alliance as a naanifestation of am unfriendly disposition
toward the Usdted States." Four weeks latier, the text of the
"Monroe Doctrine" was printed in the English newspapers and
the members ef the H©ly Alfiarice were forced fco make their
choice.

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

985

Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been will-
ing to risk the displeasure of the United States (which had al-
lowed both its army and navy to fall into neglect since the end

THE MONROE DOCTRINE

986 THE STORY OF MANKIND

of the Anglo-American war of the year 1812.) But Canning's
threatening attitude and trouble on the continent forced him
to be careful. The expedition never took place and South
America and Mexico gained their independence.

As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were
coming fast and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French
troops to Spain to act as guardians of the peace in the year
1820. Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose in
Italy when the "Carbonari" (the secret society of the Charcoal
Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and had
caused a rebellion against the unspeakable Ferdinand of
Naples.

Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alex-
ander had been the sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St.
Petersburg, a short but bloody upheaval, the so-called Deka-
berist revolt (because it took place in December,) which ended
with the hanging of a large number of good patriots who had
been disgusted by the reaction of Alexander's last years and
had tried to give Russia a constitutional form of government.

But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to assure
himself of the continued support of the European courts by a
series of conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle, at Troppau, at
L.aibach, and finally at Verona. The delegates from the
different powers duly travelled to these agreeable watering
places where the Austrian prime minister used to spend
his summers. They always promised to do their best
to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their
success. The spirit of the people was beginning to be ugly and
especially in France the position of the king was by no means
satisfactory.

The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gate-
way to western Europe through which the invaders of that
continent had passed since the beginning of time. The first
outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman province of
Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third
century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis,
where the people had continued to speak the old Roman tongue

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 887

and still called themselves Romans and their country Roumania.
Here in the year 1821, a young Greek, Prince Alexander
Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the Turks. He told his fol-
lowers that they could count upon the support of Russia. But
Metternich's fast couriers were soon on their way to St. Peters-
burg and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the Austrian argu-
ments in favor of "peace and stability,** refused to help. Ypsil-
anti was forced to flee to Austria where he spent the next seven
, years in prison.

In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since
1815 a secret society of Greek patriots had been preparing
the way for a revolt. Suddenly they hoisted the flag of inde-
pendence in the Morea (the ancient Peloponnesus) and drove
the Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered in the usual
fashion. They took the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople,
who was regarded as their Pope both by the Greeks and by
many Russians, and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the
year 1821, together with a number of his bishops. The Greeks
came back with a massacre of all the Mohammedans in
Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the Turks retaliated
by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered
25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and
Egypt.

Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but
Mettemich told them in so many words that they could "stew
in their own grease," (I am not trying to make a pun, but I
am quoting His Serene Highness who informed the Tsar that
this "fire of revolt ought to burn itself out beyond the pale
of civilisation") and the frontiers were closed to those volun-
teers who wished to go to the rescue of the patriotic Hellenes.
Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an Egyp-
tian army was landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag
was again flying from the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of
Athens. The Egyptian army then pacified the country "a la
Turque," and Metternich followed the proceedings with quiet
interest, awaiting the day when this "attempt against the peace
erf Europe" should be a thing of the past.

d8d THE STORY OP MANKIND

Once more it was England which upset his plans. The
greatest glory of England does not lie in her vast colonial
possessions, in her wealth or her navy, but in the quiet hero-
ism and independence of her average citizen. The Englishman
obeys the law because he knows that respect for the rights oi
others marks the difference between a dog-kennel and civilised
society. But he does not recognize the right of others to inter-
fere with his freedom of thought. If his country does some-
thing which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so
and the government which he attacks will respect him and will
give him full protection against the mob which to-day, as in
the time of Socrates, often loves to destroy those who surpass
it in courage or intelligence. There never has been a good
cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not
counted a number of Englishmen among its staunchest adher-
ents. The mass of the English people are not different from
those in other lands. They stick to the business at hand and
have no time for unpractical "sporting ventures." But they
rathei" admire their eccentric neighbour who drops everything
to go and fight for some obscure people in Asia or Africa and
when he has been killed they give him a fine public funeral and
hold him up to their children as an example of valor and chiv-
ahy.

Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were power-
less against this national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord
Byron, a rich young Englishman who wrote the poetry over
which all Europe wept, hoisted the sails of his yacht and started
south to help the Greeks. Three months later the news spread
through Europe that their hero lay dead in Missolonghi,
the last of the Greek strongholds. His lonely death
caught the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies
were formed to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old
man of the American revolution, pleaded their cause in France.
The king of Bavaria sent hundreds of his officers. Money and
supplies poured in upon the starving men of Missolonghi.

In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans
of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE S89

ler. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second
time. The EngHsh and Russian fleets were already in the
Mediterranean. They were sent hy governments which dared
no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the
Greek patriots. The French navy appeared because France,
since the end of the Crusades, had assumed the role of the de-
fender of the Christian faith in Mohammedan lands. On Octo-
ber 20 of the year 1827, the ships of the three nations attacked
the Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino and destroyed it.
Rarely has the news of a battle been received with such general
rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who
enjoyed no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting
an imaginary' war of liberty on behalf of the oppressed Greeks.
In the year 1829 they had their reward. Greece became an
independent nation and the policy of reaction and stability
suffered its second great defeat.

It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to
give you a detailed account of the struggle for national inde-
pendence in all other countries. There are a large number of
excellent books devoted to such subjects. I have described the
struggle for the independence of Greece because it was the first
successful attack upon the bulwark of reaction which the Con-
gress of Vienna had erected to "maintain the stability of Eu-
rope." That mighty fortress of suppression still held out and
^letternich continued to be in conmiand. But the end was
near.

In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbear-
able rule of police officials who were tr^nng to undo the work
of the French revolution, with an absolute disregard of the
regulations and laws of civilised warfare. When Louis
XVIII died in the year 1824, the people had enjoyed nine
years of "peace" which had proved even more unhappy than
the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis was succeeded by
his brother, Charles X.

Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which,
although it never learned anything, never forgot anything.
The recollection of that morning in the town of Hamm, when

390 THE STORY OF IVIANKIND

news had reached him of the decapitation of his brother, re-
mained a constant warning of what might happen to those
kings who did not read the signs of the times aright. Charles,
on the other hand, who had managed to run up private debts of
fifty million francs before he was twenty years of age, knew
nothing, remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn
nothing. As soon as he had succeeded his brother, he estab-
lished a government "by priests, through priests and for
priests," and while the Duke of Wellington, who made this re-
mark, cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in such
a way that he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and
order. When he tried to suppress the newspapers which dared
to criticise his government, and dismissed the Parliament be-
cause it supported the Press, his days were numbered.

On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revo-
lution took place in Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the
king fled to the coast and set sail for England. In this way
the "famous farce of fifteen years" came to an end and the
Bourbons were at last removed from the throne of France.
They were too hopelessly incompetent. France then might
have returned to a Republican form of government, but such
a step would not have been tolerated by Metternich.

The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebel-
lion had leaped beyond the French frontier and had set fire to
another powder house filled with national grievances. The new
kingdom of the Netherlands had not been a success. The Bel-
gian and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their
king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of Wil-
liam the Silent) , while a hard worker and a good business man,
was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace
among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests
which had descended upon France, had at once found its way
into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was
howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh at-
tempt upon the "freedom of the Catholic church." On the 25th
of August there was a popular outbreak against the Dutch
authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 391

declared themselves independent and elected Leopold of Co-
burg, the uncle of Queen Victoria of England, to the throne.
That was an excellent solution of the difficulty. The two coun-
tries, which never ought to have been united, parted their
ways and thereafter lived in peace and harmony and behaved
like decent neighbours.

News in those days when there were only a few short rail-
roads, travelled slowly, but when the success of the French
and the Belgian revolutionists became known in Poland there
was an immediate clash between the Poles and their Russian
rulers which led to a year of terrible warfare and ended with a
complete victory for the Russians who "established order along
the banks of the Vistula" in the well-known Russian fashion.
Nicholas the First, who had succeeded his brother Alexander in
1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of his own family,
and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter
in western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles
of the Holy Alliance were still more than a hollow phrase in
Holy Russia.

In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise,
Duchess of Parma and wife of the former Emperor Napo-
leon, whom she had deserted after the defeat of Waterloo, was
driven away from her country, and in the Papal state the exas-
perated people tried to establish an independent Republic.
But the armies of Austria marched to Rome and soon every-
thing was as of old. Metternich continued to reside at the Ball
Platz, the home of the foreign minister of the Habsburg
dynasty, the police spies returned to their job, and peace
reigned supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass before a
second and more successful attempt could be made to deliver
Europe from the terrible inheritance of the Vienna Con-
gress.

Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of
Europe, which gave the signal of revolt. Charles X had been
succeeded by Louis Philippe, the son of that famous Duke of
Orleans who had turned Jacobin, had voted for the death of his
cousin the king, and had played a role during the early days

39« THE STORY OF MANKIND

of the revolution under the name of "Philippe Egalite" or
"Equality Philip." Eventually he had been killed when
Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all "traitors," (by
which name he indicated those people who did not share his own
views ) and his son had been forced to run away from the
revolutionary army. Young Louis Phihppe thereupon had
wandered far and wide. He had taught school in Switzerland
and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown "far
west" of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned
to Paris. He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon
cousins. He was a simple man who went about in the public
parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a
brood of children like any good housefather. But France had
outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until
the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when
a crowd stormed the Tuileries, and drove his Majesty away and
proclaimed the Republic.

When the news of this event reached Vienna, Mettemich
expressed the casual opinion that this was only a repetition
of the year 1793 and that the Allies would once more be obliged
to march upon Paris and make an end to this very unseemly
democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital
was in open revolt. Mettemich escaped from the mob through
the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was
forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most
of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had
tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years.

This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared it-
self independent, and commenced a war against the Habs-
burgs under the leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal
struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by
the armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpa-
thian mountains and made Hungary once more safe for autoc-
racy. The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary
court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian
patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle.

As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 993

from Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal
states the prime minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope
was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head of a
French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holi-
ness against his subjects until the year 1870. Then it was
called back to defend France against the Prussians, and
Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and
Venice rose against their Austrian masters. They were sup-
ported by king Albert of Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army
under old Radetzky marched into the valley of the Po, de-
feated the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced
Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who
a few years later was to be the first king of a united Italy.

In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a
great national demonstration in favour of political unity and a
representative form of govermnent. In Bavaria, the king who
had wasted his time and money upon an Irish lady who posed as
a Spanish dancer — ( she was called Lola Montez and lies buried
in New York's Potter's Field) — was driven away by the en-
raged students of the university. In Prussia, the king was
forced to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those
who had been killed during the street fighting and to promise a
constitutional form of government. And in March of the year
1849, a German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from
all parts of the country came together in Frankfort and pro-
posed that king Frederick William of Prussia should be the
Emperor of a United Germany.

Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdi-
nand had abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph.
The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their
war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the
Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like fam-
ily, once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened
their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe.
They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the
jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation
of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-

894 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ing in the art of suiFering defeat had taught them the value of
patience. They knew how to wait. They bided their time
and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics,
talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated by their own
fine speeches, the Austrians quietly gathered their forces, dis-
missed the Parhament of Frankfort and re-established the old
and impossible German confederation which the Congress of
Vienna had wished upon an unsuspecting world.

But among the men who had attended this strange Parlia-
ment of unpractical enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country
squire by the name of Bismarck, who had made good use of his
eyes and ears. He had a deep contempt for oratory. He knew
(what every man of action has always known) that nothing
is ever accomplished by talk. In his own way he was a sincere
patriot. He had been trained in the old school of diplomacy
and he could outlie his opponents just as he could outwalk
them and outdrink them and outride them.

Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation
of little states must be changed into a strong united country
if it would hold its own against the other European powers.
Brought up amidst feudal ideas of loyalty, he decided that
the house of HohenzoUern, of which he was the most faithful
servant, should rule the new state, rather than the incompetent
Habsburgs. For this purpose he must first get rid of the
Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary prepa-
rations for this painful operation.

Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had
rid herself of her hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy
was the work of three men, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi.
Of these three, Cavour, the civil-engineer with the short-sighted
eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the care-
ful political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days
in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian police,
was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of red-
shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination.

Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Repub-
lican form of government. Cavour, however, was a monarch-

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

895

isii, and the others who recognised his superior ability in such
matters of practical statecraft, accepted his decision and sacri-
ficed their own ambitions for the greater good of their beloved
Fatherland.

Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck
did towards the Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and
great shrewdness he set to work to jockey the Sardinian King
into a position from which His Majesty would be able to as-
sume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The unsettled
political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped him in
his plans and no country con-
tributed more to the inde-
pendence of Italy than her old
and trusted (and often dis-
trusted) neighbour, France.

In that turbulent country,
in November of the year 1852,
the Republic had come to a
sudden but not unexpected end.
Napoleon III the son of Louis
Bonaparte the former King of
Holland, and the small nephew
of a great uncle, had re-estab-
lished an Empire and had
made himself Emperor "by the
Grace of God and the Will of
the People."

This young man, who had been educated in Germany and
who mixed his French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just
as the first Napoleon had always spoken the language of his
adopted country with a strong Italian accent) was trying very
hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own benefit. But
he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his hold
upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship
of Queen Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the
good Queen was not particularly brilliant and was very sus-
ceptible to flattery. As for the other European sovereigns,

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

396 THE STORY OF MANKIND

they treated the French Emperor with insulting haughtiness
and sat up nights devising new ways in which they could show
their upstart "GJood Brother" how sincerely they despised him.

Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break
this opposition, either through love or through fear. He well
knew the fascination which the word "glory" still held for his
subjects. Since he was forced to gamble for his throne he
decided to play the game of Empire for high stakes. He used
an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing
about the Crimean war in which England and France com-
bined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very
costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither
France nor England nor Russia reaped much glory.

But the Crimean war did one good thing. It gave Sardinia
a chance to volunteer on the winning side and when peace was
declared it gave Cavour the opportunity to lay claim to the
gratitude of both England and France.

Having made use of the international situation to get Sar-
dinia recognised as one of the more important powers of Eu-
rope, the clever Italian then provoked a war between Sardinia
and Austria in June of the year 1859. He assured himself of
the support of Napoleon in exchange for the provinces of
Savoy and the city of Nice, which was really an Italian town.
The Franco-Italian armies defeated the Austrians at Magenta
and Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and duchies
were united into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became
the capital of this new Italy until the year 1870 when the
French recalled their troops from Rome to defend France
against the Germans. As soon as they were gone, the Italian
troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia took
up its residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an
ancient Pope had built on the ruins of the baths of the Emperor
Constantine.

The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid
behind the walls of the Vatican, which had been the home of
many of his predecessors since their return from the exile of
Avignon in the year 1377. He protested loudly against this

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE $97

high-handed theft of his domains and addressed letters of ap-
peal to those faithful Catholics who were inclined to sympa-
thise with him in his loss. Their number, however, was small,
and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once delivered from
the cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to
questions of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty
quarrels of the European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new
dignity which proved of great benefit to the church and made
it an international power for social and religious progress
which has shown a much more intelligent appreciation of mod-
ern economic problems than most Protestant sects.

In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to
settle the Italian question by making the peninsula an Aus-
trian province was at last undone.

The German problem however remained as yet unsolved.
It proved the most difficult of all. Tlie failure of the revolution
of the year 1848 had led to the wholesale migration of the more
energetic and liberal elements among the German people.
These young fellows had moved to the United States of Amer-
ica, to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America. Their
work was continued in Germany but by a different sort of men.

In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse
of the German Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to
establish a united country, the Kingdom of Prussia was rep-
resented by that same Otto von Bismarck from whom we parted
a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had managed to gain the
complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That was all he
asked for. The opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the
Prussian people interested him not at all. With his own eyes
he had seen the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he
would not be able to get rid of Austria without a war and he
began by strengthening the Prussian army. The Landtag, ex-
asperated at his high-handed methods, refused to give him the
necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother to discuss
the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the
help of funds which the Prussian house of Peers and the king
placed at his disposal. Then he looked for a national cause

398 THE STORY OP MANKIND

which could be used for the purpose of creating a great wave
of patriotism among all the German people.

In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schles-
wig and Holstein which ever since the middle ages had been a
source of trouble. Both countries were inhabited by a certain
number of Danes and a certain number of Germans, but al-
though they were governed by the King of Denmark, they
were not an integral part of the Danish State and this led to
endless difficulties. Heaven forbid that I should revive this
forgotten question which now seems settled by the acts of the
recent Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein
were very loud in their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in
Schleswig made a great ado of their Danishness, and all Eu-
rope was discussing the problem and German Mannerchors
and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the
"lost brethren" and the different chancelleries were trying to
discover what it was all about, when Prussia mobilised her
armies to "save the lost provinces." As Austria, the official
head of the German Confederation, could not allow Prussia
to act alone in such an important matter, the Habsburg troops
were mobilised too and the combined armies of the two great
powers crossed the Danish frontiers and after a very brave re-
sistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two duchies.
The Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise
engaged and the poor Danes were left to their fate.

Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number
upon his Imperial programme. He used the division of the
spoils to pick a quarrel with Austria. The Habsburgs fell into
the trap. The new Prussian army, the creation of Bismarck and
his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in less than six
weeks, the last of the Austrian troops had been destroyed at
Koniggratz and Sadowa and the road to Vienna lay open. But
Bismarck did not want to go too far. He knew that he would
need a few friends in Europe. He offered the defeated
Habsburgs very decent terms of peace, provided they would
resign their chairmanship of the Confederation. He was less
merciful to many of the smaller German states who had taken

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 399

the side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The
greater part of the northern states then formed a new organ-
isation, the so-called North German Confederacy, and victor-
ious Prussia assumed the unofficial leadership of the German
people.

Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of
consolidation had been done. England was quite indiff'erent
but France showed signs of disapproval. Napoleon's hold
upon the French people was steadily diminishing. The Cri-
mean war had been costly and had accomplished nothing.

A second adventure in the year 1868, when a French army
had tried to force an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of
Maximilian upon the Mexican people as their Emperor, had
come to a disastrous end as soon as the American Civil War had
been won by the North. For the Government at Washington
had forced the French to withdraw their troops and this had
given the Mexicans a chance to clear their country of the enemy
and shoot the unwelcome Emperor.

It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new
coat of glory-paint. Within a few years the North German
Confederation would be a serious rival of France. Napoleon
decided that a war with Germany would be a good thing for his
dynasty. He looked for an excuse and Spain, the poor victim
of endless revolutions, gave him one.

Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It
had been offered to the Catholic branch of the house of Hohen-
zollern. The French government had objected and the Hoh-
enzollerns had politely refused to accept the crown. But
Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was very much
under the influence of his beautiful wife, Eugenie de Monti jo,
the daughter of a Spanish gentleman and the grand-daughter
of William Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga, where
the grapes come from. Eugenie, although shrewd enough, was
as badly educated as most Spanish women of that day. She
was at the mercy of her spiritual advisers and these worthy gen-
tlemen felt no love for the Protestant King of Prussia. "Be
bold," was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she

400 THE STORY OF MANKIND

omitted to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb
which admonishes the hero to "be bold but not too bold."
Napoleon, convinced of the strength of his army, addressed
himself to the king of Prussia and insisted that the king give
him assurances that "he would never permit another candi-
dature of a Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown." As
the HohenzoUerns had just declined the honour, the demand
was superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the French govern-
ment. But Napoleon was not satisfied.

It was the year 1870 and King Wilham was taking the
waters at Ems. There one day he was approached by the
French minister who tried to re-open the discussion. The king
answered very pleasantly that it was a fine day and that the
Spanish question was now closed and that nothing more
remained to be said upon the subject. As a matter of
routine, a report of this interview was telegraphed to
Bismarck, who handled all foreign affairs. Bismarck edited
the dispatch for the benefit of the Prussian and French*
press. Many people have called him names for doing
this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that the doc-
toring of official news, since time immemorial, had been one
of the privileges of all civilised governments. When the "edit-
ed" telegram was printed, the good people in Berhn felt that
their old and venerable king with his nice white whiskers had
been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally
good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly
courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prus-
sian flunkey.

And so they both went to war and in less than two months.
Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of
the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the
Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against the
German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Teu
days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of
Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been
such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia
was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 401

of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new Grerman Empire
had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teu-
tonic states and statelets.

In this rough way, the German question was finally settled.
By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable
gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely
undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried
to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods
they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and
the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century
was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has
not yet come to an end.

BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE
FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL INDE-
PENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY
LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED
BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD
MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE
OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITH-
FUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN

The greatest benefactor of the human race died more than
half a million years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low
brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth.
He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern sci-
entists, but they would have honoured him as their master. For
he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy
boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our
first tools, and he did more than any human being who came
after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other
animals with whom he shares this planet.

Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use
of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc
made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communi-
ties of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years
ago.

In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent
Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested

402

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 40S

that the Patent Office be abolished, because "everything that
possibly could be invented liad l)een invented." A similar
feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when
the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able
to move from place to place without rowing or punting or
pulling from the shore.

Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of historj' is
the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his
work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun
or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and
little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals.

Of course in the very olden days, it was always possible
to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleas-
ant tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and
Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to
devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-
spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathema-
tician waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill
the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the market-
place and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?

And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been
abolished and only a mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds
discouraged the idea of using machinery because they thought
this would throw a large number of their brethren out of
work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all interested
in producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and butch-
ers and carpenters worked for the immediate needs of the small
community in which they lived and had no desire to compete
with their neighbours, or to produce more than was strictly
necessary.

During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church
against scientific investigations could no longer be enforced as
rigidly as before, a large number of men began to devote their
lives to mathematics and stronomy and physics and chemistry.
Two years before the I eginning of the Thirty Years War.
John Napier, a Scotchma^i, had published his little book which
described the new invention of logarithms. During the war it-

404. THE STORY OF MANKIND

self, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system of
infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of West-
phalia, Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was
born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer,
died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the pros-
perity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very gen-
eral interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the
middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into
gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their
laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped
the work of the chemists who were their successors.

The work of all these men provided the world with a solid
scientific foundation upon which it was possible to build even
the most complicated of engines, and a number of practical
men made good use of it. The Middle-Ages had used wood for
the few bits of necessary machinery. But wood wore out
easily. Iron was a much better material, but iron was scarce
except in England. In England therefore most of the smelt-
ing was done. To smelt iron, huge fires were needed. In the
beginning, these fires had been made of wood, but gradually
the forests had been used up. Then "stone coal" (the petri-
fied trees of prehistoric times) was used. But coal as you
know has to be dug out of the ground and it has to be trans-
ported to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept
dry from the ever invading waters.

These were two problems which had to be solved at once.
For the time being, horses could still be used to haul the coal-
wagons, but the pumping question demanded the application
of special machinery. Several inventors were busy trying to
solve the difficulty. They all knew that steam would have to
be used in their new engine. The idea of the steam engine was
very old. Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the first century
before Christ, has described to us several bits of machinery
which were driven by steam. The people of the Renaissance
had played with the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The
Marquis of Worcester, a contemporary of Newton, in his book
of inventions, tells of a steam engine. A little later, in the year

THE MODERN CITY

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 405

1698, Thomas Savery of London applied for a patent for a
pumping engine. At the same time, a Hollander, Christian
Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which gun-powder
was used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as
we use gasoline in our motors.

All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis
Papin, a Frenchman, friend and assistant of Huygens, was
making experiments with steam engines in several countries.
He invented a little wagon that was driven by steam, and a
paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a trip in his
vessel, it was confiscated by the authorities on a complaint of
the boatmen's union, who feared that such a craft would de-
prive them of their livelihood. Papin finally died in London in
great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions.
But at the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast,
Thomas Xewcomen, was working on the problem of a new
steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was improved upon
by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year
1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of
real practical value.

But during the centuries of experiments with a "heat-en-
gine," the political world had greatly changed. The British
people had succeeded the Dutch as the common-carriers of the
world's trade. They had opened up new colonies. They took
the raw materials which the colonies produced to England,
and there they turned them into finished products, and then
they exported the finished goods to the four corners of the
world. During the seventeenth century, the people of Georgia
and the Carolinas had begun to grow a new shrub which gave
a strange sort of woolly substance, the so-called ''cotton wool."
After this had been plucked, it was sent to England and there
the people of Lancasliire wove it into cloth. This weaving
was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen. Very soon
a number of improvements were made in the process of weav-
ing. In the year 1730, John Kay invented the "fly shuttle."
In 1770, James Hargreaves got a patent on his "spii~*ning
jenny." Eli Whitney, an American, invented the cotton-gin,

406 THE STORY OF MANKIND

which separated the cotton from its seeds, a job which had pre-
viously been done by hand at the rate of only a pound a day.
Finally Richard Arkwright and the Reverend Edmund Cart'
Wright invented large weaving machines, which were driven by
water power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth
century, just when the Estates General of France had begun
those famous meetings which were to revolutionise the political
system of Europe, the engines of Watt were arranged in such
a way that they could drive the weaving machines of Ark-
wright, and this created an economic and social revolution
which has changed human relationship in almost every part
of the world.

As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the
inventors turned their attention to the problem of propelling
boats and carts with the help of a mechanical contrivance.
Watt himself designed plans for a "steam locomotive," but
ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year 1804, a locomotive
made by Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty tons at
Pen-y-darran in the Wales mining district.

At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter
by the name of Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to con-
vince Napoleon that with the use of his submarine boat, the
"Nautilus," and his "steam-boat," the French might be able to
destroy the naval supremacy of England.

Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had un-
doubtedly copied it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of
Connecticut whose cleverly constructed steamer had first navi-
gated the Delaware river as early as the year 1787. But Napo-
leon and his scientific advisers did not believe in the practical
possibihty of a self-propelled boat, and although the Scotch-
built engine of the Httle craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the
great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable
weapon which might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar.

As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being
a practical man of business, he organised a successful steam-
boat company together with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of
the Declaration of Independence, who was American Minister

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE

407

to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying to sell his inven-
tion. The first steamer of this new company, the "Clermont,"
which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York
State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of
Birmingham in England, began a regular service between New
York and Albany in the year 1807.

As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one
else had used the "steam-boat" for commercial purposes, he
came to a sad death. Broken in health and empty of purse, he
had come to the end of his resources when his fifth boat, which

Th/i jrcA^/e^ o» "Jovaj F^rr/f AfA^e a TJt»Jtt, TiffM o^ 30 />f/4^j/^/

THE FIRST STEAMBOAT

was propelled by means of a screw-propeller, had been de-
stroyed. His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a
hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his
funny flying machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country
an easy access to the broad rivers of the west and his country-
men preferred to travel in flat-boats or go on foot. In the year
1798, in utter despair and misery, Fitch killed himself by tak-
ing poison.

But twenty years later, the "Savannah," a steamer of 1850

408

THE STORY OP MANKIND

tons and making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just
four times as fast, ) crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liver-
pool in the record time of twenty-five days. Then there was
an end to the derision of the multitude and in their enthusiasm
the people gave the credit for the invention to the wrong man.
Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had

^SA^ 77fS£

THE ORIGIN OF THE STEAMBOAT

been building locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from
the mine-pit to smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his
famous "travelling engine" which reduced the price of coal by
almost seventy per cent and which made it possible to estab-
lish the first regular passenger service between Manchester and
Liverpool, when people were whisked from city to city at the
unheard-of speed of fifteen miles per hour. A dozen years
later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per hour.

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE

409

At the present time, any well-behaved fiiwer (the direct de-
scendant of the puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler
and Levassor of the eighties of the last century) can do better
than these early "Puffing Billies."

But while these practically-minded engineers were improv-
ing upon their ratthng "heat engines," a group of "pure"

^•^j€ A* fa fie >•

The oRiCrAj or Tine AwloMofr* wB

THE ORIGIN OF THE AUTOMOBILE

scientists (men who devote fourteen hours of each day to the
study of those "theoretical" scientitic phenomena without which
no mechanical progress would be possible) were following a
new scent which promised to lead them into the most secret and
hidden domains of Nature.

Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman
philosophers (notably Thales of iSIiletus and Pliny who was
killed while trying to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the

410 THE STORY OF MANKIND

year 79 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath
the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of
feather which were held near a piece of amber which was being
rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages
had not been interested in this mysterious "electric" power.
But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the
private physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise
on the character and behaviour of Magnets. During the
Thirty Years War Otto von Guericke, the burgomaster of
Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump, constructed the
first electrical machine. During the next century a large num-
ber of scientists devoted themselves to the study of electricity.
Not less than three professors invented the famous Leyden
Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin,
the most universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thom-
son (who after his flight from New Hampshire on account of
his pro-British sympathies became known as Count Rumford)
was devoting his attention to this subject. He discovered that
lightning and the electric spark were manifestations of the same
electric power and continued his electric studies until the end of
his busy and useful life. Then came Volta with his famous
"electric pile" and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor
Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday,
all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the elec-
tric forces.

They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel
Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought
that he could use this new electric current to transmit mes-
sages from one city to another. He intended to use copper
wire and a little machine which he had invented. People
laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his
own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and
then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He
then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on
Commerce promised him their support. But the members of
Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait

THE AGE OF THE ENGINE 411

twelve years before he was given a small congressional appro-
priation. He then built a "telegraph" between Baltimore and
Washington. In the year 1887 he had shown his first success-
ful "telegraph" in one of the lecture halls of New York Uni-
versity. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the
first long-distance message was sent from Washington to Bal-
timore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph
wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few sec-
onds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used
the electric current for his telephone. And half a century after-
wards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a sys-
tem of sending messages which did away entirely with the old-
fashioned wires.

While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his
"telegraph," Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had con-
structed the first "dynamo." This tiny little machine was com-
pleted in the year 1831 when Europe was still trembling as a
result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset
the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew
and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and
with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edi-
son, building upon French and English experiments of the for-
ties and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts
of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will
soon entirely drive out the "heat engine" just as in the olden
days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out
their less efficient neighbours.

Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will
make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run
by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of man-
kind but the "heat-engine," the marvel of the eighteenth cen-
tury, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with
ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking
that it be fed with coal which has to he dug out of mines at
great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.

And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick

412 THE STORY OF MANKIND

to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the
happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the
Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton
of the Dinosaur and the I'terodactyl and the other extinct
(•reatures of a by-gone age.

BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPEN-
SIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH
COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPEN-
TER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS
OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP
WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO
THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL
TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE
MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FOR
MER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT
LIKE THAT

In the olden days the work of the world had been done by
independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in
the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the
ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits pre-
scribed by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased
them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very
long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up
and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing
and there was no one to say "no."

But the introduction of machinery changed this. A ma-
chine is really nothing but a greatly enlarged tool. A rail-
road train which carries you at the speed of a mile a minute is
in reality a pair of very fast legs, and a steam hammer which
flattens heavy plates of iron is just a terrible big fist, made of
steel,

413

414

THE STORY OF MANKIND

But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a
good strong fist, a railroad train and a steam hammer and a
cotton factory are very expensive pieces of machinery and they
are not owned by a single man, but usually by a company of
people who all contribute a certain sum and then divide the

MAN POWER AND MACHINE POWER

profits of their railroad or cotton mill according to the amount
of money which they have invested.

Therefore, when machines had been improved until they
were really practicable and profitable, the builders of those

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 415

large tools, the machine manufacturers, began to look for cus-
tomers who could afford to pay for them in cash.

During the early middle ages, when land had been almost
the only form of wealth, the nobility were the only people
who were considered wealthy. But as I have told you in a
previous chapter, the gold and silver which they possessed
was quite insignificant and they used the old system of bar-
ter, exchanging cows for horses and eggs for honey. During
the crusades, the burghers of the cities had been able to gather
riches from the reviving trade between the east and the west,
and they had been serious rivals of the lords and the knights.

The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth
of the nobility and had enormously increased that of the middle
class or "bourgeoisie." The years of unrest which followed the
Great Revolution had offered many middle-class people a
chance to get more than their share of this world's goods. The
estates of the church had been confiscated by the French Con-
vention and had been sold at auction. There had been a terrific
amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen thousands
of square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic
wars, they had used their capital to "profiteer" in grain and
gun-powder, and now they possessed more wealth than they
needed for the actual expenses of their households, and they
could afford to build themselves factories and to hire men and
women to work the machines.

This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds
of thousands of people. Within a few years, many cities
doubled the number of their inhabitants and the old civic centre
which had been the real "home" of the citizens was surrounded
with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where the workmen slept
after their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours, spent in the
factories and from where they returned to the factory as soon
as the whistle blew.

Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the
fabulous sums of money that could be made in the towns. The
peasant boy, accustomed to a life in the open, went to the city.
He rapidly lost his old health amidst the smoke and dust and

il6

THE STORY OF MANKIND

dirt of those early and badly yentilated workshops, and the
end, very often, was death in the poor-house or in the hospital.
Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the
part of so many people was not accomplished without a certain
amount of opposition. Since one engine could do as much
work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine others who were
thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently they at-
tacked the factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but

'^i-r,

"'^^'^«.

>4:vi

-^>

^UftA.

THE FACTORY

Insurance Companies had been organised as early as the 17th
century and as a rule the owners were well protected against
loss.

Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the fac-
tory was surrounded with a high wall and then there was an
end to the rioting. The ancient guilds could not possibly sur-
vive in this new world of steam and iron. They went out of
existence and then the workmen tried to organise regular labour
unions. But the factory-owners, who through their wealth
could exercise great influence upon the politicians of the dif-
ferent countries, went to the Legislature and had laws passed

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 417

which forbade the forming of such trade unions because they
interfered with the "hberty of action" of the working man.

Please do not think that the good members of Parlia-
ment who passed these laws were wicked tyrants. They were,
the true sons of the revolutionary period when everybody
talked of "liberty" and when people often killed their neigh-
bours because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they
ought to have been. Since "liberty" was the foremost virtue
of man, it was not right that labour-unions should dictate to
their members the hours during which they could work and
the wages which they must demand. The workman must at
all times, be "free to sell his services in the open market," and
the employer must be equally "free" to conduct his business
as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System, when
the state had regulated the industrial life of the entire com-
munity, were coming to an end. The new idea of "freedom**
insisted that the state stand entirely aside and let commerce
take its course.

The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a
time of intellectual and political doubt, but the old economic
ideas, too, had been replaced by new ones which better suited the
need of the hour. Several years before the French revolution,
Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of
finance of Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of
"economic liberty." Turgot lived in a country which had
suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too
many officials trying to enforce too many laws. "Remove this
official supervision," he wrote, "let the people do as they please,
and everything will be all right." Soon his famous advice of
"laissez faire" became the battle-cry around which the econom-
ists of that period rallied.

At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working
on his mighty volumes on the "Wealth of Nations," which made
another plea for "liberty" and the "natural rights of trade."
Thirty years later, after the fall of Napoleon, when the reac-
tionary powers of Europe had gained their victory at Vienna,

418 THE STORY OF MANKIND

that same freedom which was denied to the people in their
political relations was forced upon them in their industrial
life.

The general use of machinery^ as I have said at the begin-
ning of this chapter, proved to be of great advantage to the
state. Wealth increased rapidly. The machine made it pos-
sible for a single country, like England, to carry all the bur-
dens of the great Napoleonic wars. The capitalists (the peo-
ple who provided the money with which machines were bought)
reaped enormous profits. They became ambitious and began
to take an interest in politics. They tried to compete with the
landed aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon
the government of most European countries.

In England, where the members of Parliament were still
elected according to a Royal Decree of the year 1265, and
where a large number of recently created industrial centres were
without representation, they brought about the passing of the
Reform Bill of the year 1832, which changed the electoral
system and gave the class of the factory-owners more influ-
ence upon the legislative body. This however caused great
discontent among the millions of factory workers, who were
left without any voice in the government. They too began
an agitation for the right to vote. They put their demands
down in a document which came to be known as the "People's
Charter." The debates about this charter grew more and
more violent. They had not yet come to an end when the revo-
lutions of the year 1848 broke out. Frightened by the threat
of a new outbreak of Jacobinism and violence, the English
government placed the Duke of Wellington, who was now in
his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for Vol-
unteers. London was placed in a state of siege and prepara-
tions were made to suppress the coming revolution.

But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad lead-
ership and no acts of violence took place. The new class of
wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the word "bourgeoisie"
which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 419

order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and
the conditions of industrial life in the large cities continued to
transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary
slums, which guard the approach of every modem European
town.

THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHIN-
ERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF
HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH
HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERA-
TION WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH RE-
PLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL
REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE
OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM

In the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Re-
form Bill Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legis-
lative methods and the most practical political reformer of that
day, wrote to a friend: "The way to be comfortable is to
make others comfortable. The way to make others comfort-
able is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them
is to love them in reality." Jeremy was an honest man. He
said what he believed to be true. His opinions were shared by
thousands of his countrymen. They felt responsible for the
happiness of their less fortunate neighbours and they tried
their very best to help them. And Heaven knows it was time
that something be done!

The ideal of "economic freedom" (the "laissez faire" of
Turgot) had been necessary in the old society where medieval
restrictions lamed all industrial effort. But this "hberty of
action" which had been the highest law of the land had led to
a terrible, yea, a frightful condition. The hours in the fac-

420

EMANCIPATION 411

tory were limited only by the physical strength of the work-
ers. As long as a woman could sit before her loom, without
fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work. Children of
five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from
tlie dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had
been passed which forced the children of paupers to go to work
or be punished by being chained to their machines. In return
for their services they got enough bad food to keep them alive
and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often
they were so tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep
them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and beat
them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back
to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands
of little children died. This was regrettable and the employers,
who after all were human beings and not without a heart, sin-
cerely wished that they could abolish "child labour." But since
man was "free" it followed that children were "free" too. Be-
sides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his factory without the
use of children of five and six, his rival, Mr. Stone, would have
hired an extra supply of little boys and Jones would have been
forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore impossible for Jones
to do without child labour until such time as an act of Parlia-
ment should forbid it for all employers.

But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old
landed aristocracy (which had despised the upstart factory-
owners with their money bags and had treated them with open
contempt), but was under control of the representatives from
the industrial centres, and as long as the law did not allow
workmen to combine in labour-unions, very little was accom-
plished. Of course the intelligent and decent people of that
time were not blind to these terrible conditions. They were
just helpless. Machinery had conquered the world by sur-
prise and it took a great many years and the efforts of thou-
sands of noble men and women to make the machine what it
ought to be, man's servant, and not his master.

Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous
system of employment which was then common in all parts of

422 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the world, was made on behalf of the black slaves of Africa
and America. Slavery had been introduced into the Ameri-
can continent by the Spaniards. They had tried to use the
Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the In-
dians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down
and died and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest
had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the
work. The negroes were strong and could stand rough treat-
ment. Besides, association with the white man would give
them a chance to learn Christianity and in this way, they would
be able to save their souls, and so from every possible point of
view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly
white man and for his ignorant black brother. But with the
introduction of machinery there had been a greater demand for
cotton and the negroes were forced to work harder than ever
before, and they too, like the Indians, began to die under the
treatment which they received at the hands of the overseers.

Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to
Europe and in all countries men and women began to agitate
for the abolition of slavery. In England, William Wilberforce
and 2(achary jMacaulay, (the father of the great historian whose
history of England you must read if you want to know how
wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,) organised a
society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they got a
law passed which made "slave trading" illegal. And after the
year 1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British colo-
nies. The revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the
French possessions. The Portuguese passed a law in the year
1858 which promised all slaves their liberty in twenty years
from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1863 and in the
same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that liberty
which had been taken away from them more than two centuries
before.

In the United States of xVmerica the question led to
grave difficulties and a prolonged war. Although the Decla-
ration of Independence had laid down the principle that
"all men were created equal," an exception had been made for

EMANCIPATION 4fS

those men and women whose skins were dark and who worked
on the plantations of the southern states. As time went on, the
dishke of the people of the North for the institution of slavery
increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The south-
erners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton
without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty de-
bate raged in both the Congress and the Senate.

The North remained obdurate and the South would not give
in. When it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the
southern states threatened to leave the Union. It was a most
dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many things
"might" have happened. That they did not happen was the
work of a very great and very good man.

On the sixth of November of the year I860, Abraliam Lin-
coln, an Illinois lawyer, and a man who had made his own in-
tellectual fortune, had been elected president by the Repub-
licans who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He
knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd
common-sense told him that there was no room on the northern
continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern
states seceded and formed the "Confederate States of Amer-
ica," Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states
were called upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of
young men responded with eager enthusiasm and there fol-
lowed four years of bitter civil war. The South, better pre-
pared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and Jack-
son, repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the
economic strength of New England and the West began to
tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from ob-
scurity and became the Charles Alartel of the great slave war.
Without interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the
crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863,
President Lincoln issued his "Emancipation Proclamation"
which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee sur-
rendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few
days later, President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But
his work was done. With the exception of Cuba which was

4!ie4 THE STORY OF MANKIND

still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in
every part of the civilised world.

But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount
of liberty, the "free" workmen of Europe did not fare quite so
well. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to many contemporary
writers and observers that the masses of workmen (the so-
called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They
lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums.
Thej'' ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to
fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their
families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery
interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legis-
lature,) encouraged them to forget their woes by offering them
unlimited quantities of whisky and gin at very cheap rates.

The enormous improvement which has taken place since the
thirties and the forties of the last century is not due to the ef-
forts of a single man. The best brains of two generations de-
voted themselves to the task of saving the world from the dis-
astrous results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery.
They did not try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would
have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of other
people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit
to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true
equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns
the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk
of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever job
is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of star-
vation for himself, his wife and his children.

They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which reg-
ulated the relations between the factory owners and the fac-
tory workers. In this, the reformers have been increasingly
successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the labour-
ers are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the
excellent average of eight, and their children are sent to the
schools instead of to the mine pit and to the carding-room of
the cotton mills.

But there were other men who also contemplated the sight

EMANCIPATION 425

of all the belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the
railroad trains, who saw the store-houses filled M'ith a surplus
of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what ultimate
goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come.
They remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds
of thousands of years without conmiercial and industrial com-
petition. Could they change the existing order of things and
do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed human
happiness to profits?

This idea — this vague hope for a better day — was not re-
stricted to a single country. In England, Robert Owen, the
owner of many cotton mills, established a so-called "socialistic
community" which was a success. But when he died, the pros-
perity of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis
Blanc, a French journalist, to establish "social workshops"
all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing num-
ber of socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual
communities which remained outside of the regular industrial
life, would never be able to accomplish anj'thing at all. It
was necessary to study the fundamental principles underlying
the whole industrial and capitalistic society before useful reme-
dies could be suggested.

The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis
Blanc and Francois Fournier were succeeded by theoretical
students of socialism like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of
these two, ^larx is the best known. He was a very brilliant
Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He
had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he be-
gan to interest himself in questions of labour and wages and
unemployment. But his liberal views made him very unpopu-
lar with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to
flee to Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and
shabby life as the correspondent of the New York Tribune.

No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on
economic subjects. But In the year 1864 he organised the first
international association of working men and three years later,
in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-known trea-

426 THE STORY OF MANKIND

tise called "Capital." Marx believed that all history was a
long struggle between those who "have" and those who "don't
have." The introduction and general use of machinery had
created a new class in society, that of the capitalists who used
their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were then used by
the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used
to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Mean-
while, according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie)
was growing richer and richer and the fourth estate (the prole-
tariat) was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted that
in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world
while the others would be his employees and dependent upon
his good will.

To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working
men of all countries to unite and to fight for a number of politi-
cal and economic measures which he had enumerated in a Man-
ifesto in the year 1848, the year of the last great European
revolution.

These views of course were very unpopular with the gov-
ernments of Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed
severe laws against the Socialists and policemen were ordered
to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the speakers.
But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs
are the best possible advertisements for an unpopular cause.
In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased and it
was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent
revolution but were using their increasing power in the differ-
ent Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring
classes. Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet
Ministers, and they co-operated with progressive Catholics and
Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused by the
Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of
the many benefits which had followed the introduction of ma-
chinery and the increased production of wealth.

THE AGE OF SCIENCE

BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER
CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER IM-
PORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL
OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS.
AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION
AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD
AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION
AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOV-
ERN THE UNIVERSE

The Egyptians, the Baby-
lonians, the Chaldeans, the
Greeks and the Romans, had all
contributed something to the first
vague notions of science and sci-
entific investigation. But the
great migrations of the fourth
century had destroyed the classi-
cal world of the ^Iedite^ranean,
and the Christian Church, which
was more interested in the life of
the soul than in the life of the
body, had regarded science as a
manifestation of that human ar-
rogance which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged
to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore was closely
related to the seven deadly sins.

427

THE PHn.OSOPHER

428 THE STORY OF MANKIND

The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken
through this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation;
however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th
century, had been hostile to the ideals of the "new civilisation,"
and once more the men of science were threatened with severe
punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits
of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ.

Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop
of prancing horses, leading their cheering soldiers to glorious
victory. Here and there, a modest slab of marble announces
that a man of science has found his final resting place. A thou-
sand years from now we shall probably do these things differ-
ently, and the children of that happy generation shall know
of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion
to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract
knowledge, which alone has made our modern world a practical
possibility.

Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and con-
tempt and humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dun-
geons. They dared not print their names on the title-pages of
their books and they dared not print their conclusions in the
land of their birth, but smuggled the manuscripts to some secret
printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They were exposed
to the bitter enmitj^ of the Church, both Protestant and Catho-
lic, and were the subjects of endless sermons, inciting the par-
ishioners to violence against the "heretics."

Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where
the spirit of tolerance was strongest, the authorities, while re-
garding these scientific investigations with little favour, yet
refused to interfere wuth people's freedom of thought. It be-
came a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and
English and German philosophers and mathematicians and
physicians could go to enjoy a short spell of rest and get a
breath of free air.

In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the
great genius of the thirteenth century, was prevented for years

THE AGE OF SCIENCE

4^9

from writing a single word, lest he get into new troubles with
the authorities of the church. And five hundred years later, the
contributors to the great philosophic "Encyclopaedia" were un-
der the constant supervision of the French gendarmerie. Half
a century afterwards, Darwin, who dared to question the story
of the creation of man, as re-
vealed in the Bible, was de-
nounced from every pulpit as
an enemy of the human race.
Even to-day, the persecution of
those who venture into the im-
known realm of science has
not entirely come to an end.
And while I am writing this
Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast
multitude on the "Menace of
Darwinism," warning his hear-
ers against the errors of the
great English naturalist.

All this, however, is a mere
detail. The work that has to
be done invariably gets done,
and the ultimate profit of the
discoveries and the inventions
goes to the mass of those same
people who have always decried
the man of vision as an unpractical idealist.

The seventeenth century had still preferred to investi-
gate the far off heavens and to study the position of our
planet in relation to the solar system. Even so, the Church had
disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who
first of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the uni-
verse, did not publish his work until the day of his death. Gali-
leo spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the
clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and
provided Isaac Xewton with a mass of practical obser\'ations,
which greatly helped the English mathematician when he dis-

GALILEO

430 THE STORY OF MANKIND

covered the existence of that interesting habit of falling ob-
jects which came to be known as the Law of Gravitation.

That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the
Heavens, and man began to study the earth. The invention
of a workable microscope, (a strange and clumsy little thing,)
by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the 17th
century, gave man a chance to study the "microscopic" crea-
tures who are responsible for so many of his ailments. It laid
the foundations of the science of "bacteriology" which in the
last forty years has delivered the world from a gi'eat number of
diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the
complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more
careful study of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified
prehistoric plants) which they found deep below the surface of
the earth. These investigations convinced them that the earth
must be a great deal older than was stated in the book of
Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published his
"Principles of Geology" which denied the story of creation as
related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful description
of slow gi'owth and gradual development.

At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on
a new theory of creation, which made the earth a little blotch
in the nebulous sea out of which the planetary system had
been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff, by the use of the spec-
troscope, were investigating the chemical composition of the
stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose curious spots
had first been noticed by Galileo.

Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with
the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the
anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission
to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive knowledge of our
organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediaeval
quack.

Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more
progress was made in every branch of science than in all the
hundreds of thousands of years that had passed since man first
looked at the stars and wondered why they were there. It

THE DIRIGIBLE

THE AGE OF SCIENCE 481

must have been a very sad age for the people who had been
educated under the old system. And we can understand their
feeling of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who
did not exactly tell them that they were "descended from
monkeys," (an accusation which our grandfathers seemed to
regard as a personal insult,) but who suggested that the proud
human race had evolved from a long series of ancestors who
could trace the family-tree back to the little jelly-fishes who
were the first inhabitants of our planet.

The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which
dominated the nineteenth century, was willing to make use
of the gas or the electric light, of all the many practical appli-
cations of the great scientific discoveries, but the mere inves-
tigator, the man of the "scientific theory" without whom no
progress would be possible, continued to be distrusted until
very recently. Then, at last, his services were recognised. To-
day the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth for
the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where
silent men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and
often sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy
greater happiness and health.

Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this
world, which our ancestors regarded as inevitable "acts of
God," have been exposed as manifestations of our own ignor-
ance and neglect. Every child nowadays knows that he can
keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of
his drinking water. But it took years and years of hard
work before the doctors could convince the people of this fact.
Few of us now fear the dentist chair. A study of the mi-
crobes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our
teeth from decay. ^lust perchance a tooth be pulled, then we
take a sniff of gas, and go our way rejoicing. When the news-
papers of the year 1846 brought the story of the "painless
operation" which had been performed in America with the help
of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To
them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape
the pain which was the share of all mortals, and it took a long

192 THE STORY OF MANKIND

time before the practice of taking ether and chloroform for
operations became general.

But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the
old walls of prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as
time went by, the ancient stones of ignorance came crumbling
down. The eager crusaders of a new and happier social order
rushed forward. Suddenly they found themselves facing a new
obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past, another citadel
of reaction had been erected, and millions of men had to give
their lives before this last bulwark was destroyed.

A CHAPTER OF ART

When a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat
and has slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how
happy it is. To grown-ups this humming means nothing. It
sounds like **goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o," but to the baby
it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art.

As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit
up, the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do
not interest the outside world. There are too many million
babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same time.
But to the small infant they represent another expedition into
the pleasant realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor.

At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey
the brain, the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives
him a box of coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is
rapidly covered with strange pothooks and scrawls which rep-
resent houses and horses and terrible naval battles.

Soon however this happiness of just "making things"
comes to an end. School begins and the greater part of the
day is filled up with work. The business of living, or rather
the business of "making a living," becomes the most important
event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left
for "art" between learning the tables of multiplication and the
past participles of the irregular French verbs. And unless
the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of

433

4S4. THE STORY OF MANKIND

creating them without any hope of a practical return be very
strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the
first five years of his life were mainly devoted to art.

Nations are not different from children. As soon as the
cave-man had escaped the threatening dangers of the long and
shivering ice-period, and had put his house in order, he began
to make certain things which he thouglit beautiful, although
they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild
animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with
pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and
out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those
women he thought most attractive.

As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the
Persians and all the other people of the east had founded
their little countries along the Nile and the Euphrates, they
began to build magnificent palaces for their kings, invented
bright pieces of jewellery for their women and planted gardens
which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright flow-
ers.

Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the dis-
tant Asiatic prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as
fighters and hunters, composed songs which celebrated the
mighty deeds of their great leaders and invented a form of
poetry which has survived until our own day. A thousand years
later, when they had established themselves on the Greek main-
land, and had built their "city-states," they expressed their
joy (and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in
comedies and in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of
art.

The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy
administering other people and making money to have much
love for "useless and unprofitable" adventures of the spirit.
They conquered the world and built roads and bridges but they
borrowed their art wholesale from the Greeks. They invented
certain practical forms of architecture which answered the
demands of their day and age. But their statues and their his-
tories and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imi-

ART 435

tations of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-
define something which the world calls "personality," there can
be no art and the Roman world distrusted that particular sort
of personality. The Empire needed efficient soldiers and
tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or making pic-
tures was left to foreigners.

Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the prover-
bial bull in the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use
for what he did not understand. Speaking in terms of the year
1921, he liked the magazine covers of pretty ladies, but threw
the Rembrandt etchings which he had inherited into the ash-
can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried to undo the
damage which he had created a few years before. But the ash-
cans were gone and so were the pictures.

But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with
him from the east, had developed into something very beautiful
and he made up for his past neglect and indifference by the so-
called "art of the Middle Ages" which as far as northern Eu-
rope is concerned was a product of the Germanic mind and had
borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins and nothing
at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not
to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist, as far
as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little
had the northern races been influenced by their southern neigh-
bours that their own architectural products were completely
misunderstood by the people of Italy and were treated by
them with downright and unmitigated contempt.

You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably asso-
ciate it with the picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slen-
der spires towards high heaven. But what does the word really
mean?

It means something "uncouth" and "barbaric" — something
which one migbi expect from an "uncivilised Goth," a rough
backwoods-man who had no respect for the established rules of
classical art and who built his "modern horrors" to please his
own low tastes without a decent regard for the examples of
the Forum and the Acropolis.

436 THE STORY OF MANKIND

And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architec-
ture was the highest expression of the sincere feeling for art
which inspired the whole northern continent. From a previous
chapter, you will remember how the people of the late Middle
Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and dwelt in villages,
they were citizens of a "city" or "civitas," the old Latin name
for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their deep
moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared
the common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and pros-
perity which they derived from their system of mutual protec-
tion.

In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where
the temple stood, had been the centre of civic life. During
the Middle Ages, the Church, the House of God, became such a
centre. We modern Protestant people, who go to our church
only once a week, and then for a few hours only, hardly know
what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then, be-
fore you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be
baptised. As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy
stories of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member
of the congregation, and if you were rich enough you built
yourself a separate little chapel sacred to the memory of the
Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred edifice,
it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In
a certain sense it resembled a modem club, dedicated to all the
inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught
a first glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a
great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when the
end of the journey had come, you were buried beneath the
stones of this familiar building, that all your children and their
grandchildren might pass over your grave until the Day of
Judgement.

Because the Church was not only the House of God but
also the true centre of all common life, the building had to be
different from anything that had ever been constructed by
the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the
Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local

ART

407

divinity. As no sermons were preached before the images of
Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that the interior
offer space for a great multitude. All the religious processions
of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open. But
in the north, where the
weather was usually bad,
most functions were held
under the roof of the church.
During many centuries
the architects struggled with
this problem of constructing
a building that was large
enough. The Roman tradi-
tion taught them how to
build heavy stone walls with
very small windows lest
the walls lose their
strength. On the top of
this they then placed a heavy
stone roof. But in the
twelfth century, after the
beginning of the Crusades,
when the architects had seen
the pointed arches of the
Mohammedan builders, the
western builders discovered
a new style which gave them
their first chance to make the
sort of building which those
days of an intense religious
life demanded. And then

they developed this strange style upon which the Italians
bestowed the contemptuous name of "Gothic" or barbaric.
They achieved their purpose by inventing a vaulted roof which
was supported by "ribs." But such a roof, if it became
too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man
of three hundred pounds sitting down upon a child's chair

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

438 THE STORY OF MANKIND

^vill force it to collapse. To overcome this difficulty, certain
French architects then began to re-enforce the walls with
"buttresses" which were merely heavy masses of stone against
which the walls could lean while they supported the roof. And
to assure the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs
of the roof by so-called "flying buttresses," a very simple
method of construction which you will understand at once when
you look at our picture.

This new method of construction allowed the introduction
of enormous windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still
an expensive curiosity, and very few private buildings pos-
sessed glass windows. Even the castles of the nobles were
without protection and this accounts for the eternal drafts
and explains why people of that day wore furs in-doors as
well as out.

Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which
the ancient people of the Mediterranean had been familiar,
had not been entirely lost. There was a revival of stained
glass-making and soon the windows of the Gothic churches
told the stories of the Holy Book in little bits of brilliantly
coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long frame-
work of lead.

Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God,
filled with an eager multitude, "living" its religion as no people
have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered
too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God
and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction
of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly
return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses
and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord
and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work
to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their
highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of com-
plete adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man,
he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium.

And thereby hangs a story.

The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the

ART 489

floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics ;
pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been
exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express
all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to
make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. Th« art of
mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle
Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters
had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and con-
tinued to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until
the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the build-
ing of churches.

Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with
the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of
the churches. This method of painting upon "fresh plaster"
(which was generally called "fresco" or "fresh" painting)
was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare
as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among
the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps
one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the
Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were
"fresco" workers for lack of something better. The method
however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the
plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness
spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern
of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient
to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix
their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with
the sticky white of eggy but none of these methods were satis-
factory. For more than a thousand years these experiments
continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves
of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But
when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with
paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well.

At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the
problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and
Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their
paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use

440 THE STORY OF MANKIND

wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for
their pictures.

But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle
Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities
were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as
art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began
to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for
kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very
short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through
Europe and in every country there developed a school of
special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the
people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made.

In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs
and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts
of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court.
But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer
painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted
his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children
and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on
the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron
of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint
Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy
was very rich and powerful and in France where the
kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists pamted
distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government,
and very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty.

The great change in painting, which came about with the
neglect of the old church and the rise of a new class in society,
was reflected in all other forms of art. The invention of print-
ing had made it possible for authors to win fame and reputa-
tion by writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose
the profession of the novelist and the illustrator. But the
people who had money enough to buy the new books were not
the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling
or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels
of the Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for
entertainment. For the first time since the early Greek city-

ART 441

states of two thousand years before, the professional play-
wright had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages had
known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebra-
tions. The tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies had told the story of the suffering of our Lord. But
during the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its re-
appearance. It is true that, at first, the position of the pro-
fessional playwright and actor was not a very high one.
William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort of circus-fellow
who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies.
But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the
respect of his neighbours and actors were no longer subjects
of police supervision.

William's contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible
Spaniard who wrote no less than 1800 worldly and 400 reli-
gious plays, was a person of rank who received the papal ap-
proval upon his work. A century later, Mohere, the French-
man, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less
than King Louis XIV.

Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing
affection on the part of the people. To-day a "theatre" is part
of every well-regulated city, and the "silent drama" of the
movies has penetrated to the tiniest of our prairie hamlets.

Another art, however, was to become the most popular of
all. That was music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a
great deal of technical skill. It takes years and years of prac-
tice before our clumsy hand is able to follow the commands of
the brain and reproduce our vision upon canvas or in marble.
It takes a life-time to learn how to act or how to write a good
novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the part of the
public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and
sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can
follow a tune and almost everybody can get enjoyment out of
some sort of music. The Middle Ages had heard a little music
but it had been entirely the music of the church. The holy
chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and harmony

442

THE STORY OF MANKIND

and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not
well be sung in the street or in the market-place.

The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came
into its own as the best friend of man, both in his happiness and
in his sorrows.

The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews
had aU been great lovers of music. They had even combined
different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks
had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to
hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar.
They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the
poorest of all stringed instru-
ments) . That was as far as any
one could go without incurring
the risk of popular disapproval.
The Romans on the other hand
had loved orchestral music at
their dinners and parties and
they had invented most of the
instruments which (in very
modified form) we use to-day.
The early church had despised
this music which smacked too
much of the wicked pagan
world which had just been de-
stroyed. A few songs rendered
by the entire congregation were
all the bishops of the third and

fourth centuries would tolerate. As the congregation was apt
to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance of an in-
strument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an
organ, an invention of the second century of our era which con-
sisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of
bellows.

Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman
musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going
from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for
pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat.

^/M'

THE TROUBADOUR

ART 448

But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities
of the late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musi-
cians. Instruments like the horn, which had been used only
as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled
until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the
dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with
horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and be-
fore the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument
(the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back
to Egypt and AssjTia) had grown into our modern four-
stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Itahan viohn-
makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of per-
fection.

And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-
spread of all musical instruments, which has followed man into
the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland.
The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the
performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one
who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by elec-
tricity. The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less
circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils
of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century,
Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the
birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modem system
of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when
there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first
instrument with both keys and strings was built. It must
have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos
which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna,
the town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages
(who had been classed with jugglers and card sharps) had
formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288,
the little monochord was developed into something which we
can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway.
From Austria the "clavichord" as it was usually called in those
days (because it had "claves" or keys) went to Italy. There
it was perfected into the "spinet" which was so called after

444 THE STORY OF MANKIND

the inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during
the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720,
Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which allowed the
performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in
Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain
changes became our "pianoforte" or piano.

Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and con-
venient instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years
and did not need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and
was much pleasanter to the ears than the mediaeval tubas, clari-
nets, trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given
milhons of modern people their first love of music so did the
early "pianoforte" carry the knowledge of music into much
wider circles. Music became part of the education of every well-
bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained
private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering
"jongleur" and became a highly valued member of the com-
munity. Music was added to the dramatic performances of
the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern Opera.
Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the ex-
penses of an "opera troupe." But as the taste for this sort of
entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where
Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the un-
limited joy of the whole community with the exception of a few
sects of very strict Christians who still regarded music with
deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to be entirely
good for the soul.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life
of Europe was in full swing. Then there came forward a
man who was greater than all others, a simple organist of the
Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian
Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from
comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of sacred
hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern
music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by
Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which
remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and

ART 446

rhythm. Then came Ludwig von Beethoven, the most tragic
of men, who gave us our modern orchestra, yet heard none of
his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the result of a
cold contracted during his years of poverty.

Beethoven lived through the period of the great French
Revolution. Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had
dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived
to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon
was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam
engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that
had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Sym-
phony.

Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large
factories had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and
poetry and music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church
and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The
leaders of the new industrial world were too busy and had too
little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and bits
of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those
things, and who were of no practical use to the community in
which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened
to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste
for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry.
The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era.
Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings
had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And
music became a monopoly of a few "virtuosi" who took the
music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall.

But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into
their own. People begin to understand that Rembrandt and
Beethoven and Rodin are the true prophets and leaders of
their race and that a world without art and happiness resem-
bles a nursery without laughter.

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A
GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMA-
TION ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT
WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EX-
PLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES

If I had known how difficult it was to write a History of
the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course,
any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half
a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a
ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every
land during every century. But that was not the purpose of
the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history
that should have rhyihm — a story which galloped rather than
walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that
certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the
dreary sands of long forgotten ages — that a few parts do not
make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veri-
table jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I sug-
gested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once
more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would
not allow.

As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-
written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them
to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice.
The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every

446

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

447

man had his ovra prejudices and his own hobbies and prefer-
ences. They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared
to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most
beloved criminal. With some of them, Xapoleon and Jenghiz
Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I
had tried very hard to be fair to Xapoleon, but that in my
estimation he was greatly inferior to such men as George
Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi or
Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to

THE PIONEER

content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of
space. As for Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior
ability in the field of wholesale murder and I did not intend to
give him any more publicity than I could help.

"This is very well as far as it goes," said the next critic,
**but how about the Puritans? We are celebrating the ter-
centenary of their arrival at PljTiiouth. They ought to have
more space." My answer was that if I were writing a history
of America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first
twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind
and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-

448 THE STORY OF MANKIND

reaching international importance until many centuries later;
that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies
and not by a single one ; that the most prominent leaders of the
first twenty years of our history had been from Virginia, from
Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than from
Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to con-
tent themselves with a page of print and a special map.

Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of
the great Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the
wonderful race of Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such
a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago?

Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take
as much stock in the perfection of these early races as some of
our most noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and
the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the "noble
savage" who was supposed to have dwelt in a state of perfect
happiness during the beginning of time. Our modern scien-
tists have discarded the "noble savage," so dearly beloved by
our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the "splendid
savage" of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an
end to the universal rule of the low-browed and low-living
brutes of the Neanderthal and other Germanic neighbourhoods.
They have shown us the elephants the Cro-Magnon painted
and the statues he carved and they have surrounded him with
much glory.

I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that
we know by far too little of this entire period to re-construct
that early west-European society with any degree (however
humble) of accuracy. And I would rather not state certain
things than run the risk of stating certain things that were not
so.

Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct
unfairness. Why did I leave out such countries as Ireland
and Bulgaria and Siam while I dragged in such other coun-
tries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland? My answer
was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed them-
selves in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 449

not keep them out. And in order that my point may be under-
stood, let me state the basis upon which active membership to
this book of history was considered.

There was but one rule. "Did the countrj' or the person
in question produce a new idea or perform an original act
without which the history of the entire human race would have
been different?" It was not a question of personal taste. It
was a matter of cool, almost mathematical judgment. No race
ever played a more picturesque role in history than the Mon-
golians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or
intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind.

The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the AssjTian, is full of dra-
matic episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just
as well never have existed at all. In the same way, the history
of the Dutch Republic is not interesting because once upon a
time the sailors of de Ruyter went fishing in the river Thames,
but rather because of the fact that this small mud-bank along
the shores of the North Sea offered a hospitable asylum to all
sorts of strange people who had all sorts of queer ideas upon
all sorts of very unpopular subjects.

It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day
of their glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas
City. But our present civilisation would be very different
had neither of these two little cities of the Mediterranean basin
existed. And the same (with due apologies to the good people
of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of this busy me-
tropolis on the Missouri River.

And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one
other fact.

When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether
he is a surgeon or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith
healer, for we want to know from what angle he will look at
our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of our
historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. We
think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go at that. But
the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian house-
hold somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differ-

450 THE STORY OF MANKIND

ently upon every question of human relationships from his
neighbour who as a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant
exhortations of Robert Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed
Devils. In due course of time, both men may forget their
early training and never again visit either church or lecture
hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays
with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they
write or say or do.

In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be
an infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the
end, I repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an
atmosphere of the old-fashioned liberalism which had followed
the discoveries of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nine-
teenth century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my
waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector of the
books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the
sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and
educated in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across
Erasmus and for some unknown reason this great exponent
of tolerance took hold of my intolerant self. Later I discov-
ered Anatole France and my first experience with the English
language came about through an accidental encounter with
Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," a story which made more im-
pression upon me than any other book in the English language.

If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I prob-
ably should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had
heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music
goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear
nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical per-
fection of the great Protestant master influenced me to such
an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer-
meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.

Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed
by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love
many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indif-
ferent because I got my first artistic impressions in a country
where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR

451

almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent con-
trasts of dark and light.

I state these few facts deliberately that you may know
the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may
understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of
this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will
allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people.
And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final con-
clusions with a greater degree of fairness than would
otherwise be possible.

THE CONQUEST OF THE WEST

After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the
history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during
this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed
to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater
powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large
business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and
subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They
connected their dift'erent possessions with telegraph wires.
And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents.
Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed

452 THE STORY OF MANKIND

by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation
with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and
Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of south-
west and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the
islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries
as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kiaochau on the
Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was
disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and con-
soled herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli
in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia,
took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated
China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and
in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of
Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire
the world has ever seen, undertook to "protect" Egypt. She
performed this task most efficiently and to the great material
benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a
foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a
number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in
1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to
lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faith-
fully picked up such islands or provinces as had been left with-
out a European owner.

The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used
the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free
State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical em-
pire was an "absolute monarchy." But after many years of
scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian
people who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished
the terrible abuses which had been tolerated by this very un-
scrupulous Majesty, who cared nothing for the fate of the
natives as long as he got his ivory and rubber.

COLONIAL EXPANSION ANT) WAR 468

As for the United States, they had so much land that they
desired no further territory. But the terrible misrule of
Cuba, one of the last of the Spanish possessions in the western
hemisphere, practically forced the Washington government to
take action. After a short and rather uneventful war, the
Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the
Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United
States.

This economic development of the world was perfectly
natural. The increasing number of factories in England and
France and Germany needed an ever increasing amount of raw
materials and the equally increasing number of European
workers needed an ever increasing amount of food. Every-
where the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more
easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber planta-
tions and oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain.

The purely political events of the European continent
dwindled to mere insignificance in the eyes of men who were
making plans for steamboat lines on Victoria Xyanza or
for railroads through the interior of Shantung. They knew
that many European questions still remained to be settled, but
they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and care-
lessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inher-
itance of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-east-
ern corner of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and blood-
shed. During the seventies of the last century the people of
Serbia and Bulgaria and Montenegro and Roumania were once
more trying to gain their freedom and the Turks (with the
support of many of the western powers), were trying to pre-
vent this.

After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bul-
garia in the year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience.
The Government was forced to intervene just as President Mc-
Ejnley was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-squads
of General Weyler in Havana. In April of the year 1877 the
Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka pass,
and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they

454 THE STORY OF MANKIND

reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appeakd for
help to England. There were many English people who de-
nounced their government when it took the side of the Sultan.
But Disraeli (who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of
India and who loved the picturesque Turks while he hated the
Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people within
their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to
conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of
the Balkans was left to a Congress which convened at Berlin
in Jime and July of the same year.

This famous conference was entirely dominated by the per-
sonality of Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old
man with his well-oiled curly hair and his supreme arrogance,
tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvellous gift
for flattery. At Berlin the British prime-minister carefully
watched over the fate of his friends the Turks. Montenegro,
Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent king-
doms. The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-inde-
pendent status under Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a
nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none of those countries
were given the chance to develop their powers and their re-
sources as they would have been able to do, had England been
less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were
necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark
against further Russian aggression.

To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to
take Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the Turks to be
"administered" as part of the Habsburg domains. It is true
that Austria made an excellent job of it. The neglected prov-
inces were as well managed as the best of the British colonies,
and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by
many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great
Serbian empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the four-
teenth century had defended western Europe against the inva-
sions of the Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a
centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty years before Colum-
bus discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians remem-

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR 456

bered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented
the presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they
felt, were theirs by every right of tradition.

And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the
archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was mur-
dered on June 28 of the year 1914. The assassin was a Serb-
ian student who had acted from purely patriotic motives.

But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the
immediate, though not the only cause of the Great World War
did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian
victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous
Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy building a ma-
terial civilisation to care about the aspirations and the dreams
of a forgotten race in a dreary comer of the old Balkan
peninsula.

*" .'J

A NEW WORLD

THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE

STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND

BETTER WORLD

The Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest charac-
ters among the small group of honest enthusiasts who were
responsible for the outbreak of the great French Revolution.
He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the unfor-
tunate. He had been one of the assistants of d'Alembert and
Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedic. During
the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the
Moderate wing of the Convention.

His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had
made him an object of suspicion when the treason of the king
and the court clique had given the extreme radicals their chance
to get hold of the government and kill their opponents.
Condorcet was declared "hors de loi," or outlawed, an outcast
who was henceforth at the mercy of every true patriot. His
friends offered to hide him at their own peril. Condorcet
refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to reach
his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the
open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some
food. The suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets
they found a copy of Horace, the Latin poet. This showed
that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no
business upon the highroads at a time when every educated

456

A NEW WORLD 457

person was regarded as an enemy of the Revolutionary state.
They took Condorcet and they bound him and they gagged
him and they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the
morning when the soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and
cut his head off, behold! he was dead.

This man who had given all and had received nothing had
good reason to despair of the human race. But he has written
a few sentences which ring as true to-day as they did one
himdred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your
benefit.

"Nature has set no limits to our hopes," he wrote, "and
the picture of the human race, now freed from its chains and

WAR

marching with a firm tread on the road of truth and virtue
and happiness, offers to the philosopher a spectacle which
consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the injustices
which still pollute and afflict this earth."

The world has just passed through an agony of pain com-
pared to which the French Revolution was a mere incident.
The shock has been so great that it has killed the last spark of
hope in the breasts of millions of men. They were chanting a
hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter followed their
prayers for peace. "Is it worth while," so they ask, "to work
and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed
beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?"

There is but one answer.

That answer is "Yesl"

458 THE STORY OF MANKIND

The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not
mean the end of things. On the contrary it brought about the
coming of a new day.

It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the
Middle Ages. The actors who played their parts upon that
long-forgotten stage are all dead. We can criticize them with
a cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has dis-
persed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt their feehngs.

But it is very difficult to give a true account of contempo-
rary events. The problems that fill the minds of the people
with whom we pass through life, are our own problems, and
they hurt us too much or they please us too well to be de-
scribed with that fairness which is necessary when we are writ-
ing history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All
the same I shall endeavour to tell you why I agree with poor
Condorcet when he expressed his firm faith in a better future.

Often before have I warned you against the false impres-
sion which is created by the use of our so-called historical
epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the an-
cient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Refor-
mation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most
dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the people
of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement.
Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the lead-
ership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representa-
tive and democratic form of government had been solved for-
ever by the second great Reform BiU, which gave workmen
an equal share in the government with their employers. When
Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous
"leap in the dark" they answered "No." They felt certain of
their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society
would co-operate to make the government of their common
country a success. Since then many things have happened,
and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand
that they were mistaken.

There is no definite answer to any historical problem.

Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish

A NEW WORLD 459

as those sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have
perished.

If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new
and much broader view of life. Then, go one step further
and try to imagine yourself in the position of your own great-
great-grandchildren who will take your place in the year
10,000. They too will learn history. But what will they
think of those short four thousand years during which we have
kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts?
They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath
Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse
him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The
great war which has just come to an end will appear in the light
of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy
of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during
one hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea.
The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for
freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro)
to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions
caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures
of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed
by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acro-
polis ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a war
between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the
fear of death, which is still common among many people, as a
childish superstition which was perhaps natural in a race of
men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even
our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms
of which we are so proud will look like slightly improved
workshops of alchemists and mediaeval surgeons.

And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and
women are not "modern" at all. On the contrary we still
belong to the last generations of the cave-dwellers. The foun-
dation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human race
was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took
courage to question all things and made "knowledge and un-
derstanding" the foundation upon which to create a more

460

THE STORY OF MANKIND

reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great
War was the "growing-pain" of this new world.

For a long time to come people will write mighty books to
prove that this or that or the other person brought about the
war. The Socialists will pubHsh volumes in which they will ac-

THE SPREAD OF THE IMPERIAL IDEA

A NEW WORLD 461

cuse the "capitalists" of having brought about the war for "com-
mercial gain." The capitalists will answer that they lost infi-
nitely more through the war than they made — that their chil-
dren were among the first to go and fight and be killed — and
they will show how in every country the bankers tried their
very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French his-
torians w^ill go through the register of German sins from the
days of Charlemagne until the days of William of Hohen-
zollern and German historians will return the compliment and
will go through the list of French horrors from the days of
Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And
then they will establish to their own satisfaction that the other
fellow was guilty of "causing the war." Statesmen, dead and
not yet dead, in all countries will take to their typewriters and
they will explain how they tried to avert hostilities and how
their wicked opponents forced them into it.

The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about
these apologies and vindications. He will understand the real
nature of the underlying causes and he will know that personal
ambitions and personal wickedness and personal greed had very
little to do with the final outburst. The original mistake, which
was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our
scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and
chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is
slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known
sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years
behind the small group of courageous leaders.

A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride
a bicycle and smoke a pipe is still a dog. And a human being
with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman driving a 1921
Rolls-Royce is still a human being with the mind of a sixteenth
century tradesman.

If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It
will become clearer to you in a moment and it will explain
many things that have happened these last six years.

Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example,
to show you what I mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and

462 THE STORY OF MANKIND

funny remarks are often thrown upon the screen. Watch the
audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem
aknost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second to read
the lines. Others are a bit slower. Still others take from
twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those men and women who
do not read any more than they can help, get the point when
the brighter ones among the audience have already begun to
decipher the next cut-in. It is not different in human life,
as I shall now show you.

In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the
Roman Empire continued to live for a thousand years after
the death of the last Roman Emperor. It caused the establish-
ment of a large number of "imitation empires." It gave the
Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the
entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman
world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless
barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless war-
fare because they were for ever under the spell of this magic
word "Rome." All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain
fighting men were not very different from you or me. But
they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital
issue — isomething living — something which was remembered
clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And
so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which
to-day would not find a dozen recruits.

In still another chapter I have told you how the great reli-
gious wars took place more than a century after the first open
act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter
on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see
that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first
clumsy steam engines were already pufiing in the laboratories
of a number of French and German and English scientists.
But the world at large took no interest in these strange con-
traptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion
which to-day causes yawns, but no anger.

And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian
will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nine-

A NEW WORLD 468

teenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon
terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around
them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for
politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few
more of her million secrets.

You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving
at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a
single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with
their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines,
their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which
time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They
invented new products and they made these so cheap that al-
most every one could buy them. I have told you all this before
but it certainly will bear repeating.

To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the
owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw
materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of
the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the
state as a d}Tiastic or political organisation. This clumsy me-
diaeval institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the
highly modem problems of a mechanical and industrial world.
It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had
been laid down centuries before. The different states created
enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the
purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Where-
ever there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or
a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives
objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object,
and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not
interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil
mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they
derived many benefits from the foreign occupation.

Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw
materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time.
Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when
Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri-

464 THE STORY OF MANKIND

tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts,
however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight.
Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and
submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th
century. They associated the idea of violence with the long-
ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties.
Every day they read in their papers of still further inventions,
of groups of English and American and German scientists who
were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose
of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a
busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only
a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic
community of people who recognise certain common ideals,)
was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to warn
the others. But the others were occupied with their own
affairs.

I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bring-
ing in one more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted
expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the
Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians
and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had
been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and
commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their
vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of navi-
gating which had been handed down to them by their ancestors.

Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery.
First one part, then another of the old ship of state was
changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were dis-
carded for steam. Better Hving quarters were established, but
more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and
while the work was safe and f airlj^ remunerative, they did not
like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the rig-
ging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wdoden
square-riggefr had been transformed into a modern ocean liner.
But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were
appointed or elected in the same way as a hundred years be-
fore. They were taught the same system of navigation which

A NEW WORLD 465

had served the mariners of the fifteenth eentur>\ In their
cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done
service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great.
In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely
incompetent.

The sea of international pohtics is not very broad. When
those Imperial and Colonial liners began to try and outrun
each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did hap-
pen. You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pass
through that part of the ocean.

And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is
in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership —
who will have the courage of their own visions and who will
recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the
voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seaman-
ship.

They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices.
They will have to fight their way to the top against every pos-
sible form of opposition. When they reach the bridge, mutiny
of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a
man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he
shall be the hero of the ages.

AS IT EVER SHALL BE

'The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am

'persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our

'assessors and judges as the ancient Egyptians called upon

'the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys on behalf of their

'dead.

'Irony and Pity are both of good counsel; the first with her

'smiles makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her

'tears.

'The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks

'neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed.

'Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at

'rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as

'to despise and hate."

And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I

bid you farewell.

8 Barrow Street, New York,

Saturday, June 26, xxi.

466

'AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY.
500,000 B.C.— A.D. 1922

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THE STORY OF MANKIND

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CONCERNING THE PICTURES

CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW
WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone.
Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous oc-
currences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In
this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a
series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events.

While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being
possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was
taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to
make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he
wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more
proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all
drawn for children and their ideas of art are very different from those
of their parents.

To all teachers the author would give this advice — let your boys and
girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you have
a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or a
mediarval castle and the class will dutifully say, "Yes, Ma'am," and
proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the
Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own
picture of "the building of a temple," or **the storming of the castle,"
and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children,
before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after
a fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of
their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the
work of certain native tribes from the upper Congro. But the child is

473

474 THE STORY OF MANKIND

quite frequentl}' prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes,
and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing accu-
racy.

The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remem-
ber certain events "in their proper sequence." The experiments of
many years in the Children's School of New York has convinced the
author that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while
very few will ever remember what they have merely read.

It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conven-
tional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate
that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be
a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The
outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be
quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since
the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous
story. Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy
with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any
other way.

Neither the publishers nor the author claim that "The Story of Man-
kind" is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for chil-
dren. It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such
a fashion that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall
ask for more.

To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers
have asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this
particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a
list of readable and instructive books.

The list was made and was duly printed.

The parents who live near our big cities will experience no diffi-
culty in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who
for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may
not find it convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and
Liveright will be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books
that are desired. They want it to be distinctly understood that
they have not gone into the retail book business, but they are quite
willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical
education, and all orders will recei'-e their immediate attention.

AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN

"Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the
"legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw
"wine for the Gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the
"Gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris ; don't
"explain that 'gris* in this connection doesn't mean *grease'; don't
"trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark ; don't prove its electri-
"cal properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them
"with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't
"insist philologically that when every shepherd *tells his tale' he is not
"relating an anecdote but simply keeping *tally' of his flock. Just go
"on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children
"get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking
"more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer. —
("On the Art of Reading for Children," by Sir Arthur QuUler-Couch.)

The Days Before History

"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells,
Volume I.

How earliest mn:: learned to make tools and build homes, and the
stories he told about (lie fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple,
illustrated account of these things for children.
"The Story of Ab," by Stanley Waterloo.

A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified
edition of this for little children is "Ab, the Cave Man" adapted by
William Lewis Nida.)

475

47« THE STORY OF MANKIND

"Industrial and Social History Series," by Katharine E. Dopp.

"The Tree Dwellers— The Age of Fear"

"The Early Cave-Men— The Age of Combat"

"The Later Cave-Men— The Age of the Chase"

"The Early Sea People — First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters"

"The Tent-Dwellers— The Early Fishing Men"

Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make
pottery, how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea.
"Ancient Man," written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik
Willem van Loon.

The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and
fascinating fashion, with story maps showing exactly what happened in
all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages.

The Dawn of History

*'The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians," by A. Bothwell Gosse.

"No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number
of works which defy description." An excellent, profusely illustrated
account of the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations
of these wonderful people.

"How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells,
Volume XL

What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the
Persians contributed to civilisation. This is brief and simple and may
be used as a first book on the subject.
"Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes," by F. H. Brooksbank.

The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the
builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all
add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt.
"Wonder Tales of the Ancient World," by Rev. James Baikie.

Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends
of the Gods all gathered from ancient Egyptian literature.
"Ancient Assyria," by Rev. James Baikie.

Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beau-
tiful enamelled reliefs, and with libraries of clay.
"The Bible for Young People," arranged from the King James version,

with twenty-four full page illustrations from old masters.
"Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book," by Nora Archibald Smith.

"Written in the East these characters live forever in the West —

READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 477

they pervade the world." A good rendering of the Old Testament.
"The Jewish Fairy Book," translated and adapted by Gerald Fried-
lander.

Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old
Jewish chap-books.
"Fiastern Stories and Legends," by Marie L. Shedlock.

**The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering
merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits
brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West."

Stories of Greece and Rome

"The Story of the Golden Age," by James Baldwin.

Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven into the
story of the Odyssey make this book a good introduction to the glories
of the Golden Age.
"A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales," by Nathaniel Hawthorne,

with pictures by MaxBeld Parrish.
"The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy," by Padraic
Colum, presented by Willy Pogany.

An attractive, poetically rendered account of "the world's greatest
story."

"The Story of Rome," by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in
colour.

Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from
the earliest times to the death of Augustus.
"Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls," retold by W. H. Weston.
"The Lays of Ancient Rome," by Lord Macaulay.

"The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than any-
thing else in Latin Literature."
"Children of the Dawn," by Elsie Finnemore Buckley.

Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or
defeat exceptionally well told. Especially recommended for girls.
"The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Talcs for My Children," by Charles

Kingsley.
•'The Story of Greece," by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in
colour by Walter Crane.

Attractively illustrated and simply presented — a good book to
begin on.

478 THE STORY OF MANKIND

Christianity

**The Story of Jesus," pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico,
Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-Siena. Descriptive text
from the New Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Na-
talie Dana.

A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story.
"A Child's Book of Saints," by William Canton.

Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and
women whose faith brought about strange miracles, and whose goodness
to man and beast set the world wondering.
"The Seven Champions of Christendom," edited by F. J. H. Darton.

How the knights of old — St. George of England, St, Denis of
France, St. James of Spain, and others — fought with enchanters and
evil spirits to preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances in-
terestingly told for children.
"Stories From the Christian East," by Stephen Gaselee.

Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the
Greek, the Latin and the Ethiopic.

"Jerusalem and the Crusades," by Estelle Blyth, with eight plates in
colour.

Historical stories telling how children and priests, hermits and
knights all strove to keep the Cross in the East.

Stories of Legend and Chivalry

"Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas," retold by E. M.
Wilmot-Buxton.

These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of
All-Father Odin, and how all things began and how they ended. A
good book for all children, and for story-tellers.
"The Story of Siegfried," by James Baldwin.

A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and
daring deeds fill the pages of the old sagas.

"The Story of King Arthur and His Knights," written and illustrated
by Howard Pyle.

This, and the companioii volumes, "The Story of the Champions of
the Round Table," "The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions,"
"The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur," form an incom*
parabl«» collection for children.

READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 479

"The Boy's King Arthur," edited by Sidney Lanie-, v'lustrated by N.
C. Wyeth.

A very good rendering of Malory's King Arthur, made especially
attractive by the coloured illustrations.

"Irish Fairy Tales," by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rack-
ham.

Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland's epic
hero Fionn. A hook for the boy or girl who loves the old romances,
and a book for story-telling or reading aloud.

"Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France," by A. J.
Church.

Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the
romantic glamour surrounding the great Charlemagne and his crusad-
ing knights.

"The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," written and illustrated by
Howard Pyle.

Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts
of children.
"A Book of Ballad Stories," by Mary Macleod.

Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the
ninstrcls of England and Scotland.
'The Story of Roland," by James Baldwin.

"There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in
which the exploits of Charlemagne and Roland have not at some time
been recounted and sung." This book will serve as a good introduction
to a fijie heroic character.

"The Boy's Froissart," being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Ad-
venture, Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain.

"Froissart sets the boy's mind upon manhood and the man's mind
upon boyhood." An invaluable background for the future study of
history.

"The Boy's Percy," being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love
from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by
Sidney Lanier.

"He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be
manful in necessary fight, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in
the household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in
all things."

"Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims," retold from Chaucer and othetf
by E. J. H. Darton,

480 THE STORY OF MANKIND

"Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a
lively and pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves
very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes
and fiddles and bagpipes." A good prose version much enjoyed by boys
and girls.
•'Joan of Arc," written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel.

A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book
to be owned by every boy and girl.
"When Knights Were Bold," by Eva March Tappan.

Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of
pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant guilds, of schools and litera-
ture, in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good
book to supplement the romantic stories of the time.

Adventurers in New Worlds

"A Book of Discovery," by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authen-
tic sources and with maps.
A thoroughly fascinating book about the world's exploration from
the earliest times to the discovery of the South Pole. A book to be
owned by older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure.
"A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Found-
ing of the Colonies on the American Continent," written and
done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon.
"Dear Children; History is the most fascinating and entertaining
and instructive of arts." A book to delight children of all ages.
"The Story of Marco Polo," by Noah Brooks.
"Olaf the Glorious," by Robert Leighton.
An historical story of the Viking age.
"The Conquerors of Mexico," retold from Prescott*s "Conquest of

Mexico," by Henry Gilbert.
**The Conquerors of Peru," retold from Prescott*5 "Conquest of Peru,"

by Henry Gilbert.
'*Vikings of the Pacific," by A. C. Laut.

Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia;
Benyowsky, the Polish pirate ; Cook and Vancouver ; Drake, and other
soldiers of fortune on the West Coast of America.
^'The Argonauts of Faith," by Basil Mathews.

The Adventures of the "Mayflower** Pilgrims.
^'Pathfinders of the West/* by A. C. Laut.

READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 481

The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the
great Northwest.
'•Beyond the Old Frontier," by George Bird Grinnell.

Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the
Pacific Coast.

"A History of Travel in America," by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated
from old woodcuts and engravings. 4 volumes.

An interesting book for children who wish to understand the prob-
lems and difficulties their grandfathers had in the conquest of the West.
This is a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so
readable as to be of interest to older children.

"The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators," by Hendrik Willem van
Loon. Fully illustrated from old prints.

The World's Progress m Invention — Art — Murie»

"Gabriel and the Hour Book," by Evalecn Stein.

How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours
for illuminating the beautiful hand-printed books of the time and how
he himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France
and England.
"Historic Inventions," by Rupert S. Holland.

Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the spinning-
jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing machine, electric light, and other
wonders of mechanism.

"A History of Everyday Things in England," written and illustrated
by Marjorie and C. V. B. Qucnnell. 2 Volumes.

A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white
and in colour, giving a vivid picture of life in England from 1066-1799.
It tells of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of
art and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by
every boy and girl.
"First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures," by Maude I. G. Oliver.

A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by giv-
ing them technical knowledge of the media, the draughtsmanship, the
composition and the technique of well-known American pictures.
"Knights of Art," by Amy Steedman.

Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated ir colour from
old masters.

4S2 THE STORY OF MANKIND

"Masters of Music," by Anna Alice Chapin.

"Story Lives of Men of Science," by F. J. Rowbotham.

"All About Treasures of the Earth," by Frederick A. Talbot.

A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron,
rare metals and precious stones.
"The Boys' Book of New Inventions," by Harry E. Maule.

An account of the machines and mechancial processes that are
making the history of our time more dramatic than that of any other
age since the world began.
"Masters of Space," by Walter Kellogg Towers.

Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and be-
neath the sea with signals, and of speaking across continents.
"All About Railways," by F. S. Hartnell.

"The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and What She Is Doing,"
by Commander E. Hamilton Currey.

True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish
Main and famous frigates, and about slave-hunting expeditions in the
days of old.

The Democracy of To-Day .

"The Land of Fair Play," by Geoffrey Parsons.

"This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that
America renders each of us, and the active devotion each of us must
yield in return for America to endure." An excellent book on our
government for boys and girls.

"The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen," compiled
by Joseph B. Gilder.

A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The
Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the
famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt.
"The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis.

The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America's finesi
citizens.
"The Promised Land," by Mary Antin.

A true story about a little immigrant. "Before we came, the New
World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the
Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning
to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.'*

READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 483

Illustrated Histories in French.

(The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by

all children whether they read the text or not.)
"Voyages et Gloricuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explo-

rateurs Fran9ai8, illustre par Edy Segrand."
"Collection d'Alburas Historiques."

Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.

Fran9ois I, texte de G. Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Job.

Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Vogel.

Richelieu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir. '

Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Maurice
Leloir.

Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job.
*Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age" ; illustrations de A. Robida.

484

THE STORY OF MANKIND

INDEX

Abelard 210

Abu-Bekr .... 142

Achaeans 55

Acropolis 78, 81

Aegean Sea 48-53

Africa 452, 453

Age of Discovery 224-240

Age of Expression 219-223

Age of Reason 346

Akkadians 35

Alaric 127

Alba, Duke of 269

Albert of Sardinia. ,393

alchemy 404

Alcibiades 82

Alemanni 127

Alexander VI (Pope) 238

Alexander the Great. . . . .28, .37, 83, 84

Alexander 1 355, 363-372, 386

Ali 142

American Revolution 323-333

Amerigo Vespucci 236

Amorites 35

Anne 294

Antiochus III 107-108

Antony 117

Aquinas, Thomas 194

architecture .437, 438

Aristides 77

Aristotle 83, 193-195, 216

Arkwright, Richard 406

art 433-445

Assyrians 28, 36

Athens 81, 82

Augustus 118

Bach 444

Bacon, Roger 194, 226, 429

Bagdad 142

Balance of Power 296-300

Balboa 236

Balkan States 376, 386, 453, 454

Barbarossa 166

^arrack Emperors 125

Beethoven 445

Belgium 374

Bell, Alexander Graham 411

Bentham, Jeremy 420

Bismarck 394-400

Blanc, Louis 425

Blucher 357

Boccaccio 214

Boer War 452

Bolivar, Simon 383

Bologna, University of 210

Bonaparte). Joseph 383

Bonaparte (See Napoleon).......

Boris Godunow 306

Brandenburg 312

Brazil 375

de Brienne 340-341

Buddha .241-246

Bulgaria 453, 544

Bunsen 430

Burgundians 127

Byron 388

Byzantine Empire 216

conquered by Turks 137

Byzantium 126

Cabot, John . - 236, 284, 326

Caesar, Julius 112-115

de Calonne 339-340

Calvin 262, 264

Canning, George 384, 388

Capo d'lstria 376

Carbonari 386

Carthage 88-104

government of 88-90

Cartwright, Edmund 406

Castlereagh 368-372

Catiline 113

Cavour 394

Chaldeans 37

Champollion 19

Chancellor, Richard 285, 301

Charlemagne 144-149, 193

crowned • • 146

his Empire divided 146-148

Charles I (England) 287-290

IXDEX

485

Charles II (England) ......... .290-292

Charles V. • . . .252, 253, 259, 267. 269. 320

Charles X (France) 389

Charles XII (Sweden). .......... . 311

Charles XXII (Sweden) 374

Charles the Bold 148

Charles Martel 143

Chartist Movement 418

Cheops 26

chivalry 159-161

Christian IV (Denmark) 274-276

Chrysoloras 216

Cicero 113

Civil War (U.S.A.) 423

Qeopatra 28, 115

Clevis 145

Cnossos 51-53

Colbert 320

College of Cardinals 164

Colonial Expansion 451-453

Columbus .226, 232-235

Committee of Public Safety 346

Confucius 247-250

Congo 452

Congress of Vienna 361-382

Conrad V 167

Constantine 126. 127. 135

Constantinople 127, 129, 137. 216

Copernicus 231

Correggio 440

cotton .405, 406

Council of Ten (Venice) 200

de Covilham, Pedro 231

Crete 51-52

Crimean War 396

Cromwell, Oliver • 289-290. 320

Crusades 166-173

First 169

Second 170

Cuba 453

cuneiform inscriptions 32

Cyrus 45

Czartoryski, Adam 374

da Gama, Vasco. • 226,236

Danish Parliament 189

Dante 211-213

Danton 346

Declaration of Independence 331

Declaration of Rights of Man--. 334

Denmark 374

Deutschland 148

Diaz, Bartholomew • . ... 230

discovery of America ....235-238

Disraeli 454

Divine Right of Kings 287-289

Draco 64

Dutch East India Company- .. .238-272
Dutch Republic becomes Kingdom yji

Dutch Republic formed 190

Dutch West India Company .. 273

Dynamoes • . . . 41 1

Edict of Nantes 277

Egypt • ■ 17-28

Captured by Alexander the Great 27

Captured by Assyrians ..... 27

Captured by Hyksos 27

Captured by Rome 28

Electricity 410-411

Elizabeth (England). . .271.283,285.320

Emancipation Proclamation 423

England, conquests of 154

English Cabinet 293

English Colonies 326-329

English Revolution 279-295

Encyclopaedia (French) 336, 429

Engels, Friedrich 425

Enghien. Due d' 351

Erasmus .208, 256, 257

Eriksen, Leif . . 232

Estates General (Holland) 189,190.270

Etruscans 93

Eugenie, Empress .•..•• 399

van Eyck, Jan 439

factories 413-419

Faraday, Michael 411

Ferdinand and Isabella 235

Ferdinand II (Austria) 274

Ferdinand VII (Spain) 375

Feudalism 155-158

fire, first use of 14-15

Fitch, John 406, 407

Florence 201. 396

Fra Angelico 222

French Colonies 327-329

French Parliament 188

French Revolution 334-348. 415

Francis Joseph 393

Franco-Prussian War 400-401

Franklin, Benjamin 330. 410

Franks 127, 144

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen 166

Frederick II of Prussia 314-316

Frederick William I 314

Frederick William IV 393

freedom of the sea 272

Fulton, Robert • • 406

486

THE STORY OF MANKIND

Galileo 404

Garibaldi 394

Genoa 201

George I 294

George II 294

George III 294. 330

German Empire 400-401

Germany after Congress of

Vienna 376-379

Ghent 203

Gibel-al-tarik 142

Giotto 222

Girondists 346

Glacial Age 13, 14

Godfrey of Bouillon 170

Goths 127

Grachi Ill

Grand Remonstrance 289

Grant 423

Gratian 210

Greece 54-84,376,387,388

Greek art rediscovered- • 214.215

" cities as states 58-61

" government 62-65

home-life 66-70

" langfuage in Middle-Ages. 216

Greeks conquer Aegeans 56, 57

Greek slaves 67-68

" theatre 71-73

Gregory (Pope) 136

Gregory VII 164-166

Grotius 272

Guelphs and Ghibellines 211

von Guericke, Otto 410

Gustavus Adolphus 276

Gutenberg 223

Haiti 383

Hals, Franz 440

Hammurabi 35

Hannibal 100-107

Hanseatic League 203

Hargreaves James 405

Hasdrubal 102L 103

Hastings, Battle of 154

van Heemskerk 272

Hegira 140

Hellenes 55

Henry rV (Germany) 164-166

Henry VII (England) 282

Henry VIII (England) 262.282

Henry the Navigator 228-230

heresy . . 265

herring fisheries 203

hieroglyphics • • 19-21

Hittites 36

Hohenstaufen family 166

Hohenzollern, rise of 313-314

Holy Alliance -360-372, 384-386

Holy Roman Empire founded.. •■ 148

Henry Hudson 273

Hundred Years' War 281, 282

Huns 127

Huss, John - -220, 369

Huvgens 405

Hyicsos 27

Icelandic Parliament 189

Indo-Europeans 44-47

Indulgences 258

Inquisition 263, 264

Isis 24

Italy united 394

Ivan the Terrible 202-203, 306

Jacobins 345, 346, 353

James I 286

James II 292

Japan 452

Jeflferson, Thomas 331

Jenghiz Khan 304

Jerusalem 41

captured by Crusaders 170

captured by Turks 173

Jesuits 266-267, 379

Jesus Christ 118-123

Jews 38-41

Joan of Arc 220, 281

John (England) 186, 187

Josephine, Empress 351

Justinian 136

Karageorgevich dynasty 376

Kay, John 405

a Kempis, Thomas 219, 221

KirchhoflF 430

Knighthood 159-161

Koniggratz, battle of 398

Kossuth 392

von Kriidener, Baroness 369-371

INDEX

487

labor reforms .•••.. 420-426

Lafayette 388

Lao-Tse 247, 248

de Laplace, Marquis 430

Lee, Richard Henry 331

Lee, Robert, General 423

van Leeuwenhoek 430

Leibnitz 404

Leipzig, battle of 356

Leonidas 78

Leopold 1 (Belgium) 391

Leopold II (Belgium) 452

Lincoln, Abraham 423

Locomotives 408, 409

Louis XIII 276

Louis XIV 296-299, 320, 334-335

Louis XVI 338-346

Louis XVIII 356,365,389

Louis Philippe 391-392

Louisiana Purchase 358

Loyola 266

Luther, Martin 251. 257-260

Lyell, Sir Charles 430

Macchiavelli 222

Magellan 225.226,236,237

Magenta, battle of 396

Magrna Carta 186-187

Mammals 7

Man, first appearance 10

Marathon 76-77

Marco Polo 224

Maria Theresa 315

Marie Louise 391

Marius 111-112

Mary, Queen 283

Mary, Queen of Scots.. 283

Marx, Karl • 425-426

Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico.. 399

Mazzini 394

Medes 45

Mediaeval cities 174-183

♦• obtain charters. 180-183
" self-government ...184-190

•• trade •• 198-205

•• world 191-197

Medici ^1

de Medici. Catherine 283

Mercantile System 317-322

Merovingian kings 1^"^^

Mesopotamia 29-37

Metternich... 363-372, 386. 389. 390-392
Mexico 399

Michelangelo 440

M icroscope 430

Middle Ages 191-197

Miltiades 76

Mirabeau 345

Mohammed 138-143

Mohammedans conquer Mesopo-
tamia and Spain 142

Monroe Doctrine 384

Montesquieu 336

Montez, Lola 393

Morse, Samuel 410

Moscow 305-306

** burned by Napoleon 356

Moses 38-41

Mozart 444

Mummx 24

Music , 441-445

Mycenae SO

Napier. John 403

Napoleon.. 149, 348-363, 374-375, 395-396

Napoleon III 400

National Assembly 343-345

Necker 338. 341-344

Nelson 354

'Netherlands^ war with Spain. .268-271

Newcomen, Thomas 405

Newton, Isaac 404, 429

Nicholas I (Russia) 391

Nieuw Amsterdam 273

Nile Valley 17, 22, 26. 27

Ninwegcn, peace of 299

Norman conquest of England 280

Normandy 151

Norse discoverers 2^-233

Norsemen 150-154

North German Confederacy 399

Norway 374

Novgorod 202-203

Obrenovitch dynasty 376

Octavian 117

Odoacer 127

Oldenbarneveldt, John of 278

Osiris 24

Otto the Great 148, 163, 193

Owen, Robert 425

Oxford University 210

Pacific Ocean, discovery of 236

Paine. Thomas 346

488

THE STORY OF MANKIND

painting 439-440

Palestine 41

Papin 405

Paris, University of 210

Paul 119-123

Paul I (Russia) .355, 367. 368

Peloponnesian war 81-82

Pepin 145

Pericles 81-82

Persia 45, 47

Persian wars with Greece 74-80

Peter the Great 307-311

Peter the Hermit 169

Petrarca 213-214

Piano 443-444

Pilgrims 329

Pius VII 353

Platea, battle of 80

Pharnaces 115

Pharoah 27

Philip II (Spain) 283, 288, 267-270

Philip of Macedon 83

Philippe Egalite 392

Philippine Islands 237

Phoenicians 42-43

Phoenician alphabet 43

Poitiers, battle of 142, 144

Poland 374

Pompey 113, 114

Pontius Pilate 121-123

Pope 123-137

Pope vs. Emperor 162-167

Portugal 375

Prester, John 229-231

Priests, first mention of 24

Printing 223

Protestants and Catholics 262-278

Prussia , 313-316

Ptolomean system of the universe 231

Ptolomy 28

Punic Wars— 1st war 97-98

2nd war 98-103

3d war 103-104

Puritans 289, 326-327

Pyramids , , 25-26

Quintus Fabius Maximus 100-102

Rafael 222

Ravenna 127, 211

Reformation 251-278

Reform Bill 418

Reichstadt, Duke of .» 360

Religion, origin of 23-24

Rembrandt 440

Renaissance 206-223

Richard the Lion Hearted 186,187

Richelieu 276

Robespierre 346^ 347

Roland 146

Rollo 151

Roman Church 131-137, 253-255

in England........ 279

" conquest of England 279

" Empire 117-130

" Slaves 109-110

Rome 88-130

conquers Greece 106-107

conquers Syria 107-108

earliest history .91- 96

fall of 124-130

Romulus Augustulus 127

Rosetta Stone 18-19

Roumania 387

Rousseau, Jean Jacques 336

Rudolph of Hapsburg 167

Rumford, Count 410

Rump Parliament 289

Runnymede 186

Rurik 302

Russia 301-312, 380

Russo-Japanese War 464

Ryswick, Peace of.;, 299

Sabines 93

St. Helena 359

Salamis 79

Salerno, University of 210

Sarajevo 455

Savonarola 217

Schliemann, Heinrich 48-50

Scientific Progress 427-432

Scipio, Lucius 108

Scipio, Publius 103, 106

Serbia 454

Serfs 306

Shakespeare 286, 441

Sicily 393

Slavery abolished 422

Socialism 425-426

Solferino, battle of 396

Solon 64

Spain 375

Spanish Armada 271, 284

Spanish Succession, war of. . . .299-300

Sparta 11- 82

Star Chamber 282

Steamboat 406-408

INDEX

489

Steam Engine 404-405

Stephenson. George 408

Stuarts 286-292

Sulla 111-113

Sumerians 32- Z7

Sweden 311, 374

Swedish Parliament 188

Swiss Assemblies 189

Talleyrand 363-365, 368, 371, 373

Taoism 247

Ta' Rifa 228

Tartar Invasion 304-306

Telegraph 410-411

Telephone 411

Ten Commandments 40

Teutoburg Woods 118

Theatre 71-73,441

Thebes 28

Themistocles 77

Theodoric 127

Thermopylae 78

Third Estate 342-345

Thirty Years' War 273-278

Tilly .^4-276

Tory 292-293

Toussaint I'Ouverture 383

Trafalgar 354

Triple Alliance of 1664 298

Trov 48-49

Turgot 388, 417

.208-211

Universities, origin of
V

Vandals 127

Varro 102

Varrus 118

Vatican 396

de Vega, Lope 441

Velasquez 440

Venizuela 383-384

Venice 172, 198-202

Vermeer 440

Verrazano 326

Victor Emanuel 393

Vikings 151

da Vinci, Leonardo 222

Voltaire 336

Wallcnstcin 274-276

Washington, George 330

Waterloo, battle of 357-358

Watt. James 405

Wellington, Duke of 357

Westphalia, treaty of 273,277

Whigs 291-293

Whitney. Eli ,405

William I (Germany) 400

William III (England).. ..292-295, 299

William the Conqueror 154

William of Orange (the Silent) 269-270

William of Orange 390

Wilberforce. William 422

de Witt. Jan 298-299

Worms. Diet of 259

writing, invention of 18-21

Wycliflfe, John 220

Xerxes 79

Y
Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander 387

Z
Zarathustra 45

,"r.

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