BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE GREATEST STORY IN THE

WORLD, PERIOD I
NATURE'S MOODS AND TENSES
WHEN LIFE WAS NEW
THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB

EDITED BY
THE PRIVATE DIARIES OF THE
RT. HON. SIR A. WEST
WARRIORS AND STATESMEN
From the Literary Gleanings of the late
EARL BRASSEY

All rights reserved

 THE GREATEST STORY
IN THE WORLD
PERIOD II
The Further Story of the Old World up to the Discovery
of the New
THE GREATEST STORY
IN THE WORLD
PERIOD II
The Further Story of the Old World up to the
Discovery of the New

BY HORACE G. HUTCHINSON

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
 FIRST PUBLISHED . . . 1924

PRINTHD IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
 PREFACE TO PERIOD II
I H A V E taken up our " Greatest Story " from the point
at which we dropped it at the end of the first volume ;
that is about the year A . D . 100, when the Roman
Empire was a solidly established institution.
Throughout that first volume our own land of
Britain scarcely had a place. In the latter part of
the period—A.D. 100 to A . D . 1500—which this second
volume covers, men of Britain played a great role.
For centuries, kings of England were rulers of large
domains on the Continent of Europe also, and at one
time their Continental territories were more extensive
and richer than their insular possessions. The world
story thus becomes, in some measure, England's also.
Moreover, when there have seemed to be two or more
ways open for the telling of the story, I have always
tried to adopt what I may call the English way, the
way which seemed likely to bring it most warmly and
intimately home to English hearts and minds. Thus,
for example, when the course of history brought us
to the point at which we were to consider the manner
of life of those Gothic or Germanic tribes which came
flooding in from the eastern side of the Rhine, I have
chosen, for a type of their lives in general, what we
partly know and partly surmise of those lives as they
were lived in our own island. Again, where I have
endeavoured to give an idea of the manner in which
the Northmen, the sea-rovers, made their settlements,
I have taken their incursions on England as, a type
ix
X PREFACE
of the rest. In both instances it would have been
equally possible to tell the story of some of the people
of Charlemagne's great empire and the Continental
settlements of the Northmen as typical examples, but
the other appeared to me the way far more likely to
make the picture real and the story appealing to the
eye of an Anglo-Saxon reader.
The period is one of dissolution, in the first place,
as the l i o m a n Empire broke to pieces under its own
dissensions and the inroads of the barbarians. The
break-up was followed by a certain reconstruction
under the later empire of Charlemagne. B u t this
again was followed by a second dissolution, less com-
plete than the former. The feudal system then plays
its temporary part as a means of holding society to-
gether in some sort of cohesion. A n d finally we see
the kings asserting the central authority in their
kingdoms more and more at the cost of the local
authority of the feudal lords.
Throughout these centuries of successive change
there is one power which works all the while to prevent
humanity from falling back into a state of barbarism
and complete lawlessness —the power of the Church
exercised through the person of the Pope and of his
officials who covered Christendom. The Crusades,
w i t h all that they brought of good and i l l , are an episode
in the story's course.
By the end of the period the Moor has finally been
expelled from the south-western corner of the scene,
but the T u r k has established himself largely on its
eastern side.
The year A . D . 1500 brings the story down to the
dawn of a new day, when the darkness of the Middle
Ages shall be dispelled by the light which is spreading
out from I t a l y to illuminate Europe. We are at the
point when the new story of America in the West
and the very ancient stories of India and China in the
 PREFACE XI

East are just about to be brought in and woven up

w i t h our own story. B u t they have not been brought
i n yet.
In this second volume I have followed the plan
adopted for the first—avoiding, as far as possible,
names and dates that are not of the highest import-
ance, for the sake of simplification and in order to
give their true value to those which are the most
important. Only the large outlines are laid down, so
that the reader may know, when he comes to the
study of any one particular section of history, the
place which that section occupies in relation to the
whole.
I have again aimed at telling the narrative in very
simple language ; but in this second volume I have
tried to adapt it for scholars perhaps a year or so
older than those for whom the first was specially
written. I have made this slight difference presuming
that the scholar was likely to read the earlier part of
the story first and then to pass on to this latter.
A n d once more, as in the Preface to Period I,
I have to thank Mr. R. B. Lattimer for much valuable
correction and advice.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER. PAGE
I. BRITAIN 1
II. T H E CAMPS OF THE LEGIONS 7
III. T H E BARBARIAN AT THE WALLS . 14
IV. T H E DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE . 23
V. T H E BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH 80
VI. How BRITAIN BECAME ENGLAND . 38
VII. T H E PASSING OF THE BARBARIAN 43
V I I I . THE POPE 54
IX. How ENOLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN 59
X . THE SARACENS . . . . G8
XI. T H E FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 79
XII. How THE PEOPLE LIVED 91
X I I I . How THE PEOPLE LIVED—continued 106
XIV. T H E SETTLEMENTS OF THE SEA-HOVERS 118
XV. T H E CRUSADES . 126
XVI. T H E SLAVS IN EASTERN EUROPE 139
XVII. NORMANS AND ANGEVINS . . . . 145
XVIII. T H E STRENGTH AND THE WEAKNESS off ROME 161
XIX. T H E MOSLEMS I N SPAIN . . . . 171
XX. T H E PLANTAGENETS IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND 181
XXI. ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BURGUNDY 196
XXII. T H E TEUTON AND THE SLAV 206
XXIII. T H E TURKS I N EUROPE . . . . 218
XXIV. THE NEW DAWN . . . 225
INDEX 235
xiii
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
H A D R I A N ' S W A L L TO-DAY . . . . Frontispiece

STONEHENGE 41
THE I K O N CROWN O F T H E LOMBARDS . . . 51
BOME AND ST. PiiTEU'S 56
W H I T B Y ABBEY 61
C H A R L E M A G N E ' S SWORD , 77
CANTERBURY 95
A N ANGLO-SAXON MANSION 101
A N ANGLO-SAXON DINNER PARTY . . . . . . 103
A VIKING SHIP . 120
N O B M A N GATEWAY . 124
A CRUSADER 135
A K N I G H T TEMPLAR 141
A NORMAN HOUSEHOLD 148
A JOUST BETWEEN KNIGHTS 155
CCEUR-DE-LION'S P R I S O N . . . . . 157
K N I G H T I N C H A I N ARMOUR 178
T H E GIRALDA, SEVILLE . . . . 178
BYZANTINE ABCHITECTURE . . . . . . . 190
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 193
CONSTANTINOPLE 207
GENOA 222
COLUMBUS 228
S H I P O F COLUMBUS' T I M E 284
xiv
THE GREATEST STORY
IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER I
BRITAIN

IN the first volume of this Greatest Story in the World

we saw how man lived upon the earth from the earliest
times at which we know anything about him. We
followed the story down to about the 3-ear A . D . 100
when the different threads of the story came together
into one hand—the mighty hand of Rome and of the
firmly established Roman Empire. The whole world,
or what the people of that time regarded as the whole
of the world that mattered, was controlled by the
Roman hand. This second volume will be mainly the
story of what happened when the grasp of that hand
weakened, and allowed the threads to fall apart again.
Rome had driven its fine roads, which you may
imagine going out, from the imperial city as their
centre, like the spokes of a great wheel, to the farthest
ends of the Empire. A n d you should notice a
peculiarity about those spokes—those roads—that
they always went straight. It did not matter how
high a hill they came to, nor how deep a valley—
1
 2 BRITAIN
unless the hill or the vale side were impossibly steep,
the road never turned. It did not go round the h i l l :
it went over the top of it and down the other side.
I suggest to you that you should take notice of
this straight going of the roads, partly because the
fact of their straightness is interesting in itself and
also because it is so like the way in which the Romans,
who made those roads, acted in all their doings. They
went straight ahead and would not be turned aside or
stopped by any obstacles. Their roads, of which we
are still able to trace portions, are signs of their
character as a nation.
Posting along these roads they had a fine system of
mounted messengers, one messenger, at a post say
twenty miles out of Rome, taking up, w i t h a fresh
horse, the message which another had brought out
from the city, and so on—perhaps as far as Byzantium
(the name of Constantinople had not yet been thought
of) eastward, as far as the coasts of Gaul, from which
men could look across to the cliffs of Britain, north-
ward. They were roads along which armies would
march, trade would be carried, government officials,
w i t h all their train of slaves and servants, would go
to their appointed places in the provinces, carrying
w i t h them Roman ideas of discipline and obedience,
Greek arts and thought and, possibly, and more and
more as time went on, the new religion of Christianity.
At the northern cliffs of what we now call France
the road would come to an end—of necessity, because
there the sea began. But, once across the narrow
sea which we call the Channel, the road building would
begin again, if the Romans were intending to make
any long stay in the country. The first time that
the Roman legions came they were led by Julius Caesar
about 50 years B.C. Probably that wise general and
statesman did not t h i n k that the cost of making Britain
a part of the Roman Empire was worth paying, at
 CLAUDIUS I N B R I T A I N 3

that time. His legions had plenty to do in keeping

the tribes of Gaul in order. He established no Roman
authority in Britain, but sailed back to the Continent,
and the Romans seem to have paid no attention what-
ever to Britain for nearly a hundred years.
A n d on this second occasion of their coming there
is no doubt that they came intending to stay. It was
about A . D . 50, or a little sooner, that Claudius, the
emperor, himself w i t h the legions, appeared in B r i t a i n
and easily made himself master of most of the southern
and all the south-eastern part of the island.
We must t r y to get a picture in our minds of the
state of Britain at that time, and realise how the
people lived and what kind of people they were.
Perhaps the first thing to realise about them is
that they were not English at all. This name English,
if it was used in those days at all, was the name of a
tribe that lived across the N o r t h Sea on what we
now call Sleswig. N o r t h of them lived a tribe called
the Jutes, on that Jutland from which the great sea-
fight takes its name, and south of them a tribe called
Saxons. A l l were of the same race, originally, and all
came conquering to Britain—but not just yet.
When Julius Caesar, and also when Claudius, nearly
a century later, came to Britain it was inhabited by
a people from whom it had its name, the Brythons.
It is believed that they were not the original inhabitants
of the island, but that they had come from some part
of that great nursery of the human family, the east
of Germany and Poland and the west and south of
Russia. There had been at least two great westward
migrations of an ancient race called Celts from that
nursery, before the time of the Romans coming to
Britain. A l l over the western world and as far south
as Byzantium itself these Celts penetrated, and, coming
from the east, it is noticeable that they maintained
themselves against later invaders most strongly in
4 BRITAIN
the farthest west—in Spain, in Brittany, in Cornwall,
Wales, Ireland and the West of Scotland.
The earlier immigration of Celts into B r i t a i n had
taken place in what is called the Bronze Age, when
man had learnt to make weapons and tools and orna-
ments of bronze, but had not yet learnt the use of iron.
These Bronze Age Celts were called Goidels. B u t the
people after whom the island was named, the Brythons,
came in the I r o n Age ; and it was them that Caesar
and all the later-coming Romans found in possession.
So much has been written about the ancient Britons
dyeing themselves blue with " woad " and so on that
we are inclined to regard them as far more rude and
savage than they were. They seem to have lived in
huts made of stone and t u r f and partly excavated in
the ground and to have been hunters, and, in a very
simple way, farmers. Some of their houses were
built on oak piles driven into the soft Aground of the
marshes. They lived in small communities, or tribes,
often fighting against each other, and w i t h a head-
man over each tribe. B u t besides these communities
scattered over the country, there had already been
established towns where markets, for buying and
selling, were held. This, at all events, would be a
tolerably correct picture of the south and east of
Britain, where there was a close connection, across
the narrow Channel, w i t h Gaul and the Roman i n -
fluences. Caesar's Romans found the Brythons buying
and selling w i t h gold coins and iron bars serving them
for money.
I say that this is a tolerably true picture of the
south and east, particularly because it is in those
parts that an invader, whether he came for peaceful
trading or for warlike aggression, would find it the
most easy to establish himself. If we look for a
moment at the geography of our country we shall see
that this must have been so.
 T H E BRYTHONS 5
For one thing, they are the parts which lie nearest
to Gaul and the rest of the Continent from which the
invader would be likely to come. A n d then you will
see that the south and east, say as far north as the
Humber and as far west as the Severn, are, in spite
of certain high ridges of downs and hills, by far the
more level, generally, and less broken. They were
easier to traverse. We have to imagine all the country
far more densely wooded than it is now, and all the
river valleys far more marshy. In consequence of
the marshy softness of the lower ground, we find that
the old tracks generally went along the uplands,
wherever that was possible.
Colchester, in Essex, was the chief city of B r i t a i n
when the first serious Roman invasion came, and
under Claudius the legions crossed the Thames, took
Colchester and mastered all the south-east of Britain.
Wherever the Romans came, it was their custom to
make military roads if they had any intention of
settling in the country. Julius Caesar's expedition
we have to regard as little more than one of discovery
—to see what the island was like, and whether its
products would pay the Empire for the cost of conquest.
His decision must have been that it was worth the
cost, because we know that several of the emperors
had designs for making the conquest, but, busy as
they were elsewhere, nothing was done to achieve it
u n t i l Claudius came to the throne in Rome.
The produce that the Romans found, which induced
them to think that the island was worth conquering,
was chiefly mineral; tin, lead and iron, w i t h a little
gold ; and later B r i t a i n grew corn for the Empire.
The Brythons seem to have been stubborn fighters.
They had horses and chariots, w i t h blades, like scythes,
sticking out from the sides of the chariots. B u t it
seems that they had little discipline and little idea of
forming themselves into any order when they went
6 BRITAIN
into battle. They could have had no real chance
against the experience and skill, to say nothing of
the better arms, of the Roman soldiers.
So, after the establishment of the Roman authority
in the south, the penetration of the island by the
legions went on. They penetrated as far north as
Cromarty, and as far west as Anglesey, but they never
really subdued either the far north, where the people
called Picts then lived, or the broken and hilly countries
in the west, which the Celtic Brythons still occupied.
Under one of the generals, Agricola, whose campaigns
are described by the Roman historian, Tacitus, we
find that a line of forts was established across the
narrowest part of Scotland, from the Clyde to the
Forth. B u t under the Emperor Hadrian, who reigned
from 117 to 138, the great effort of the Empire was to
establish certain limits, or boundaries, which it would
be able to hold against all attacks from beyond those
boundaries. During his reign the Empire gave up
some of its conquered territory in Asia. Hadrian
erected a line of palisades, or strong wooden walls,
along the boundary line of the Empire between the
Rhine and the Danube, and in Britain he threw up
a wall, a long way south of the Clyde and Forth, from
the Solway to the mouth of the Tyne. Evidently,
however, this obstacle was not effective in keeping
out the Pict, for twenty years later we find his suc-
cessor, Antoninus Pius, building a second wall from
F o r t h to Clyde, for the better security of the frontier.
 CHAPTER I I
THE CAMPS OF THE LEGIONS

IT never was any part of the Empire's plan to drive

out the native people from lands that it subdued.
What it wanted of these people was that they should
stay where they were and follow their own customs
and provide the necessities and the luxuries of life
for their conquerors. The Romans were what we
should call a very practical nation. Roman laws, of
course, had to prevail in the lands so conquered, but
otherwise it does not seem that there was much up-
setting of the national habits of the people. B u t
the influence of the conquerors, their way of thought,
their discipline and so on, of course worked among
the conquered, and the natives of the provinces so
became Romanised, as it is called.
In order to understand and to follow the course of
this greatest of all stories we ought to t r y to form a
picture in our minds of the world at this time, say from
A . D . 100 to 200.
There is the Roman E m p i r e ; and that is all the
world that seemed to matter to those who were the
great actors in the story at that time. We have to
regard that Empire as shut in, walled off. The sea,
from the mouth of the Rhine to the coast of Africa,
is the boundary north and west. There is a strip of
Empire in Africa reaching to Egypt, between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara desert, and all that
strip is protected by a line of forts against incursions
7
8 T H E CAMPS O F T H E L E G I O N S
from any Ethiopians from the desert. There is Egypt
itself. Then there is so much of Asia Minor as from
time to time was held as Roman. It included Syria,
at all events, but the boundary here was more often
changed perhaps than elsewhere, though it did not
in many parts remain quite fixed. So we come up
to the Black Sea, and to the mouth of the Danube.
The Danube, during most of the time that the Empire
lasted, formed a boundary line, though the province
of Dacia was for a while held beyond i t . A n d we
know that there were palisades—a wooden w a l l —
drawn along from the Danube to the Rhine.
That completes the enclosure, w i t h Britain lying
apart like a k i n d of crumb, crumbled off the big loaf.
Thus there is this great Empire, fenced w i t h i n
walls and other limits, such as the limits that the sea
makes ; and at certain places outside the wall there
are people looking over—outsiders, whom the Romans
called " barbarians,'* men who said " bar bar," that
is to say, who were unintelligible, when they tried to
talk. The Brythons themselves were barbarians, of
course, to the Romans. So were the Gauls, whom
Julius Caesar conquered in the land that is now France.
So were the Iberians, who were the people that the
Romans found in Spain. Thus there were many
barbarians w i t h i n the boundaries, as well as outside.
But as time went on these natives of the different
regions w i t h i n the Empire became " Romanised.''
Roman modes of law and of the governing of cities
made their way all over the Empire. What we should
call " municipal life," that is to say the management
of towns by " municipal " authorities, like our mayors
and councillors, came into fashion. The natives
became more like their Roman conquerors in their
thoughts and in their ways of life. Natives and
Romans made marriages, and the children of these
marriages hardly would know what to call themselves
 ROMAN "CITIZENS" 9
—whether Romans or Gauls. In the early days of
Rome, when it was a Republic, the privileges of a
Roman citizen were very important. The " citizen "
alone had the right to a vote for the election of the
officials by whom he and the whole Republic and its
dependencies were to be governed. Rut this right
of voting was given more and more freely as the
years went on and as other parts of the Empire i n -
creased in importance. To all the free men—all
who were not slaves—of certain states that had loyally
helped Rome when she was hard pressed by her enemies,
the right was given first; then to all Italian free men ;
and soon it was extended widely through the Empire.
We notice how St. Paul, at Cgesarea, claimed his right,
as a free man of the Empire, to make appeal to the
Emperor himself at Rome, and how that right could
not be disallowed.
Now one of the rights that " citizenship " had
carried w i t h it in the early days was the right, and the
duty, of being called up for military service in defence
of the Empire and to fight its foes. The " legion "
about which we hear so much in this great story,
first came into existence in this way. It was a col-
lection (the word " legion " itself is a form of the last
two syllables of col-44 lection ") of the citizens to fight
for their city.
As the Republic grew and began to take possession
of more and more lands far away from its centre, there
was need of armies of quite a different k i n d from this.
The citizens of the first legion went on military service,
when called upon ; but they looked forward to going
back to their farms, or whatever their business was,
as soon as the fighting was over. The increasing
power of the Republic and the increase of the territory
and peoples over which it ruled, made it necessary
that the government at Rome should have an army,
or several armies, ready to take the field when required.
 10 T H E CAMPS OF T H E LEGIONS
A n d thus a Roman " standing army," as we should
call i t , came into existence; its soldiers were men
who had no other business than soldiery ; the military
life was their profession, by which they earned their
livelihood.
B u t the name of legion was still used, although it
was used for something very different from that to
which the name had been given at first. It grew to
• be used for what we might call " a division," of an
army. The number of soldiers in a legion differed
slightly from time to time, but for the most part it
was about 0,000, nearly all foot-soldiers. They were
heavily armed, w i t h heavy throwing spears, short,
double-edged swords and long thrusting spears. Their
general way of battle was to discharge the throwing
spears in a volley and then to charge in and destroy
the enemy, already sorely vexed by the heavy javelins,
w i t h the short swords.
The legions, as we have seen already, might be
moved hither and thither to any point of the great
Empire where their services were needed. While
the Empire was being created, and the nations were
being subdued, there was frequent occasion for this
movement of large bodies of troops ; but you must
realise that we have now come to a point in the story
at which the Empire -especially under the wise
Emperor Hadrian—is concerned more w i t h making
good the conquests it has already won, than in adding
to them. The boundaries, the limits, have been set,
as we have just been tracing them—or somewhat
like that. The Romans are within the boundaries ;
the barbarians are without. A n d wherever the
barbarians are there is need of one or other of the
legions, acting as a k i n d of police, to see that no one
breaks through the wall.
The result of that is that the legions are not required
to move about so much as they were when the Empire
 T H E LEGIONS I N B R I T A I N 11
was being won. Now that it is won, they are set here
and there, like watch dogs, along the boundaries.
The positions which they occupy become permanent
camps. The legionaries are allowed to marry and to
live outside the actual confines of the camp.
I think this then may give us some general idea
of the picture that we should carry in our minds of
the Roman Empire—which is almost as much as to
say, of the world—at this point in the story, about
A . D . 200. There are in all twenty-five legions. In
Britain itself there were three, one at Chester, one at
York, one at Caerlcon. Now the number of troops
in a legion was commonly, as we have seen, 6,000,
but twenty-five of these legions did not nearly
represent the total army of the Roman Empire, because
to each of the legions was attached at least an equal
number of auxiliaries, light-armed troops. Thus the
establishment of a legion in any district meant a huge
increase of population, a very large eastrum or camp,
from which we get the names of such places as Man-
chester, Dor-chester, and Chester itself—Chester being
a modification of the Roman word eastrum. Besides
the auxiliaries, who were light-armed foot-soldiers,
there were a few mounted troops attached to each
legion, but the chief of the fighting was supposed to
be done by the legionaries, or soldiers of the legions.
Just as we saw that among the Greeks the hoplites,
the heavy-armed soldiers of the phalanx, were con-
sidered to form the strength of the army, so it was w i t h
the heavy-armed legionaries of the Romans.
The tradition was still kept up, that the legionaries
should be men who had the privileges of free citizens
of Rome, while the auxiliaries were taken from a lower
class of the people who had not these privileges. B u t
we have seen that this privilege was given to more
and more as time went on, so that Roman citizenship
ceased to be as valuable as it once was, because it
12 T H E CAMPS O F T H E L E G I O N S
had become more common. Recruits to the legions
were taken from the natives of the conquered lands.
Moreover, since the legionaries in these settled camps
were allowed to marry, their sons were naturally dis-
posed to become soldiers, like their fathers, when they
grew up.
The effect of all this was to make the legions very
closely attached to the places in which their permanent
camps were pitched. The camps became home to
them. They no longer looked to Rome as their home ;
and by degrees they ceased to look to Rome as the
centre at which what we should call their Head-
quarter Staff resided. They became more and more
independent of Rome. If an attack came, or was
threatened, from the barbarians beyond the limits
which they had to guard, they dealt w i t h the threat
or the attack. They were not obliged to send back
to Rome for their instructions.
Realise then, for it is of much importance in the
development of the great story, the increasing i n -
dependence of the legions in their large camps, when
once these camps had been established as permanent
settlements. We left the story, at the end of the first
volume, at a point where its threads had been gathered
together in the great hand of the Roman Empire.
This second volume is largely occupied w i t h the
disruption and pulling apart of those threads out of
that hand ; and the reason why the hand was obliged
to relax its grasp and so allow the threads to be torn
apart again is twofold. One part of the reason is
this independence of the " far flung " legions, which
became less and less attentive and obedient to orders
from the centre at Rome. Another part of the reason
is that the barbarians beyond the limits began knock-
ing at the walls harder and harder and finally broke
through.
What is so interesting to see in this story is not
 LEGIONS I N D E P E N D E N T 13
only the events that happened, but also (and perhaps
more interesting still) the explanation why they
happened as they did. I have tried to make clear
how it was that the armies of the Empire grew to be
almost independent of any orders coming from the
centre, and how that independence partly explained
the break up of the Empire.
I must now t r y to make clear to you why it was
that the barbarians knocked as they did at the walls
and finally broke through them and so completed the
disruption of the power of Rome.
 CHAPTER I I I
THE BARBARIAN AT THE WALLS

F O R a whole hundred years now, that is f r o m A . D . 200

to 300, this greatest story in the world is really made
up of a succession of small stories, each almost exactly
the same as the last. They are stories about the
" barbarian," at some point or other of the boundaries
of the Empire, t r y i n g to break through, here and there
succeeding in making a breach in the wall, and pene-
trating into the Empire, but again and again being
thrust back, so that the old boundaries, as established
by Hadrian, were on the whole tolerably well main-
tained all through this hundred years.
The first serious break in the wall was made by
a tribe called the Franks, from the east side of the
Rhine, breaking through the boundary between the
Empire and (Termany. There was at least one other
tribe in alliance w i t h the Franks in this invasion, but
it is the Franks of whom we should, I think, take notice
particularly, because here we find them for the first
time in what the Romans called Gaul, and in what is
now called, from these very Franks, or from their
descendants, France.
B u t they did not remain long in Gaul at that
time. They were driven out by the legions. A n d the
legions in that province had to do the work of driving
them out without getting any help from Rome. The
result of that was that these legions, finding that
they had to rely on themselves, thought that they
might as well have a government of their own. They
n
 THE GALLIC EMPIRE 15
chose an " emperor" for themselves, a " Gallic
Empire " was founded—the Empire of Gaul—and it
was obeyed even across the Pyrenees, in Spain, and
across the Channel, in Britain. This so-called Gallic
Empire had an existence of about t h i r t y years, after
which it was overthrown and the Empire of Rome
was re-established over Gaul.
The story was almost exactly repeated in other
parts of the Empire. The Goths, a tribe perhaps of
the same race and origin as the Franks, and of similar
habits, but living not so far towards the north, broke
in across the Danube. They were a very formidable
force, and overran the Balkans. They defeated a
Roman army, under the Emperor Decius himself,
and Decius was killed in the battle. We must not
allow ourselves to be misled by the term " barbarian,"
applied by the Romans to all these peoples, and to
think of them as mere savages. These Goths had
possessions on the Black Sea and they are said to
have sent out, during this century, a fleet estimated
at 500 ships which made incursions along the
coasts of Asia Minor and Greece as formidable as
any that the Vikings, later on, made further north.
They actually stormed and pillaged such cities as
Corinth and Athens.
Further east the Persians came pressing in upon
the Empire. They were defeated and driven back
by the Syrian dux Orientis, duke of the East, as he
was called. He was no more than a high official,
appointed by Rome, but after this success against
the Persians he proclaimed himself as an independent
prince, t h e Prince of Palmyra. Zenobia, his widow,
who succeeded him in his real power, though a young
son was the successor to his title, maintained the
independence of Palmyra, and even conquered Egypt,
but again there happened that which we have seen
more than once in the course of the great story—the
16 T H E B A R B A R I A N A T T H E WALLS
enemies of Rome prevail against her for a while, u n t i l
she is provoked to put forth her full strength against
t h e m ; but, once she is roused to strenuous action,
they go down before her. Zenobia was defeated and
brought in triumph to Rome about twenty-four years
before the end of the century, and in A . D . 300 the
Roman Empire stood w i t h i n its bounds not greatly
changed from its bounds of a hundred years before.
There was, however, a real, if not a very visible,
difference : the " barbarians," although for the time
thrust back, had probably learnt that the Roman
power was not quite invincible; and the legions
guarding the frontiers had learnt that they had to
rely on their own forces, without assistance from the
central headquarters at Rome, for repelling the
barbarians, and therefore felt less disposed to look on
Rome as their master.
The condition of the Empire w i t h i n its frontiers
was far less prosperous at the close than it had been
at the beginning of the century. We saw how the
Greek thought and culture had been carried along the
Roman roads to the far boundaries of the Empire.
B u t although the barbarian armies were still kept
outside those boundaries, a great many of the bar-
barians had come to settle w i t h i n the Empire and had
been taken into the legions. * No doubt some of them
learned the arts and the wisdom and the civilisation
which the Romans had learnt from the Greeks, but
on the other hand they prevented the spreading of
these good lessons throughout the world. If they
became somewhat " Romanised," the Roman Empire
at the same time became somewhat " barbarised,"
by their coming i n . Moreover Gaul, as we have seen,
had been the scene of war, and so, too, parts of I t a l y
itself, Greece, the Balkans, as we should call the
district now, Asia Minor and Egypt. There was
scarcely a corner of the Empire in which the Pax
 T H E BARBARIANS 17
Romana had not been broken. Therefore the fields
were waste, the population diminished, the towns
were partially abandoned, trade was nearly at a stand-
still. Disease and lack of food followed in the train
of war.
Thus, although the boundaries of the Empire stood
in the year A . D . 300 much as they had stood a hundred
years before, the Empire within had grown far weaker.
If the barbarian should break through again, as it
was most likely that he would, there would not be the
old strength to repel him. But, before we come to
the actual breaking-through point, we would do well
to consider a question which I expect w i l l have come
to your minds : What sort of people, of what race,
and of what habits of life were these barbarians,
so-called, and what was the reason why they kept on
thus trying to break in upon the Empire ?
We get our first knowledge of the way of life of
these barbarians from the great Roman historian
Tacitus; and his account is especially interesting
to us, who are English, because it is the account of
the way in which those people lived who were our
own ancestors. For the very name of English or
Englishmen, we may take i t , was not known in the
Britain of that day, nor for some time after A . D . 800.
There were English, as we have noted, in Sleswig, and
to north and south of them were Jutes and Saxons.
The three were closely allied in race and in language,
and the Romans, because they came into touch w i t h
the Saxons chiefly, the most southern of the tribes,
called them all Saxon. It seems, however, that
among themselves they commonly used the word
English, which strictly was the name of the nation
or tribe in the middle, to include all three tribes. All
were Englishmen, but the Jutes and Saxons were
distinct, though allied, tribes within the English
description.
18 THE B A R B A R I A N AT T H E WALLS
The barbarians that Tacitus writes of lived to the
south and east of these, on the eastern side of the
Rhine, but what he has to say about them we may
take to apply to those forefathers of our own, because,
just as the name English included Jutes and Saxons,
so too the English and many others, such as the Goths
and the Franks, were all to be included under a name
of wider meaning s t i l l . A l l were related. A l l spoke
a language which had evidently come from the same
original source, though different tribes had learnt to
speak rather differently because they had lived far
apart from each other for a great many years. A l l
had very similar customs and ways of life, and the
same religion. Christianity had not yet come to
them.
What Tacitus tells us is that all these allied nations
were,made up of people living the life of farmers. They
liked to live separately from each other, in families
apart. Their farm would consist of as much plough
land as the head of the family and his sons and
daughters could work and keep in good order, and as
much pasture land as his cattle required. These
farmers would be established in the midst of the great
forests which covered all the land. They would be
either in natural glades in these forests or in clear-
ances made by the people themselves.
Each family lived by itself on its farm ; but within
a certain region there would, be a collection of these
farms, not far apart from each other ; and this gather-
ing of farms would form a tribe, or a division within
a tribe, by itself, apart from any other tribe. A n d
immediately surrounding each tribal group it seems
as if the forest was always left in its natural state, so
that there was a wide strip, or " mark "—a word we
find later in the form of the " m a r c h " and the
" marches "—between one and the other. This strip
was always dangerous to traverse. It was the home
 T A C I T U S ON T H E GOTHS 19
of w i l d beasts. Moreover the farmers imagined it to
be the home of evil spirits of many kinds which might
lead men astray and destroy them. A n d it was
necessary, if a man did have the courage and fortune
to make his way safely through this terrible belt of
forest, that he should sound his horn loudly as he
passed the further side of it and came into the farmed
land of one of another tribe. If he did not give notice
of his coming by this horn-blowing, he was to be
suspected as an enemy, and was liable to be killed
without further inquiry.
Thus, you see, these communities were made up
of men owning their own land. They were free-
holders, as we should say. A n d , because they owned
land, they had the rights of free-holders, or free men.
The right, really, was the right of self-government.
For although they lived so much apart from each other,
and were, as Tacitus tells us, very much attached to
their independent way of living, yet they had inter-
course together. To the Roman historian, accustomed
to the crowded cities of I t a l y , their solitary way of
living would naturally seem extraordinary, and very
likely it was not quite so solitary as his description
would make us think. They had, at all events, their
government, their laws and customs, and had, as it
appears, perfect liberty for arjsanging all these for
themselves.
They used to meet from time to time, probably
at a set time once a year, in a certain place, generally
a hill, to which a certain sacredness was ascribed on
that account, and there they would hold courts of
law, to settle disputes brought before them, and would
impose sentences, and discuss matters of interest to
the tribe generally. Every free-man, every free-
holder of land, had a right to be there and to give his
vote. The man who had no land had no v o t e ; he
had no rights. So it was held a dreadful thing in
3
 20 T H E B A R B A R I A N A T T H E WALLS
those days to be a " land-less " man. These free-
holders were called " ceorls" (in later English,
" churls " ) , and " ceorl " really means " man " ; as
if to imply that those who had not the right which
the possession of land gave were hardly men at all.
A n d of the " ceorls " there were some larger proprietors,
who were called " eorls " (later " earls " ) . From that
word too we get the " eorldermen " (or eldermen),
who sometimes deliberated apart at the meetings and
were greatly considered, as men of position and wisdom.
B u t they had no rights over the " ceorls," except such
as the " ceorls " voted to them and might take back
again by vote.
If any man deemed himself injured by another he
could bring his case before the court, and if he made it
good the court would award h i m compensation for
the injury done h i m in the form of some cattle, or
other valuable property to be given over to h i m by
the man that did h i m the injury. The amount of
the compensation it would be part of the work of the
court of law to settle when it was assembled at the
" mote h i l l " or place where the eldermen of the tribe
gathered for the purpose.
But, you may say, t h a t is all very well for the man
who had suffered an injury that was not fatal. Y o u
could compensate him, perhaps. B u t how about a
man that had been killed ? Y o u could not very well
compensate h i m .
Y o u could not. A l l you could do in a case like
this would be to make the killer give compensation,
in form of a heavy line of cattle or goods, to the wife
and family of the murdered man. B u t t h a t would
not be enough : the killer must be personally punished
too, probably w i t h death.
A n d then you may say that, if he was to be punished
w i t h death, it would not much matter to h i m how
many of his cattle or how much of his goods were
 T H E GOTHIC F A M I L Y 21

taken from him and given to the family of the man he

had killed.
It would not—to him personally ; but it would
matter to his wife and family. They would be the
poorer by the amount of the fine that was paid. A n d
it is thought likely that it was in this way that the
custom grew of looking upon the family of a person
who had suffered wrong as the people who were to be
compensated for the wrong, rather than the sufferer
himself; and also of looking upon the family of the
man who had done the wrong as the people who should
make the compensation, rather than the wrong-doer
himself.
The result of that was to make each person in the
family look upon every other person of the same family
as one whose acts might make a great deal of difference
to him. The whole family had to suffer when any of
its members did wrong : the whole family had a claim
against a person who had wronged one of its members.
So they had this sentiment, that all the members
of a family were dependent each on the acts of the
other, and that they must suffer together when wrong
was done ; but in other ways they were very indepen-
dent people.
They seem to have been generally t a l l and big,
both men and women. They had light hair, which
even the men allowed to grow long, so as to fall on
their shoulders, blue eyes and fair complexions.
That is a general description which may serve for
all the tribes of the barbarians which came knocking
on the northern and eastern walls of the Empire in
Europe all the way down from Sleswig, where the
Saxons were, to the lands occupied by the Goths,
some of whom lived as far east as the shores of the
Black Sea, where they had formed, as we have seen,
a large fleet. It is possible for a general account like
this to serve for the many different tribes and nations
22 THE BARBARIAN AT T H E WALLS
into which the barbarians on this boundary of the
Empire were split up, because they were all of one
race originally, rather as we of Great B r i t a i n and most
of the Americans are of the Anglo-Saxon race, although
we are now of different nations.
A l l these peoples, of whom it is convenient to speak
by the Roman term of barbarians, were of the great
family of mankind t h a t is called the Indo-European
—that is the more general name, including them all,
of which I wrote a few pages back. It is given that
name, because some of the family went south, into
India, and some west, into Europe, out of some
region in the north and east, which seems to have
been a great hive or nursery of mankind out of which
we came swarming south and west.
This hive seems to have had its home perhaps in
the west of Russia; but little is known about i t .
Probably it would be more right to speak of many
hives, scattered over a large region, than of one.
B u t we may know that the scattered members of the
family—those in India and those in Europe—are
related by the similarity of some of the most common
words, or parts of words, in the languages of India
and of those lands of which the European members
of the family got possession.
Besides its troubles from the threats of these
barbarians on its north-west borders, the Empire,
as we have seen, had its troubles through most of this
century from Persians and others on the south-east;
and I now want to ask you to notice an effect of these
troubles and threats of trouble on the Empire itself,
for it was an effect which made a very great difference
to the story. This effect was the dividing up of the
one Empire into two, w i t h a Western Empire, as of old,
having its seat of government at Rome; but also w i t h
an Eastern Empire having its centre of government at
Byzantium, as Constantinople was then called.
 CHAPTER I V
THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE

T H E causes that led to the dividing up of the Empire

are easily understood. What is far less easy to under-
stand is how Rome ruled the world, as the world then
was known, so long as she did. Remember this :
at that time you could only travel, and you could
only send a message, as fast as a horse could gallop,
if it was by land that you went or sent; and only as
fast as a ship—a ship w i t h a very simple and primitive
way of setting the sails —could be urged through the
water by sailing or by rowing, if your going was by
sea. For practical purposes of getting news or of
moving troops, the world of the Romans of that
date, say from Egypt to Britain at its furthest points,
was a very great deal larger than the whole of the globe
is to us to-day. If you can understand it in that
sense, their Empire was very iiMs^ch larger, much less
under the eye and the direction of the centre of govern-
ment, than the whole British Empire to-day. A n d
we find that large enough. The Romans had the
further trouble, which we have not, that the leaders
of the legions in the provinces, when they had repelled
the barbarians, sometimes claimed to be independent
of the central authority, as we saw both in Gaul and
in Asia Minor.
So the wonder really is, not that Rome should at
length fail to govern all this Empire from one centre,
but that she should have succeeded in doing so at all,
23
24 T H E DIVISION OF T H E EMPIRE
and for so long. F r o m causes which I have spoken
of already, the home government was not as strong
as it had been ; and as the power at the centre grew
less the pressure of the barbarians on the boundaries
grew more. Especially it became convenient to have
a centre of government nearer the boundary on the
south-east, where the eastern barbarians were
constantly making their attacks and where a great
leader of the army, if he checked the attack, might
become too strong for the authority of Rome to con-
t r o l unless it put forth all its force. A solution of
the trouble was attempted by the Emperor Diocletian,
who came to the imperial throne in 284. What he
did was to appoint a colleague for himself to whom he
gave his own title of Augustus, though he also retained
the title for himself. There were, therefore, two
Augusti. A n d besides the Augusti, he appointed two
leaders of armies in the provinces to bear the title
of Caesar. Thus there were two Caesars and two
Augusti. The Empire and its armies were portioned
out between these four great persons. Diocletian
himself had the command of the army of Syria. His
colleague, the other Augustus, commanded the armies
of I t a l y and of Africa. One of the Caesars had the
armies guarding the Rhine, and the other the armies
guarding the Danube boundary.
In this way were the Empire and its defending
forces divided up. The Caesars were considered to be
in an inferior position to the Augusti, and as between
the Augusti themselves Diocletian was supposed to
to be the superior of the other. We may t h i n k it
likely that the Emperor, in making these appoint-
ments, did little more than give his formal approval
to arrangements that already existed, in fact. Very
probably these important persons would have been
able to make themselves practically independent of
the Emperor, even if he had not given them these
 CONSTANTINE T H E GREAT 25
offices, and very likely they were the more ready to
pay h i m some show of deference because he had given
them his approval.
There is one point about the arrangement to which
I would call your attention, and that is that Diocletian,
who claimed to be the superior of them all, assumed,
for his own command, the army of Syria, of the
East. Y o u will perceive what that seems to indicate
—that the Romans had begun to look upon the Eastern
side of the Empire as more important than the Western.
As early as the year 300, or even earlier, this was their
view.
In Diocletian's time we find that any claim of
power by the people, the democracy, was entirely
given up. The government was an autocracy ; though
there might be more than one autocrat. There was
no longer any value in being a citizen of Rome. Rome
and I t a l y had no privileges above the rest of the
Empire. They were administered and taxed in the
same way as all the provinces.
This formal division of authority under Diocletian
did not long answer the purpose for which he designed
i t , and he and his fellow " Augustus " abdicated in
305, and for nearly twenty years there was continual
fighting between rival " Emperors " elected by the
different armies. For a time, but for a time only,
peace w i t h i n the Empire was gained under Con-
stantine I.—Constantino the Great, as he was
deservedly called. He deserves that distinguishing
title if only for two acts of his reign which made a
very great impression on the story of the world : he
accepted the Christian religion as the recognised
religion of the Empire, and he built the City of Con-
stantine—Constantinople—to be the new capital of
the Empire, the new centre.
He died, however, in 337, and immediately the
fighting between r i v a l Emperors was resumed. It
26 T H E DIVISION OF T H E EMPIRE
was nearly t h i r t y years before the world had any
peace from these rivalries. At length Valentinian is
proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers, and he appoints,
as his colleague and fellow " Augustus," his own
brother Valens. To Valens he gives the title of
Emperor of the East, w i t h the capital of that Eastern
Empire at Constantinople. For himself he takes
the Empire of the West, w i t h its capital still at Rome.
It appears that the independence of the two Empires
is complete. Their boundaries are defined, the l i m i t
of the Eastern Empire being drawn so far to the west
as to include Macedonia and Greece.
Of all the Indo-European tribes or nations the
most powerful, the most numerous and that which
occupied the largest territory, was the great nation
of the Goths. They may have come down from
Scandinavia—from Norway and Sweden. There are
some evidences which make that likely, but the
evidence is not very clear. They owned the country
along the boundary of the Roman Empire from the
Danube to the Vistula.
A n d behind all these tribes of Indo-Europeans
settled for the most part in what we now call Germany
and Austria—behind them, that is to say to the north
and east, in the region of that great hive or nursery
of mankind which seems to have been somewhere in
the north of Asia—there was another nation, not
belonging to the Indo-European family, not speaking
a language that resembled theirs, not made up of
persons at all like these Indo-Europeans in appear-
ance. The Indo-Europeans, whom i t will perhaps
be more convenient to call Germans, because they
lived in the countries now occupied by Germans and
Austrians—these German tribesmen were t a l l and
fair. This other nation, to the eastward, was of small
dark men. They were called Huns.
Y o u may remember that antiquaries—men learned
 T H E HUNS 27
in ancient history—tell us that man, in his progress
to civilisation, has passed through two rather distinct
stages—the hunting stage and the pastoral stage—-
and through them came to a t h i r d stage, the agri-
cultural, when he settled down to grow crops. The
German tribes were already in this t h i r d stage, at the
point which our story has reached, but the Huns were
in the second stage only ; they wandered, w i t h their
flocks and herds.
This nation of little dark men seems, by their
language and by other evidences, as if it must have
been related to the Finns, of Finland. The evidences,
however, are not very clear; but what is tolerably
clear is that they were a numerous and a warlike race
of l i t t l e dark men, and that they kept up a constant
pressure, from the north and east, upon the Goths
and other German tribes ; especially on the more
eastern Goths, called Ostrogoths.
A n d very often it seems to have been that pressure
of the Huns from the N o r t h and East that made the
Germans t r y and t r y again to break through the
boundary of the Roman Empire and work their way
towards the west. The first of these breaks through,
however, which had any success, was in a southward,
rather than a westward direction. It was a break
through of the Goths towards Constantinople, and it
was very formidable indeed.
When Diocletian appointed a colleague for himself,
a second " Augustus," he, as we saw, took the Eastern
command for himself and gave the Western to the col-
league. When Valentinian finally divided the Empire
between himself and his brother Valens, he took the
West and gave the East to his brother. It is possible
that he may have foreseen something of the trouble
that was soon to come on that eastern side. W i t h i n
three years of his accession to the throne of Constanti-
nople Valens was called upon to lead his legions to
28 T H E DIVISION OF T H E EMPIRE
repel a great incursion of the Goths. He met them at
Adrianople and suffered a terrible defeat. He him-
self was killed in the battle. The barbarians pressed
on. They were at the walls of Constantinople.
A hundred years before this, Goths, crossing the
Danube, had fought and conquered Roman legions
and had killed an Emperor, namely Decius, who is
notorious for his cruel persecution of the Christians
known in history as " the Decian persecutions." The
Gotlis had at this time been checked by further
Roman forces that were brought against them, but it
was then that the Empire lost the province of Dacia,
which lay north and east of the Danube, and the
Danube thereafter became the boundary.
Now the children of these Goths, rather more
than a hundred years later, were across* the Danube
again, had again conquered the legions and again
a Roman Emperor had been slain by them in battle.
Constantine had himself been forced to fight the
Goths in Thrace, and, when building his new capital,
had encircled it w i t h defensive walls. It was well
for his successors that he did so. The Gothic army
was held before the walls. A large number of their
nation had already crossed the Danube and had been
admitted as peaceful settlers within the bounds of
the Empire. It is certain that Gothic invaders from
north of the Danube would find many friends, for
the Goths already settled in the Empire were dis-
satisfied w i t h their treatment by the Romans. A n d
even in the Roman legions that they defeated there
would be many of their countrymen, for the recruiting
of barbarians among the legionaries had been going
on for more than one century. Theodosius the Great,
who had succeeded Valens, killed by the Goths, as
Emperor of the East, made a treaty w i t h the con-
querors, which was faithfully observed u n t i l the
death of Theodosius in 395. B u t then the Goths
 B A R B A R I A N TRIBES 29

threw off the yoke which the treaty had put upon their
necks.
It was fortunate indeed for the Empire that the
Persians were no longer a danger on the eastern
boundary. A peace w i t h that nation had been
arranged in 364, and was not broken for nearly 150
years.
The Goths were divided into several different
tribes, not always at peace w i t h each other; and
especially into Visigoths and Ostrogoths that is
Western Goths and Eastern. They were so com-
pletely divided by the end of the fourth century that
the Ostrogoths had fallen under the domination of
the Huns, while the Visigoths, further westward,
were independent of that fierce and strange people.
B u t even these Western Goths felt the pressure,
pushing them westward, of the H u n , though not so
directly. They had the Ostrogoths in between, and
sometimes we actually find the Ostrogoths, w i t h the
Huns, fighting against the Visigoths. Thus inter-
mixed was the fighting.
A n d you should know too that although the
Romans still called these nations barbarians, many
barbarians had come to high honour and great power
in one or other of the Roman cities. The division
between Roman and barbarian was not nearly so
distinct and sharp as the word " barbarian " suggests
to us. It was not possible that there should be much
idea of inequality between them, seeing that the
barbarian could hold such high honour in the chief
places of the Empire.
 CHAPTER V
THE BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH
Y o u w i l l see now what the story told in the first few
chapters of this volume is, for the most part, about.
It is about the efforts of the Empire—on the whole,
the successful efforts of the Empire—to keep itself
intact w i t h i n its walls and to keep the barbarians out.
The pressure of those barbarians without, together
w i t h the weakened state of the Empire itself, has led
to the division of the Eastern from the Western
Empire. A n d that is the story up to close on the
year 400.
After that year 400, or a few years before, the
story changes. It is no longer about the efforts of
the Empire to keep the barbarian out. The barbarian
is triumpliantly breaking through ; and it is w i t h that
break through, and w i t h all t h a t happened to the
Empire, as a consequence, that the story has now to
deal.
We shall think it curious, as we follow i t , to note
how the different tribes of the barbarians seem as
if they acted together, in concert w i t h each other,
from the northern extremity of the Empire's boundary
right down to where we saw those Visigoths permitted
to settle south of the Danube. They seem to have
pressed in from the east, w i t h i n the space of very few
years, along the whole of that boundary.
Probably it was by no pre-concerted arrangement,
t h a t is to say not following any already arranged
30
 B R I T I S H LEGIONS RE-CALLED 31
plan, that they pressed in along that boundary nearly
all at the same time. Probably what happened was
that all of them were feeling a pressure from the
Huns, their neighbours on the east: so that they
were all ready to move. Then, when one tribe heard
of the success of another in moving west, the tribe
that heard this news would be encouraged to attempt
a westward push on its own account. That push
would be all the more likely to succeed because the
Roman legions were busy t r y i n g to stop those that
had moved westward already.
To what extent they acted together in order to
help each other we do not know—probably w i t h very
little idea of giving each other this help, for often
when they encountered each other in the course of the
westward move, they actually fought amongst them-
selves. What we do know—and it is a fact that
made a great difference to the story of our own islands
—is that within a very short time the Empire found
its legions so hard beset on the Continent of Europe
that it recalled the three legions that had been holding
Britain. This happened in 407.
I have already, I think, mentioned the names of
all those Indo-European or Germanic tribes that
occupy chief place in the story w i t h the exception of
the Vandals. These Vandals had their home some-
where between the Oder and the Vistula, in modern
Prussia, and they travelled further than any of the
rest, actually going down through Spain, across into
Africa, turning eastward again and working their
way along the north coast of. Africa, establishing
themselves at Carthage, equipping a great fleet there
and crossing over and taking Rome itself by assault
from the sea—a very wonderful story indeed.
B u t the first people to move in this great irruption,
or break i n , of the barbarians into the Empire were
those most southern, the Visigoths. They pressed
82 THE BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH
along, not southward this time but westward, into
Gaul.
We always have to bear in mind that these move-
ments of the tribes westward were not like the marches
of an army only, but rather like the migrations of a
whole people. It was land, land to settle on and to
live in without vexation from Huns and other enemies,
that they came to seek; and they brought w i t h
them their wives and children and live stock, to settle
them down on the newly won land. It seems to have
been the custom of all these tribes to take to them-
selves one-third of the land that they conquered,
leaving the conquered people two-thirds—a far more
generous proceeding than we should have expected
from them. B u t we have seen something of their
institutions and courts of law. Although called
" barbarians," they were far from being what we should
term savages. They had, however, very little idea
of learning or arts or science. The Greek thought
had not penetrated among them, although many of
them had by this time become Christian. They
were not nearly so advanced in civilisation as the
Romans, and their conquest of all Western Europe
checked the progress of civilisation and threw all
mankind backward into ways of life and of thought
that probably the Romans and Greeks never expected
man to return to.
It was under pressure of their own kinsmen, the
Ostrogoths, acting w i t h their superior lords, the Huns,
that the Visigoths at this time invaded Gaul and
pushed into the north of I t a l y and down into Greece.
They had become Christians. A large number of
monks came w i t h the armies and, in their religious
zeal, destroyed many beautiful temples of the pagan
gods in Greece and elsewhere.
The westward advance of the Goths was not con-
tinuous. It met w i t h checks from the legions, but
 THE VANDALS 33

again and again they came on, like waves of the sea,
returning after retreating. In 402 they were driven
back, but in a later invasion they came three times,
in three successive years, up to the walls of Rome
itself: that is, in 408, 409, and 410 ; and some time
in these years it seems that a large force of the Ostro-
goths joined their kinsmen of the Western Goths in
this Italian invasion. These Eastern Goths were
still pagans. In 410 the Goths actually entered and
sacked Rome. The effect of this was that the Empire
was compelled, if it was to survive at all, to make some
terms of peace w i t h the invaders, even if the terms
meant that it had to give up a large territory to them.
This is precisely what happened. W i t h i n a few years
after the sack of Rome the Goths had established
themselves in the south of Gaul and pushed down
over the Pyrenees into Spain. Their Spanish con-
quests at this time were given back to the Roman
Empire, though some of the Goths remained in Spain,
but by way of compensation Rome recognised what
was known as the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse.
This Visigothic territory reached right across to the
Atlantic Ocean and as far north as the River Loire.
B u t now we ought to take a lojok at what was
happening a little further north again, for this pressing
through of the Germanic barbarians went on, as I
have said, all along the eastern boundary. Just as
the Goths had come flooding in from across the Danube,
so too came the Vandals from across the Rhine. This
happened in 406 or 407 ; and it was in 407 that the
Empire, harassed by all these incursions from the
east, was obliged to withdraw its legions from Britain.
We have seen something already of a tribe or
nation called Franks, that had passed into Northern
Gaul some years before this and had been repelled by
the Romans. B u t some of them stayed w i t h i n the
Empire's bounds on terms of friendship w i t h the
34 THE BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH
Romans, and when the Vandals appeared in Gaul
these Franks met them in a great battle wherein the
Vandals are said to have lost two thousand killed—
a very large number, considering the comparatively
small armies of the time. The effect of this beating
seems, curiously enough, to have been, not to send
them back, as we should expect, to the north-east,
whence they came. Instead of that we find them
going onward, south-west, and two years later cross-
ing the Pyrenees into Spain. They fought there with
the Visigoths and other German tribes that had found
their way there before them, and in the end—that is
to say, after twenty or more years—had taken posses-
sion of that southern part of Spain which is called
Andalusia.
And then a very strange thing happened, and
they undertook an extraordinary adventure, which
we have already just glanced at.
A stretch of the northern coast of Africa, along
the south of the Mediterranean Sea, belonged to the
Western Roman Empire. It ran from the Straits of
Gibraltar eastward to the boundary of the province
of Egypt which was part of the Eastern Empire.
All this strip was put under the command of a Roman
official who had the title of Count of Africa.
Just at this time the Count of Africa had given
offence to the Imperial authority, and, in his fear of
what the offended majesty of Rome might do to him,
he invited the Vandals to come across the straits to
his assistance. They came—probably in larger
numbers than he had reckoned on. Eighty thousand
of them, in all, including the women and children,
are said to have come. The Count of Africa quickly
repented of what he had done. He patched up his
quarrel with the Emperor, and then set to work to
turn out these guests and helpers that he had invited.
But they were by no means so ready to go as they had
 VANDALS I N AFRICA 85
been to come. They fought to remain, and so success-
fully that within two years of their landing in Africa
they had possession of all the Roman territory along
that shore w i t h the exception of three cities, of which
Carthage was the chief. At this time Carthage was
estimated as the most important city, after Rome
and Constantinople, in the Empire. A n d a few years
later again, the Vandal king, breaking a treaty which
he had made w i t h Rome, attacked and took Carthage
itself; and so, once again, this city, which had been
the source of such deadly peril to the Empire in the
days of Hannibal, fell into an enemy's hands ; and
it was for nearly a hundred years held in those
hands.
Thus, to the year 440 or so, we may trace the
extraordinary fortunes of this people to their zenith
—their highest point. There, for the moment, we
leave them.
Now a great part of the reason why the Vandals
in Spain were so very ready to respond to the invita-
tion of the Count of Africa was that the Visigoths
w i t h some allied tribes were pressing upon them there
very much more severely than was pleasant. Spain is
a country, as you should know, very^iuch cut up and
divided by mountain ranges, so that it was difficult
for any conqueror to conquer the whole of the country,
because those who were defeated could retreat into
the mountainous places from which it was hard to
hunt them out. Y o u w i l l find this happening again
and again in the story of what we now call Spain.
It is not certain, but it seems likely, that the people
called Basques, living along the Pyrenees, are
descendants of those Celts whom we saw moving west-
ward and settling as Brythons in Britain and in
Brittany. If that is so, they have maintained their
language and their national character to this day, in
spite of the many conquerors that have, at one time
4
36 THE BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH
or other in the great story, had possession o f . t h e
greater part of Spain.
I write sometimes of " Spain " and sometimes of
" I t a l y , " and so forth, because it seems the natural
and easy way of indicating the lands which we now
speak of by those names ; but they were not so
known at the time of which I am telling you. A n d I
would warn you against a mistake into which we are
only too ready to fall—the mistake of supposing
that this Spain and this I t a l y , for example, have
certain natural boundaries—that there is any parti-
cular reason, apart from the arrangements, the treaties
and so on, which nations, in the course of the story,
have made w i t h each other, why they should have
the bounds which are set to them to-day. It is true
that these arrangements about the territory allotted
to each arc determined in some measure by the natural
features, as we call them—by mountain ranges and
by big rivers—but if it were not for these arrange-
ments there is no reason in nature why the countries
should be divided out among mankind as they are,
and the divisions are continually being changed all
through the story.
Now the Visigoths, as soon as they were free of
the Vandals, extended their Kingdom of Toulouse,
as it was called, towards the west u n t i l they were
masters of nearly all Spain; but that was not u n t i l ,
in conjunction w i t h the Romans, they had attended
to another business further north—that is to the
invasion of Gaul by A t t i l a , K i n g of the Huns. That
Hunnish invasion was checked and pushed back by a
great battle fought near Chalons in 451 ; and, curiously
enough, it was almost exactly at the same place that
the advance of the Eastern power, the Germans, was
checked and repelled in the Great War of a few years
ago. In this battle against the Huns, which was one
of the battles that has made a great difference in the
 THE FRANKS 37

story of the world, there were fighting together,

Romans, Visigoths and also Franks.
The Franks, as we saw before, were perhaps the
first of the Germanic tribes to break through the
Roman wall. B u t on that first incursion they were
repulsed and made a treaty w i t h the Empire. Then
they came again in the year 429 and, though defeated
once, gradually fought their way south beyond the
Somme River, and eventually right down to the Loire.
South of that region they fought as allies of the
Romans as late as 460.
The battle at, or near, Chalons counted for a great
deal in our story. The Huns were a far more savage
and uncultured people than any of the former invading
tribes, and it really was a battle fought on behalf
of civilisation, as civilisation was then understood,
between the Romans, Goths, and Franks on the one
side and the Huns and savagery on the other. And
with these Huns were some of the Ostrogoths, whom
we thus find fighting against their own kinsmen.
One of the results of the battle was that the Ostrogoths
now shook off the yoke of the Huns and became again
an independent people.
And not only was the battle of Chalons a battle
on behalf of civilisation; it was a battle on behalf
of Christianity too, for the Huns—probably one and
all—and the Ostrogoths, for the most part, were
pagans, and the Goths and Franks and Romans
nearly all Christians.
Therefore you see that Romans and barbarians
had come together and made common cause, as we
say, by the middle of the fifth century. Let us see
what was happening in Britain in the meantime, now
that the Roman soldiers had been withdrawn from it
 CHAPTER V I
HOW BRITAIN BECAME ENGLAND

WE might naturally expect to find that as soon as

the conquering Romans left our island, the native
Brythons would rejoice in their freedom and in
getting r i d of their masters. They had, indeed, made
an attempt, under their Queen Boadicea, to free
themselves while the legions still were there, but the
attempt had failed. The good discipline and fighting
qualities of the Romans had been too much for them.
So, for a short while after the Roman soldiers went,
they may have rejoiced in their freedom ; but they
did not rejoice long. Y o u remember those walls
that the Romans built across the island, and what
their purpose was. It was to help keep out the Picts
and Caledonians, those wild tribes that lived in what
we call the Highlands of Scotland. We should regard
these walls, not as insurmountable barriers, but merely
as aids to defence, connecting camps and forts estab-
lished at intervals along them. A n d w i t h i n a very short
time of the withdrawal of the Roman garrison, or
guards, the Picts were over the wall and constantly
harrying and robbing and killing the Britons.
Now the story goes that the Britons, worn by the
perpetual inroads of the Northerners, invited to their
assistance certain princes of the Saxon people—the
people, you w i l l remember, who lived in Sleswig.
There were Jutes in the N o r t h of that country—in
Jutland—then Angli, as the Romans called them,
38
 THE ANGLO-SAXONS 39
that is English, in the middle, and Saxons in the south.
B u t both Angli and Saxons were names used to cover
all those people. The names were used rather inexactly.
These Anglo-Saxons—let us call them so, for that
will include both the covering names—were great
sea-farers, rovers, pirates. They went on marauding
expeditions in their ships just as the Phoenicians had
gone marauding long before and just as the N o r t h -
men, the Vikings, went a little later. It may be
they were invited by the Britons ; it may be they
came without invitation, as their pirate fleet went
down along the east coast of Britain. If they were
invited, the result was very much like the result of
the invitation which we saw that the Count of Africa
gave to the Vandals. The Vandals came and helped
h i m ; but then they helped themselves also so liberally
that they drove him out of his own possessions. The
Anglo-Saxons did just the same by the Britons. They
helped them : they drove back the Caledonians : but
then they stayed : they drove out the Britons : they
established themselves in the island : they changed
Britain, the land of the Britons, into England, the
land of the Angles.
At least, they made that change-over much of the
island. We have noted its geography in an earlier
chapter, and saw that the east and the south are
less mountainous and therefore less strong for defence
against an invader, than the west and north. So it
was all down the East of England and along the
southern part that the Anglo-Saxons settled. The
Britons went back into the hills of Devon and Corn-
wall, of Wales and of Cumberland.
We have to picture to ourselves all the eastern
and southern shores of Britain and the western coast
of the Continent of Europe as very liable to the attack
of one or other of the sea-rovers at this time, and, as
a consequence of different tribes of these rovers arriving
40 H O W B R I T A I N BECAME ENGLAND
in strength in different parts of our island, we find it
divided into three different main kingdoms—in the
north the kingdom of Northumbria, which reached up
as far as the F i r t h of F o r t h ; in the south the kingdom
of Wessex, or the West Saxons ; and between the two
the kingdom of Marcia, or Mercia, which meant, origi-
nally, the kingdom of the Marches—of the " mark "
or boundary between the English and the Britons.
The B r i t o n had become Romanised—that is to
say had adopted Roman ways of thought and living,
and had lived under Roman law, while the legions
were there. Of course, since the legions formed
permanent encampments—practically towns—as we
have seen, all the Romans and the Roman influence
did not leave when the soldiers and the governors,
appointed by Rome, went. The Britons had the
Roman way of talking of these English as " bar-
barians "—men outside the pale.
Then these barbarians came i n , just as they had
come into Gaul, and conquered. B u t , for reasons
that are not easily seen, they treated the conquered
people, the Britons, w i t h far more severity than the
Continental conquerors showed. Perhaps they were
of a fiercer race. Whatever the reason, they came
killing, exterminating the natives ; and, whereas in
Gaul and other provinces t h a t the Germans con-
quered, the Roman methods of law and all the Roman
customs were allowed to go on, in B r i t a i n the Anglo-
Saxons did away w i t h all the Roman institutions and
manners. They brought in their own ways and
their own religion.
They were pagans, and the native Britons had
become Christian. Perhaps that, in part, is why
they treated the Britons so badly. B u t we have to
be on our guard about believing quite all that is told
us of their cruelty ; because the only people who have
told us about i t , who wrote the history of the time
 DRUIDS 41
and of the doings of the conquerors, were clerics, clerks
of the holy orders, monks of a Christian monastery.
B r i t a i n had been Christian, because the Romans
had introduced Christianity and established it in the
stead of the old D r u i d religion of which the great
stone circle at Stonehenge remains as a monument.
B u t England was now pagan, and followed the religion
of the N o r t h , whose gods were Woden, or Odin, the god

The Druidical circle, from the air, at the present day.

of battles, who gives us our name for one of the days
of the week—Woden's day, or Wednesday, and Thor,
the god of the hammer, the great smith, like Vulcan in
the religion which the Romans took from Greece. From
Thor we get our Thursday. A n d Freia, the goddess
who was supposed to be the wife of Odin, gives us our
Friday. Tuesday is the day of the god T i w .
By way of completing the story of our week-
days—Sunday, of course, is the day of the Sun ;
Monday, of the Moon. A n d Saturday—and you
42 HOW B R I T A I N BECAME ENGLAND
should note this, because it shows what a mixture
our language is of words taken from the Saxon on
the one side and from the L a t i n , the Roman, on the
other Saturday is the day of Saturn, one of the
Roman gods adopted from the Greek.
For more than a century England remained pagan.
I t was not t i l l very nearly A . D . 600 that any attempt
was made to bring in Christianity again. That
attempt was made in the south-eastern corner of
England, just where the Anglo-Saxon pagans them-
selves had landed, and quite near our present chief
cathedral town of Canterbury. B u t the revival of
Christianity in England did not really come that
way. The northern kingdoms in England were too
strong for any influence from the southern kingdom
to prevail. Christianity was reintroduced into
England from Ireland, whither the Saxons had never
come to destroy i t . It came by way of an island,
Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, and so across to
the H o l y Island, off the coast of Northumberland.
Then arose great fighting between the heathen,
under Penda, K i n g of Mercia and of the " Middle
English," as you w i l l read of their being called, and
Christians under Oswi, K i n g of Northumbria. Oswi
utterly defeated Penda in A . D . 655 and from that
victory followed the establishment of Christianity
as the accepted religion over the British islands.
A l l this story of England under the rule of the
Anglo-Saxons is separate and quite apart, for very
many years, from the rest of the great story, which
is, at this time, chiefly concerned w i t h the destruction
by the barbarians of the Western Roman Empire.
It w i l l come very closely into the great story again
before many centuries are past, and you will see that
it is closely involved in it by the time we reach the
end of this volume; but u n t i l 600 or so, England is
rather out of the main current of European history.
 CHAPTER V I I

THE PASSING OF THE BARBARIAN

WE left the Vandals in 450 established in possession

of all the African shore that had belonged to the
Western Empire. The place of chief importance
that fell into their hands was Carthage, that city
from which so much trouble had come to Rome several
centuries before. A n d just as had happened before,
so it happened again now. The Carthaginians
descendants of those famous sea-rovers, the Phoeni-
cians, had made Carthage, w i t h its fine harbour, the
headquarters of a fleet which went raiding and
marauding all over the Mediterranean Sea. So too,
now, the king of the Vandals assembled a great fleet
which acted in just the same piratical way. Its first
act was to defeat, so completely as practically to
destroy i t , the fleet of the Western Empire, and
thereafter it became the terror of the Mediterranean,
and its act of final and most unbearable insolence was
when it came into the Tiber and the Vandals attacked
and sacked Rome itself. This was in 455.
It is only a few years before, that we heard of the
Goths " sacking" Rome. We may begin to ask
ourselves what exactly is meant by this " s a c k i n g " ;
for we may wonder t h a t there was very much left,
after a while, to sack.
We have to remember, however, just as we had to
remember when we were learning about the dreadful
suffering of the Britons at the hands of the Anglo-
Saxons, t h a t all we know of what happened is what is
48
44 T H E PASSING OF T H E B A R B A R I A N
told us by the sufferers of the " sacking." Probably
the ferocity of it was a little exaggerated. Y o u may
have heard the phrase " an act of Vandalism," as
describing some savage and senseless destruction of
beautiful buildings and other works of art. And
that description is taken from what the Vandals are
supposed to have done when they sacked Rome. B u t
the true story seems to be that they really did not de-
stroy the most beautiful things in Rome, which were
generally the temples to the old Greek gods. What
they did destroy were the Christian churches. And
they took away all the gold and silver they could lay
their hands on, no doubt. B u t they destroyed the
Christian churches just because they were pagans, and
because Christianity was to them a false religion.
It was a mistaken religious zeal which seems to have
impelled them to do i t . And since the men who have
handed down the story were Christians, it is likely
enough that the destruction would be described as
somewhat worse than it really was.
Doubtless it was bad enough ; and the Vandals
were not at all pleasant pagans. They persecuted
the Christians wherever they laid hands on them.
Now, we may follow the fortune of these Vandals
until they disappear from the great story altogether.
They continued their bad work as pirates and perse-
cutors of the Christians for the best part of areat
years ; and then there came against them a very great-
general of the Eastern Empire, Belisearius In a .
fought battle, Belisarius at length gained the victory
over the Vandal king. It was victory so complete
that he could impose what terms he pleased on me con-
quered people. The whole f i g h t i n g force of the V anoais
that still survived was taken c a p t i v e to Constantinople,
where it was formed into as mounted guard and sent
to fight the Empire's b a t t l against that still uncon-
quered enemy, the on the Eastern boundary,
l
 T H E VISIGOTHS 45
Thus the Vandals were destroyed, and their very
name passes out of the story after contributing to it
one of its most remarkable episodes. Let us briefly
recapitulate their story. Starting from somewhere
on the shores of the Baltic, they come across Gaul
and down into and through Spain, westward and
southward. Then, crossing into Africa, they t u r n
eastward again and become a great and terrible
force, and finally are vanquished and taken yet further
eastward to Constantinople and to Parthia, dis-
appearing out of history at a point far eastward of
their original starting-place for their westward journey.
They have gone from the Baltic to the Black Sea,
after travelling to the farthest western confines of
the world as then known in order to get there.
So vanish, then, the Vandals.
Now as to those Visigoths, under whose pressure
the Vandals were only too thankful to get out of Spain,
we have seen them establishing their Kingdom of
Toulouse, in the south of Gaul, and surging over the
Pyrenees so that they made themselves masters of
most of Spain. At first we find them making treaty
w i t h Rome under conditions which confess the superior
sovereignty of the Roman Empire.^ B u t by the year
470 or so they have thrown off all pretence of regarding
Rome as their mistress. They deal w i t h her as an
independent monarchy.
B u t though their kingdom is an independent
kingdom, it is a kingdom based on the Roman model
for its government. Its laws are the Roman laws.
It has adopted Roman manners and Roman ways of
thought. It does not, like the Anglo-Saxon govern-
ment in Britain, impose German customs. It even
gives to Roman habits and thought a vigour which
they have lost in Rome itself. In Spain, at all events,
their kingdom is to endure for the best part of three
centuries, and it w i l l then be ended by an actor who
46 T H E PASSING O F T H E B A R B A R I A N
has not yet appeared at all in the great story—the
Saracen.
W i t h that we may now dismiss the Visigoths from
the story. The main scenes in which they took the
chief role have been sketched, and they may go
behind the scenes w i t h the Vandals. Their influence,
however, and their descendants remain : their effect
on the story far greater and more lasting than that
of the Vandals.
Very soon after the date 470, or so, of the Visigoths
claiming independence, there happened in Rome itself
an event which was full of interest and of meaning
in the story. A barbarian, by name Odoaccr, was
appointed K i n g of I t a l y . That in itself was a notable
appointment. What made it more notable still is
that, though calling himself K i n g of Italy, he did not
also call himself emperor.
It was an acknowledgment that the Western
Empire had ceased to exist or had ceased to be
governed from Rome. Odoacer recognised the
emperor at Constantinople as the one and only
emperor; and accepted from h i m an official title,
that of " Patrician," showing clearly that he regarded
himself as owing some sort of service and obedience
to the emperor of the East. It made Rome and
I t a l y seem of no greater importance than other
provinces or kingdoms, such as the kingdom of the
Visigoths w i t h its capital at Toulouse, or that of the
Vandals in Africa.
Under Odoacer, as king, I t a l y suffered invasion
from yet another tribe of barbarians, from those
Ostrogoths, related to the Visigoths, whom we saw
under A t t i l a fighting against their cousins at Chalons.
The power of the H u n was so broken by the defeat
of Chalons that these Ostrogoths were then able to
free themselves from their dependence. L i k e l y enough,
however, the H u n still pressed hard on them from the
 ATTILA, THE HUN 47

east, for although Attila's strength was shattered it

was not wholly destroyed. Two years after the
Chalons battle the " Seourge of God," as he was
named, was at length killed, and most of the horde
that he led was either exterminated or lost among the
people of the land in which they made their last stand
as lighters ; but even this great host of Attila's we
have to look on as only a " swarm," so to call i t , from
the main " hive " which still lived and multiplied
somewhere in that immense territory which we now
call Russia. Even three or four hundred years
later we hear of Rome and I t a l y being menaced by
Huns from the north at the same time as the Saracens
are threatening from the south. For the moment,
however, their defeats on the northern border of
Italy, following on their disaster at, or near, Chalons,
have sent them behind the scenes of our story. The
Eastern Empire was threatened w i t h an attack by
them on Byzantium itself about ninety years later
than the date of Attila's death; but this menace
was dealt w i t h successfully by that Belisarius whom
we have already seen victorious over the Vandals.
As he thrust the Vandals, so also it was he who thrust
the Huns, out of the story.
B u t now, in Odoaccr's reign, the Ostrogoths, free
of the Huns, but still perhaps pushed westward by
them, appear in N o r t h I t a l y . This happened in the
year 488. Odoacer marched against them, but was
heavily defeated, and was killed by the very hand
of Theodoric, the famous king of these Eastern Goths.
It was w i t h the full knowledge and approval of the
Eastern Emperor that these Goths thus invaded I t a l y ,
although the K i n g of I t a l y had owed his kingdom
in the first place to the Emperor at Constantinople.
After their victory the Goths established themselves
in N o r t h Italy, and this kingdom of the Ostrogoths
in I t a l y lasted for about fifty years. By that time
48 T H E PASSING O F T H E B A R B A R I A N
there was certainly no force at the disposal of Rome
that could drive them o u t ; but the Eastern Empire
then moved against them. Once more it was that
great Byzantine general Bclisarius who had command
of the Empire's forces. Once more he was completely
victorious. The Ostrogoths were compelled to relin-
quish their hold of the Italian t e r r i t o r y ; and so they
too, having played their part, pass behind the scenes.
While they were in I t a l y they had stretched hands
across the Alps, and had come into touch again w i t h
their kinsmen, those Western Goths that had their
Kingdom of Toulouse in Southern Gaul. B u t even
before the Eastern Goths were pushed out of the
Italian kingdom that they had conquered, the hold
of the Western Goths on their kingdom in Gaul had
been loosened, the extent of that kingdom had been
diminished, and they were left w i t h little on the
northern side of the Pyrenees—that is, w i t h little
outside of what we now call Spain.
This loss was inflicted on them by that tribe or
nation of Germanic barbarians of which I have several
times made mention already, the Franks.
As of the Goths, so too of these Franks, there were
more than one tribe or nation, but the tribe which is
most important in the story is that of the Salian Franks.
It was so called either because it came from the River
Saal, or, more likely, because it came from the " salt,"
the " saline " sea. Y o u may have heard of the " Salic
L a w , " which provides that the right of succession to
the throne shall not be given to a son by relationship
through the mother w i t h the previous occupant of
the throne. It must come through the father—" in
the male line," as is said. That was one of the
ancient laws of these Salic, or Salian Franks.
About the middle of the fourth century, that is to
say about, or a little after, 350, they were invading
Gaul, in the north, but were checked and defeated,
 CLOVIS, K I N G O F T H E F R A N K S 49
and after their defeat were allowed to settle north
of the Rhine, under treaty w i t h the Romans. F i f t y
years later, the Roman Empire had so much need of its
legions to protect itself from the south, that the legions
of the Rhine, like those of Britain, were withdrawn.
Upon that the Franks claimed, and took, their
independence. W i t h i n another fifty years we find
them established as far south as the River Somme.
They had fought, as we have seen, w i t h Romans and
Visigoths against the Huns, the common enemy of
them all, at Chalons, in 451. Only a few years later
they were fighting w i t h the Romans and against the
Visigoths further south; but by 480 they asserted their
independence, and the next year the famous Frankish
K i n g Clovis came to the throne, and under h i m the
Franks took possession of nearly the whole of Gaul. He
united all the tribes of the Franks under his sovereignty.
The only parts of Gaul which were not now under
his rule were the kingdom of Burgundy, as it was
called, after a German tribe, the Burgundi, coming
from the east, like all the rest of them, and a piece
of Provence, in the south, which is all that the Visigoths
were able to retain on the north of the Pyrenees of
their Kingdom of Toulouse.
Terrific and most picturesque warriors were these
Franks, according to the accounts that we have of
them, very t a l l men and strong, w i t h long red or
fair hair. For defence they had a wicker shield, light
so that they could move it quickly. One of their
chief weapons was the throwing axe, w i t h which they
were very accurate and expert. They had bows and
arrows and a long spear. They wore breeches, close
fitting, as far down as the knee, and a tunic that was
belted about the waist w i t h a broad leather girdle
adorned w i t h metalwork of iron and silver. Brooches
kept it fastened.
Thus they came conquering; and they are to be
50 T H E PASSING O F T H E B A R B A R I A N
remarked above all the rest of the conquering and
invading barbarians, because they came to stay.
Doubtless many of the others stayed also, but not
as conquerors.
There is one other tribe of barbarian invaders for
us to notice—the Lombards.
B u t I fear that you w i l l be rather tired of all
these different nations to whom I am introducing you.
Their comings seem very confusing. It is difficult
to remember which came before another and where
they went and what they did. The biggest things
done were, I suppose, first—though not first of all in
point of time -that wonderful pilgrimage of the
Vandals. That is perhaps the strangest story of all.
Secondly, the invasion of the Visigoths, establishing
their kingdom temporarily in South Gaul and more
permanently in Spain, was really more important,
because it was more lasting in the form that it gave
to the great story. A n d then, thirdly, this Frankish
dominion in Gaul is of great interest to us. It is the
beginning of modern France.
B u t they arc very puzzling—the comings and the
vanishings. A friend of mine gave me what we call
a memoria technica, to help me, and you, in remember-
ing the order in which the different nations of the
barbarians came in from the east. Y o u know what
a memoria technica is : some words easy to remember
which recall to our minds something that we find
difficult to remember. These words, as he gave them
to me, are: " Visiting friends' houses very often
frankly laborious."
Do you see what that means ? I am afraid he
must have found himself rather bored, at times, when
his friends were doing their best to entertain h i m .
He does not seem to have been as grateful as he should
have been. B u t the suggestion of the words is as
follows : " Visiting " is for Visigoths, who were the
 THE LOMBARDS 51
first to come west, in any force ; then " friends "
is for Franks—they came very early in the story of
the barbarian invasions, but I hey came in much
greater number later, as is indicated by the later
" frankly." " Houses " is for those Huns, defeated
at Chalons, " very," for the Vandals, " often " for
the Ostrogoths, and " laborious " for the Lombards.
It is not quite perfect, because some of them came

THE I K O N CROWN OF THE LOMBARDS.

The iron part of this crown, supposed to have been forged from one of the
nails of the Cross, is the narrow cirrlet embedded in its interior.

and came again at different times. I believe that

the Franks were really the first of all to break through
the Roman wall of Empire ; but on the whole it
roughly represents the order of their coming. It is
easily remembered and is a great help.
Let us see now what it was that these latest comers,
the Lombards, did, and who they were.
They were a tribe that lived up north of the
5
52 T H E PASSING O F T H E B A R B A R I A N
Visigoths and east of the Saxons and they were called
Longo-bardi, long beards. They came last of all
the Germanic tribes, for i t is not t i l l 5(58 that we hear
of them in I t a l y , though they had drifted southward
and had settled along the N o r t h of the Danube long
before. B u t though the latest, they seem also to
have been the rudest and least advanced of these
tribes. They never became Romanised, as the others
did, never learned any civilisation from the civilised
people whom they conquered. B u t they came in great
i'orce and made their conquering way right down to
the Tiber. They settled then and formed a kingdom
in the N o r t h of I t a l y , more or less where Lombardy
now is. They were still so powerful some two centuries
later that we find them taking Ravenna, which was
within the boundaries of the Eastern Empire and was
a place of great importance w i t h a fine harbour.
It was the increasing power and savage rapacity
of the Lombards which led to an incident that was of
the very greatest importance in the story. The Pope
and notice this particularly, for it is the very first
time that we have had occasion to name h i m in our
story—the Pope begged for help, against the L o m -
bards, of the K i n g of the Franks. A n d this assistance
was given him, at first by Pepin and afterwards by
Charlemagne—the greatest of all the Frankish kings
—and the result of that assistance was that Charle-
magne was triumphantly victorious and in 774 took
to himself the title of K i n g of the Lombards. The
real result was that the Kingdom of Lonibardy, in any
independent sense, was at an end.
So now we may sum up these invasions of the
various barbarian tribes and see what they amounted
to and what effect they had on our story.
The Visigoths continued on in Spain u n t i l the
Saracens and the Moors came to overthrow their
Spanish kingdom in 710.
 BELISARIUS 53

The Huns ceased, for some centuries, to be a danger

to the West about 450, though at least a hundred
years later they were a menace to Constantinople and
the East, and even as late as 900 they were again
threatening Northern I t a l y . The Vandals went out of
the story, in the curious way that we have seen, in 533.
About 550 the Ostrogothie kingdom in North I t a l y
was likewise ended.
Incidentally, we note that it was by the great
Byzantine general Belisarius, that these last three
were defeated and sent out of the story. None of
the three left a very lasting impression on i t , but
that cannot be said of the Visigoths, who altered the
way in which people lived both in Gaul and Spain
very considerably. The Lombards' kingdom was
swallowed up, as we saw, by Charlemagne, in 744.
They, too, left little mark on the story.
There remain, however (and their kingdom does
not, like that of the others, come to an end), the
Franks. The others go, but the Franks stay.
Charlemagne absorbs into his own domains many
others besides those Lombards. He absorbs the
Burgundians, the Saxons (this name had by now been
transferred from those Northern Saxons who were
sea-pirates and came to Britain, to a people occupying
part of that territory in south-west Germany which
is still called Saxony) and many besides.
W i t h Charlemagne we come to the beginnings of
Europe such as we know Europe now. B u t in order
to see how Europe began at that time to seem some-
thing like the Europe that we know we must go back
again to " the Eternal C i t y , " as it has been called—
—to Rome—and see what has been happening there,
and especially what it is that has happened which has
brought into being and into his great importance in
the story that personage of whom we made our first
mention only a page or two back—the Pope.
 CHAPTER V I I I
T H E POPE

As Christianity spread through the world in the

second and t h i r d centuries, churches, that is to say
places in which the Christians assembled for worship,
were established in many cities. In different parts
of the Empire, as these parts were converted from
paganism, overseers of the local churches were
appointed and were called " episcopi," from a Greek
word which is very literally translated by our word
overseer. A n d our word " bishop " is formed from that
word " episcopus." There was, of course, a bishop, an
episcopus, at Rome.
If Jerusalem had not been, as we have seen that
it was, so battered by war and so deserted by the
inhabitants who were driven out of i t , it is likely that
Jerusalem would have been regarded as the chief
Christian city, because Christ had taught and had
suffered there. It was the centre and chief city of the
religion on which Christianity was based and of that law
which Christ Himself said that He came not to destroy
but to fulfil. B u t Jerusalem itself was almost destroyed.
Rome was the chief city, the centre, of the Empire.
At Rome, moreover, the apostle who did more than
any other to spread Christianity among the Gentiles
—that is to say, all over the world—St. Paul, had
lived for some years, and had died.
Whether St. Peter ever came to Rome is still
rather uncertain. The evidence is not clear. B u t
the latest researches seem to make it probable that
54
 T H E BISHOP OF ROME 55
he did go to Rome, and perhaps died there, as a
martyr. For we must remember that all through the
first centuries Christianity had to fight its way against
great opposition from those of the pagan religion.
Besides the hatred of Christianity which some felt
because it was a new religion, it incurred the hatred
of the rulers because the Christians seemed to be
setting up for themselves another ruler than the
Roman Emperor. Even during Christ's life wc
know that the Christians in Judaea were suspected
of enmity to the Emperor. The Pharisees laid a
trap for Jesus by asking H i m whether it was lawful
to pay tribute to Caesar. So the Christians often
had to meet for worship in secret, and thousands of
them were cruelly put to death.
Rome, then, because it was the centre of the
Empire—which, for all Rome's subjects, meant the
centre of the Universe—and also because it was the
place where certainly St. Paul, and very probably
St. Peter also, lived and died, became naturally the
place to which the Christians throughout the Empire
looked as the chief place in which their God was
worshipped, and the place to which they would bring
for decision any difficult questions and differences of
opinion which the bishop of the district in which such
debate arose could not settle for them. These districts
were named " dioceses " from a very early date.
Thus the bishop of Rome came to have an authority
above the others. A n d then the legend grew that
to h i m St. Peter, who was supposed to be the keeper
of the keys of the gate of Heaven, had bequeathed
some, at least, of that authority which St. Peter
himself had directly from Christ.
Thus it was, even before the Emperor Constantine
confessed himself a Christian. Y o u should observe
that the Emperors themselves had been deemed to
be in some degree divine, and
56 THE POPE
glory of gods, up to this time. Constantine, pro-
claiming Christianity as the- Slate religion, gave up

ROME.
View of St. Peter's.

this claim to d i v i n i t y for the Emperor. The time

had not yet come when the Head of the Church—its
 J U L I A N T H E APOSTATE 57
Father, Papa, or Pope—should actually confer the
Imperial authority on the Emperor by consecration in
the great cathedral built in Rome to St. Peter's glory.
That time was not y e t ; but it was not so very far
distant. It came, about the year 800, w i t h the consecra-
tion of Charlemagne after he had destroyed the kingdom
of the Lombards and taken their territories for his own.
After Constantine, the Emperor Julian tried to
reverse this declaration of Constantinc's and to bring
back paganism. He was called Julian the Apostate,
for so d o i n g ; and the chief interest of his attempt
is that it shows how firm a hold Christianity already
had taken, for the attempt failed utterly.
Certain circumstances seem to have combined
to make the position of the Pope of Rome central
and capital for all Christendom. For the good
government of the Church there had been appointed
by the early Christians five principal bishops, to each
of whom was given the title of Patriarch. Patriarch
means " arch," or chief (as in " archbishop " and
" arch-angel ") of a " patria," which is a family, or
clan, from pater=father ; and so Abraham and others
were called patriarchs. This name, or title, was
transferred to those who were chief among the bishops.
The Patriarchates, or cities in w h i e l r t h e Patriarchs
had their headquarters, were these : Rome, Constanti-
nople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.
The t h i r d city, in size and importance, in the Roman
Empire was Carthage ; but Carthage, as you know,
was taken by the Vandals, who were pagans ; so
the Bishop of Carthage could not be any rival of
the Bishop of Rome. A n d just as the Vandals, who
were heathens, removed one possible r i v a l to the power
of Rome in the Church, so did another, and very much
more important, anti-Christian power remove some
of the other rivals, the Patriarchs. This anti-Christian
force was that wonderful Moslem or Mahommedan
58 T H E POPE
power which rose up w i t h marvellous swiftness in
Arabia in the middle of the seventh century. The
Saracens came surging up out of Arabia, into Palestine,
where was the Jerusalem patriarchate, on to Asia
Minor and the patriarchate of Antioch, westward into
Egypt and the Alexandrian patriarchate. There
remained then the Patriarch at Constantinople and
the Patriarch, or Pope, at Home.
Thus these two anti-Christian powers unconsciously
fought the battle for the supremacy of the Pope.
Now you have seen how Odoacer, the barbarian,
became K i n g of I t a l y in 475, but did not claim to be
Emperor : that made the way of the Pope's power
more easy. A n d all through the fourth century—
that is from 300 to 400, to speak in " round figures,"
as we say—the Emperor of the West had his court,
not at Home, but at Milan, in the N o r t h of I t a l y .
Just after 400 the Western Emperor moved his court
to Ravenna, though it was actually w i t h i n the bounds
of the Eastern Empire. The power, however, that
went w i t h the high-sounding title of Western Emperor
was not great, at this time, u n t i l the days of Charle-
magne, when it became attached to the Franks'
kingdom, and by that time the position of the Pope
of Rome was so high and so firmly set that we find
Charlemagne himself being consecrated and anointed
as Emperor by the Pope.
B u t before this date another very extraordinary
thing in the story of the Church had occurred.
Christianity had been introduced into some of the
northern parts of what is now Germany; and the
way by which it had come was not, as you would
expect, straight up from Rome, but it had come in
from the west, from England, and into England it
had been brought from the west again—from Ireland.
H o w that came to pass I will t r y to tell you in
the next chapter.
 CHAPTER I X

HOW ENGLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN

A L L Europe, we may say, west and south of the Rhine

and of the Danube, had become Christian before
the barbarians broke through the wall. A n d when
we say " all Europe," it includes even Ireland, out
in the north-west. When the Angles and the Saxons
came invading B r i t a i n and driving the Britons
westward, they destroyed Christianity and brought
in their own northern religion w i t h its gods, Odin,
god of War, and Thor, god of the Hammer, and the
rest of them. B u t their invasion and their disturbance
never reached as far west as Ireland. There, the
Christian religion continued, while it was destroyed
in England.
The Anglo-Saxon conquerors were constantly
fighting w i t h each other, as well as w i t h the Britons,
in England. The three big kingdoms of these Anglo-
Saxons were Northumbria, in the n o r t h ; Wessex, in
the south-east and stretching westward along the
southern part of England; and Mercia, between the
two. These fought w i t h varying success, and some-
where about 600 came an invasion into K e n t of a
tribe closely allied to the Angles and the Saxons,
and actually included sometimes under either of
these names—the Jutes, from the northern end of
that Sleswig peninsula from which they all came.
They landed in Kent, and perhaps because they were
so close of k i n w i t h the conquerors already there,
50
 ST. A U G U S T I N E 61
or perhaps because they came in very great force,
it was a Jute k i n g who soon became master of all
the east of England from the south of K e n t as far
north as the Wash. A n d one of his first acts of
importance, as king of all this country, was to ask,
and to receive, as his wife, the daughter of the K i n g
of the Franks. The Franks by that time were masters
of Gaul.
Y o u see what the effect of that was—to bring
England and the Continent of Europe together, into
close relations w i t h each other. They had been thus
close together under the Romans, but the intercourse
had been severed by the barbarians. Now it was
resumed ; and the Pope of Rome took advantage
of it at once. The Franks were Christians. The
Frank king's daughter, whom the Jute king of East
Anglia had married, was a Christian. The Pope
sent St. Augustine into K e n t to preach Christianity ;
and he was so successful, as a missionary, that
Christianity was admitted by the East Anglian king
and by his people generally. Thence it made its way
again into Northumbria.
So that seems entirely to contradict what I told
you at the end of the last chapter, abouC Christianity
being brought back into England, and so to some of
the northern parts of Europe, not from Rome, but
from Ireland.
The explanation of that apparent contradiction
is that this conversion which was brought about by
St. Augustine was not lasting. The Mercians, who
had been tributary, that is had paid tribute, to the
Northumbrian king, allied themselves w i t h the
Britons of Wales and claimed independence. Their
k i n g Penda was the last of the great champions
in England of the heathen gods, and his long reign
was a continuous struggle against the new religion.
By 650 he had defeated all his rivals except the
62 HOW ENGLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN
Northumbrians. Northumbria still held out against
him, but St. Augustine's envoy, who had brought
Christianity again to Northumbria, had departed
after a victory gained by Penda over the Northumbrian
king. Even in the south people relapsed in numbers
into heathenism. The zeal for Christianity was kept
alive in the north by influences that had come in
through Ireland.
From the Irish churches, untroubled by the
incursion of barbarians, missionaries had come
westward. A famous monastery had been established
on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland.
Thence the missionary monks had passed on into
Scotland, still, at t h a t time, called Caledonia and
inhabited by the people called Picts. They had
passed, too, across the northern part of England
and had settled on the island which even now is
called H o l y Island, off the east coast of Northumber-
land. That was the centre from which the new K i n g
of Northumbria and his people were inspired w i t h
a zeal for the Christian religion which made them
continue the struggle against the Mercian king whose
lordship was at this time acknowledged over most of
the rest of B r i t a i n . Oswi, the Northumbrian king,
had received some of his education at the monastery
of Iona. In 655 he met and utterly defeated the
Mercian forces, under the aged k i n g Penda, near
the modern t o w n of Leeds.
That battle gave heathenism in England its death-
blow, and the inspiration for that blow had come
from the Irish Church. B u t then, England being
thus again united to Rome by religion, and its inter-
course w i t h Gaul renewed, the envoys of Rome
reappeared, and pleaded for the supremacy of the
Pope of Rome over the English. The Irish Church
differed in opinion from the Pope of Rome, as we are
told, about the date at which Easter should be kept
 SYNOD O F W H I T B Y 63
and about the fashion in which the priests' heads should
be shaved. The English Christians had to adopt the
one opinion or the other, and Oswi, the Christian
champion, summoned a great meeting, called a Synod,
at W h i t b y , to settle which of the two England should
follow. The envoys of the two claimant Churches,
the Romish and the Irish, pleaded the case before
him, and it is asserted that he gave his decision in
favour of Rome on being told that St. Peter was
both the founder of the Romish Church and also that
he held the key of the gate of Heaven. Oswi feared
that he might offend St. Peter if he declared for
Ireland rather than for Rome, and that St. Peter in
consequence might not admit him through the
heavenly gate. Thus England passed again under
the spiritual rule of the Pope, and the Irish monks
left their monastery on the H o l y Island. Rut,
both before and after this, some of them travelled into
Northern Europe and preached Christianity among
the German tribes, even so far north and west as the
southern shores of the Baltic where the most numerous
and most powerful people were the Frisians.
They do not enter very importantly into the making
of the great story, but they were a great force along
that Baltic coast. Very occasionally v we find the
"name Frisians used for all those who were much more
commonly called Saxons, and it is possible that they
were of the same original stock ; but that is a question
which we need not t r y to settle.
In this manner, then, it was determined for England
that she should be Christian, and no longer heathen ;
and it was determined also that she should follow the
Romish way, in strict obedience to the Pope of Rome,
rather than the Irish. B u t though all the English
kingdoms became Christian, that religion common to
them all did not for very long bring them at peace
together. For the whole length of another century
64 HOW ENGLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN
they were fighting among themselves, now one and
now the other having the advantage, but never so
decisively that any one of them could call himself
king of all the English, or of England.
A l l this while the Frank kings were very powerful
in Gaul, and though they never seem to have had
any idea of attempting the conquest of Britain, they
kept their eyes attentively fixed on what went on
there ; and their purpose seems to have been to keep
the country in a state of division and disturbance.
This they did by helping, or at least by promising to
help, the one that was the weakest.
Thus affairs went in B r i t a i n down to the time of
the great K i n g Pepin, of the Franks, and again, after
him, of his yet greater son Charles, who was known as
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great—that is to say
u n t i l about the year 800. A n d at about that time
there came down upon the English the invasion of
another nation of sea-rovers like themselves—the
Danes.
A l l this while, too, the power of the Pope of Rome
had been increasing, by no means at a steady rate of
progress, but at times gaining greatly and at others
losing, but on the whole going forward like the i n -
coming tide.
Doubtless the fact that the Western Empire no*
longer looked on Rome as its capital city, gave the
Bishop of Rome opportunity for increased power.
So long as Rome was the home of the Emperor and
his court, there was a greater and more powerful
person in Rome than its bishop. B u t the Emperor,
as we saw, removed his court to Milan and, later,
to Ravenna. That left the Pope as certainly one of
the chief men, if not absolutely chief, in Rome. We
have also seen that about halfway through the
seventh century—that is, about 650—the Saracens
had turned out from their seats three of the five
 T H E POPE 65
patriarchs of the Church, namely those of Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Antioch. There remained the
Patriarch at Constantinople and the Patriarch, the
Pope, at Rome. The regidation of religious matters
in the Eastern Empire fell naturally therefore to the
former and the latter became head of the Church
throughout the Western Empire.
The authority of the Pope depended largely on
the belief that when Constantine, the first Christian
Emperor, made Constantinople the scat of his power,
he gave, or donated, to the Bishop of Rome his
authority over all the Western Empire. This
" donation of Constantine " became very famous.
It is generally thought that the deed, that is to say
the parchment w i t h the words on it which were
supposed to make the gift good, was all made up—
that the signature was a forgery, and the whole story
of the donation an invention. B u t if it was so, it
was an invention which had a great effect. It helped
the Pope to establish his supremacy over all the
churches in the West.
Nevertheless it seems that when there was trouble
in any of the churches of Spain, where the Visigothic
kingdom was established, the t r o u b l e used to be
referred for decision to the capital city of that kingdom.
Likewise in France, trouble in any of the Frankish
churches was settled, if possible, by bringing the case
up before the bishop in the capital of the Franks.
B u t , for all that, both Visigoths and Franks looked
on Rome, the city of St. Paul and St. Peter, as a
place—we might say as the place—especially sacred
and its bishop as a personage holding an authority
superior to all others in Christendom. The feeling
was the same in those churches yet farther from the
Roman centre, the churches of Germany and of
England.
The Western Empire, we have to realise, was no
66 HOW ENGLAND BECAME CHRISTIAN
longer Roman ; it was Frankish. Rome itself was
included w i t h i n the Empire of which the Emperor
was Charlemagne. It was the Pope, you may
remember, who had called in the aid of the Frankish,
or French, kings—first Pepin and then Charlemagne
—to aid h i m against the Lombards. They had given
such effectual aid that the Lombard kingdom was
overthrown and Charlemagne himself was crowned
w i t h the I r o n Crown which was the sign of the Lombard
monarchy.
The name of Lombardy remained, and remains
to this day, as t h a t of a part of Northern I t a l y . It
remains also in our Lombard Street, in London. This
was so called from the Lombard merchants and gold-
smiths and bankers who came thither from Lombardy.
The arms of Lombardy were three balls, and you may
sometimes see three balls now as a sign over the door
of a pawnbroker's shop. The first banking operations
of the Lombards in London were very like modern
pawnbroking ; for they would lend money to people
who gave them security for its repayment by handing
over jewels or golden chains or ornaments. Thus
curiously is the richest street, as it has been reckoned,
in the richest city in the world, called after those
long-bearded barbarians, of unusually savage manners,
who came away from somewhere near where
the Elbe goes out into the sea and who founded a
kingdom for a while in I t a l y . A strange story which
you may recall whenever you see that sign of the
three golden balls.
After the fall of Lombardy the Empire of Charle-
magne included not only all Gaul, which had come
to h i m by succession from Pepin, b u t also what we
may describe as all Germany, and I t a l y as far down
as the Tiber and southward of it again. The Pyrenees
had for years formed the boundary between the
Frankish Empire and the Visigoths' kingdoms. The
 T H E SARACENS 67
Emperor Would have had no authority over the Goths,
had they still been there in 800 or so ; but in the
early half of the eighth century, beginning as early
in that century as 710, that Visigothic kingdom had
begun to go to pieces under the attacks of the fierce
Arabs, inspired by the fighting religion of Mahomet,
who in course of the previous century had fought their
way to the mastery of Asia Minor and of Egypt.
They came, working eastward along that strip of
Africa fringing the Mediterranean, along which we
saw the Vandals working westward. A n d just as
the Vandals, who conquered all that African strip,
were invited into Africa, from Spain, in order to
help the master, as he then was, of that Africa against
his enemies, so now these Saracens and Moors were
invited, in the early part of the eighth century, into
Spain, from Africa, to help one of the rival parties
who were disputing about the succession to the throne.
They, like the Vandals, stayed a good deal longer
than their hosts had intended, and w i t h a far different
position in the country than those hosts had designed
for them. B u t they were a people so important in
the making of this greatest of great stories that we
must give them a new chapter to themselves and to
their own particular story.

6
 CHAPTER X
T H E SARACENS

B O T H the name Saracen and the name Moor came to be

used in a sense much wider than their first significance.
At first the Romans knew as " Saraceni," a single tribe
of Arabs living near Mount Sinai. Later, the name
Saracen was used by Europeans to mean any followers
of the religion of Mahomet. Moors, " Mauri " or
44
dark men," was a name at first used only for a tribe
that was also called Berbers, living along the northern
edge of the Sahara desert, in Africa. B u t they were
not of black skin, like the negroes, nor had they woolly
hair. Their complexion was darkened only by the sun's
burning power, and their hair was smooth. There
were many of them in the forces that invaded Spain
and put an end to the Visigoths' kingdom there early in
the eighth century; and after a time all the Moslems,
or Mahommedans, in Spain came to be known as Moors.
The story of the rise of Mahomet and the spread
of the religion that he preached and the success of the
armies by whose victories it was so dispersed is one of the
most wonderful, perhaps it is actually the most astonish-
ing, of all those that go to make up the great story.
The maker and preacher of the religion that we
call, after him, Mahommedanism, or Mohammedanism,
began his preaching early in the seventh century.
He was a poor man, of no eminent family in Arabia.
Arabia had already come under Jewish influence in
some parts, and under Christian influence in others.
Mahomet took the Bible as the basis of his preaching,
but it seems that he did not understand it very well,
68
 MAHOMET 69
and he placed his own interpretation on much of i t .
He supposed himself to be the prophet, or apostle,
chosen by the only God, whom he called Allah, to
preach the true religion to the Arabians.
Abraham, as we saw in the first volume of this
great story, was patriarch, or head, of a clan t h a t came
up out of the desert at first to Ur of the Chaldces.
Mahomet seems to have claimed to preach the religion
of Abraham. Moreover, there was a tradition that
the Arabians were descended from that Ishniael of
whom the Bible tells us, the son of Hagar, sent out
into the wilderness, " whose hand was against every
man and every man's hand against h i m . " If we accept
this story we shall perhaps wonder less that Mahom-
medanism was such a martial, such a fighting religion.
Mahomet preached that its followers should fight to
carry it over all the world.
Y o u are not to understand from this, however,
that it was a religion which set out to make proselytes,
as we call them ; that is, to convert others to the same
way of thinking. In later days we shall find that the
Saracens were not very eager that the Christians of
the countries that they conquered should become
Mahommedans, because it was their custom to tax, at
a certain sum, every one not of their religion. They
seem to have looked on this financial side of the affair
as being of more importance to them than any salvation
of the Christian people's souls.
B u t at the beginning of his preaching—or prophesy-
ing—Mahomet had hard work to make his doctrine
accepted, and himself acknowledged as the prophet of
the one and only God, even among his own people.
He had to fly from his native city of Mecca to the
neighbouring Medina. After a while he found sup-
porters there, and by degrees they became so many
that he was able to go back and take Mecca. Then,
again by degrees, he was joined by so many of the
70 T H E SARACENS
Arabian tribes that he was able to send armies beyond
the bounds of Arabia, into Syria northward. They
suffered defeat and check at times ; but on the whole
they were extraordinarily victorious.
For their success there were several causes, all
quite easy to understand. They were a hardy people,
accustomed to meagre fare and to hard living in the
desert. They were very fine horsemen. The religion
which their prophet preached to them promised untold
joys in Paradise for those who died fighting against
the enemies of Islam. (Islam was the prophet's
name for the faith which he preached.) An intense
belief in this happy future, after death, made them
fearless in battle. Then they were a very poor people,
and those against whom Mahomet sent them were far
richer, and to the Moslem soldier loot from the enemy
never was forbidden. They seem to have had a
certain sense that some justice and mercy were due to
the conquered, for the rule was that only four-fifths
of the loot taken became the property of the conquerors.
The conquered were left w i t h a fifth.
A n d most of those against whom they went at
first were weak, owing to lack of discipline and absence
of strong government. The forces of the Eastern
Empire in Asia Minor and of the Persians had been
weakened by continuous fighting against each other.
Syria had been so hammered between the two that it
had little strength of its own. Egypt was feebly held.
B u t i t was not t i l l after the death of the prophet
that the armies carried the green flag of Islam east and
west; and for a while after his death the succession
to his religious leadership was much disputed.
It may occur to you to ask what need there
was for a successor to such a position as that of
Mahomet. He had preached his gospel. He had
laid down the laws that were to be followed. Was
not that enough ? W h y did he need a successor ?
 T H E CALIPHS 71
The explanation is that while Mahomet was a
great preacher, or prophet, he also held a position of
leadership over the Arabs which we have no one word
to express. Perhaps it can be stated best by saying
simply t h a t the Arabs d i d what he t o l d them to do.
It also looks as if he was wise enough to tell them to do
things t h a t they were not likely to object to doing.
I suppose we may state that he was a ruler w i t h the
limits of his authority not very clearly defined. B u t
his influence was very powerful, because he gave out,
and probably believed, that whatever he t o l d the
people was put into his mouth by Allah, the only
God, whose prophet he claimed to be.
This " only God " was a phrase that was often
repeated by the Mahommedans in opposition to the
" T r i n i t y " of the Christians, to whom the Deity was
revealed as being " three Persons and one God."
Therefore, if Mahomet had died without a successor
to an authority in some part like his own, the people
would have been quite at a loss for a guide and ruler.
He was in fact succeeded by " caliphs," as they were,
and as they still are, called, the word caliph actually
meaning " successor" or " representative." The
caliphs were supposed to be " representative " of
Mahomet, to succeed to some of his authority, rather
as the Popes of Rome were deemed to succeed to and
be representative of the authority of St. Peter. They
did not pretend to receive messages from Allah, as
Mahomet had received them, but they would uphold
the teaching of Mahomet; and their explanations of
doubtful points in his teaching were likely to be
accepted by all Mahommedans. A n d although they
were not held in the same honour as Mahomet, they
were regarded as rulers of the nation whom all men
should obey for the sake of their good fortune both in
this world and in the next.
Now, in Syria and in Asia Minor generally, the
72 T H E SARACENS
population was probably far more nearly akin to the
Arabians than to the Romans or the Greeks. It was
from Arabia that the Semitic tribes had come into
the country westward from the Euphrates and the
Tigris and thence had spread over Syria and Palestine.
The Saracens had little difficulty w i t h them. The
Persians had a stronger feeling of nationality and made
more resistance, but before the middle of the seventh
century Persia too was conquered.
The way of fighting of those early Arabian con-
querors was to come sweeping down in cavalry charges
on the enemy. Their weapons were the spear and the
curved sword, called scimitar, w i t h which they used to
smite as they galloped. They were very quick in
movement, and if they had a reverse they could w i t h -
draw and disappear over the desert so swiftly that it
was almost impossible to deal them any really severe
blows.
As they conquered lands where different methods of
fighting were in use, they learned to adopt those that
would be of value to them, but always their chief
reliance was on the quick movement of their cavalry
and on the cavalry charge, w i t h the spear and scimitar ;
and even when they put on any defensive armour in
addition to a light shield, it was of a fine mail, or steel
network, only. It did not add greatly to their weight
on horseback. The steel work of Damascus, the capital
of Syria, and the edge that was set on the sword-
blades of that steel work, became famous very early.
They used the bow but little u n t i l the time when
the T u r k came into the story ; but he is not there yet.
Perhaps the most wonderful testimony to the
intelligence and enterprise of these children of the
desert is that they fought a great and successful naval
battle w i t h the fleet of the Eastern Empire as early as
655. The Emperor himself was in command of the
defeated fleet. In all likelihood most of the victors
 T H E MOORS I N S P A I N 73

were seamen of the Syrian coast who had become

Mahommedans.
In one particular the rise of the Moslem power in
Arabia, and its northward and eastward expansion,
were possibly more of a relief to the Emperor at
Constantinople than a menace. The Persians had
continually been threatening and giving trouble on
his eastern border. The Saracens attacked the
Persians and w i t h i n a very few years completely con-
quered them so that the Persians troubled the Empire
no more. The Saracens seized Irak, which was the
most beautiful and richest province of all Persia.
They pushed further east, still conquering, into India,
Tibet, and even to the borders of China.
This was the first direction of their expansion,
but almost at the same time they gained, easily,
possession of Egypt, and then proceeded westward
along that fertile strip of Northern Africa between
the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert. Here
they encountered, conquered, and converted to
Mahommedanism that tribe of Berbers who were
called the Moors, as I told you, and who were the
conquerors of Spain.
It was in 710, less than a hundred years after
Mahomet became a power in his native Arabia, that
they went over into Spain to help the K i n g of the
Visigoths, or one of the claimants to the Visigothic
throne, against his rival.
The Gothic power was broken by these dissensions,
and the conquerors had no great trouble in making
good their conquest over the whole of Spain, always
excepting those strong mountainous places in the
Pyrenees where the Basques still live—a different
people from any that have entered Spain w i t h i n the
knowledge of our historical records. Perhaps they
are of the same race as the Celts—either as the B r y -
thons or as that older branch called Goidels—of whom
74 T H E SARACENS
a remnant held out in Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, and
Brittany.
The Saracens had this advantage—call it luck, if
you please—that they came upon enemies whose
government was weak, who were not united or brought
together by any feeling of patriotism or love of their
country or nation. The Roman soldiers, at the time
when the legions were made up of free citizens who
owned land, had been able to feel that they were
lighting for their own property. B u t all that feeling
had long passed from the armies of the seventh and
eighth centuries. The Saracens had, in their religion,
a sentiment which gave them union, and inspired
them w i t h the idea that they were all fighting for the
same cause. We have seen how the prospect of j o y
in Paradise, if they should die in battle, gave them
courage. Therefore, when we take these facts into
consideration, their quick and extensive victories do
not appear so incredible. Their hordes must have
seemed almost invincible to the greatly alarmed people
of Europe as they went so easily through Spain ; but
when they pushed up through the Pyrenees and came
against a really strong and well-governed people in
the Franks they made no further way ; they were
defeated. They were rolled back again across the
Pyrenees and left to make good their Empire in Spain.
They had this sentiment and inspiration common
to them all—their fighting religion ; but the caliphs
of Mahomet never showed any of that power of
organisation, any of that capacity for governing a
great empire from a single centre, which had been so
remarkable in the Romans during the first hundred
years or so after the b i r t h of Christ. The capital, or
chief place of residence of the caliphs, became, after a
while, Bagdad, on the Euphrates. It was more
central and convenient, no doubt, than a city in the
Arabian desert. But, first of all, the ruler of the
 MOORS INDEPENDENT OF BAGDAD 75
African province tried to assert himself as independent
of the caliph ; then the ruler of Spain, more distant
still from the centre, claimed independence more
strongly and successfully; and so it was also w i t h
other provinces in the circumference of the wide and
constantly widening Empire. The links, as we say,
of the Empire chain were not very solid or strong.
But there was always this in common, to help keep all
together—their religion. If the caliph in Bagdad had
little or no control over the doings of the Moorish
ruler of Spain, if the latter made war and peace and
so on as seemed good to him without referring for
orders to headquarters, the caliph still had some
influence over him and his followers in religious
matters, as being the representative and successor of
Mahomet, who was Allah's prophet.
It was very like the power which the Roman
Church, w i t h the Pope at its head, had over the
Christians. The Roman Empire, in a military sense,
and in the sense of having Rome as the centre of its
government and laws, had gone to pieces. There was
no more " appealing unto Caesar," or to any authority
at Rome, from the decision of a court of law in some
far-off province—as St. Paul appealed at Caesarea—
but still the Pope had his far-reaching power. The
officials of government had gone from the cities of
Gaul or of Britain or wherever it might be ; but the
clergy remained, and grew more and more in number,
and the authority of the Pope of Rome—or even of
the Pope from Avignon or Ravenna, for sometimes,
as we shall see, he was obliged to fly from Rome—had
its power over these clergy and through them over the
laity. Ever since Constantine had made Christianity
the State religion they had been servants and officials,
in this manner, of the dying Empire and of the growing
Church. The caliph's power was a like power,
because he was the successor of Mahomet, though it
76 T H E SARACENS
was never, in its spiritual influence, of equal power w i t h
that of the successor of St. Peter. B u t the t w o may
be compared, and the comparison is very interesting.
So now we have brought the story to a point when
we may very well pause a moment and take a look at
the map, to see how things have been arranging them-
selves—to ask ourselves " Who's who ? " in A . D . 800
and " Who has what ? " It is on Christmas Day of
that year that the mighty Charlemagne, the greatest
king of the Franks, is consecrated Emperor by the
Pope at Rome. That fact in itself tells a story.
B u t as for the world map of that time, you w i l l
remember how it was w i t h our England, that the
Anglo-Saxons, or one or other of those tribes from
Jutland, held all the east; that the boundaries of
Wessex went far west, where England is at its
broadest; that Mereia was the Middle England, and
that in the north was Northumbria, which went up to
the southern limits of the Picts and Scots in Caledonia.
The West Country, as we call it now, and Wales and
the West of Cumberland, as well as Ireland, were still
in the hands of the Celts.
There were Celts too on the Continent, in Brittany,
and in parts of Spain.
Spain itself, w i t h l i t t l e exception, was held by the
Moors, but of course the Gothic and Roman popula-
tion, whom the conquering Moors found there, still
remained there too. The Saracens also had all that
Northern African strip as far east as L i b y a and
Egypt. They had E g y p t itself, Palestine, Syria and
away to the east into India and so out of our picture.
In Asia Minor they kept up a continual contest for
many years w i t h the Eastern Empire.
That Eastern Empire itself has become a poor
possession in comparison w i t h its extent at the date of
the Roman Empire's division. It has a hold on the
extreme South of I t a l y and it also claims the islands
 CHARLEMAGNE 77

of Sardinia, Sicily, and of the Ægean Sea. It holds

Asia Minor as far south as the borders of Mesopotamia
and northwards to the Black Sea; but in those
regions it is continually menaced by the Saracens.
What we now call Turkey in Europe is w i t h i n the
Empire, and also the greater part of Thrace. It
retains Greece ; but of Macedonia it has scarcely any
grip. Various barbarian tribes, Slavs, Serbs, Bulgars,
have possession of the
country up to the
Danube.
A n d as for the rest
of the map, all that
matters, all that does
not belong to the
north-eastern barba-
rians, falls into the
Empire of Charle-
magne. Pepin, K i n g
of the Franks before
Charlemagne, had all
that we call France
and further had our
Switzerland, Bavaria
and, in the north, the
present Holland and
Belgium. He also was
king of considerable
territory east of the
Rhine. B u t under Charlemagne those large posses-
sions were very largely increased, eastward, and
northward, and southward. Southward he held I t a l y
right down to Naples. Eastward he had all the old
Roman province of I l l y r i c u m ; that is to say that his
sovereignty extended to the Danube. Northward of
the Danube, where that great river makes its south-
ward bend, he held Bohemia. He had the land of the
78 T H E SARACENS
Saxons up to and beyond the Elbe. He ruled over
Denmark and the south of Scandinavia.
The whole of the centre of the picture, in fact, is
included in this Carolingian Empire, as it was called,
from Carolus, the L a t i n form of Charles. A n d Charle-
magne had been consecrated Emperor by the Pope at
Rome. The Visigoths had been Christians, but they
had not been orthodox Christians according to the
opinion of the Church of Rome. They had been
Arians ; that is, followers of what the Roman Church
considered the wrong and heretical opinion of a certain
bishop called Arius. The Roman Church and the
Pope of Rome could not have used the clergy of the
Visigoths as their agents ; the Pope could not have
acted through such agents or worked w i t h them. B u t
he did, and he could, act through the Frankish clergy ;
and you sec over how large a space of the world he
could thus act and make his power felt.
In the Eastern Empire the Patriarch at Constanti-
nople was the head of the Christian power. The Pope's
authority did not extend there. Neither had it
authority in Spain under the Mahommcdan Moors.
Indeed a large number of the Romans and Goths in
Spain became Mahommedans, in order to enjoy the
privileges and the lighter taxes which the Moslems
imposed on Mahommedans. B u t the Pope had this
very strong position as the head of the Church all over
Charlemagne's Empire and beyond—for he was obeyed
in Britain and in Ireland.
The great Empire of the great Charlemagne was
not fated to last very long, as you w i l l see ; but it had
served to help in establishing over all the central part of
Europe the authority of the Church at Rome; and when
it broke up, that authority was still maintained over the
broken pieces of the Empire, no matter under what king
they fell. Charlemagne repaid the Pope well for his
consecration at Rome on Christmas Day of the year 800.
 CHAPTER X I
THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

N o w , since the Franks occupied, for a while, so large

an Empire, and were the principal people to establish
the Pope's power, let us see what they did over this
extent of Empire, what they made of i t , what it
became under them.
For the most part, we must realise they came into
territory, as they moved westward, which had been
conquered by the Romans and which had again been
conquered, from the Romans, by barbarians of the
Gothic tribes. So the Franks found a population
partly Roman and partly Gothic there, when they
came. They found Roman laws as the principal laws
of the country, slightly altered, no doubt, by the
Gothic customs, but much as the Ronlans had estab-
lished them. They found cities built in the Roman
way—that is, w i t h i n a square of walls, w i t h a gate in
the centre of each wall and streets running straight
through from one gate to the other opposite to i t .
That was the usual plan of the Roman cities, if the
ground allowed of their building in this w a y ; and the
roads went on through the surrounding country, from
one city to another, very straight, very well made,
turning as little as possible to right or left, and only
turning this little when a mountain over which, or a
river through which, it was impossible to carry the
road came in the way.
The Frankish tribes which penetrated into Gaul
79
30 T H E F R A N K S A N D T H E F E U D A L SYSTEM
from time to time—themselves, probably, pushed
westward by the Huns who came from further east
again—were divided into two great groups, the
Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks. The name
Ripuarian was given to the tribes who settled along
the " ripa," which is the L a t i n word for " bank," of
the Rhine. The name Salian, of the other great
group, as we have seen already, is of doubtful origin,
perhaps from the " saline " or " salt " sea ; because
this group came from the shores of the Baltic.
For a long time Franks kept pushing in from the
East through the Empire's wall. There were Franks
w i t h the Gothic and Roman army that defeated
A t t i l a at Chalons in the middle of the fifth century.
The Salians seem to have been the latest of the Franks
to come i n , but they became so strong that they
dominated all the rest.
I have spoken of those great kings of the Franks,
Pepin and Charlemagne, but the king under whom the
big work was done of bringing all the Frankish tribes,
and indeed all Gaul, under one authority, and giving
them that union which means strength—that king was
earlier than either of these. His name was Clovis.
He became king of the Salian Franks in 481.
The kings of his dynasty were called Merovingian,
from Merovig, an old chieftain. He made himself
master of the whole of Gaul, except of what was then
called Burgundy and Provence, in the south. B u t
you should know that this name Burgundy, derived
from that of one of the Gothic tribes, was made to
cover very different territories, under rulers of different
races, at different times in our story.
So here was this K i n g Clovis of the Franks ruling
over this large Empire. He found the Roman law
and the Roman system of government in use there ;
and the Franks adopted as much as they could of the
Roman customs into their own. B u t it was difficult.
 THE "COUNTS" 81
The Roman official who had represented the govern-
ment of the Empire was called the " comes," or
" count," and the Merovingian kings of the Franks
seem to have tried to continue to govern through the
" count." One of his duties was to collect taxes,
but the Franks do not seem to have understood
taxation as it was understood by the Romans. The
Romans made assessment, that is to say calculations,
from time to time, to find out how much money was
needed for the government of a province, and they
exacted from the people of the province as much as
was required to meet that need. Under the Franks
the tax came to be a fixed amount on property.
The d u t y of the Count in levying the tax cannot
have been easy, for these Franks were one and all
fighting men. In their own country the practice had
been to hold an assembly of the tribe for the making
of laws and judging cases. That was their idea of
government. It was a plan which might work well for
a small tribe. It was not suitable for a large empire.
The consequence is that we soon see the Count,
and other men of rank and of large possessions in
land, becoming more and more independent of the
king, who really could not make his authority felt.
One of the difficulties t h a t the king found, arose from
the custom, which was a Roman custom, of granting
" immunities," as they were called, to certain persons
and institutions. They were granted especially to
institutions connected w i t h the Church. They pro-
vided t h a t the lands to which they were given should
be " immune from " visits by the king's officials. The
great man, or the great institution, to whom or to
which the i m m u n i t y was granted thus became like a
small king, w i t h i n his own kingdom. He could do
almost as he pleased.
So there was always this trouble, and it grew
greater as time went on, that the king's authority
82 THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
was more and more disputed, more and more
weakened ; and in this weakening of authority the
security for life and for property grew weaker. The
poorer people found that their best hope for a secure
life was to put themselves under the protection of
some rich and powerful man ; that rich and powerful
man found that his best hope for safety was to take
under his protection as many as possible of these
people, who, in return for the protection, would fight
for h i m on occasion.
A n d this, shortly put, was, in the main, what
brought about the state of society known as the
feudal system.
It was the more easy for the lesser men, the
vassals, and the great man, the lord, to make these
terms w i t h each other, because something of the k i n d
was already in existence, both in the Germany from
which the Franks came and in the Roman and Gothic
society into which they had come as conquerors.
The name given to the assembling of men of less
power and wealth around the greater men had been
" comitatus," in Germany. In Rome it had been the
custom for a prominent citizen to have a troop of
" elientes," or clients, men of the people who came to
h i m to ask him for advice about any legal claims that
they were making, or any injustice under which they
were suffering. They would receive his advice, and
perhaps he would speak for them when their case came
before the court. In return, these clients would
support their patron, as the great man was called,
w i t h their votes whenever they could be of use to
him, and they would even accompany h i m about the
city, in times of disturbance, as a k i n d of bodyguard.
The Frankish kings, we may note, had a body-
guard for their special protection, and this bodyguard
was held in very high estimation, so much so that if
one of them were killed the killer, or his relations, had
 THE "PRECARIUM" 83
to pay a penalty three times as heavy as they would
have had to pay for the killing of any other free man.
So the service of the vassal to his feudal lord was
only an extension of the k i n d of service that the
client did for the patron ; and so too the service of
protection that the lord gave to the vassal might
easily grow out of the protection and help given by
the patron to the client.
A n d then there was another custom common in the
Roman and Gothic society which helped to form the
relationship between the vassal and the feudal lord.
If a free man were landless he was in a very poor posi-
tion. It was beneath his dignity to serve as a slave,
or even a s a " v i l l e i n , " which was a position in society
between that of a slave and a free man. B u t if he
were without land, he had no means of livelihood ;
and as his life was of no value to anyone he had no one
to defend him. Therefore it had become usual for
these landless free men to come to some large land-
owner and offer him to do h i m certain service if he
would grant, or lend, them a piece of land, or possibly
the use of a mill—a water-mill for grinding corn—or
some other grant out of which they might get a liveli-
hood. If this were granted them, they would give
their service and help to the lord. The L a t i n word
for " to pray " is " precari," and so this relationship
between the lord and the tenant was called " pre-
carium," because the tenant had " prayed " the lord
for i t . I have called it a " grant, or loan." It was
not a gift, because the lord might take it back at any
time, and so end the tenancy, nor could the tenant
pass on his right in the land, or whatever it might be,
to his heirs. If the lord did allow it to go on to these
heirs, they would probably have to pay h i m some
" fine," before they succeeded to i t , as well as under-
taking to continue the service which the first tenant,
when the grant was made, had promised.
84 THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
So herein, that it could be taken back by the lord,
it was like a loan ; and yet it differed from a loan in
this —that there was no idea in the mind of either the
lord or the tenant that it was likely to be taken back.
It. was intended to be a permanent loan, if we may use
that expression, but still it was recognised on both
sides that the lord or the lord's successors had the
power at any moment of taking it back, if he or they
pleased, from the tenant and the tenant's successors.
You must have heard the expression " a precarious
possession," or something of the k i n d . Y o u may now
know how that expression arose. The word " pre-
carious " is, of course, from this " precarium," which
is derived from the L a t i n word for " to pray."
You will find that these two ideas, that of the
relation between the patron and client, and t h a t
between the landlord and the " precarious " tenant,
helped to form the foundations, the roots, from which
the feudal system grew up. The land or the m i l l was
the fee, or fief (fief was the French form of the word) in
return for holding which the holder owed service to the
lord.
Just what he should do for the lord, by way of
service, differed in different places at first, and was
determined by the different customs of each place;
but as time went on the duties began to be defined, or
laid down, more exactly, and grew to be very much the
same wherever the system prevailed. The vassal had
to follow his lord to war when called on, he had to
serve as a defender when the lord was attacked, he
was liable to have to contribute to the dowry of the
lord's daughter when she was married and to his
lord's ransom if he should be taken prisoner by the
enemy. He had to follow the lord to battle armed at
his own cost, perhaps mounted, perhaps w i t h some of
his villeins following him.
Y o u can realise that when the country was in a
 D I V I S I O N S I N SAUL 85
very disturbed state, so that the king's authority
could not easily and quickly be enforced, the lord who
had many of these tenants or vassals could do very
much as he pleased on his own territories. Y o u w i l l also
realise that when men could no longer get justice from
the central authority, which the king represented, they
were only too grateful to get it from their feudal lord.
A n d the condition of Gaul under the Franks began
to be a condition of general disturbance after the
death of the great K i n g Clovis. He died in 511 and he
left his kingdom divided between his four sons. The
youngest of these sons, by name Clotaire, lived longer
than any of his brothers, but on his death, in 561, he
in t u r n left four sons, and again there was division of
the kingdom, claims were made by one and were
resisted by another. There was continual civil war.
Yet again, a few years later, there were new divisions
amongst the children of one or other of these, and so it
went u n t i l the kingdom was once more united, after
613, by the death or defeat of his rivals, under Clotaire
I I . Clotaire was nominally sovereign, yet still there
were the subordinate kingdoms, each claiming some
independence.
B u t during this century, when the Frankish con-
querors were righting w i t h each other, the general
condition of society had been altered. We have seen
how the large landowners began drawing to themselves
a body of vassals, and how they gradually became more
independent of the king's authority. We have to
notice at the same time that the power of the Church,
in the hands of its bishops, was continually growing
greater. The Church was constantly being enriched
by donations of land given it by pious persons who
deemed that they might find salvation by these gifts ;
and what made the Church the more powerful was the
above-mentioned custom of granting " immunities."
The " immunities " were granted by the Crown, in
86 THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
return for some service done, or by way of payment of
a debt, or as an act of mere friendliness; and the
meaning of the " i m m u n i t y " was that the land in
respect of which it was granted was " immune " from
the king's tax collectors or law officers. The Crown
officials could not enter on i t . The taxes were collected
and the law administered by persons acting for the
landowner. You see how this again would work
towards making the great landowners independent of
the Crown. A n d these " immunities " were largely
given to the bishops in respect of the Church lands.
The bishops thus grew to great independence and
power, and they worked continually to have their own
people, the subordinate clergy, subject to their own
laws, the laws of the Church, and not to the laws of the
Crown.
Now at the court of the Merovingian kings and
also of the lesser kings, the chief officer and chief
executor of the king's w i l l was an official called " the
Mayor of the Palace." He was everywhere a man of
great influence and of high family. He acted not so
much like an English Prime Minister as like the vizier,
the chief officer, of an Oriental king.
As time passed, in the constant distractions of the
kingdom and the weakening power of the central
authority, the power of these high officials grew con-
tinually.
The distractions and the struggles between the
lesser kingdoms in Gaul, and also between the nobles
and the king, went on for another century. The
contest which really settled the matter, for a while,
was a battle at Tertry in 687, in which Pepin, Pepin I I . ,
as he was called, defeated the king's forces, and took
the king prisoner. I t was not, however, t i l l the middle
of the next century that the line of the Merovingian
kings died out. A l l that while, however, they were
practically dominated by Pepin, the victor at Tertry,
 CHARLES M A R T E L 87
and when their dynasty came to an end he became
king of the Franks, and therewith founded a new
dynasty, the Carolingian.
Pepin came to the throne w i t h powers derived from
two sources. His family had held the great office of
Mayor of the Palace in one of the subordinate king-
doms for nearly half a century, and he was also
descended from a great bishop, Arnulf. Thus he had
all the power of the Church on his side. Charles
Martel, who succeeded him, gained an important
victory over the Saracens at Tours in 732. That is a
very notable event in our story, for it pushed back the
Moors south of the Pyrenees again, and freed Christian
Gaul from their danger. Further, this same Charles
(Martel, or the Hammer, as he was called) served the
Church of Rome faithfully in Germany, supporting a
-mission which Bishop Boniface was carrying on for
the conversion of some of the still pagan German
tribes to Christianity.
The Pope, Gregory I I I . , on his accession to the
Papal throne, was menaced by the Lombards in the
N o r t h of I t a l y and by independent Dukes in the
south. He appealed to Charles Martel for assistance.
The Lombards, however, had fought wjth Charles at
Tours, to save Christendom from the Saracens, and
Charles did not care to take arms against them. B u t
the son of Charles, who succeeded h i m as Pepin I I I . ,
seems to have understood how greatly his power
would be strengthened if he could claim to be sup-
ported by the Church. The authority of the Pope at
Rome was becoming every year more powerful;
Boniface had now the title of Papal Legate, the
Pope's representative, and as such he anointed Pepin
I I I . king of the Franks, in the presence of the great
nobles, at the capital city of Soissons. W i t h i n two
years Pepin had defeated the Lombards and r i d the
Pope of their menace. He did not take their kingdom,
88 THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
but the territory that he conquered from them he gave
to the Papal See. Thus he made the Papacy—that
is to say, the successive Popes of Rome—a territorial
sovereignty, owning extensive land and much wealth.
At the same time he accepted a title, that of
" patrician," from the Pope. It was a title which had
meant much in the days of ancient Rome. It meant
nothing now, except that it was a sign of the close
links that bound together the Prankish kingdom and
the Papacy. Rut that in itself meant much, for these
were the two most powerful forces in the Western
world of that time, and both were growing stronger
every year.
13y the time of Pepin's death, in 768, he was king
of all Gaul.
He left two sons, and to the younger, before an
assembly of his nobles, he bequeathed certain pro-
vinces ; but, fortunately perhaps for the peace of
France, the younger son died and all came into the
hand of the elder, who was Charles the Great.
A n d by this time that custom which we have seen
growing common, of vassals leaguing themselves
together around a lord, had established itself over a
great part of the Empire. The feudal system had
really become a fact, although it was a fact which was
concealed by the power and the splendour of this
great emperor, who was so constantly victorious.
The big territorial landowners became " Counts "
and the lands over which they exercised authority
were called " counties." We noted the origin of the
title a few pages back. Sometimes counties, two or
more, had been drawn together into a single larger
domain, which might then be called a " duchy," w i t h
a " duke," or, in French, " due," over i t . Rut Charle-
magne's policy was to break up the duchies and collect
their revenues and taxes by his own officers as the
originally appointed " Counts " had collected them.
 POPE A N D E M P E R O R 89
Even when the feudal system was fully established,
the powers of the lords were not unlimited, by any
means, and they governed w i t h i n the bounds of their
lands largely through the " curia," or assembly,
summoned from time to time, of the vassals. The
king, as well as the lords beneath him, would summon
a " curia," and this was called the " curia regis," the
king's curia, when it was the assembly of the king's
vassals and was summoned by him. There seems to have
been no l i m i t to the points that might be discussed in
these assemblies ; but the lord's assent to any vote
passed by them appears to have been required before
the measures voted on could be put into operation.
Now the help that Charlemagne gave to the Pope
was valuable to him not only against the Lombard
foreigners, but against the Roman nobles themselves.
It was the Pope, the Bishop, and not the Duke, of
Rome who appealed to Charlemagne ; and that very
fact shows how far the position of the Pope had
altered from that of the early bishops of the Church.
He had become ruler of a territory, of a great city,
even of a State. A n d yet he had little force of arms
w i t h which to defend this possession, which had come
to h i m by the donations of pious Christians. Pepin,
we have noted, had given h i m lands recovered from
the Lombards. B u t the great men in Rome, the
great families, constantly disputed the Pope's authority
over the city and the State. To have the Emperor as
his ally gave the Pope a power against which they
could do little.
Under Charlemagne the Prankish Empire grew to
its greatest extent and splendour, but it had no rest.
One of the reasons of the Emperor's success in
keeping his nobles in tolerable obedience was, doubt-
less, that he kept them so busy, fighting his battles.
He subjected the Northmen (later, Normans) who had
come down from Scandinavia in their ships and settled
90 THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
themselves along the northern shores of France,
facing Britain. Afterwards this land of the N o r t h -
men had the name of Normandy.
The Saxons, occupying what later were called the
Netherlands, put up a surprisingly strong opposition
to the great Emperor, but in the end he conquered
their independence. Elsewhere, around his ever-
extending boundaries, the smaller nations gave h i m
less trouble. In the end it is not too much to say that
his Empire included all of what we know as France
and Germany w i t h Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and
parts of Scandinavia. Southward he held the northern
parts of I t a l y , nearly as far down as Rome. He
crossed the Pyrenees, but gained no lasting hold on
any of Spain. Indeed, it was on return from a Spanish
expedition that he suffered the greatest disaster that
ever befel his arms. This was the defeat of a large
body of his forces at Roncesvalles, in which fight were
killed the great hero Roland and a number of the most
illustrious of the Frankish leaders and nobles.
In later years both Charlemagne himself and his
great men, such as Roland and others, his paladins,
and " the, twelve peers," were made the subjects of
the most extravagant stories. They were related to
have performed superhuman exploits, to have been
eight feet in height and to have conducted themselves
generally in a manner which Cervantes, the Spanish
novel writer, caricatured in his famous story of Don
Quixote. The twelve peers may remind us of the
twelve knights of K i n g Arthur's Round Table, and
it is likely that there was some original connection
between the stories.
B u t Charlemagne was t r u l y Charles the Great
without these fabulous additions to his greatness.
He died at A i x la Chapelle in 814 and was succeeded
by his only surviving son, whom he had crowned w i t h
his own hand the year before his death.
 CHAPTER X I I

HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED

IN this and the next chapters I propose to attempt a

sketch of the way in which the tribes of the Goths
lived, whether in the Empire of Charlemagne or in our
own island. A n d because the island story must be of
the greater interest to us, seeing that it is our own, I
shall t r y to describe the mode of life of the people there,
and will ask you to accept that description as giving
the type or pattern of the life on the Continent also.
The feudal system did not develop in England
precisely as it developed on the Continent of Europe.
This is a statement which may surprise you, for
you w i l l no doubt know that the feudal system did
exist in England at a rather later date, and that the
principal part of England's story for many a year was
made up of fights between the feudal barons them-
selves and of combinations of the barons against the
king. B u t this feudalism was brought into England
by the Norman kings, after W i l l i a m I.'s conquest in
1066, and again there was a fresh importation of feudal
practices under those French kings of the House of
Anjou—thence called Angevins—who reigned both
over England and over a large slice of France.
B u t it did not spring up in England like a growth
from the soil, as it did in Charlemagne's empire. It
had not the same roots in England. The Anglo-
Saxon had not quite the same customs of the comitatus,
91
92 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
the body-guard devoted to the king or chief, as the
Franks had, nor was England as familiar as France
w i t h the Roman customs of the patrocinium—the
relation of patron and client—and the precarium—
the tenure of land granted in answer to a prayer—out
of which the relations between the feudal lord and his
vassal so easily grew. Moreover, you w i l l remember
that the Anglo-Saxon possession of our England did
not include the whole of the island. There were still
Britons along the western fringe and there were Picts
north of the Forth. And even the land that the
Anglo-Saxon did hold was not one kingdom, but
divided into three main divisions, to say nothing of
some lesser divisions. There were the kingdoms of
Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, to name them in
their order from north to south.
At one time we hear of the " Heptarchy," or seven
kingdoms, but the number really might be stated
equally well as more or less than seven, according as
this or the other collection of tribes were reckoned as
independent.
Therefore the kingdoms were small, so that the
kings, if they had any strong rule at all, could make
their ruling strength felt all over their kingdoms. We
have seen that one of the reasons why the feudal
system came into being on the Continent was that the
king was not able, in disturbed times, to make good
his authority far from his own headquarters. That
failure to make good was less likely to occur to the
ruler of the small kingdoms into which England was
divided.
B u t what did happen in England was that the free
man, the man who owned his own piece of land as a
freehold, gradually became less free. In the system
of tribal government which the Gothic tribes brought
westward w i t h them, it had been the custom for the
free men of the tribe (the ceorls, or churls) to come
 T H E E N G L I S H LOSE T H E I R F R E E D O M 93
together at certain times and pass laws and t r y cases
that arose under the laws. They were called together
by the king and by the chief men (the eorls, or earls)
and they voted on any subject that came before the
assembly. A n d still, in England, the freemen had the
right to come up to the assemblies and vote. But,
though the kingdoms were not very large, they were
larger, no doubt, than the territories held by the tribes
in their Eastern homes. It was a long way for the
voters to come to the assemblies. They had their
business, as towns began to grow, to occupy them.
Perhaps their agriculture, their mill, or their cattle
needed their attention. At all events, however it
happened, they ceased to go to the assemblies, and the
result, of course, was that the king and the earls got
more and more of the law-making and of the decision
of cases into their own hands, and the ordinary free-
man, though still in name free, and still w i t h his right
to vote, came to have less and less power and had to
obey the decisions of the king and his council of earls
more and more. They had no arrangement by which
they might make their wishes known at the assembly
by means of a representative appointed by them-
selves, as our voters now arc able to make,, their wishes
known by appointing their Member of Parliament
and sending him to Westminster to speak for them.
In theory all the old English voters were members of
their parliament, so to call i t . They could all go to it
and speak and vote. But, owing to the difficulties of
going, and the distance, the result was that they
did not go at all, and so had no one to represent their
views in the government under which they were
supposed to be free, and in which they were all sup-
posed to have an equal share in governing. They
continued, however, to have the power to vote in
their more local assemblies, in the " hundred court,"
which was something like an enlarged parish council
94 HOW T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
of a few villages, and in the " shire court," or council
of the shire, formed by the union of many villages.
H o w these courts were formed, you shall read in the
next chapter. It seems to be rather doubtful whether
the people availed themselves much of these powers.
They probably became more and more content to
leave the business of government to the chief men.
These three kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and
Wessex were constantly striving together for the
mastery. Our unfortunate land can have known very
little peace u n t i l Egbert, who ruled all England from
827 to 830, did succeed in bringing the kingdoms under
his sole authority. The rulers of the Franks do not
seem to have made any attempt to extend their wide
empire so as to include our islands. Charlemagne,
however, took much interest in the course of affairs
in England, and at one time there was a project of
marrying his son to a daughter of the K i n g of Mercia.
The project was not accomplished ; and at a moment
when Mercia was at her strongest, so that there d i d
seem a possibility of her overcoming the other divisions
of the country and uniting all under one rule, Charle-
magne's influence was exerted to restore the K i n g of
Northumbria to his throne. The fact is that the
Frankish policy towards England was, not to attempt
its conquest, but to thwart its own efforts towards
unity, so as to keep it divided, and by reason of
its divisions, weak. B u t to the English generally,
Charlemagne showed much favour and they were well
received at his court. He had assumed the position of
head, w i t h the Pope, of the Catholic Church, and that
position in itself gave h i m a reason and an excuse for
interfering, as he did, w i t h Church matters in England.
I have said that the English were well received at
the court of the great Emperor. Y o u may take that
to mean that the English were by no means, at this
far-away date, shut up in their own island. They
<*

CANTERBURY.
96 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
often went to and from the Continent and even to
Rome ; and Roman emissaries, priests and bishops,
were constantly coming to England.
To get a true picture in your minds of the country,
both in England and in other parts of Europe, it is
almost necessary first to dismiss from your minds the
picture as you know it to-day. Whereas, now, you
see for the most part, as you travel by train or motor,
cleared land, open fields, and here and there woodland,
you have to imagine a land at that time universally
covered by wood, w i t h only here and there clearances
made by man. Along the tops of the downs, however,
exposed to the high winds, there would be very little
growth of trees. The woodland would be full of game
and of wild creatures. There would be deer, and wolves
preying on the deer.
You must imagine a population extraordinarily
less numerous than it is now. Even in 1087, when
Domesday Book, which contained a " census " of all
England, was made, the population is given at
1,500,000. For the most part we may suppose the
people living rather after the manner in which the
Gothic tribes lived in their own country—in clearances,
or what we might call villages, in the midst of the wild
wood and in the river valleys. B u t there would be
some towns, larger villages gradually growing, and
these towns you would probably find beginning to be
surrounded by a protecting wall of raised earth and
palings w i t h gates that were shut at nightfall.
Generally the houses, both in the villages and in the
towns, would be of timber and clay, built as 1 w i l l
shortly describe ; but after a while the churches and
the great men's houses, and the fortified castles would
be of stone. There is what we call Saxon stonework
still to be seen both in England and in other parts of
Europe.
Now through this green wood, which generally
 MODES O F T R A V E L 97

covered our England, there would be roads and tracks.

A l l the travelling by land would be on foot or on horse-
back. The use of wheels for vehicles was known even
to the Britons before the coming of the English, for they
had their war-chariots; but even where the Romans had
made their fine roads it is not likely that, after all the
years since the Romans left the island, these roads would
not have fallen into such disrepair that no wheeled t h i n g
could go along them far without sticking in the mud.
For another fact, that you have to realise about the
country of that day, is that it was not only far more
wooded than it is now : it was also far more marshy.
The rivers ran more broadly, their banks were wider.
A l l the neighbourhood of Westminster, for instance,
was a swamp, and the Thames, because it Avas so wide,
was far less deep and it was fordable there. Men and
horses could walk through i t , perhaps on some stones
thrown into the bed, and certainly it must have been
far less deep and far more wide than it is now.
Because of this marshiness of the lower grounds,
the roads by which people travelled went as much as
possible along the upper, the harder and drier, ground,
sometimes following a line near the top of the downs.
The tracks or byways from the woodland and Aalley
villages rose up out of the lowland as quickly as the
ground would allow and went up to join the older
roads along the downs. B u t , in spite of all that, you
must realise that the rivers were really the great means
of communication. They were the chief roads and
highways ; and the proof of that is that it is always
low down, by a river, that all the old towns and the
big church establishments and buildings were made.
There are Canterbury, London, Winchester, Oxford,
Paris, Rouen and very many more that you w i l l
think of. N o t a river of any size that did not have a
town springing up on its banks, and not a t o w n of any
size springing up anywhere except on a river's bank.
 98 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
A n d the way in which the English and other
Gothic people formed their homes and lived their lives
appears to have been very different from the way of
life of the older Celts. We have seen that the Anglo-
Saxons, when they came to England, established them-
selves in the river valleys and in the woodland country ;
but there is evidence that those earliest inhabitants of
whom we know anything, the Celts, who were here
before the Romans, lived more on the upper lands, on
the Downs. This is shown by the relics which the
plough and the spade discover for us, on these upper
levels, and also by those extraordinary large stone
rings of which the most famous is that at Stonehengc,
although it is certain that only a few hundred years
ago the stones at Avebury near Marlborough must have
encircled a very much larger area. Most of the
Avebury stones have been broken up now by the
farmers to make roads and houses.
The great stone circles had to do w i t h the religion
of which the Druids were the priests, and you should
note that this Avebury, near Marlborough, is a very
central spot, in England. It is on high ground, and
we know that many tracks or roadways led from it as
a centre, going out like spokes of a wheel. Also you
may notice that many of the rivers radiate out
from that central high ground and find their way
thence in different directions to the sea. Probably
that part of the country was looked on as particularly
sacred because it was so central.
Now for people coming to England from the
Continent of Europe, the easiest way to come, because
it was the shortest sea-passage, would be across the
Channel at, or near, Dover. Thence, if they wanted
to get into the heart of England, they would be
prevented from going northward by the Thames.
They could not cross the Thames on foot or on horse
t i l l they came to London, where the Romans made their
 L I N E S OF T R A V E L 99
Watling Street, as it was called, across the river and
thence up to Chester.
B u t as a matter of fact they were more likely to
wish to go westward than northward, because it was
in the west of England that those things of value lay
for which, in the old days, people did come from the
Continent to England—that is the lead and t i n that
were in the mines. These lay in the west of England
and in Ireland. In Ireland, in the Wicklow moun-
tains, some gold was found. So, then, going westward,
these people came to the meeting of the roads at or
about Avebury and the Salisbury Plain country.
On those high downs and on that t h i n soil there
would be few and small trees. The woodland would
be all below, say rising not much more than 500
feet above sea-level. Therefore this high country
gave the best and easiest land for the living of a people
who were in the pastoral stage ; that is, had flocks
and herds. It was, and it still is, good sheep l a n d .
A n d it d i d not need clearing.
The Anglo-Saxons came w i t h somewhat different
habits. They had been used to l i v i n g in the wood-
lands and the river valleys, rather than on open
downs; and therefore it was to the lower lands that
they naturally resorted. They established themselves
in villages there, as they had been established in their
homes across the Channel.
I would remind you again that I am t r y i n g to tell
you the story of how these people came and settled in
England, and how the k i n d of life that they lived has
developed into the k i n d of life that we lead now, not
only because it is our very own English story, and
therefore of the closest interest to us, but also because
it is in much the same way that the Gothic tribes
settled and developed over most of the Frankish
Empire and also where the Visigoths lived, in Spain,
both while they were the actual rulers of Spain and
8
100 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
also in the times of the Moorish conquest of that
country. So that it is the story of a great part of the
world, and of the part most important for the world's
progress, that we may see being enacted on a small
scale in our own island.
In the river valleys, then, these incoming Saxons
would establish themselves on some firm and not too
marshy bit of land. There they would build the
houses of their villages. A n d the houses, at first,
were built in this manner : they would either leave
four tree stems, as they cleared the woodland, or else
would drive four poles into the ground, to form the
corners of the projected house, which we will call
A c
| | . Then they would bring together and
fasten together, at their tops, the trunks or poles A
and B and the poles C and D, so that they came like
t h i s T h u s they got the shape o f the house.
Y o u may note that this is somewhat the shape of that
Gothic arch, which became so important in later build-
ing. The house, at first, was divided into two rooms,
at most, in one of which the men lived and in the other
the women. The builders threw a roofing pole across,
from the top of one of the arches—that is to say, from
the point at which the poles A and B were fastened
together, to the top of the other arch, where C and D
were fastened together. This made the " roof tree."
Then they put struts, or strengthening pieces of wood,
across from one pole to the other, about at the height
where the poles began to bend most sharply so as to
come together. The usual distance from each of the
poles, as between A and B, and also between C and D,
where they entered the ground, was 16 feet. Thus
they had the frame of the house constructed.
Then they would apply slighter rods of timber to
the sides, in the k i n d of weaving way in which you
 S A X O N HOUSES 101

must have seen those hurdles made which are used

very generally in England for penning sheep. It is
what is called wattle work—the rods going in and out,
under and over each other. Then they would plaster
up the crevices w i t h clay, " daubing " i t , as it is called,
so that the whole work is called " wattle and daub."
That is how their houses were made, or somehow like
that. I w i l l not affirm that it was just in the order
that I have mentioned that each of the processes was

A N ANGLO-SAXON M A N S I O N .

performed, but it is tolerably sure that it was somewhat

thus that those Saxons and most of the German tribes
made their houses.
As a rule the houses were thatched, but sometimes
tiled w i t h roofing tiles, after the fashion of the villas
that the Romans had built. The floor might also be
tiled.
In the houses of the wealthier people the walls were
often hung w i t h tapestry, woven and worked by the
Anglo-Saxon ladies, who wen 1 skilful in spinning and in
needlework. These tapestries were hung from hooks,
102 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
tenter-hooks, from which we have our proverb of
" being on tenter-hooks." They served to exclude
the draught, as well as for adornment, for probably
the " wattle and daub " was not always wind proof.
A n d then there was a hole at the top of the roof to
let out the smoke of the fire, which would be lighted in
the centre of the room, or hall. The houses had no
chimneys. Sometimes they had windows for light,
but these were only slits in the walls not glazed.
They did know something of the use of glass, for
they had glass drinking-vessels, as well as vessels of
wood and of silver. The horns of the cattle were
used for the same purpose. For the furniture of their
houses they had tables, generally of a round shape.
There arc several quaint pictures, adorning old manu-
scripts, showing them seated, or standing, at dinner.
They had benches and stools, but no movable seats,
as it seems. The seat they called a " sett " a thing
to " settle," or " s i t " on. We still use the word
" s e t t l e " for a k i n d of sofa, and " stool " comes from
the same Anglo-Saxon word. We are learning now not
only the story of the beginning of our own ways of life,
but also much of the story of our own words and way of
talking.
In the better houses the seat and table at which the
heads of the family sat were raised on a flooring a
little above the level of the rest, on what was called a
dais. This would only be in the bigger houses. The
dinner and other meals were always served in the hall,
or larger room, which really was the one important
part of the house. The apartments for the women were
sometimes adjoining the hall, under the same roof,
but sometimes " the lady's bower," as it was called,
was a small separate building. Bed places, like berths
in a ship's cabin, were often arranged for the men along
the sides of the great hail, screened off by a curtain.
Y o u w i l l understand that the better and larger a
 T A B L E MANNERS 103
house was, and the wealthier its owner, the more it
would have of these fittings and conveniences. Most
of the houses in the ordinary village we may suppose
to have been almost altogether without them.
For their food at table, even in the best houses,
they do not seem to have had forks. They had
knives, but how much they were used at table we
hardly know. Fingers were the chief instruments ;
and they were careful to wash their hands before and

AN ANCLO-SAXON DlNNER-PARTY.

FROM Wright's Homes of Other Days.)

after meals. Indeed washing, both of the person and
of their clothes, seems to have been more carefully
and more often done thus early than a little later in the
story. I am not giving you any account of their
clothes, because you will get an idea of them much
more quickly and exactly from the illustrations.
Often, in the large houses, they would have one or
more minstrels playing to them as they ate, for they
were fond of music and of the dance, and of various
games. The Romans had left, in 'Britain, the tradition
104 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
of their games and gladiators' exhibitions in the
amphitheatres, and these had not been forgotten.
The Saxons may have come into that tradition and
adopted the games, or they may have brought their
own. They had games that were a k i n d of mimic war-
fare, w i t h bows and arrows and javelin or dart throw-
ing, which no doubt served to keep them in practice for
the frequent wars which the kings waged together and
for which a contingent from each village was required.
Their chief food seems to have been bread, w i t h
butter, cheese, and m i l k . This shows how much they
depended on their live-stock, even though they seldom,
as we may suppose, ate fresh meat. But they had
poultry and ate much fish, and had a few vegetables,
such as beans, besides the wild produce of the woods,
like blackberries, mushrooms, nuts, and so on. They
brewed beer, and mixed it w i t h honey to make the
favourite drink called " mead." A little wine came
in from the Continent; but only the rich men could
afford that.
To give them light, we know that they had candles,
made both of the tallow, the fat of animals, and of
wax, from the bees, and they also used lamps, holding
oil, w i t h a wick from the spout, like the Roman lamps.
As a rule, in the villages established in the wood-
land, where the houses were not close together, on the
sides of a road, or in a circle, b u t were scattered among
the cleared places, a mound of earth w i t h a hedge on
top was thrown up round about i t . It was called by
the Saxon word from which we have our word " wall " ;
but it hardly was what we should call a wall. Perhaps
it was partly to protect the home garden, which lay
w i t h i n i t , from strolling cattle and w i l d creatures, and
partly for defence against enemies. There is evidence
that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of flowers and
of their gardens.
Where the houses lay alongside a road, and
 W A L L E D HOUSES 105

especially beside what was called a " street " (which

meant one of the paved Roman roads, from stratum,
meaning a paved surface), this surrounding wall or
mound would not be made.
As time passed they began to make improvements
in their houses. The first improvement seems to have
been to build walls, up to about the height of a man's
head—timber walls only at first—making use of trunks
that had grown w i t h a bend in them, as the corner
posts, for the arch. From that came the occasional
use of stone for the walls, where stone was easily to be
found, or of brick, where there was clay convenient for
the baking ; but for very many years wood was the
usual material for the building of all except the great
houses, churches, castles, and the like. Of course it
was very inflammable, and you know how, even as late
down in our story as the date (1666) of the great fire
of London, the destruction was so complete because
almost all the houses were of wood.
 CHAPTER XIII

now T H E PEOPLE LIVED—continued

IT is likely that some of the Celts, before the coming

of the later invaders, had begun to descend from their
l u l l villages and to occupy the river valleys and
clearings in the woodlands ; but we do not know much
of their story, and have to piece it together as best we
may from the signs of their residence which they have
left. Both before the Roman occupation of B r i t a i n
and also for two or more centuries afterwards, we do
not know at all clearly what went on in our island.
B u t about the Saxons, nearly from their first
coming to England, we have written evidence to give
us information. We know something of how their
village societies were formed, and these societies are
extremely interesting to us, because we can see from
them how our present way of living came about, how
the landowner and the tenant, the squire and the
agricultural labourer came to be.
The villages, then, in these Saxon times, consisted
of a group of the " wattle and daub " houses formed
in the manner that you have seen. If they were built
near one of the roads, the houses would be on either
side of the road, forming something like what we call
" the village street" now. If they were not near a
road they would often be arranged in a circle, w i t h a
clear space in the middle. In this clear space, sur-
rounded by the houses, we may see the earliest form of
the modern " village green."
106
 H O W PEOPLE L I V E D 107
A n d then, outside the circle of houses would be the
lands which the villagers held and worked. There
would be a certain area of this land which would be
cultivated, w i t h the plough, for crops, and, further,
outside that there would be land which would be
grazed by the villagers' cattle and sheep. It would be
what we call " common land," and any freeman in the
village would have the right to t u r n out on it a certain
fixed number of animals. Besides this there would be
a certain area of ground beyond again, called " the
waste," where the pigs of the villagers might be turned
out to feed in the woods. This area also was defined
by law, so that it should not run into the area allotted
to a neighbouring village.
Now the area of cultivated land held by each of the
ceorls (the churls, or free peasants) in the village was
generally fixed at t h i r t y acres. It was reckoned that
t h i r t y acres was the l i m i t that a team of oxen could
plough and keep in order during the year. B u t a team
was reckoned to consist of eight oxen, and each ceorl
was only allowed one pair of oxen.
Y o u w i l l see what this implies. It implies that
they shared their oxen among them, four of the pro-
prietors coming together, w i t h two oxen each, to
make up a team. Thus there was sharing in the oxen
and in the ploughing work that the oxen did, as well as
in the common grazing land. I want you to notice,
as a great feature of the early village life, this sharing or
community, this having many things in common.
Then there were the cattle and the flocks and the
pigs ; and these would all need looking after. B u t
each owner did not look after his own. On the
contrary, a herdsman for the cattle, a shepherd for
the sheep, and a swineherd for the pigs were appointed.
The ceorls were not the only freemen. There was
a class of freemen, too, of less importance than these
holders of t h i r t y acres. They had to do some of the
108 HOW T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
work under the thirty-acre men ; and perhaps it was
from their class that the swineherd and the shepherd
were taken. Another man who was employed in the
same way, as a servant of the community, was the
miller, the corn-grinder.
Below this lower class of freemen, again, came the
serfs, the slaves. In the earliest known documents
that show us what the duties and rights of the free-
men in the villages were, there is no mention at all of
the rights and duties of the serfs, because, as a matter
of fact, they had, in law, no rights, and to their duties
their was no l i m i t . They had to do what they were
bid, and their masters had as much authority over
them as over cattle. They were indeed owned as
" chattels," or cattle. B u t it docs not follow that they
were ill-treated, for a wise master would not treat even
his cattle or his sheep i l l . He would treat them well,
because the stronger and healthier they were the more
work they would do for him or the more milk or wool
they would give him. It was to his interest to be
kind to both the two-legged and the four-legged
cattle. The slaves were members of the conquered
race for the most part.
A n d then, besides the ceorls, and probably at first
chosen by them and from among them, was the eorl.
His business was to look after the community in a
general way, to preside at its meetings, to act as its
judge, and as its leader in case of quarrels w i t h the
neighbours. In return, he had portions of land given
to him amidst the portion of the ceorls, and the
ceorls had to work the land for him, or to get it worked
for h i m by their slaves. Generally the law was that
they had to give him so many days' work during the
week. That is the way in which their work was
measured. They thus paid h i m what was really very
like a rent for his land, and as time went on it was more
and more in the light of what we call rent that it was
 EORLS A N D CEORLS 109
regarded. Similarly, when they brought corn to the
m i l l to be ground, they had to put a certain portion of
the ground corn into a chest especially kept there for
the eorl. A n d here again, this paying in of the corn
came to convey the idea that the m i l l belonged to the
eorl and that this was a payment for the privilege of
grinding the corn there. Thus the eorl came more and
more into the position of owner of the land and of all
in the village.
Besides the duties that the eorl owed to the ceorls,
and the duties they owed to him, he himself had duties
that he owed to the king. These were chiefly three,
to follow the king to war, to maintain the bridges
w i t h i n the boundaries of the village lands, and to help
build the fortified places, the castles. He also had to
see that the king's taxes were paid, when taxes began
to be imposed. A n d just as, out of the payments of
service and of corn made by the ceorls to the eorl, the
idea grew that these payments were made as a k i n d of
rent for the land, of which the eorl was the owner,
so too, as between the eorl and the king, the services
that the eorl owed and paid began to be looked on as
payments made by the eorl for the land which he
held from the king. Therefore the whole^land of the
country began to be regarded as in the king's possession
and to be rented, as we should say, from him by the
eorls, by whom it was again in part " sub-let," to use
our modern term, to the ceorls or peasants.
As we have seen, the area that it was considered
right for the ceorl to hold was t h i r t y acres, but in
various ways this might be divided or added to, so that
the original equality did not last long. A n d as, the
population grew, more land had to be taken in, from
the waste, for cultivation, to provide for younger sons.
The eorls had a curious power of forbidding, if they
so pleased, the marriages proposed by the ceorls and
their children. Perhaps the power was originally
110 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
voted to them by the ceorls themselves as a means of
controlling the population, so that there should not be
more people than the available land could support;
but it is a curious power for any authority to have over
men who called and believed themselves " free."
B u t the fact is that the so-called freedom of these men
became more and more of an illusion; they became
less and less free.
After Christianity was accepted as the religion of
England there was another person, besides those
already mentioned, who had a right to be supported
by the community of the village. This was the priest,
and the tenth of some of the produce, which was
allotted as his share, in return for his services as
priest, is the origin of those " tithes " which still are
paid to the clergy.
A l l payments were, for a long time, made " in
k i n d , " that is to say, for instance, in corn, or in wool or
milk, or in so many days' work. Coined metal, as
what we call *' a medium of exchange," had been
known in England for a very long while, even before
the coming of the Romans, but its use does not seem to
have been common. After a while, however, its use
increased, and gradually payment in coin, by the
ceorls to the eorl, began to take the place of payment
in kind, and the eorl might welcome the coin because
of its ease of transmission to the king when the king
required money for his wars.
At first, as you w i l l see from all this, the villages
were very much what we call self-supporting. They
had all they required for food. They had the wool of
their sheep and the hides of their cattle to be worked
up into clothing. They had unlimited firewood from
the forest. So they had l i t t l e need of money, for
exchange. B u t as they became more rich than their
own needs demanded, in such things as wool and hides
and the foods that did not perish quickly, such as
 T H E CHAPMEN 111

cheese, then they might begin to exchange these

things for other produce which they could not make
for themselves, and which might be brought in by the
travelling merchants, called " chapmen " (from the
word " cheap," to sell, whence we have the London
street, called Cheapside, to-day). These chapmen
came on horseback w i t h their wares and bought and
sold in the villages, and then it became most useful to
have coin as a means of exchange. Even the wool was
a bulky stuff to c a r r y ; yet it was less inconvenient
than some of the other commodities. The two chief
articles of necessity that the villagers could not supply
themselves w i t h were iron implements and salt.
This wool-selling of the villages, we may be sure,
was done in a very small way at first, but it grew and
grew u n t i l it became very important and a source of
great riches, as wealth was then estimated, to England.
This was when the carrying of the wool over-Channel,
to the Continent, had been arranged for, and there was
a regular trade going on. That, however, was not to
happen u n t i l the days when the Normans were rulers of
England and could keep their own kinsmen, the
Scandinavian rovers, from piracy in the narrow sea
straits.
At the point of time to which we have now brought
down our story, say 800, when Charlemagne was
anointed Emperor by the Pope in Rome, the Danes,
from Denmark and perhaps from Norway and Sweden
too, were contantly vexing and harrying all the
eastern and southern coasts of England and the
opposite coasts of the Continent. Their way was to
sail up the rivers w i t h their ships, to take everything
which they could easily carry away, to work havoc of
every kind, by fire and sword—then back to their ships
and away again.
At this time you w i l l note that the bigger towns
were all in the river valleys, as we have seen already,
112 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
and also that most of them were not very far inland.
In B r i t a i n the Romans had fixed their capital city in
the north, at Y o r k , but after they went away the
important part of England was the south. It was the
part near the Continent, where all civilisation and
religion and good things came from—also, where the
conquerors of England were apt to come from. The
narrowest sea between the two was what we now call
the Straits of Dover. A l l these circumstances led to
the establishment or to the growth of Canterbury as
one of the great cities of England.
I write of England as of one country, but you w i l l
remember that it still was a disunited, a divided
England. It remained so disunited, and vexed by
constant wars between the rival kingdoms, until
brought under one rule in 827, by the power and
wisdom of the great K i n g Egbert, who had come to
the throne of Wessex in A . D . 800, the very year of
Charlemagne's consecration at Rome, and held
authority over all England from 827 t i l l his death i n
830. I write this vague and indefinite phrase " held
autliority " on purpose, because it certainly was not a
very definite rule that he held over the whole country,
and it must have differed in different parts. He even
conquered Wales and all the Celtic part of B r i t a i n
except Cumbria—our modern Cumberland. It was
towards the end of his reign that his more or less
united kingdom began to be seriously harassed by the
Danish sea-rovers attacking the eastern and southern
coasts.
We have noticed already that the principal towns
grew naturally on the banks of the rivers. There is a
further fact about their situation which we may
observe, and that is that the chief and largest of them
were placed just so far up the rivers that they might
get best advantage from the tide. In days long before
steam was used to drive ships, and when they could
 T H E SITES O F T H E C I T I E S 113
sail only w i t h the wind very much in their favour, you
can easily understand how valuable the help of the
tide would be, both for coming up and going down a
river.
Then, if the town were placed just above the point
up to which the saltish sea-water came, the fresh
water coming down could be used for drinking and for
such processes as brewing and tanning hides which
were very early industries ; and there would be a
constant flow of water to work the corn-grinding mills.
Considerations of that kind probably influenced the
Anglo-Saxons in choosing sites for their towns such
as Canterbury, and Winchester, and London, which
became the capital after the Norman conquest.
From the Continent people could cross the Straits of
Dover and find themselves very soon in the sheltered
waters of the Thames estuary or of the Stour which
went past Canterbury. The land about the mouth
of the Stour has risen a good deal since those days,
and the passage of ships up the river was more open
and wide then than it is now.
The advantage of Winchester, as a site for a large
town, was that from the mouth of the Seine, which
came down past Rouen, a very short sea-passage
would bring the mariner into the sheltered water
behind the Isle of Wight. He could enter that shelter
from the east or from the west, as the wind served
best, and he would be out of sight of land, either
French land or English land, for only a very short
distance in the mid-crossing. This was a matter of
much importance to the sailors of those days ; they
did not at all like to go out of sight of their landmarks.
Then, once in the Solent, as we call i t , the shipman
would take advantage of the tide to carry him up
Southampton Water, and very likely some way up the
Itchen river, towards Winchester, before he need r u n
his ship aground and disembark.
114 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
A s a further advantage you may see that both Canter-
bury and Winchester had high ground close about
them on which a fortified camp could be made for the
protection of the t o w n . A n d we know, in fact, that
such camps were made in the vicinity of both towns.
The ground bears signs of them to this day. The
beginnings of London are thought to have been a
British h i l l fort on the h i l l where St. Paul's Cathedral
now stands. Of other cities we know that Manchester
was a British settlement and a place where the Druids
worshipped, and later a Roman city. We hear of
Birmingham as a village of the Saxon Beormingas.
Liverpool was a fishing village in Saxon times, but not
of sufficient importance to be named in Domesday
Book.
This brief account may, I hope, give you some little
idea of the manner in which those people lived, and so
laid the foundations of our life to-day. They were
without a great many things which we look on as
ubsolute necessities. They had, at first, no cotton and
no linen for their clothes. They had no tea or coffee
to drink ; no tobacco to smoke. They had beer,
which they brewed and sometimes sweetened w i t h
honey, for they understood bee-keeping. The honey
was important for them, for they had no sugar.
Neither had they potatoes ; and they grew no root
crops for their cattle to eat in winter.
That fact that they had no root crops was impor-
tant in their lives, for it meant that all they had to
keep their cattle and sheep alive on in the winter was
such hay as they could make and store. It would not
support a very large stock all through the winter, and
the consequence was that they killed down all their
stock, except what was wanted for breeding purposes,
at the beginning of each winter.
Now you may remember I said that one of the
chief necessities that the villagers would have to buy,
 I M P O R T A N C E OF H U N T I N G 115
because they could not produce it for themselves, was
salt. Seeing how many of what we call necessities,
such as sugar and the like, they could do without, you
may wonder that salt should be so necessary. B u t
now that you know about this killing off of so much of
the stock at the beginning of winter you may begin to
see the necessity of the salt. Unless all this good food
was to go bad it must be salted, in order to preserve
it for eating as required. So, in the winter months,
they might have meat sometimes ; but it would be
salted meat, not fresh.
But of course that would not apply to any game
that they might kill by hunting in " the waste " —
the woodland—nor does it appear that freemen were
forbidden, in Anglo-Saxon times, to hunt. They had
bows, which they made of yew or other wood, and spear
shafts and arrows of ash, and the English very early
were famous for their archery. They were famous too
for their breed of hunting dogs, which were sometimes
exported to the Continent, so highly were they valued.
So they had this resource—free hunting in woods
which probably were well stocked w i t h game in
comparison w i t h the small human population. Make
a note in your mind of this importance of the game,
due to the fact that they could get no fresh meat from
their domestic stock in winter. It is an importance
which partly explains the reason of the fearfully
severe game laws—laws to protect the game—which
were passed a little later.
That is the picture, as well as I have been able
to draw it for you, of the life of those people, our
ancestors. You may take it, too, as something like a
picture of the life of the people over a large part—say,
all except the southern parts—of Charlemagne's
wide empire. The feudal system came, to change
the conditions, in that Frankish Empire earlier than
it came to England ; but even in England the con-
9
116 H O W T H E PEOPLE L I V E D
ditions were such as would pass easily into feudal
arrangements. In theory the ceorls were free, not
the vassals of a lord, but their freedom was becoming
more and more of an illusion. The corl was there,
getting an increasing authority and an increasing
possession of the land, and so making everything
ready for the feudal baron to step into his place. B u t
the state of England did not render it so necessary for
the ceorl to seek protection under his eorl, as we saw
that it became a necessity in France. In England the
king, whether in a divided or a united England, could
still protect the people and exercise his authority over
them and sec justice done.
When we come to the tenth century we find that
the title of eorl, or carl, for the head man of the village,
was no longer in use, but a person exercising almost
exactly the same power, and having the same p r i v i -
leges as the carl, was now called the " thane." His
powers and privileges were perhaps no greater than
those of the earl, but there was this difference in his
position, that there was no longer any illusion of his
being appointed by, and being one of, the villagers.
He was appointed by the king. Generally he had been
one of the king's soldiers, and the lordship of a village
seems often to have been granted him as a reward for
good military service. This would be particularly
likely to happen w i t h villages in conquered districts;
and in many districts, w i t h the perpetual warfare
going on, villages must have been conquered and re-
conquered again and again.
The title of earl, however, did not die out in
England, as it did on the Continent. Either during or
before the tenth century, the villages began to be
grouped into what were called " hundreds." Probably
the name arose from the idea that each " hundred "
was a grouping of ten villages, each represented by its
ten thirty-acre men, as we have called them. It is
 "HUNDREDS" AND "SHIRES" 117
scarcely likely that many hundreds kept these figures
long, or even that many ever had them precisely exact.
Then a grouping was made of some of the hundreds,
and this group of hundreds was then called a " shire."
The title of earl came to be given to the lord, no longer
of a single village, but of a shire—a much more impor-
tant post. The earl of the shire was appointed, like
the thane, by the king. There were " hundred
courts," as we noticed before, which the freemen,
so-called, of the village could attend and vote i n .
A n d there were also " shire courts," held less often,
which also the freemen might attend, and wherein
also they might vote. The president of the shire
court was the earl.
We may compare the earl and his shire, in England,
w i t h the comte, or count, in France, w i t h his donate" or
county.
Thus, or somewhat thus, went the story of the
people's lives in Europe throughout the time of the
rule of the Danish kings in B r i t a i n and up to its
conquest by W i l l i a m of Normandy in 1066.
 CHAPTER X I V

T H E SETTLEMENTS OF T H E SEA-ROVERS

IT is in the reign of K i n g Egbert that we begin to hear

of the Danes coming as sea-rovers and raiding the
coasts on both sides of the English Channel. They
came, they harried and stole, and went away again.
That was bad. B u t it began to be worse when
they did not go away again, when they came in such
numbers that they could actually dare to establish
themselves for the winter up some river. They had
then come to stay. W i t h i n t h i r t y years after the
death of Egbert they became so strong that they took
the towns of York and Nottingham. The English
kingdom was again, at this time, disunited. This
was partly owing to the custom—which proved fatal
to the union of the continental empire also—for a
king, at his death, to divide up his kingdom, by w i l l ,
and give portions to two or more of his sons. B u t in a
fortunate hour for England, Alfred, who won the name
of " the Great," came to the throne of Wessex in 871.
He fought the Danes on land, uniting the people of
K e n t and Essex w i t h his own Wessex men. He fought
them w i t h varying success, on the whole getting the
better of them. He also (and you might make a note
of this as the beginning of Britain's naval power)
defeated some of their ships w i t h his own fleet.
Whereupon came many more Danes w i t h many
more ships ; and English and Danes had to meet in
many a battle and skirmish u n t i l a decisive victory at
118
 A L F R E D T H E GREAT 119

length enabled Alfred to come to a settlement w i t h

them. Even so, the settlement was far from estab-
lishing him as sovereign over all England. An
arrangement was made by which the Danes were to
occupy, undisturbed, the eastern side, and were to
leave the English in peaceable possession of the west.
We have spoken before of that old Roman road called
Watling Street, which ran from London to Chester :
you may take that line as about the boundary line
between the two peoples who now held England.
Alfred, besides this peaceful settlement w i t h the
Danes, owes his claim to the title of " great " to the
wisdom w i t h which he settled the affairs of his own
kingdom and for the favour that he showed to literature
and culture of ail kinds. He was a Christian, and had
insisted, when he made his treaty with the Danes, that
they should profess themselves Christians and be
baptised. He did all that he could to help in educating
his people. He himself made translations into the
Anglo-Saxon of books written in Latin giving the
description and history of parts of Germany from
which some of the Gothic tribes had come. He also
caused books on religion to be translated, so that the
people who were educated sufficiently to be able to
read their own language might study them, and while
he rebuilt monasteries and other buildings belonging
to the Church, which had been ruined in the perpetual
wars, he expected the priests and the Churchmen (the
clerics, or clerks) to undertake the education of the
people.
Probably Alfred was far too wise to suppose that
peace would be kept for long between his Anglo-Saxons
on the west of the Watling Street and the Danes on
the east. The Danes were of a race akin to the
Anglo-Saxons and to the Franks—they were German
or Gothic. The Romans and Anglo-Saxons themselves
had both come into Britain as quite a different race
120 T H E S E T T L E M E N T S O F T H E SEA-ROVERS
from the inhabitants whom they conquered ; b u t the
Danes were of nearly the same stock as those whom
they found, and harassed, in England. B o t h were of
that race called Nordic, of which it was characteristic
for the men to be t a l l and large, w i t h fair hair and blue
eyes. We have seen how the English were gradually
losing their freedom under their earls or thanes.
The Danes came in w i t h their freedom little if any
less than it ever had been. They were hardy and
independent; and even to this day we find these
qualities to be characteristic of the dwellers in those
lands east of the Watling Street in which most of the

A VIKING SHIP.

Hanes settled. The southern and western men are of

a ' amer character.
It would take far too long to tell how the Danes
broke the peace arranged by Alfred, and all about the
continual fighting, w i t h the many changes of fortune
which came to pass between them and the English all
through the tenth century. Towards the end of that
century we find the English kings bribing the com-
manders of combined fleets of Danes and of allied
Northmen, from Norway, to retire and leave the
English coasts. Of course that only meant that these
pirates came again the next year, so that it became
necessary to levy a special tax, which was called the
Danegeld, to buy them off.
 MASSACRE OF T H E DANES 121
An English king, Ethelred, in the hope, as we are
told, of making the Northmen his friends instead of
his persecutors and pirates, married the daughter of
the Duke of Normandy. This Normandy is the
Normandy that you will see on the maps of to-day and
lies just across the English Channel. The Duke and
his Normans (or Northmen) were of the same k i n as
the ravagers of the English coast. Therefore Ethelred
seemed to be likely to gain peace for his kingdom when
he married a daughter of this race. What did happen
is that about sixty years later (he was married to the
Duke's daughter in 1002) another Duke of Normandy,
William, established himself as K i n g of England. It
is w i t h this marriage of Ethelred's that the influence of
Normandy in England begins. The Normans did not
come upon England all of a sudden in 1066, the year
of their conquest. There had been some preparation
leading to i t .
Unfortunately for Ethelred's hope of peace, he
formed, or was led to agree to, a design of exter-
minating the Danes in England by a wholesale massacre.
It was a design in which the English were the more
ready to take a hand because of their hatred of the
Danish troops which several of the kings had been
keeping in their pay. These mercenaries were very
insolent and high-handed in their dealings w i t h the
civil inhabitants, and on the signal given the inhabitants
readily rose against them.
Thus a general massacre took place ; but then
followed that which, w i t h a people of the fierce
and resolute character of the Danes and Northmen,
was sure to follow. A great force came over the sea,
and, though twice bought off by payment of the
Danegeld, they came again in 1013, and yet again,
and finally, two years later, under Canute they
came to stay. Canute, victorious, was first acknow-
ledged king of the old Danish possessions in the
122 T H E S E T T L E M E N T S O F T H E SEA-ROVERS
east of England and a few weeks later of the entire
country.
W i t h i n a year he too married that sister of the
Duke of Normandy who had been married to Ethelred
and was now a widow. A n d so, once more, the
Norman influence came in.
Canute, who reigned close on twenty years, was
followed by two kings of Danish race whose reigns
only covered seven years together, and then followed
the last of our Saxon kings, the first Edward. He was
Saxon on the father's side ; for his father was that
Ethelred who married the Duke of Normandy's
sister. On the mother's side, therefore, he was
Norman.
The right of this Edward, called the Confessor, to
the kingdom was not undisputed, but he had the
support of a certain Earl Godwine, who, w i t h his sons,
had become so great a power that lie claimed, and was
able to maintain, lordship over half the realm of
England. This great carl consolidated his power by
marrying his daughter to K i n g Edward, and one of
the sons of Earl Godwine was that Harold who became
king after Edward, and who was defeated and killed by
W i l l i a m the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.
It is my wish, in telling this story, to trouble you
w i t h as few names as possible, in order to avoid con-
fusion, but I want you to bear these names in mind and
to be clear as to how the people were related to each
other, because it is this relationship that explains how
it was that W i l l i a m the Conqueror came to lay claim
to the throne of England. He did not merely come
as a conqueror to take, by force, what was not his.
He came to enforce what was, or what he claimed to be,
his right.
Harold, then, succeeded Edward, on Edward's
death, as king. B u t before his death Edward had
tried to arrange for a successor. We have to remember
 W I L L I A M T H E CONQUEROR 123
that the principle that the eldest son of the king
should follow his father on the throne was not estab-
lished in those days. B u t Edward had no son. He
had a great-nephew, who was no more than a child.
A n d he seems to have had no wish that the kingdom
should go back to the Danes, although he had married
a sister of Harold, the Dane. So he approached
William, Duke of Normandy, w i t h a proposal to
appoint h i m as successor.
So the story is told ; but its t r u t h is not clearly
proved. It has also been said that he sent Harold
himself as his ambassador in this delicate matter, to
the Norman court. That does not sound probable.
What does appear to be established is that Harold,
by some means or other-—possibly by having to run
his ship on the coast of Normandy in a storm -came
into William's power, and that, while so held, waiting
till a ransom should be paid for h i m and he should be
released, William made him take a very solemn oath
that on Edward's death he would do his best to
support William's claim to the throne of England.
That being done, Edward dies, and Harold, far from
keeping that most solemn oath, claims the kingdom
of England for himself, and actually accedes to the
throne, apparently without any serious opposition
from the people.
B u t then comes W i l l i a m of Normandy, mightily
indignant, w i t h his fleet. He lands at Hastings,
encounters Harold and his forces, defeats them
heavily, Harold is killed in the battle, and William
becomes K i n g of England. He is accepted w i t h a
readiness, and w i t h a slight opposition after the first
battle, which we may suppose to be due to two causes*
one, that our country had been so long vexed by
fighting that it was weary and was willing to receive
any peace at any price, and, two, that the Norman
influence had spread through the country far and wide
124 T H E S E T T L E M E N T S O F T H E SEA-ROVERS
before the actual coming of the conqueror, so that
the means for establishing his conquest were already
prepared.

NORMAN G A T E W A Y , COLLEGE GREEN, BRISTOL.

B u t it is very likely that this coming of the N o r t h -

men, the Normans, out of France will have caused you
to ask a question or two in your minds. Y o u may be
wondering how it should be that Normans, Northmen,
 T H E NORTHMEN IN FRANCE 125
should be coming to England from Normandy, that
is to say from the south. Y o u may be wondering
how it is that there are Northmen established there,
as Dukes, that is as great rulers. When last we con-
sidered the Continent of Europe this Normandy was
part of the great Empire of Charlemagne. In order to
see how the Northmen came to be there we may go
back to the Empire of Charlemagne in the n i n t h
century. We have seen how that Empire was brought
about and compacted. It is now a most important
thing for the understanding of the great story that we
should see how quickly that splendid Empire fell to
pieces after Charlemagne's death. The understanding
of that w i l l make quite clear how the Normans were
able to settle themselves as independent rulers of the
part of France which is still, after them, called
Normandy.
 CHAPTER X V

T H E CRUSADES

WE have seen that the kings of the date to which this

greatest story now has come, do not seem to have
realised that if they partitioned up their possessions
among several sons the result was likely to be that
there would be disunion and fighting. Charlemagne
had three sons, and would, it appears, have divided
his Empire by his will among them, but two of those
sons died, so that the whole Empire came into the
hands of the survivor.
This survivor, however, had, in his turn, three
sons, and at his death the Empire was divided amongst
the three. In this division we see the beginnings of
the present arrangement of the greater part of Europe,
for one son took a territory of which the boundaries
were nearly the same as those of modern France,
another had what corresponds more or less to Germany
of to-day, and the t h i r d to something very like modern
I t a l y . The Italian brother, the eldest, had the title of
Emperor.
A n d now—to state shortly what was the rather
natural outcome of that division—the kings, or those
who claimed the kingship, of those territories fought
over their possessions for at least a century and a half,
150 years.
Of course that meant that the people of the country
were in constant misery and fear of their lives and
uncertainty about any property they might have.
126
 NORMANDY 127
Bands of soldiers, followers of their feudal lords, went
about the country, and were very rough and brutal,
taking all they could find and paying nothing. The
authority of the king could not deal w i t h these dis-
turbers of the peace. The big landowners grew more
and more independent of the king. He might be their
feudal lord, in name, but for all this century and a half
the K i n g of France had no more power than several of
the great lords themselves. More and more then it
became necessary for the poorer class, if they would
live safely, to live under the protection of one or other
of the big men. This led to the clustering of the
houses of the poor people round about the castle, the
strong place, of their lord. He organised them as a
fighting force, when fighting had to be done, and stood
for them in place of the king. They were his faithful
subjects, getting his protection as their return for
working and fighting for him. Some of these lords
grew so powerful and so dangerous to the king that he
was glad to grant them their independence and full
possession of their lands in return for their assurance
that they would not take arms against him and attack
his territory.
Now all the while that the Danes and Northmen
were harrying the shores of England they paid their
attentions no less to the coasts of France, going up the
Seine to Rouen, especially, and establishing winter
quarters there very much as the Danes did in England.
The emperor and the kings of France strove against
them, but if they were defeated they only came back
again in numbers larger than before. The end of it-
was that in the beginning of the tenth century the
king deemed it his best policy to give up to the North-
men or Normans all that Normandy which they held
despite all he could do against them. He made it
condition that they should become Christians. A n d
thus it was that they were firmly established as a
128 T H E CRUSADES
Duchy under a Duke (dux, or leader) at the date of
their conquest of England in 1066.
Descendants of Charlemagne continued to sit on
the throne of France u n t i l near the end of the tenth
century, when one H u g h Capet, a great noble, was
elected by his fellow-nobles as king. Note t h a t ; that
it was by an election of the feudal lords, not because he
had a hereditary right—that is, a right by birth—to
the throne, that he became king. A n d how long that
dynasty of the Capetian kings, as they are called,
lasted in France you may realise from the fact, which
you most likely w i l l remember, that the king who was
guillotined during the French revolution was called
" Louis Capet" by those revolutionists who pro-
claimed that all men were equal and that titles of all
kinds were to be done away.
This first elected Capet king, however, had no more
power over those who had elected him than the kings
who had descended from Charlemagne. B u t the
Capetians kept the kingdom in their family, as we have
seen, all down the ages. Still, it was not u n t i l nearly
two hundred years later than the election of H u g h
Capet that any of his descendants began to have
really great power. About that date, that is to say
towards the end of the twelfth century, or a little
before 1200, the king succeeded in making his power
over the nobles very much more effective, and there-
w i t h the last days of the feudal system came to an end.
It passed away to give place to what is known as the
" absolute monarchy "—government by a king who
was able to do anything that he chose, without check
of any kind.
In the meantime the Carolingian kings (descendants
of Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne)
went out of the story, and the Capetians came into i t ,
in the midst of perpetual disorder and fights among the
feudal lords. Each duke, in his duchy, each count in
 T H E POWER OF T H E CHURCH 129
his county, was a little independent king. It seems a
wonder that the whole government of Europe d i d not
fall apart and dissolve into these independent govern-
ments of the big lords in the different places, each
governing according to his own ideas. It seems a
wonder, and it really is a thing to wonder at. It seems
to suggest that there was some power at work through
it all, some one power, powerful everywhere, which
kept things together and in some sort of unity and
order—kept the same ideas of government and justice
and so on underlying all the differences.
It seems as if there must have been some such
power, for how else can we account for the fact that the
society of the world did not fall all to pieces ? A n d we
know, as a fact, that there was such a power, pene-
trating everywhere : it was power emanating, as at the
time of the Roman Empire, from Rome itself. B u t
now it was not the power of a government w i t h strong
military forces, splendidly organised. It was the
power of the Christian Church, of which Rome, w i t h
its bishop who was called the Pope, was the centre
and headquarters for all the Western world.
It seems all the more wonderful that the Pope of
Rome should have been able to make his power so
widely felt, when we see what constant difficulties he
had to encounter in the government of Rome itself.
It is evident that Charlemagne himself, even at the
height of his Empire, deemed that his authority would
be increased if he had the Pope on his side. That is
shown by his consecration at Rome, of which we have
spoken before. A n d there is no doubt that the Pope
too was very glad to have the Emperor on his side, to
help h i m .
At the same time there was another aspect to the
story, for the Pope was continually t r y i n g to make
himself, as the governor of Rome, independent of the
Emperor. Yet, if he became so independent as to be
130 THE CRUSADES
without the Emperor's help, he had scarcely sufficient
force at his command to oppose two other parties in
Rome who were always striving for power, the nobles
and the populace. A proof of this weakness of the
Pope's is that on the break-up of the Empire of Charle-
magne the Pope at once found himself in difficulties
w i t h these other parties in the city and its vicinity.
He was able to assume to himself much of the power
that had been wielded by the Emperor ; but, being
now without the help of the Empire, he was without
defence against the nobles, who at once obtained
greater power.
A n d , further, there were enemies without, as well
as within. The Saracens at this time, that is to say in
the first half of the tenth century, were in Sicily and
Southern I t a l y and pressed up from the south, while
again, as long before, tribes of the Huns threatened
from the north. B o t h dangers were repelled, by the
arms of the " barbarians " far more than by the arms of
Rome, and almost at the end of this tenth century we
find a " barbarian," a German, elected as Pope of
Rome.
Yet, in spite of all these difficulties, and while from
one moment to another the very existence of the Pope's
rule in Rome, the central city of the Christian Church,
seems to have been in danger, the power which went
out from that centre reached far and was efficient.
Europe, under the feudal system, was very disturbed,
maybe, very full of fighting, but it was deeply religious.
Partly it was because men were so lawless and com-
mitted so many sins that they submitted themselves
so humbly to the commands and advice of the priests.
They had very many sins to repent of. The Church
and its priests taught that remission or absolution of
sins might be gained by gifts made by the sinners to
the Church. Thus a great lord or a king, to expiate his
evil deeds, might build a cathedral or an abbey or give
 THE H O L Y CITY 131

extensive grants of land to the Church. Thus the

Church grew rich.
B u t the Church also taught that forgiveness for
sins might be gained by doing penance, that is to say
by punishment and suffering; and one of the forms of
this punishment which the Church advised as most
efficacious was to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the
H o l y City. That is a fact of which it is w o r t h your
while to make a special note in your minds, because it
was out of this habit of pilgrims going to Jerusalem
for the good of their souls that those great expeditions
called the Crusades came to be made.
Among the many good things for which the
Christian Church was working was peace. It was
working for peace in a world that was at constant war,
in spite of the Church's efforts. It may seem a strange
thing to say, that the Crusades were partly due to the
Church's wish for peace, but it is probably true that
part of the reason why the Church gave them its
blessing was they were a means by which Christian
soldiers, instead of lighting against each other, might
be united in fighting against non-Christians, against
Mahommedans.
This is one reason which might have led the Church
to favour the Crusades. Another was that it seemed
a dreadful thing that a city so sacred as Jerusalem
should be in the hands of the Saracens. Naturally the
Church favoured the attempt to recover the H o l y
Places by the Christian powers.
Yet a t h i r d reason which brought about the first of
the many Crusades was that the Emperor of the
Eastern Roman Empire, in Constantinople, was being
hard pressed at the moment by the Mahommedans in
Asia Minor, and made a request to the Christians in the
West to come to his help. The Eastern Empire had
suffered heavy losses. N o t only had the Saracens
taken possession of its old territories of Egypt and
10
132 T H E CRUSADES
Africa, as well as Palestine and Syria and a large part
of Asia Minor, but from the north had come raiders
even to the very walls of Constantinople itself. A
number of races from the north and east had taken
part in these incursions—Huns, Tartars, Slavs, from
the Carpathian Mountains. It is in the ninth century
that we begin to hear of such a country as Russia,
which was inhabited by all these races, and Russia
already was beginning to stretch a hand down towards
that Constantinople which she has hankered after
ever since. Then that large and fertile land which is
marked as Hungary in modern maps was already
called by that name and had been lost to the Emperor
at Constantinople. His was, in fact, an Empire
restricted to a comparatively small western slice of
Asia Minor, to some of the islands and to the fringes,
along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, of
all that it had once claimed in Greece and in what we
know as Turkey in Europe. The aggression which the
Emperor especially dreaded when he summoned the
West to help him was aggression by the Turks, who
had by this time established themselves as the chief
Mahommedan power in the East.
The Turks, a people of the same k i n as those
Tartars who formed part of the mixed population of
Russia, had come down from the east and north and
settled themselves in force in the eastern part of Asia
Minor. It would seem that they were a tougher and a
rougher race than the Arabians, whose religion they
had adopted. Rut the fact that they had accepted the
religion founded by the Arabian Mahomet, did not
save the Arabs from the attacks of these invading
Turks, who dispossessed them of all their conquests in
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Further westward it was
chiefly a race of African natives, who had adopted the
religion of Mahomet, with but a small contingent of
any Arabian people, that conquered Spain and had its
 PLAGUE IN EUROPE 133

capital city at Cordova, in that country. A n d a

little later in the story another Mahommedan African
tribe, closely akin to the conquerors of Spain, seized
and kept a long slice of that southern shore of the
Mediterranean as far cast as the Egyptian boundary.
It is the more necessary to make a note of these
divisions, because it seems to have been the way of the
Crusaders and of all Christian people of that time to
group together all Mahommedans, no matter of what
race they were, under the common name of Saracen,
which originally was applied to one tribe only of the
Arabian nation. By the end of the eleventh century,
when the first Crusaders went to the H o l y Land, the
hold of the Moors in Spain was neither as firm nor
nearly as extensive as it had been. The country was
divided between Christian and Moslem, the Moslem
still possessing the southern part, nearer that Africa
whence he had come. The fighting was continual, w i t h
results that gave now one side and now the other the
advantage, but it inclined, on the whole, to favour the
Christians. This was the time; to which belong the
splendid stories about the Cid Campcador and many
other great Spanish and Christian heroes.
B u t while, in the West, the Christian was thus
forcing the African Saracen gradually to loosen his
grip on Spain, in the East the Turkish Saracen was
pressing the Christian so hard as to cause the ruler of
Constantinople, though still claiming the title of
Eastern Emperor, to send a prayer to all Christians to
come to his aid.
The conditions of the people in most parts of
Europe was probably more miserable about this date,
that is to say about 1100, than ever before or since.
Besides the misery caused by the perpetual fighting,
there was disease, in the form of a plague, which killed
large numbers ; and a very bad season for farming had
brought great scarcity of food. Therefore when the
134 T H E CRUSADES
call went forth for volunteers to help the Christians of
the East and to regain the H o l y Places from the
infidel, very many were ready to respond to the sum-
mons. The Crusade was preached first by a religious
zealot called Peter the Hermit, and attracted the poor
people who were so wretched in Europe that any
change must have seemed likely to be for the better
health of their bodies, quite apart from the saving of
their souls. This call of the Hermit's seems to have
been the summons of a man full of zeal, but of little
wisdom. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern
Empire, whence the prayer for help had come, was
named as the place in which the Crusaders were to
collect for the attack on Palestine. Thither Peter the
Hermit led his followers ; but very few survived even
to reach that city. On the way across Hungary wild
tribes set upon them and destroyed a great number.
So that poor effort came to nothing, as it was certain
that it must from the way in which it was under-
taken.
B u t in the meantime a more orderly movement had
been started, w i t h a great Churchman, acting as the
Pope's legate, at its head. So it had the Pope's
blessing, and many of the great feudal lords were its
leaders. There were lords of I t a l y , of France, of
Germany, and we may note especially that there
were lords of Normandy.
The Northmen had not stopped, in their sea-borne
incursions, at England and the northern coasts of
France. They had established themselves in parts of
Spain, they had come through the Straits of Gibraltar,
they had ousted, or had greatly helped in ousting, the
Saracens who had taken possession of Sicily and of the
south of I t a l y . They had set themselves up as rulers
of that I t a l i a n south, w i t h Naples as their capital.
Thus enterprising, and ever further pushing, were these
people from the north.
 W A R F O R T H E CROSS 135

So these, too, took a part, and a leading part, in the

great war for the Cross. Crusade is from the French
croissade, which is from croix, a cross. Y o u may have
seen figures on tombs in churches, of knights in armour
w i t h one leg crossed over the other. This distinction
of the crossed legs is only given
to the figures of knights who had
taken part in one or other of the
Crusades.
It was in the year following
the disastrous enterprise of Peter
the Hermit, that these Crusaders,
starting from different points in
Europe, came together at Con-
stantinople. Trouble arose then,
because the Emperor of the East
wished the leaders to do homage
to him. That meant that any
victory they might win in the
Holy Land would be a victory
gained for him. Homage is a
word derived from homo, a man,
and the meaning of " doing
homage " was that you confessed
yourself the homo, or man, of
him to whom you did i t .
Thus the Emperor desired
these leading Crusaders to be his
" men," in the sense that any
lands and cities that they con- CRUSADER.
quered should be his. That was
not quite the idea which they had in their own minds,
when they came to his assistance. The Emperor's
view was that all Asia Minor and Palestine and other
lands such as Egypt, which the Saracens had taken,
really belonged to his Empire and should be given
back to the Empire if the Crusaders could gain them.
136 T H E CRUSADES
The outcome of this difference of opinion seems to
have been that the leaders of the Crusade did homage,
reluctantly, to the Emperor, but perhaps they had the
thought in the back of their minds, as they did i t , that
it was an oath which they might break. However
that may be, when the time came to fulfil their vow—-
for they won a quick and easy success over the Turks
in Asia Minor and Syria—they did not give up Palestine
and the H o l y Places to the Emperor. A portion of
Asia Minor which they regained from the Saracens
was handed over to the Emperor, but as for Palestine
itself, that was taken, and it was retained, by the
Crusaders ; and the chief result of that first and most
successful of the Crusades was that a Christian K i n g -
dom of Jerusalem was set up, and was maintained for
nearly a century—from 1097 to 1187. The name of
Kingdom of Jerusalem and the title of king endured
for many years more, but the kingdom then consisted
of no more than a strip of the coast-line of the Levant
and did not include the city of Jerusalem at all.
B u t though the Christians were able to hold this
new kingdom in the East for nearly a hundred years,
i t was within less than fifty that the very important
frontier city of the Eastern Empire, Edessa, in Asia
Minor, was taken by the Saracens. The Emperor at
once sent out another appeal to the West, and this
appeal became the occasion of the second Crusade,
undertaken in 1140.
It began w i t h even brighter promise than the first;
for whereas knights were the leaders of the former, two
kings, the K i n g of France and the K i n g of Germany,
put themselves, in person, at the head of the second.
B u t in spite of the fair promise the main result was
failure. It was the occasion of some successful
enterprises by the way ; and we may note that whereas
the first Crusade had been almost entirely French and
Norman, English, as well as Germans, took part in the
 T H E WENDS 137

latter. Also, whereas the route taken by the first had

been entirely overland, through Hungary, some of the
second Crusaders, from England and Flanders, made
their way to the East by sea.
In course of that sea voyage some of the soldiers of
the Cross, landing up the Tagus from their ships, took
the city of Lisbon from the Moors, and this capture
was the beginning of the little kingdom of Portugal.
Thence the force went upon its voyage eastward.
In the north of Germany some of the forces
assembled for the Crusade never went very far from
home. They seem to have received the permission
of the Pope to light against a tribe, called Wends, on
their eastern frontier, instead of against the Saracens ;
and seeing that these Wends were heathen, this might
perhaps be regarded in the light of a H o l y War no less
than that in Asia Minor.
It is possible to state very shortly the achievements
of the forces that did get to the East -they achieved
nothing at all. The two kings seem to have been
jealous of each other. They acted separately, w i t h no
j o i n t action, and were defeated in t u r n . They
returned home w i t h no glory, and left the Kingdom of
Jerusalem in a worse plight than before, just because
of their failure, after such preparations and expecta-
tions. The Saracen might well think that if this was
all that the West, under its two greatest kings, could
do, they need not be much afraid.
Therefore they pressed continually closer and
closer about the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The
Christians held their own, w i t h a success that is rather
surprising, until the reign of the great Saladin. U n t i l
his reign the Saracens in Asia Minor and in the country
east of the Jordan had not acted in unison w i t h the
Saracens in Egypt. Saladin brought all together ; so
that now the situation of this L a t i n Kingdom of
Jerusalem was even worse than we saw the position
138 T H E CRUSADES
of Palestine to be in the very early days of the great
story. Then it had lain between the two powerful
empires of Egypt and Babylonia. Now it was lying
like an island in the midst of a sea of enemies all
fighting, not against each other, but united to fight
against i t .
A n d then this Jerusalem, taken from the Saracens
in 1099, was by them retaken in 1187.
We may be sure that the Christians in the East
could not possibly have held their own against the
Saracens, as they did during these years, if they had
not been constantly receiving reinforcements from the
West. History speaks to us of certain definite dates
for the first, second, t h i r d Crusades, and so on, but we
also have to imagine a continual going to and from the
East of knights w i t h larger or smaller followings. In
this way the strength of the garrisons in the kingdom
were maintained, and in this way happened that
continual bringing of Eastern ideas to the West, which
was really of more importance in the making of this
greatest of all stories than any of the victories won or
cities taken.
 CHAPTER X V I

THE SLAVS IN EASTERN EUROPE

T H U S I have tried to give a picture i n outline -a

cinematograph, or moving picture—of the world after
the break up of Charlemagne's Empire. We see the
Turks pressing up against the Eastern Empire in Asia
Minor, w i t h the result that the Emperor appeals to the
West, and that the first Crusade establishes, for nearly
a hundred years, the L a t i n Kingdom of Jerusalem.
African Mahommedans have possession of the strip of
N o r t h Africa running from Egypt—Egypt itself being
held by the Turks—till they meet another Mahom-
medan African people which has possession of the
southern part of Spain. That same power had the
whole of the Spanish peninsula in its grip a little
earlier, but its own divisions, of Arabs, Africans, and
Syrians, made it weak, and it was broken as soon as it
came against any organised force. Therein I t a l y we
see that the Pope, aided by the Emperors and giving
them the aid of the growing power of the Church in
return, is on the whole establishing his temporal power
in Rome more and more firmly. In the south of I t a l y
and in Sicily the enterprising Normans drive out the
Saracens and take possession. Northward, the great
territory which, together w i t h I t a l y , had been Charle-
magne's, has been split into the two large divisions,
the kingdoms of France and of Germany. B u t in these
so-called kingdoms the king was at this t i m e only a
little more powerful than his lords, the barons and big
139
140 T H E SLAVS I N E A S T E R N E U R O P E
landowners. The feudal system prevailed, and the
king was constantly engaged w i t h the hard task of
keeping his feudal lords in order. It was disorder,
rather than order, that was the rule all over the
unhappy world. England fared a little better, thanks
to the Channel which cut it off and made its conditions
different from those of the Continent. B u t now it has
been conquered by the Norman, and we have to see how
that conquest had the result, for a very long while,
of counteracting the effect of the Channel as a separat-
ing barrier. England was soon caught up into the
continental turmoil.
We have to see how that came to pass. But there
is still one side or corner of the picture which we have
left rather blank, and we had best get that corner filled
before we come to consider the part that England
played in the continental trouble. It is that corner
which is occupied by the large stretch of territory on
the eastern fringe of Charlemagne's Empire, from the
southern shores of the Baltic right down to Constanti-
nople and the boundaries of the Eastern Empire.
Y o u may have noticed that in the accounts of the
Crusades—the first and the second, which are all that
have come into our story as yet—-I mentioned two
names which had not appeared before, Hungary and the
Wends. The first was the name of a country through
which the Crusaders went to reach Constantinople ;
the second was the name of a heathen tribe against
which certain of the knights who had been enrolled for
the second Crusade obtained the sanction of the Pope
to go, instead of against the Saracen.
These Wends were a tribe or branch of a race that
appears to have increased in numbers very rapidly and,
from a small territory to the north of the Carpathian
mountains, to have spread over all that large tract just
described from the Baltic to the neighbourhood of
Constantinople. It was a race of people called Slavs,
 M I L I T A R Y KNIGHTS 141

and even to-day it is thought to number more than any

other of the races of man. It is not the first time that
it has been mentioned in this greatest of all stories.
We saw, in the first volume, that a large number of the
serfs under the Roman Empire, especially in the East,
were of this people. So large were their numbers that
it is from their L a t i n name servus that we get our
word "slave," which we use as a translation of servus.
These Slavonic " serfs " were members of the Slav race
who had been taken prisoners in battle.
The Slavonic people from the East were constantly,
as their numbers grew, and perhaps as they too were
pressed by l i n n s and Mongolians from further East
again, pressing in upon the Gothic, the Germanic
tribes ; and now it was against one of the Slav tribes,
these Wends, that the knights of Northern Germany
received leave to go on Crusade. They took to them-
selves the name of Knights of
the Sword.
There were several of these
bodies, or societies, at a later
date than this, who bound
themselves together by vows,
like the vows which the monks
took, and lived under one rule.
They were formed, like the
monkish orders, for the ad-
vancement of the Christian
religion, but these Military
Orders—the Knights Templar
and the Knights Hospitaller
were perhaps the best known
of them -enforced religion
with the sword as well as
with the gospel-preaching, and were always ready to
tight on the Christian side against the pagans on the
boundaries of Christendom.
142 T H E SLAVS I N E A S T E R N E U R O P E
Just at this moment, then, these Knights of the
Sword, who were afterwards amalgamated w i t h the
Knights of the Teutonic Order, went, not against the
Saracen but against the Wends. Now Wends was the
name that the Germans gave to all the Slavs, from this
one tribe of the Slavs which was called Wends. In
like maimer the name of Teutons was, and sometimes
still is, given to all Germans and even to all peoples
derived from the Gothic tribes, though originally it was
the name of one only of these tribes. A n d so now,
w i t h these Teutons and Slavs thus opposing and
thrusting at each other, we come into touch w i t h one
of the great world struggles that has been going on
ever since, and was one of the causes of the Great War
—the opposition of Teuton and Slav. It is the oppo-
sition of German and Russian, for most of the great
population of Russia is Slavonic—that is, made up of
Slavs—and Russia became the name of most of the
immense territory occupied by the Slavs. It is said
that the name of Russia had its origin in three great
leaders of men who came from a province called Rus,
in Sweden. If that be so, it appears that they again
were some of those masterful Northmen, or Normans,
whom we have seen taking the lead whenever they
came in any number.
The name of the country may have come from
these men of Rus. That is one story. B u t it is
perhaps doubtful whether it may not be rather from
" rothsmen," meaning " oarsmen," that is " sea-
farers " ; which is a name likely to be given to any of
those northern sea-rovers. It is not often easy to
know whether this or the other body of sea-faring
Northmen came from Sweden or Norway or Denmark ;
for these lands were at different times united under
one government, or under two, or, again, separated,
and each w i t h its own government; and for a time, as
at the very moment when Canute was K i n g of England,
 M E N OF RUS 143
Denmark was united w i t h the others and was the
ruler in the union.
B u t there seems to be general agreement among
historians that either the men of Rus, or the people
called Rothsmen, who became rulers of Russia and gave
the country its name, came from Sweden.
The Slavs, however, occupied territory outside
what came to be called Russia. The Kingdom of
Poland was theirs; and it is chiefly by their descen-
dants that those various countries designated to-day
by the name of the " Balkan States " are peopled.
So the Slavs held a vast country reaching from the
Baltic almost down to the Mediterranean along the
Eastern boundary of the Western Empire.
B u t even as early as the sixth century there was a
large slice cut out of this Slavonic territory, formed of
that land which is now called Hungary. The first
conquerors, who thus thrust in and divided the Slavs
of the south from those in the north, were a people
called Avars, and they, w i t h a certain force of the
Huns, together gave to the country the name of
Hungary. In the next century we find that the
Germans are turning against the Avars, and that
Hungary itself is included in the Empire of Charle-
magne. B u t after Charlemagne's deaths when his
great possessions fell into hands less able to hold them,
Hungary is yet again invaded and conquered by a
people from the north-east, called Magyars, and what
makes that conquest so notable for us is that the
Magyars are the dominating race in Hungary to-day.
On every side, and in every corner, of the world
picture, in fact, we are now beginning to see States and
kingdoms and populations settling down into the
places and conditions in which we are able to recognise
them as we look at a modern map.
These Magyars, then, a people allied to the Finns,
of Finland, and coming from the east of the U r a l
144 T H E SLAVS I N E A S T E R N E U R O P E
mountains, conquered Hungary towards the close of the
n i n t h century, and have been there ever since. They
were pagans, but in the eleventh century they became
Christians, and members of the Church of Rome. That
is a point to notice, that they joined the Church of
which the Pope was the head. The Slavs, that is to
say all the peoples to the east of Germany, w i t h the
exception of the Magyars, as they accepted Christianity
became members of the Greek Church, which had its
chief bishop, called the Patriarch, in Constantinople,
the capital city of the Eastern Empire.
A n d now, under the Western Empire, had come
into power and been raised to the importance of a
duchy the State called Austria. Austria means
" Eastern." It was the eastern " mark," that is to
say " march " or " boundary," of the Empire. It
" marched w i t h , " that is, was next to, Hungary and
some of the Slav country, and was therefore a kind of
fortress State against the enemies of Germany. Thus
its importance grew. It had its ancient city, now
called Vienna, on the great river, the Danube, which
brought much trade and commerce into the land. The
valley of the Danube, moreover, was, as you may easily
understand by looking at the map of Europe, the
route which folk would be likely to follow between the
centre of Germany and Constantinople, which was
the meeting-place for the Crusaders.
Therefore you may now see how it was that
Hungary had to be named as the country through
which the Crusaders went, and also you may see how
there come into the story the Wends (often an alter-
native name, as used by the Germans, for the Slavs)
against whom went those Knights of the Sword who
were at first enrolled w i t h the idea that they should go
to the H o l y Places in Palestine.
 CHAPTER X V I I
NORMANS A N D ANGEVINS

T H E Normans who conquered England were far more

different from the English whom they conquered than
the Danes, under Canute, had been. A n d yet Danes
and Normans, both being " Northmen," were closely
akin. B u t we have to note that the conquering
Normans came, not from the north, but from the
south from Normandy ; and some years of residence
there, among the Franks or French, had changed them.
Moreover, we have to remember that, according to the
estimates of historians, only about one-third of the
force w i t h which Duke W i l l i a m came to England was
really Norman. The larger part was of Franks and
any others whom the adventure attracted or whom
William had hired to aid him.
The conquest must have made very much more
difference to the upper classes of the English people
than to the lower. Many lords were killed at that
Battle of Hastings which decided England's fate. In
their places the conqueror put his own barons and
army leaders, thus rewarding them, at no expense to
himself, for their services. Norman lords soon super-
seded English lords throughout the land, but the
peasants, and also the townsfolk, would go on w i t h their
lives much as before. The English system was not, as
we have seen, so different from the completely feudal
system of France that the lower vassals would know
much difference in the change from one to the other.
145
146 NORMANS A N D A N G E V I N S
The English regarded the land as belonging in the first
instance to the people ; the Normans regarded it as
belonging to the king. B u t in the practical result this
different point of view did not count for much, because
the English had already lost all the land rights which
had once been valuable to them. We traced the way
in which that happened a chapter or two back.
It is curious to note how the Norman influence
made itself felt indoors, w i t h i n the house, more than
out-of-doors. The simpler things, which all would
use, kept their old names, the Saxon names. It is the
words denoting things belonging to the more cultured
life that come from the Norman. Thus sheep, oxen,
deer, are Saxon names of the animals which the
English would use or h u n t ; but when these creatures
are cooked and brought to table they appear there
under the French names of mouion or mutton, bceuf or
beef, and venaison or venison.
Mention of the deer and the venison suggests one
particular in which the Norman Conquest probably did
restrict the peasants' rights. There is evidence to
show that the Normans were not the inventors of
those game laws which forbade, under cruel penalties,
any hunting in the woodlands. It is certain that this
was no new thing of Norman invention, because there
are the Forest Laws, as they are called, that is to say,
laws for the preservation of the game and the timber, as
early as the Saxon Heptarchy. There is also a code of
very cruel game laws attributed to Canute. It has been
suggested that this code was a forgery invented by the
Norman kings to excuse the severity of their game
laws. What seems perhaps most probable is that there
were severe laws in existence before the Normans
came, but that the Normans were the first to apply the
laws very strictly. The statements about the numbers
of villages and cultivated fields that W i l l i a m Kufus
destroyed in order to make himself a hunting estate in
 GAME LAWS 147

the New Forest are almost certainly exaggerated

misstatements. We must remember that all the
earliest records that we have were written by monks or
other clerics. Now the Church was often at variance
w i t h the lay authority and w i t h the authority of the
king. It was constantly t r y i n g to get more and more
power into its own hands. Therefore all the stories
arc likely to have been written in a spirit antagonistic
to the laity and in favour of the Church and all the
Church's interests.
Just to show you the character of the game laws in
those days and also to show how the law imposed
different penalties on different classes, I will cite one or
two sections from the code attributed to Canute.
" 23. If any free or unfree man shall k i l l any
beast of the Forest, he shall for the first pay
double (i.e. double of ten shillings), for the second
as much, and the t h i r d time shall forfeit as much as
he is worth to the K i n g .
" 2 4 . B u t if either of them by coursing or
hunting shall force a royal beast (which the
English call a staggon) to pant and be out of
breath, the freeman shall lose his natural liberty for
one year, the other his for two years ; but if a
bondman do the like, he shall be reckoned for an
outlaw (what the English call a friendless man).
" 2 5 . B u t if any of them shall k i l l such a royal
beast, the freeman shall lose his freedom, the other
his liberty, and the bondman his life."
H u m a n life and liberty were cheap, but the value
of the King's deer was high.
I have said that England, by reason of the Norman
Conquest, was caught up into the political affairs of the
Continent. This was not merely because Normandy
was a part of that Continent. It was chiefly because
of the relationship or connection by marriage of the
11
148 NORMANS A N D A N G E V I N S
ruler of Normandy, who had now become the ruler of
England also, w i t h the ruler of another part of that
country which we now call France—that is, of Anjou.
In order to understand how this happened, we have to
get these troublesome relationships into our mind.
H u g h Capet, as has been said, was chosen by the
nobles of France, out of their own number, to be king

A NORMAN HOUSEHOLD.
(A banquet is in progress upstairs.)
(From Wright's Homes of Other Days.)

when the family of Charlemagne became extinct. At

first, being as it were but one among the rest of the
nobles, the kings of the Capetian family had little more
authority than one of those nobles.
W i l l i a m I. of Normandy and England was succeeded
by W i l l i a m I I . , Rufus, who was shot by an arrow
while hunting in the New Forest. The elder son of
 T H E C R O W N OF E N G L A N D 149
Rufus, by name Robert, was far away. He had gone
on the first Crusade. Henry, the younger son, seized
the English throne, and married an English wife.
They had no son, but they had a daughter named
Matilda. This Matilda then, on the death of her
father Henry I . , had this clear and distinct claim to the
throne of England.
B u t there was also in the world, and ready to take
a crown if he could get one, a certain Stephen, who was
the son of a daughter of W i l l i a m the Conqueror.
Stephen therefore, as the Conqueror's grandson, had a
claim to the throne.
The barons of England seem to have given their
support now to one and now to the other of these t w o
claimants, bringing their forces to the help of the side
which, at the moment, was getting the worse of the
struggle. Their idea seems to have been to keep the
trouble going in order to make their own power greater.
At length the whole country wearied of the fighting,
and a peace was made on the following terms : that
Stephen should have the Crown during his life, and that
at his death it should go to the son of Matilda. This
son's name was Henry, and he did, in due course,
succeed to the Crown, on Stephen's death, as Henry I I .
Now, notice whom Matilda, his mother, had
married. She had married first the Emperor, Henry
V., and secondly, the Count of Anjou. Her son Henry
inherited Anjou from her, and married Eleanor, who
was heiress of Aquitaine and Poitou, in the south of
France, and was the divorced wife of the K i n g of
France. By his marriage, therefore, Henry became
lord of Aquitaine. Then K i n g Stephen died, and this
same Henry, our Henry I I . , had England, Normandy,
Anjou, and Aquitaine. That is to say his possessions
on the Continent were more extensive than his English
inheritance and also were more extensive than the
lands of the K i n g of France himself.
150 NORMANS A N D ANGEVINS
Thus was England taken up, as we may say, into
the continental system and became a part of i t . She
became an actor in the struggles which such a situation
as this was evidently sure to cause between the K i n g
of England, w i t h all these French possessions, and the
K i n g of France. It was a contest between the Capets,
the Capetian Kings of France, and the Angevins, the
kings of England who had that name from the impor-
tant lordship of Anjou, which belonged to them ; and
the contest continued from the middle of the twelfth
century almost to the middle of the thirteenth—say
from 1150 to 1240. In the course of that struggle a
very remarkable, and a very remarkably different,
change took place in France and in England in the
power of the kings of the two countries over their
barons.
In France the king gradually gained in power u n t i l ,
in the long reign of Philip Augustus, which stretched
over the last twenty years of the twelfth century and
the first twenty-three of the thirteenth, the king
became all-powerful.
In England, on the contrary, where the king had
been not nearly so much in the hands of the barons as
the early Capetian kings of France had been, the barons
gained more and more power u n t i l , in 1215, we find
K i n g John compelled by his barons to allow his seal to
be affixed to Magna Carta. This charter gave English-
men the beginnings of their liberty at the very time
when the K i n g of France was effectually establishing
the autocratic power of the Crown over all French
subjects.
Henry I I . , although his kingdom was so extensive
in England and on the Continent, expanded it yet more
widely by a complete and effective conquest of Ireland,
and also by receiving homage from the K i n g of Scotland,
whom his armies had defeated at Alnwick and made
prisoner.
 IRELAND 151
We have seen very little of Scotland in the course
of the great story, and little of Ireland since we saw the
priests of the Irish Church coming westward and con-
verting the heathen to Christianity. Scotland had for
centuries, from the time of the Romans in Britain and
probably long before that, been a troublesome neigh-
bour to England on the north boundary. We have
seen that boundary shifted once or twice as the forces
on one side or on the other prevailed. B u t Scotland,
in her attacks upon England, never succeeded in
penetrating very far south, and therefore did not take
any very important part, at that time, in the making of
the story. A n d now Henry had the Scottish king
prisoner and doing homage to him. That homage gave
the K i n g of England the position of feudal lord over
the K i n g of Scotland. B u t feudal vassals, as we have
seen, were not always quite subservient to their lords.
The Scottish kings were no exception, and they acted
very much as if they were no less independent than
before.
B u t the conquest of Ireland was different, and com-
plete. Ireland, lying out in the western sea, had
escaped the incursions of the Saxons, the Danes, and
the Normans that had fallen upon England. Sea-
rovers had constantly harried her coasts, as,they harried
every coast w i t h i n reach of their sails and oars, and
made some settlements there ; but the island as a
whole had not been overrun by any invaders since the
coming of the Celts.
In Ireland, thus cut off from the rest of the world,
the Church went its own way in less dependence on
the Pope at Rome than any other in all the Western
world. In the Eastern Empire and in all the vast
territories of the Slavs the Patriarch at Constantinople
was looked up to as the head of what came, in later
days, to be known as the Greek Church. It conducted
its services rather differently from the Roman Church,
152 NORMANS A N D ANGEVINS
and there were some differences in the doctrines of
the two. The Church of Constantinople was too
strong for the Church of Rome to prevail against it
in the East, but Rome claimed universal spiritual
authority in the West.
The Pope, moreover, by virtue of a before-mentioned
deed signed by Constantine, and called the Donation,
or gift, of Constantine, was reputed to have authority
over all islands. It did not matter that this famous
Donation, or the deed by which it was supposed to be
instituted, was strongly suspected to be a forgery, nor
did it matter that even if it really were drawn up by
Constantine and signed by him, his right to give away
authority over " islands " was not quite clear, although
he were the emperor of the world. No matter. This
gift of " islands," though the document, or deed, was
doubtful, was destined to play an important part in the
world's story when that story began to be concerned
w i t h the discoveries of new continents and islands.
For the moment it served to authorise the Pope to
give our Henry I I . a mandate to conquer Ireland, and
to bring its Church into subservience to Rome. The
Pope was Adrian I V . , the first, and the only, English-
man who ever held that highest spiritual honour.
His behests were willingly and easily obeyed. Ireland,
divided between several local chieftains, or kings, did
not resist Henry's armies l o n g ; and so became
subjugated to England. A n d by thus bringing Ireland
into the fold of the Church Henry made some atonement
to Rome for that infamous murder, in Canterbury
Cathedral, of the Archbishop Thomas, sometimes
called a Becket, which was done by some of his
knights who thought to give h i m pleasure by its
doing, even if he had not directly bidden i t .
The differences between Henry and his archbishop
had risen out of that question of " investitures," that
is of who should have the appointments to the high
 CGEUR-DE-LION 153
offices in the Church (whether those appointments
should be made by the Crown or should be kept in the
hands of the clerical party), which was the cause of
much trouble, and actual righting, in many lands.
The solution of the trouble, as has been noted already,
was found in the arrangement that the Church should
appoint its own officials for all spiritual offices, but
that for its earthly possessions it should do homage to
the sovereign of the country in which they lay. The
appointment of the Pope himself was put into the
hands of a College of Cardinals : that is, of high
Church officials.
Henry's successor on the English throne was his
eldest surviving son Richard, surnamcd Cwtir-de-Lion
for his gallantry in war.
We have come now to the years of which the great
story has been told to us in very picturesque language.
It seems to be an age of heroes, and of heroes inspired
by the highest motives. It is the time of that t h i r d
Crusade in which the kings of England and of France
combined w i t h the emperor to t r y to w i n back
Jerusalem from Saladin, that great Moslem ruler who
held Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Mediterranean
shore of Africa nearly as far west as Tunis. West-
ward again African Moslems held the southern half of
Spain. There were gallant actions to be performed
on behalf of the Cross both in East and West.
It was the age of those wandering minstrels the
troubadours of the Langue d'oc in the south of
France, the trouveres of the Langue d'oil in the north
of France, the singers of the Lingua di si in I t a l y .
Each of those was so called from the word used by the
people of the locality for our English word " yes."
In the " oil " we have the origin of the modern French
" o u i . " In England we have seen that there were
wandering minstrels. In Germany there were the
same, by the name of Minnesingers.
154 NORMANS A N D ANGEVINS
These Romance languages, as they were called, of
the Langue d'oil and the Langue d'oc, were the result
of the mixture, in the different localities, of the
Gothic, or German language w i t h the Roman, the
L a t i n . The troiweres of Northern France, like the
minnesingers and the English minstrels, were singers
or reciters of stories. Sir Walter Scott's " L a y of the
Last Minstrel " may give us an idea of the tales that
they recited. But, at this moment of our story, say
the end of the twelfth century, we are in the midst of
the age of chivalry, as it is called. It was the age when
the knight thought it right to devote all his services to
some lady of his love whose colours—probably a knot
of ribbon which she had worn—he carried con-
spicuously. It was the age of tournaments, which
were encounters between mounted and heavily armed
knights held before some great lord's castle. It was
an age too of constant fighting, some of which was in
the sacred name of the Cross against that Crescent
which was the badge and the sign of the Saracens. So
these rhymesters had plenty of stories for their telling.
There was a whole series of tales about the Court
of K i n g A r t h u r in B r i t a i n , some of which Tennyson
has put for us into modern verse in his " Idylls of the
K i n g . " There was a series, too, about the Court of
Charlemagne and his paladins, as his knights were
called. Many, indeed most, of the stories, which may
have had some historical and real incident underlying
them, were so overlaid w i t h invention that it is quite
impossible to tell where t r u t h leaves off and fiction
begins. The knights are of quite incredible stature
and strength, and the feats they perform are far too
good and great to be true.
We ask ourselves, then, seeing that we cannot
accept these stories as true in all their detail, whether
or no they are so far true that they do give us an
accurate idea of what life was like in those days :
 A JOUST B E T W E E N KNIGHTS IN T H E LISTS.
(From The History of Ereryday Things (Quennell), by permission of Messrs. B. T. Batsford, L t d ,
156 NORMANS A N D ANGEVINS
whether knights-errant—that is to say, knights
" erring " or wandering—really did go about, as they
are represented to us, seeking adventures.
Certainly many of the adventures of which the
stories tell us cannot be believed. The knights slay
for us such creatures of fairy-tale as dragons and the
like. B u t still there is no reason why something of
the k i n d may not have been true. We have to imagine
a country t h i n l y populated and cultivated only in
parts. We have to remember, too, that these knights,
and their horses also, were covered w i t h armour, so
that no weapons of the villeins or men of low degree
could h u r t them much. Moreover, the reputation of
the knights made them very bold against the men of
less degree, and made those men of humbler class the
more t i m i d and humble. Therefore it is not altogether
beyond belief that there may have been much of this
going about from castle to castle by wandering knights
in armour, and the wastes and woodlands were w i l d
places, where w i l d beasts and yet wilder outlawed men
might be met w i t h . The tales of the minstrels had
some foundation; but it is probable that what they
were interested in was not so much to tell their
audience true stories, as to tell them stories which
should amuse them and t h r i l l them.
That is the k i n d of story that the singers of England,
Germany, and Northern France told ; but the singers
of the south of France, the troubadours of the Langue
d'oc, were not so much singers or tellers of stories, as
singers of love songs. They could sing hymns of
hate, too, against those whom they disliked, and this
gave several of them much power. Some were of
high rank. They went from castle to castle, providing
entertainment in return for the amusement and
delight which their verses gave. Remember that the
castles were poorly lighted, after dark, that there were
few books and few people able to read what books
 T R O U B A D O U R S , ETC. 157
there were, and you may realise that the troubadour
would be very welcome.
" Troubadour " and " trouvere " are both from
the French root which we still see in French " trouver,"
" to find." They were finders or inventors of songs
and stories. W i t h them, in their company some-
times, travelled a lower class of musician and enter-
tainer, who did conjuring tricks, played antics, as well
as performing on musical instruments. He was called

R I C H A R D CCEUR-DE-LION'S PRISON AT T R I E F E L S ,
RHENISH BAVARIA.

a " joglar," or " jocular," a joking person. Our

modern form of the word is " juggler."
W i t h these shows and performances of the minstrels
and the juggler, and w i t h dancing, wrestling, and cruel
sport like bear-baiting and cock-fighting, the people
passed their leisure.
Now our K i n g Richard, of the lion-heart, was
reckoned as a troubadour. He was a verse maker and
a singer. That Crusade on which he went w i t h the
158 NORMANS A N D A N G E V I N S
K i n g of France had a certain measure of success. It
did not gain back Jerusalem from Saladin ; but it did
win towns on the coasts of Palestine, and it ended in
an arrangement w i t h Saladin that the Christians
should retain these coast towns and that Christian
peaceful pilgrims should be allowed to go to Jerusalem
without being ill-treated.
B u t the Crusade had other results also. Richard
appears to have taken a more leading part in it than
the K i n g of France liked. The K i n g of France returned
from the Crusade before Richard. He found that
Richard's brother, John, had conspired w i t h the
English barons against Richard, and he very gladly
gave his aid to John to strengthen the conspiracy.
Richard, probably taking too much upon himself,
in his lion-hearted way, had offended other people
besides the K i n g of France. One of these was the
Duke of Austria. Clearly Richard realised that he
was not a very popular person, for he disguised himself
and tried to gain his way home from the Crusade
undetected. B u t he was found out as he was going
through Austria. He was brought before the Duke
and imprisoned. Later the Duke of Austria handed
him over to the emperor, and he was imprisoned in a
castle in Germany.
There, according to the story, he was overheard,
singing a song of his own making, by a youth who had
at one time been his page and was passing by that
castle in which he was held prisoner. However that
be, it became known that the K i n g of England, return-
ing from fighting for the Cross, was being held shame-
fully a prisoner, and the indignation of the Pope and
of the greater part of Christendom was fierce. Under
threat of being excommunicated from the blessings of
the Church, and on payment of a large ransom, the
emperor released K i n g Richard, who hastened back to
England.
 T H E PLANTAGENET KINGS 159
The barons had been conspiring w i t h John, but
John had none of the ability to be leader of a great
conspiracy. The barons, moreover, had learnt from
of old how to make their own power greater by aiding
now one claimant to the throne and now another. As
soon as Richard appeared they deserted John's very
wrongful cause and went back to their proper allegiance
to Richard. John had no hereditary right to the
Crown, even on Richard's death, for John was the
fifth son of Henry I I . and Henry's fourth son had
himself a son, and this son, by all the laws of heredity,
had a claim on the Crown before John, his uncle.
B u t what we call the laws of heredity were not
followed very strictly in those days, and we have seen
again and again how ready a king was to portion out
to his sons parts of his kingdom. It was a practice
which naturally led to fighting and to dissension.
Henry had signified before his death the division
that he intended to make, and his sons began to fight
and intrigue for their portions while he was still alive.
Philip, K i n g of France, seems to have been ready to
support any claimant against the K i n g of England.
While Richard was king Philip supported John against
h i m . As soon as John became king he turned against
John, and John crossed the Channel to fighCPhilip in
order to t r y to maintain the English sovereignty over
Henry I I . ' s continental possessions.
B u t the dukes of the duchies and the counts of the
provinces favoured Philip rather than John. Their
quick change from the English to the French allegiance
shows how little real u n i t y there was under a feudal
king. John was a feeble leader, and the result of
some months of fighting was that he surrendered
nearly all the territory on the Continent held by his
grandfather. The kings of England ceased to be
Angevins, that is to say ceased to hold the lordship of
Anjou. The name of Plantagenet, from the branch
160 NORMANS A N D A N G E V I N S
of the planta genista, or broom, which they took for
their badge and wore in their caps, superseded the
name of Angevin for their dynasty.
Y o u might think that now, when the French king
was thus establishing himself as lord of nearly all that
we call France, the kingdom was beginning to settle
down into much the same condition, and w i t h much
the same boundaries, as we see i t . As a matter of
fact it had to be rent apart again, and again re-united,
before that settlement could begin. You w i l l do well
to note that one of the most powerful of the lords who
helped Philip in his light w i t h John was the Duke of
Burgundy. This name of Burgundy was brought into
the great story at a very early date, by a Gothic tribe
called the Burgundi coming westward w i t h the others.
It is a name that remains to this day. B u t no other
name of a territory has stood for such different areas,
or has had such different significance. It was, of
course, part of Charlemagne's Empire, and now it was
held as a fief of the K i n g of France. We shall sec
Burgundy coming to great power before the story's
end, but for the moment the French king is pre-eminent
over his lords.
The position between king and barons in England
is very different, for the barons are there forcing the
king to the acceptance of Magna Carta. By the
provisions of that charter or agreement no Englishman
shall henceforth be imprisoned, without t r i a l ; and
already travelling justices have been instituted to go
through the land and conduct trials.
In England the foundations are being laid for
liberty. On the Continent the foundations are being
laid for that despotic power of the Crown which is
only to be broken by the catastrophe of the French
Revolution.
 CHAPTER X V I I I
THE STRENGTH AND THE WEAKNESS OF ROME

O N E chief effect of the growing power of the French

king over his nobility was the gradual breaking up of
the feudal system throughout the greater part of
France. Philip sent bailiffs to collect his taxes,
instead of receiving them through the hands of the
lords, and we may look on this as a striking sign of the
changing times. He formed, moreover, the beginnings
of a standing army. In the extreme south of France,
in Aquitaine and Provence, the feudal conditions
lasted longer, but there, too, feudalism was crushed
out after the so-called Crusade against the Albigenses,
the people of A l b i in the south of France, who held
certain religious views at variance w i t h those of the
Church. Moreover, they professed themselves*offended
by the life and manners of the monastic orders and
other clerics. It was the very offence which caused the
Reformation later; but these would-be reformers of
A l b i were too few to w i n success, and their so-called
" heresy " was stamped out w i t h cruel severity.
The troubadours, together w i t h the poetic language
of " oc," passed away for ever w i t h the feudal society
which had made their manner of life possible. We have
come to some very dark pages of our story. In the
course of the perpetual fights between the feudal lords
themselves, and between combinations of the lords and
the king, the one side or the other, finding its own
161
162 S T R E N G T H A N D W E A K N E S S OF R O M E
forces failing, hired bands of mercenary soldiers to aid
them. When the little wars were over, these hirelings
got their dismissal. Perhaps they did, or perhaps they
did not, get their pay. If not, they were likely to take
its equivalent, and more, from any that had not the
force to withstand them, and even if they were paid
for past service, what were they to do on their dis-
missal ? W h a t they did was to wander up and down
the country, offering their service to any who cared to
hire i t , and in the meantime supporting themselves by
high-handed robbery and violence.
The Scandinavian nations and the Swiss furnished
most of these mercenaries, and they were the scourge
and terror of all Europe in the Middle Ages. It is
very largely the insecurity of life and property due to
their numbers and cruelties that so darkens the record
of this period of the story.
This particular trouble was one from which the
island position of England kept her fortunately free,
but she had her own troubles, more than enough.
The English barons, in their disgust at their treatment
by John, had invited the son of K i n g Philip of France
to come over and claim the English throne. He
actually was in England, w i t h a French army, at the
time of John's death; but a heavy defeat at Lincoln
sent h i m home again.
John's death, in fact, seems to have caused the
support of the barons to swing back yet again to the
rightful heir to the Crown. Amongst other degradations
which he had brought on his country John had sworn
fealty to the Pope for his possession of England and
Ireland. Our islands had, therefore, in theory, become
a possession of the Pope held by the English king as his
vassal, and few things in the whole of our great story
are more remarkable than the power which the Popes
continued to wield over all Europe, except its eastern
fringe, at the very time when the position of the Popes
 T H E CITIES OF I T A L Y 163
themselves was so very insecure at Rome that we
actually find them, not only unable to enforce their
authority in the city, but now and then compelled to
fly from it for their own personal safety.
It is very interesting to see what happened in the
country which we now call I t a l y , because it was some-
thing that was rather different from that which
happened elsewhere. It was different just because
there was this contest between the Pope and the
Emperor going on all the while, complicating the
already difficult position caused by the feudal system.
It is necessary, for the understanding of what
happened, that we should free our minds of any idea
of a single country, a unity, called I t a l y , as we know
I t a l y now. There was no such idea in men's minds
at the time reached by our story, and we can under-
stand what happened much better if we can get back
to their point of view.
For them there was the Emperor, w i t h his very
extensive but rather vague claim over a good deal of
what Charlemagne had made his own. Then the
feudal system had created what were practically
independent provinces in the north of I t a l y as else-
where. A n d then there came in the Pope, the power
of the Church. A n d the power of the Church had its
principal political influence, as regards I t a l y , in this :
that just as at Rome the Pope, who was originally no
more than the Bishop of Rome, had come to have
almost, if not quite, sovereign power in the city and
its neighbourhood, so too in other cities the bishops
began to exercise, not so much sovereign power as
the power of chief magistrates in addition to their own
spiritual power. Important cities, like Florence,
Milan, and Pisa, claimed an independence which the
Emperor found it his best policy to concede to them.
They were fortified w i t h walls which the inhabitants
were well able to defend at need. The feudal lords
12
164 STRENGTH A N D WEAKNESS OF ROME
at the same time had their castles in the country,
outside the towns.
There had been trouble and even war about the
" investitures," that is to say the appointments to
the high offices of the Church; and when this was
settled, it went far to free the Church from the c i v i l
authority, b u t at the same time it largely freed the
civil power from the Church. The bishops were
succeeded by c i v i l officers, called consuls, as rulers in
the cities. Then the feudal lords began to come into
the cities and live w i t h i n the walls, and as they were
the richest and probably the most able men, they
began to be chosen by the citizens as the chief officers.
From that to the establishment of themselves as
tyrants and despots in the cities—enlightened and
art-loving despots, generally—the step was short.
Often the chief families were at deadly feud w i t h each
other for years and years. Remember the Montagues
and Capulets, of whom we read in Shakespeare's
" Romeo and Juliet," in Verona.
City also fought against city about claims on
territory, rights of way on roads and rivers, and many
other points. A n d then came a threat from without
which forced the cities of Northern I t a l y to come
together and form a compact, or combination, known
as the Lombard League. The threat came from that
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (i.e. Red-beard) who
was Emperor at the date of that not altogether fortunate
t h i r d Crusade in which K i n g Richard of the L i o n
Heart took a leading part. The settlement, in 1122,
of the trouble about the investitures, had put the
appointment of the Pope into the hands of an I t a l i a n
College of Cardinals, as we have noticed already,
whereas he had hitherto been appointed by a German
Emperor. There had been the rather ridiculous position
of the Emperor appointing the Pope and the Pope
anointing and consecrating the Emperor. A n d now,
 F R E D E R I C K BARBAROSSA 165
although the Pope and Emperor had been of much
help to each other in the years before, the Pope from
this time forward began to take his stand as an Italian,
appointed by Italians, and thus to be in opposition
to the German Emperor. The Italians, besides, had
been largely increasing in population all these years.
The Italians, moreover, and especially the great
cities of N o r t h I t a l y , like Milan and Florence, had been
growing more and more independent. Several of the
emperors had not paid them much attention, but this
Frederick the Red-beard was more aggressive than his
predecessors. He attempted to assert a sovereignty
like that of the Carolingian emperors—that is, the
emperors of Charles's dynasty—over I t a l y , both north
and south. It was the cities of the north, the Lombard
cities, that he would naturally encounter first, and
these, by forming themselves into this Lombard
League, proved too strong for h i m . They fought him,
they forced h i m to give up his attempt to bring them
again into subjection under the German imperial rule.
He tried again and again, but again and again they
beat him. In its immediate purpose the League had
this success ; but it did not bring the States belonging
to it under one government. They still remained
independent of each other, and after F r e d r i c k had
withdrawn and the need for union was not pressing
they went back to their old feuds and fighting among
themselves. Besides these smaller differences, there
arose a constant and large division throughout all
I t a l y between the two parties that had the names of
Guelph and Ghibelline respectively. Originally these
had been names of German families—of the Welfs of
Bavaria and of the Waiblingen of Swabia—but in
course of time, in I t a l y , they lost all their first meaning.
Guelph came to mean the democratic party, favouring
the rule of the people, and w i t h this party the Pope was
identified. The Ghibellines were for the rule of the
166 S T R E N G T H A N D W E A K N E S S OF R O M E
high-born rich under the sovereignty of the Emperor.
A little later we find the great families of Orsini and
Colonna opposed as leaders of Guelph and Ghibelline
respectively. There was this constant unrest, but
I t a l y was not seriously troubled again by the claims of
the Emperor for t h i r t y years after the death of the
red-bearded Frederick. After that interval another
Frederick, grandson of the Red-beard, became
Emperor, and he again tried to impress his sovereignty
over these cities. He had some successes at the start,
but in the end he was repulsed quite as decidedly as his
grandfather.
As the result of this last defeat of the imperial
force, a permanent treaty—a treaty which actually
did last—was drawn up denning the rights of the
Emperor, and l i m i t i n g them very narrowly, over
I t a l y . The cities of the League were ensured in their
practically complete independence; and a like inde-
pendence was given to the Tuscan city of Florence
though she was not of the League. B u t still it was as
separate city States that their independence was defined.
There was still no u n i t y of government.
Now among the cities of the Lombard League, as it
was originally formed, Venice was included. It is
curious, however, that the name of Venice does not
appear in the treaty made w i t h Frederick Barbarossa.
If you w i l l look at the map of I t a l y you will see, on
either side of its long leg, two cities that were great
seaports—on the western side Genoa and on the
eastern side Venice. Most of the cities of the north of
I t a l y are inland cities. These two, exceptionally, are
on the sea.
B u t the importance of the t w o seaports differed
greatly, just because they were on opposite sides of
the long leg. Venice, looking eastward, was the port
to which came, most naturally and easily, all the
merchandise and traffic from the East. Through
 T H E POWER OF VENICE 167
Venice it was distributed throughout the West. This
fact gave Venice a great position. It also incited the
Venetians to be great sea-goers and great merchants.
They became both enterprising and rich. They had
a considerable navy. They became more powerful
than any other of the States of I t a l y ; and just because
this eastward-facing position made their interests
rather different from those of the rest, they therefore
came to stand rather apart from the others. Their
form of government was rather different. It was
perhaps better adapted for a State in which the great
men were merchants and shipowners. This difference
may possibly account for the name of Venice not
appearing in the treaty w i t h the Emperor Frederick
Red-beard.
Venice, thus powerful already, became far the
greatest naval power in the Mediterranean as a result
of the fourth Crusade. Really this so-called Crusade
was not directed by the Church at all. It was more of
a commercial undertaking than a spiritual adventure.
Egypt, which was in the hands of the Moslems, was
its object, therefore its forces had to go by sea. Venice
furnished money and transport.
Just at this moment the rightful Emperor of the
East had been dethroned by his brother, who had
usurped his power. The Crusaders, even from the
time of the first Crusade, never thought that they met
withfair treatment from the EasternEmperor, for whom
they fought. Perhaps they were glad enough now to
take up the cause of the rightful but deposed Emperor.
Venice, moreover, had her own private cause of offence
w i t h Constantinople. The result was that the Crusade
was turned aside from its first object, which was
Cairo, in Egypt, and was directed against Constanti-
nople. Constantinople fell to their attack in 1204.
Baldwin, Count of Flanders, a Norman by race and one
of the leaders of the Crusade, was appointed Emperor
168 S T R E N G T H A N D W E A K N E S S OF R O M E
of the East, and Venice, for her share, was given the
nominal sovereignty over some of the islands in the
Mediterranean, thus further increasing her power.
Frederick I I . , the grandson of Barbarossa, had come
to the imperial throne w i t h claims to an empire
scarcely less than that of Charlemagne himself. For
besides being Emperor, and thus K i n g of Germany, he
still had that claim on the Kingdom of I t a l y which the
emperors had not renounced, even if they could not
enforce i t . His mother had been heiress of the Norman
Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, on which also, therefore,
he had a valid claim. Rome lay between these two
territories. Moreover, this Frederick was in the
succession of the rulers of Burgundy, that great
province of which the K i n g of France was nominally
the overlord. The less important island Kingdom of
Sardinia was his also, and by his marriage he gained
the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as it was still called, though
it meant only the strip of western coast of Syria and
Palestine which the T u r k had left to the Christian.
Probably Frederick I I . ' s power, extensive as it was,
was quite unwieldy. Probably his authority over
parts of this great extent would not have been very
readily obeyed, nor very easily enforced. However
that be, he really, as I have said, effected nothing
against the Lombard League, which was revived, in
spite of the feuds between the cities. The League,
as before, had the power of the Pope on its side.
One of the means by which the Pope defeated the
Emperor in this struggle, and it was perhaps his
strongest weapon, was by excommunicating him.
Frederick had engaged to go on Crusade, the fifth
Crusade, but ill-health had prevented his taking an
active part in i t , and the Pope gave this as the reason
of his excommunication. Excommunication meant t h a t
he was denied all part in the services and sacraments
of the Church in this life, and was t o l d that his soul
 A S C E N D A N C Y OF T H E C H U R C H 169
would be lost in the world to come. It released his
subjects from any necessity of obeying his commands.
It put him, moreover, much in the position of an
" outlawed " man, which meant that he was not under
the protection of the laws of the land, so that any
man could be held blameless who lifted a hand to
attack him. It was a terrible power, and it was used
very terribly by the Church at this time and for many
centuries afterwards.
A n d then this Frederick, this man excommunicated
by the Church, undertook the direction of the sixth
Crusade. It was an extraordinary position. A
Crusade was a war for the Cross, for the Church ; and
here was one who had been placed quite outside the
fold of the Church taking the leadership in this war.
B u t the t r u t h is that these later Crusades were not
really aimed against the infidel and the Moslem for
religious reasons nearly so much as for political motives.
Frederick actually did persuade, without fighting, the
Turkish Sultan of Egypt to give him the sovereignty of
Jerusalem.
While he thus brought back the H o l y Places into
the Christian Church, what he claimed to be his own
territories in Europe were being invaded by the Pope's
forces—a k i n d of " Crusade " was wag&d against h i m
who was leading a most successful Crusade in the
recognised sense of the term !
He returned to Europe to struggle awhile against
the spiritual power; but it was too strong for him.
He died in 1250. For another score or so of years Pope
and Emperor, I t a l y and Germany, fought inter-
mittently, w i t h such weapons as each had, but before
the beginning of the fourteenth century the Church's
spiritual ascendancy prevailed over all the Western
world, and Rome had been established in her papal
possessions.
During much of that fourteenth century, however,
170 S T R E N G T H A N D W E A K N E S S OF R O M E
conditions in Rome became so disturbed that the Popes
removed to Avignon in France. They removed
thither in 1305 and four years later we find the Emperor
acknowledged as K i n g of the Romans. It was not
for another seventy years that a Pope dared or cared
to live in Rome, and even when the Papal Court did
return there were for many years two Popes, one,
appointed by the Italian cardinals, in Rome, another,
elected by the French, in Avignon.
Y e t even in the midst of these distractions and
schisms, when the actual life of the Head of the Church
was sometimes in danger, we still see the Church's
power steadily increasing—for one reason, because, in
the t u m u l t of the times, it was the one force which
knew its own purpose and pursued that purpose in all
places and at all times unchangeably. By the end of
the fourteenth century it stands at last supreme in its
own city and country—in Rome itself. Rome as a
republic exists no longer: it has become the Papal
State.
 CHAPTER X I X

THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN

IT is curious to note the different modes of government

which prevailed in the different States of I t a l y in the
fifteenth century. There was, nearly halfway down
the long peninsula, this Papal State or State of the
Church, firmly established by 1450. In the extreme
south was the kingdom, that is to say a State governed
by a monarchy, of Naples, w i t h which the island of
Sicily was at one time included, while at another time
the kingdom was separated from i t . In the extreme
north there was Milan, of which the Duke was the head.
Another of the five great States by which all I t a l y at
that time was held was Florence, under a republican
government, and there was the powerful naval State
of Venice, also in name a republic, though its mode of
government differed from the mode of Florence. In
I t a l y more than in any other country, although con-
ditions everywhere were constantly changing, we find
what we may call experiments in ways of government
being attempted. I do not t h i n k that there is any
form of government, or even of anarchy—which is
absence of all government—under which mankind ever
has tried to live that was not put upon its trial in I t a l y
during these years. Yet, through all the shifting
scene, so unsettled that even the Pope himself had to
fly from the H o l y City, the power of the Church still
increased and increased. A n d one of the means of its
171
 172 T H E MOSLEMS I N SPAIN
increase we have to recognise in the Crusades.
Although the later Crusades lost much of the high
spiritual motives which had inspired the first Crusades,
even the worst of them was waged w i t h the under-
lying idea in the minds of the warriors that they were
fighting in the sacred cause of religion.
The earlier Crusades had been fired w i t h the
project, which for a while had been achieved, of rescuing
the H o l y Places of Palestine from the infidel. The
first Crusaders of all had been invited thither by the
Emperor at Constantinople. The fourth Crusaders
had attacked and taken Constantinople itself and had
put one of their leaders, Baldwin, the Norman, on the
imperial throne. B u t there were other so-called
Crusades that never went eastward at all. Only a
few years later than the date, 1204, of the expedition
which captured the imperial capital of the East, that
so-called Crusade against the Albigenses swept over
the beautiful country of the troubadours. The people
of this part of France had been disposed, for many
years, to adopt a view of the nature of God which had
been brought from the east of Europe and was opposed
to the doctrine of the Church of Rome. Moreover,
these heretics, as the Church deemed them, set their
faces firmly against some of the evil practices of the
clergy.
It is not only in the south of France, but it is in
whatever part of Christendom we look at this time, that
we find these evil practices. Doubtless there were
very many good and zealous priests and monks, but
the records leave no doubt that there were very many
who were idle, and worse than idle. From the Pope
himself came parchments on which were written
pardons for sins committed, and these pardons could
be bought, for money, from the clergy. Also there
were other parchments on which were written " indul-
gences," as they were called—that is to say leave to
 THE ALBIGENSES 173

commit sins, up to a certain date, without penalty.

These too were sold, for the benefit of the clergy and
the Church.
It was against such bad doings as these that the
Albigcnsian heretics protested, and probably it was
this protesting, quite as much
as their heretical belief, which
led the Church to incite an
active war against them. They
were under the protection of
the lords of the castles in which,
as we have seen, the troubadours
were welcomed and entertained,
for these lords themselves appear
to have been inclined to their
doctrine. One of these lords was
excommunicated by the Pope's
legale who had been sent to t r y
to suppress the heresy. In the
uproar which this caused the
legate was killed, and the result
of his murder was that the Pope
incited the lords of the north of
France to take up arms against
the south and sweep the A l b i -
gensian heretics off the face of
the earth.
It was a sweeping which was
not perfectly accomplished at the
first passage of the broom. The STATUE OF KNIGHT w
heresy continued t o linger on i n CHAIN ARMOUR.
secret places u n t i l the Church,
by the use of that most cruel institution called the
Inquisition, finally destroyed it. Hut it was an
immediate result of the Crusade that the independence
of the lords of the south of France was lost. Their
demesnes were gathered in under the sovereignty of
174 T H E MOSLEMS I N S P A I N
the K i n g of France, and all that graceful and pictu-
resque and highly cultivated life in which the trouba-
dours had taken so very large a part came to an end.
Their music was silenced : their poems were composed
no more.
You may read in your history books that the " era
of the Crusades " comes to an end in 1270. Y o u will
also find the Crusades divided up into first, second,
t h i r d , and so on. But, as we have seen, there was a
continual going to and from Palestine. There was,
too, one European country in which we may say that a
perpetual Crusade, or war for the Cross against the
Crescent, went on without ceasing for close on 800
years. That country is Spain, from its first invasion
by the Moslems, which was early in the eighth
century, u n t i l their final expulsion at the end of the
fifteenth.
The Mahommcdans, you may remember, even
pressed on over the Pyrenees, those mountains dividing
France from Spain, after they had helped in breaking
up the kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain itself; but
they were defeated and driven back as soon as they
came up against a strong opposition. They were able
to overrun Spain just because there was no strong
opposition there. B u t these Moslems themselves did
not form any durable government in Spain. They
had none of the ability for governing and organising
that the Romans had shown. They had no sooner
swept over the Spanish peninsula, as they did, than a
Christian kingdom independent of them was proclaimed
in that region of Spain which you may still see marked
on the map as Asturias. B u t it extended much
beyond the bounds of the present province so-called,
reaching from the Pyrenees away to the western
extremity of the peninsula.
The story of Spain all this while was cut off and
separated from the whole great story and did not enter
 T H E MOORISH "CONQUEST" 175
intimately into its making, rather as that peninsula
itself is cut off from the rest by the Pyrenees. It is a
story, however, which we cannot afford to neglect
because there came a time, a l i t t l e later, that is to say
in the sixteenth century, when Spain was very master-
ful all over the world and played the leading role in
the story. B u t during all these eight centuries of her
crusade w i t h the Moslem she took but little part.
We have observed that the Pyrenees, beside being a
formidable obstacle and boundary in themselves, were
the home of a very independent and unconquered
people called the Basques. They are there still, still
a people rather apart. Probably they are survivors
of one or the other of those early Celtic invasions which
swept over Europe and of which there survive also
remnants in B r i t t a n y and in Wales. They still speak
a language unrelated to that of the French on the one
side or the Spanish on the other.
A n d what was the story of this Spanish peninsula,
thus separated from the rest ? We have in the first
place to t r y to understand what the " Moorish con-
quest," as it is called, meant. It is said that the
Moors " swept o v e r " the country. It is a good
phrase to express what happened if we take it in the
right sense. They " swept over " the country, but
that does not at all i m p l y that they swept all the
former inhabitants, who probably were chiefly of the
Visigothic race, before them. Spain is a country of
many mountain ranges. To bear that fact in mind
w i l l help us to understand what happened.
These mountain ranges provided refuges into which
the inhabitants could resort in time of invasion, and
whence they could come forth again and take up their
lives much as before when the sweeping of the invasion
had passed over. Spain was far too large a country
for the Moslems who came in to settle and to govern,
and it was too much cut up by the mountains. The
176 T H E MOSLEMS I N S P A I N
invaders had not any very settled government or
organisation among themselves. They were a mixed
company of soldiers, Arabs, Syrians, and Africans.
They had no settled purpose in their invasion. They
seem not to have known what to do w i t h it when they
had achieved i t .
They achieved it easily, because there was no real
resistance, as we have seen, u n t i l they crossed into
France. B u t though the Christians of Spain could not
combine to resist them, the Christians had some
settled interests in common, to hold them together.
They had the Church, and they had the combination
of their own Gothic laws w i t h the Roman law which
they found in Spain when they came there. They
had, therefore, some influences to bring them together
into that u n i t y which gives strength, and as their
numbers grew they became powerful.
We should bear in mind that they had not long
been converted to Christianity when the Moslems came
upon them. The religion of Christ had no very strong
hold over them. The consequence was that, when they
found that their conquerors would let them live far
more comfortably in the country if they adopted the
religion of Mahomet, there were many who were quite
willing to do so. The conquerors do not seem to have
used their power cruelly, and it is likely that the people
in general were in quite as good a position and quite as
happy under the new rule as under the old. The Jews,
particularly, of which nation there were very many in
Spain, were almost certainly happier, for the Christian
government had persecuted and oppressed them and
the Moslems were far more tolerant. The Moslems,
indeed, whether in Spain or Asia, or even in Africa,
were probably quite as advanced in general culture as
the Christians. Europe was indebted to them for a
better knowledge of medicine than the Western world
had acquired before. The game of chess was given us
 W A N I N G P O W E R O F T H E MOORS 177
by them, and when we say " check-mate " we are
really saying " Sheik mat " = t h e sheik, or king, is dead.
By the tenth century the Christian power from
the north was beginning to press heavily upon the
Mahommedans in the south, and this pressure south-
ward led to the foundation of the Kingdom of Castile,
in the centre of Spain. Another kingdom which had
been independent, that of Leon, was absorbed by
Castile. This name of Castile is said to be derived from
casiillas, or castles, because the Christians, as they
spread southwards, made forts or castles, as they
went, which they held as outposts against the Mahom-
medans. A l l through the next, the eleventh century,
in the course of which W i l l i a m the Conqueror came to
Britain, the war between Christian and Moslem went
on, a continual Crusade, in Spain. We may notice
that twice, when the Moslems were hard pressed, they
summoned others of their own creed in Africa to come
to their assistance. On each occasion of the coming
of these new forces the Christians were forced back.
B u t the energy and the organisation which made
the strength of these counter-attacks seem to have
spent themselves quickly. Always there was more
u n i t y among the Christians and a more steady purpose.
They came on again to the attack and found the
Moslem force less able to resist.
A very important gain for the Christians was the
taking of Cordova by Ferdinand I I I . , K i n g of Castile
and Leon, in 1236. Cordova was the chief city of
Mahommedan Spain. There was a Caliph, or head of
the Moslem Church, at Cordova, independent of the
Caliph at Mecca. It is rather like the position of the
Pope at Rome and the Patriarch at Constantinople in
the Christian Church at that time.
The effect of this capture of Cordova was decisive.
Not many years later another important and strong
city of the Mahommedans, Seville, was also taken from
 E N G L A N D A N D CASTILE 179
them, and it is a remarkable fact in this capture of
Seville that the Christians had the assistance of ships
belonging to the Moorish K i n g of Granada. The
K i n g of Granada had done homage to Ferdinand for
his kingdom. Even before the middle of the pre-
vious century Alphonso V I I . had been crowned as
" Emperor in Spain and K i n g of the Men of the T w o
Religions."
It is a singular title. There is not the slightest
doubt that it claimed a great deal more than the
possessor of the title could enforce, but still it shows
the direction in which events even then were moving.
They had gone very far when a king of Castile could
have the only remaining Moslem potentate in the land
as his vassal, and could have the help of his Moslem
ships in the assault on a Moslem city.
B u t still Spain was far from a united kingdom.
Portugal was independent and has retained that
independence ever since. There was the small inde-
pendent Kingdom of Navarre, up against the Pyrenees,
and in the south-east, w i t h a long stretch of sea-
coast on the Mediterranean, was Aragon, also an
independent kingdom.
Aragon entered more into the course of the great
story than any other of the kingdoms in Spain before
1500 ; because her kings had some claim to the throne
of Naples and Sicily ; but it was no very large part in
the story that even Aragon played.
Our England came near to being drawn into the
story of Spain herself, or rather, of Castile—I say rather
of Castile, because the name of Spain, to include the
whole country which we now so call, was hardly in
use then. This happened because John of Gaunt, who
was son of our K i n g Edward I I I . , had married, as his
second wife, a daughter of Pedro the Cruel, as he was
styled, the K i n g of Castile. Pedro, for his cruelties,
had been hunted off the throne by his own brother,
13
180 T H E MOSLEMS I N S P A I N
and our Edward the Black Prince, eldest brother of
John of Gaunt, went down from France into Castile
and helped to put Pedro back.
John of Gaunt's claim was settled by the marriage
of the son of John I . , who had succeeded Pedro on the
throne of Castile, to John of Gaunt's daughter. We
may think that England was fortunate in thus escaping
all the complications in which this claim might have
involved her.
A n d now—to conclude the story of Spain, up to
the year 1500 or so, and the story of that long drawn-
out crusade of eight centuries of which she was the
scene—it is remarkable that although the Moslems'
power had been restricted to the Kingdom of Granada
as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, it
was not u n t i l nearly the close of the fifteenth that
their dominion in Spain was brought to an end by the
capture of Granada itself. A n d by this time the
Christian power in the country had been strengthened
by the union of the Kingdom of Aragon w i t h that of
Castile. This was brought about by the marriage of
Ferdinand, K i n g of Aragon w i t h Isabella, Queen of
Castile. Thus, w i t h Granada now included in Christian
Spain, we have the boundaries of the country as they
are to-day, except for a small part of the little K i n g d o m
of Navarre which lay south of the Pyrenees. That
final portion also will be annexed before many years
of the new century have gone.
A n d now Columbus is just coming back w i t h the
news of America. Spain is about to enter on her
conquests in the New World. A new day is dawning.
 CHAPTER X X
THE PLANTAGENETS IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND

IF the kings of England after John had been content to

acquiesce in his giving up of practically all that were of
value of his possessions on the Continent, it is likely that
they would have saved much fighting and misery, both
for the people of England and of the Continent also.
It was not to be thought for a moment that they
would so acquiesce, however. It took the almost con-
tinual fighting of some 300 years to effect that useful
separation of England from the rest of Europe.
To understand the story we have to bear in mind
that the character and will of the king i n those days
were all-important for the country. He could practi-
cally dictate what was to be done. He could declare
war and make peace.
A n d yet, remember this, even a king could not
make war without money, to pay and feecyhis troops
and to get munitions of war and horses and so on. The
kings of England often found themselves in want of
money for their wars. They tried once or twice to
impose, of their own authority, a tax—over and above
the taxes which had grown out of ancient usage and
were recognised as the king's right—to pay these
expenses, but the people and the barons always proved
too strong for the king when he attempted these
exactions. If they did not actually force him to give
up the new tax, they at least compelled h i m to accord
them some further liberties and privileges in return
for their consenting to pay the extra contribution
demanded of them. It was largely in this way,
181
182 T H E PLANTAGENETS
because of the necessity for money in which the king
found himself, that the " rights of the people," as we
call them, were conceded.
So it is possible to argue that out of the evils and
miseries of the wars this good did come, and that it
might not have come but for these evils and miseries,
because it was through them, or through the wars that
caused them, that the needs of the king became so
pressing.
Henry I I I . , succeeding the wretched John, gave
his subjects further offence, besides that of the money
which he made them subscribe for his wars, by the
number of foreign counsellors and officials that he had
about him. A n d the effect of this again was perhaps
not altogether evil, for it helped the English people to a
stronger idea that they were one nation—to a stronger
idea of their national unity, as we say. While the
kings were t r y i n g to be both English kings and French
kings, the people grew more and more purely English.
Because of Henry I I I . ' s money difficulties, he had
often to summon that Great Council which had grown
out of the Anglo-Saxon "witanagemote " or " meeting
of the wise men " of the nation. It began to be written
of by its present name of " parliament," and exercised,
as we have seen, one of the most important powers of
parliament, namely, allowing the king to collect money
from the people. A n d this very phrase, that it seems
natural and right to use, " allowing the k i n g , " shows
how the power of the king was already limited. It
was very different in France; and it was largely
because the French people had not been able to put
any such check on their king's power that the horrors
of the French Revolution had to happen. The English
counties sent up representatives, chosen by themselves,
to the Councils or Parliaments; and so government
by the representatives of the people began.
Charters for free trading and i m m u n i t y from
 F I R S T P R I N C E OF W A L E S 183
certain taxes were granted by the king at these
Councils, but he broke his word as readily as he gave i t ,
and his barons soon came to open war against him.
The barons had the better of the fighting. Twice they
defeated h i m and extorted promises from h i m as a
condition of letting h i m continue on the throne at
all, but the last and deciding battle at Lewes, went in
the king's favour. By that time he was perhaps
softened by age. His terms were not severe and the
last years of his long reign were the best.
When he died in 1272 his son Edward, his heir,
was on Crusade, and it was not u n t i l two years later
that he returned. That no claimant to the throne
came forward in that interval seems to show that the
idea of hereditary succession to the throne was at
length fully recognised.
It looks as if Edward had learnt wisdom from his
father's folly. He did not attempt expensive foreign
adventures, except as he was compelled to them by his
difficulties w i t h his feudal lords in Aquitaine and
Gascony. He had the K i n g of France as his own feudal
overlord in respect of those lands. B u t he did under-
take, and successfully, an enterprise against a foe
nearer home—Wales, whose prince refuse^ h i m the
homage due. He conquered Wales and, although it
rebelled against h i m about ten years after, and again
against a later king, he really had conquered it once
for all. F r o m that time forward the eldest son of the
K i n g of England has had the t i t l e of Prince of Wales.
He was not nearly so fortunate in his attempt to
settle the affairs of Scotland. He was called in as an
umpire over the question of who was the rightful heir
to the Scottish throne, and trouble quickly arose
because he claimed that he had given this decision as
the overlord of Scotland, whereas the Scottish view
was that he had merely been invited, as an independent
party, to arbitrate in a case of difficulty.
184 T H E PLANTAGENETS
Hence came war, and repeated war, w i t h Scotland
—repeated, because after more than one conquering
invasion Scotland appeared to be defeated, and at the
conqueror's mercy, but always its spirit revived, first
under the leadership of W i l l i a m Wallace, then under
that of Robert Bruce ; and Bruce was the effective
ruler of Scotland when Edward I. died, in 1307. Seven
years later, in Edward I I . ' s reign in England, Bruce
won the decisive battle of Bannockburn, which made
Scotland secure in her independence during all the
years of Bruce's life, and left her a constant menace
to England u n t i l the happy union of the nations was
accomplished by the succession of the Scottish k i n g —
James, the first Stuart K i n g of England—to the English
throne. B u t that was not for many a long year
beyond the date that this book tells of.
Of the three Edwards who succeeded each other at
this time as kings of England, the first was the best and
most statesmanlike, the second the least worth, and
the t h i r d , bold and chivalrous, committed many of the
sins of the father of Edward I. and wasted the country's
strength and resources in foreign war. In his reign began
that of which history speaks of as the Hundred Years'
W a r : and indeed it lasted for more than a hundred
years, seeing that it had its commencement before the
middle of the fourteenth century and did not end u n t i l
just after the middle of the fifteenth. That long-
drawn-out war was of course w i t h France, and France
had Scotland ever ready to help w i t h a stab from the
north of England when England was in trouble.
The war was almost forced upon the kings of the
unfortunate countries, France and England, by the cir-
cumstance that the English k i n g was the lawful feudal
holder, under the K i n g of France, of Aquitaine and
the Gironde in the south of France. It was a possession
far from the English centre, and immediately attached
to France. Geographically it was a part of France.
 T H E BLACK D E A T H 185
Therefore, in defence of these and other claims to
territory on the Continent, England was practically
obliged to fight, seeing that France was scarcely less
obliged, for her own safety and settlement, to
endeavour to w i n this territory to herself. The long
war was fought w i t h very varying success, and not
without intervals of peace. The feudal lords of the
disputed districts were willing to play off one king
against the other, proclaiming themselves now under
allegiance to the one and now to the other, as they
found it to their best advantage.
Edward began by winning a great naval victory,
which made his fleet unquestioned mistress of the sea
for twenty years or more, and at the end of the first
ten years of the war, from 1337-1347, all the gains
seemed to be w i t h him. He made a truce w i t h the
French king, after winning a great victory at Crecy,
after capturing Calais, and after his armies had been
no less victorious in the south. We can never know
how matters might have gone, when the time of that
truce ended, had not an awful calamity, far worse than
war, fallen upon England and upon all the Western
world. It was that calamity known by the dreadfully
suitable name of the Black Death.
It seems to have been the same disease as t h a t
which is now called the plague, and it was so terribly
deadly that actually one-third of the population in
England is said to have died from i t , and the loss of
life on the Continent was no less. Most countries had
far fewer inhabitants then than they have now, and
they could less afford the loss. The result, in England
—and it must have been much the same elsewhere—
was that much of the cultivated land went back to
w i l d waste land, for want of workers to keep it tilled.
This lack of labourers led to a general change in the
system on which agriculture was carried on. It led to
the system that is still in use.
186 T H E PLANTAGENETS
According to the old way, the workers were
practically bound to stay and work on the manors.
They were called villeins, and their condition was quite
different from that of the serfs. The condition of
serfdom itself was dying out. The villeins could not,
at all events, be bought and sold, like chattels or cattle.
They were protected by law. B u t they were obliged
to give so many days' work, and do other services, to
the lord of the manor on which they lived. They had
to t i l l the lord's land for him. The rest of their time
they might employ in working for their own livelihood.
Under the new system, which came in by reason of
the scarcity of labourers after the two years or so of the
Black Death had passed over the land, the lords of the
manors found it more to their advantage to let out
part of their land—to " farm " it out—to tenant
farmers, who paid partly in money and partly in
produce, instead of by so many days and pieces of
work. The farmers engaged labourers to whom they
paid a wage, again part in money and part in kind, of
which the amount was settled by A c t of Parliament.
The modern system, in fact, was established.
B u t another result of this terrible Black Death,
which lasted t i l l just after the middle of the fourteenth
century, was that the truce between France and
England was formally renewed. Troubles on the
boundaries of France, however, both in the south and
in the west, were constant. Edward, claiming to have
a right through his mother to the throne of France,
gave the French lords a ready pretext for declining
feudal services which they did not wish to render to
the king who occupied that throne.
Open war was renewed, and both in Normandy and
in the south Edward triumphed. The Black Prince,
as he was called, K i n g Edward's eldest son, the
Prince of Wales, conquered more than all that England
claimed in and around the troubadours' Langue d'oc
 M E D I E V A L ARMOUR 187
and won the wonderful victory of Poitiers in which he
took captive the French king. Again a truce, all in
England's favour, was made. Once more war broke
out, aroused as usual by the discontent of the French
nobles; but this time it was discontent, on the part
of those nobles of the south who had long been under
the suzerainty of the French king, w i t h the foreign rule
of England.
We have mentioned two great battles won by the
English, Crecy and Poitiers. They deserve a few words
more, for they marked a big change in the military story.
The ideal of the formidable fighting engine during
all the earlier years of those Middle Ages of which we
are speaking now, was the knight, in armour clad. Up
to the fourteenth century it was armour of mail, that
is to say of rings of steel connected w i t h each other
and so forming a flexible covering, and yet able to
keep out a moderate sword thrust or arrow shot.
During the course of the fourteenth century the
armour became more solid and weighty, w i t h plates of
metal instead of the mail. The horse, as well as the
knight, was thus plated, and, so defended, neither
could easily be hurt by the weapons then in use.
Horse and man together were so heavy ?ifc}iat they
could bear down, in their charge, a great force of men
on foot. Therefore they were so feared that a very
small number of the heavy cavalry could put to flight,
and to death, a very much larger number of infantry.
B u t this weight of armour made them very
unwieldy. If they fell from their horses they could
only regain the saddle w i t h great difficulty. The
Crusades, taking these heavy armed knights into the
scorching sun of the East and nearly baking them
alive w i t h i n their armour plates, must have taught
them some of the disadvantages of this weighty
armour. B u t what taught the English, in the first
place, that the heavy armed cavalry was not as
188 T H E PLANTAGENETS
invincible as was commonly thought at that time, was
the lesson learnt in their wars against Scotland. The
Scots had adopted the plan of putting pikemen, w i t h
long pikes, in the forefront of their battle. The
English heavy horse charged on these, but the pikes
kept them back ; and, all the while, lightly armed
archers on either flank poured in showers of arrows to
the destruction of horse and man.
That was the manner in which the Scots several
times had beaten the English. The English, taught
by these reverses against the Scots, adopted just the
same order of battle against the French at Crecy and
also at Poitiers. A n d they had an astonishing success.
In both battles the enemy was in far larger numbers,
but the pikemen stood firm and held back the French
cavalry, which charged again and again, and all the
while the famous archers of England poured in arrows,
from either side, w i t h the long bow.
These battles meant more than victories of the
English over the French. They were victories of the
common soldier, the foot soldier, over the knight and
the cavalry. They took away, at a blow, much of the
awe w i t h which the knight in armour had been regarded.
Doubtless they added something to the self-respect of
the foot soldier as they must have diminished some-
thing of the pride of the other. They led, too, to a
lighter arming of the cavalry which made the horse-
men quicker in movement and less clumsy.
Edward, after Poitiers and the capture of the
French king, seemed to have brought his kingdom to
the height of its power. The country increased in
wealth, especially in the wealth which it derived from
the wool trade w i t h Flanders. The association of
England w i t h the Flemings was close, and many of
that nation came over at this time and established a
weaving industry in the towns of our eastern counties.
B u t probably the great bulk of the wool that was
 ENGLAND AND FLANDERS 189
grown on the backs of English sheep was still taken to
the Continent in the unworked state. We may
picture to ourselves the long strings of pack-horses, led
by carriers, going along the bridle-paths, as we might
call them now, bearing the wool to the port whence it
should be shipped across Channel. Wheeled vehicles
were known and were in use, but it is tolerably certain
that most of the carrying was on horseback, u n t i l a
river was reached which was navigable by the small
ships of that day. The roads were not adapted for
carts—in spite of the old road-making of the Romans.
A considerable portion of the revenue of the Crown
came from the " duties," that is to say the money due
according to the arrangements of the law, that were
paid to the king's officials by the merchants on the
exported wool.
There had been Counts of Flanders ever since the
tenth century, and the K i n g of France was their over-
lord. When the K i n g of England claimed to be K i n g
of France, the Count of Flanders, like other feudal
vassals, was ready enough to take what advantage he
could get from changing his allegiance from one master
to the other. The industrial cities of Flanders, such
as Ghent and Bruges, had secured great privlleges for
themselves. Like our own city of London, they had
gained most of their privileges in return for sums of
money given at one time or another to help their
sovereigns in distress. The large degree of indepen-
dence claimed by these cities, and the power which
their wealth gave them, made the position of the
rulers of Flanders constantly difficult. They were not
independent States, like the Italian cities; but they
had far more independence than our London.
England had become by this time a land possessing
many beautiful buildings. Even the first of these
three Plantagenet Edwards had been a great builder.
It is one of the many curious facts about the story of
190 T H E PLANTAGENETS
these Middle Ages, in which righting was almost con-
tinual, that they were the date of the building of some
of the most stately cathedrals and ecclesiastical build-
ings both in England and all over Europe. In Spain,

BYZANTINE STYLE OF ARCHITECTURE.

Capital and column from St. Sophia.

nearly from the time that the Moslems first came there,
there was building showing much of the Byzantine style,
as it was called, from Byzantium or Constantinople.
B u t the most beautiful and impressive buildings
were in what is known as the Gothic style, which had
 GOTHIC BUILDINGS 191
many varieties, but of which the striking feature is
that the tops, the highest points, of the arches came
to an angle, or peak, and were not rounded as was the
style of the arch in the older buildings, called Norman,
which were before them. Arch is from L a t i n arcus,
a bow, and the Norman arch was of the rounded shape
of a bow when the string is pulled back to discharge
the arrow. The Gothic form of the arch is said to
have been copied by its builders from the form which
the corner poles of the primitive Gothic houses
naturally took when they were brought together at
the top to form the angle of the roof, as described
on p. 100. This name of Gothic for this glorious
architecture is a little confusing, first because we made
the acquaintance of the Goths a long time before we
read of the Normans, and yet what is called the Norman
style of building is older than that which is called
Gothic; and secondly because the very words Goth and
Gothic are apt to suggest to our minds a very barbarous
and uncultivated folk.
A n d so they were, when they came first into this
story, from their homes east of the Rhine, but they
acquired, by degrees, civilisation from the Roman
world which they conquered, and this particular
science and art of architecture was carried to great
perfection at the date to which we have brought the
story now. It is almost enough, to impress upon our
minds the idea of that perfection, to remember that
the building of Westminster Abbey, as we see it now,
was undertaken in the reign of Henry I I I . in the
thirteenth century, and that the beautifully decorated
chapel of Henry V I I . attached to it was added later,
as the name of the king after whom it is called,
indicates. There are some traces left of Norman and
still older Saxon building in the cloisters, for the
original building was a monastery, established in
Saxon times, of Benedictine monks.
192 T H E PLANTAGENETS
In the Poets' Corner, as it is called, of the Abbey
is a tablet commemorating the poet Chaucer who
lived, at one time, close to the Abbey. He died in
1400 and his stories of the pilgrims travelling to the
shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral,
where he was buried, tell us very much about the
manner of life of the people of that day.
B u t , besides, Chaucer was a poet of the highest
genius, and the beauties of his verse are marvellous
considering the rough and troubled times in which he
wrote. Most of the earlier writers had been clerics,
and none approached the grace of Chaucer, a layman.
But, what is perhaps more wonderful still, he had no
followers, certainly none for more than a century after
his death, who came near h i m in beauty of language or
of thought.
Our story does not take us as far as that great
Renaissance, or new b i r t h of learning and culture,
which distinguished the sixteenth century. We must
put our Chaucer, together w i t h Dante in I t a l y , and a
few disciples such as Petrarch and his friend Boccaccio,
as forerunners, a century or more ahead, of that great
revival of literature.
By far the most of the Gothic building was of
places for worship or for the accommodation of the
clergy. Men thought—and it was a view which the
Church was very ready to encourage—that they could
find salvation and forgiveness for their sins if they
devoted their wealth to the building of houses for
religious purposes ; and they also supposed that they
could secure the favour of God by giving lands and
property during their lifetime to the Church or by
leaving it to the Church at their death.
By these gifts and legacies the Church grew more
and more wealthy. B u t this generous gift to the
Church did not altogether find favour w i t h the kings
or other feudal overlords of the givers, because every
 GOTHIC A R C H I T E C T U R E .
Doorway of Beuuvais Cathedral.
194 T H E PLANTAGENETS
such gift to the Church meant a diminution of the
taxes payable to the lord. Such feudal taxes were
those paid at a vassal's death, on the succession of a
new heir—but the Church did not die ; or on marriage
—but the Church did not marry. Lands of which the
owners died without leaving an heir lapsed back to the
Crown, which was looked on as having originally
given the lands to the tenant on a feudal tenure, or
tenancy—but the lands of the Church never thus
lapsed.
In order to put a check on this, Edward I. found it
easy to persuade his Parliament to pass an A c t to
prevent such giving of land to the Church unless leave
were first obtained from the Crown. The Act was
called the Statute of Mortmain, or of The Dead Hand,
probably because land given to the Church passed into
a hand that was dead so far as any giving of fees to a
feudal lord was concerned. The Crown might, or it
might not, grant the leave requested. The persuasion
of the Parliament to pass the measure was easy,
because most of the influential members of the Parlia-
ment suffered in the same way as the king. Their
vassals, as well as his, might leave or give land to the
Church, and so diminish their fees.
Thus king and barons stood together in this
particular, against the Church, and all through our
story we find a certain difference in this respect
between England and the rest of Europe. In England
we find that the king, the nobles, and the commons
were generally ready to stand together to resist the
power claimed by the Pope, representing the Church.
They might, and they did, constantly fight amongst
themselves, but on the whole they were very ready to
unite on this one point, and to resist Rome. The
great teacher and preacher Wycliffe gave the Crown
all the assistance of his eloquence in denouncing the
greed of the Church for civil power and great posses-
 W Y C L I F F E A N D HUSS 195
sions. Just as we look on Dante, the Italian, as a
forerunner of the new b i r t h in learning, so we may
regard our Wycliffc as forerunner of the great Refor-
mation in the Church. A great preacher in Bohemia,
John Huss, preached the doctrines of Wycliffe and
gained far more followers than he; and after Huss,
Luther, the greatest of all the reformers, carried the
work to its conclusion in the seventeenth century.
The Hussites of Bohemia became a large and
formidable armed force. In our country it is likely
that a revolt of the people of the eastern counties,
led by W a t Tyler, was in some part inspired by the
teachings of Wycliffc. Questioning the authority of
the head of the Government would easily follow from
questioning the authority of the head of the Church.
B u t partly by a very gallant show of courage by the
young king, Richard I I . , and partly by the valour of
the citizens of London, under the Mayor, the rebels
were overcome and crushed.
This spirit, however, in which Wycliffe and his
followers, the Lollards, disputed the authority of the
Pope, found favour w i t h the Government for a short
while only, and then the Lollards were hunjed down
and burnt as heretics. In Southern Germany, it
inspired the Hussites a little later. B u t it made no
way in France. We have to remember that at the
very beginning of the fourteenth century the Pope
fled from Rome and came to live, w i t h his court, at
Avignon, and this fact, that the Pope lived, and lived
for many years, in a French city, had the effect of
drawing the Pope and the K i n g of France closely
together. A further effect of this was that, all through
the weary years of almost incessant war between
France and England, the favour of the Church was
w i t h France rather than w i t h England, and it was a
favour which had much value.
 CHAPTER X X I
ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BURGUNDY

A F T E R the Hundred Years' War had been i n progress

less than a quarter of a century, it seemed as if Edward
I I I . had won all that he could possibly claim—peace
and sovereignty over all the outlying parts of his
dominion at home, and over more than he had set out
to gain on the Continent. B u t the war was renewed
by the action of Edward's vassal lords in France, only
nine years later, and before his death, which happened
in 1377, scarce a possession on the Continent was left
to England except the city of Calais and a narrow
strip of coast south of Bordeaux, in Guienne. Even at
sea the French fleet, now aided by the Spanish since
the interference by the Black Prince w i t h the affairs
of Spain—see p. 180—was completely victorious and
made raids on the south coast of England. At the
end of the fourteenth century it was on the terms that
England should hold these fragments, and these only,
of her once great territory on the Continent, that a
treaty was made w i t h France by Richard I I . , Edward's
successor on the English throne.
The cost and miseries incurred in England by
those unsuccessful wars in France led to serious riots
against the Government. It was then that W a t
Tyler led his force of Kentish rebels to London, where
only the courage of the king, a boy of fourteen, and
the resistance of the m i l i t i a of the t o w n saved the city
from the mob.
196
 HENRY I V 197
Twice towards the end of the century Richard,
now the French treaty was arranged, found time to
visit Ireland and claim the homage of the chiefs of the
Irish clans, and it was while he was in Ireland, on the
second of these expeditions, that his enemy, Henry,
Earl of Bolingbroke, whom he had banished, came back
to England and was joined by great forces in the
country which had by now become disgusted w i t h
Richard's tyranny. For though Richard had shown
extraordinary courage and manly wisdom as a boy,
his later acts raise a doubt whether he was quite
sane. In the last year of the century, 1399, Henry
came to the throne as Henry I V .
It was a troublous succession. There was dis-
content and active rebellion of both lords and commons
in England itself. Wales rose in arms against the
king and was followed by Scotland. France threatened
to renew the war. Gradually the king gained the
victory over each of these various forces opposed to
him. Wales and Scotland were subdued by arms.
Against Scotland he had the help of the great Earl of
Northumberland and his son famous in story as
" H o t s p u r . " Very shortly afterwards the power of
Northumberland was brought into opposition to the
king, but was overthrown in that battle which settled
the Welsh trouble and, as Shakespeare relates to us,
gave Henry, the king's son—soon to be Henry V . —
the chance of distinguishing himself by killing " H o t -
spur " in single combat, and thus proving that he was
made for better things than to be the boon companion
of the drunken old knight Falstaff.
But w i t h his own commons Henry I V . was able to
make terms only by giving up a serious piece of what
had been the royal privilege before. He agreed that
the taxes raised to meet the expenses of the war
should be received and paid out again by a committee
appointed by the Parliament, and no longer by an
198 ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BURGUNDY
official appointed by the king. The difference was of
much importance for the liberties of the English
subject.
As for the threat of war from France, that threat
died away for the moment in consequence of an event
which had a large effect on the course of the story
during most of the fifteenth century. This event was
the rise of the Duke of Burgundy to a power almost as
great as that of the K i n g of France himself, the Duke's
feudal overlord.
Burgundy had for very many years been the name
of a territory varying in extent, sometimes including
portions of the present I t a l y and Switzerland, and
always some of the most fertile and beautiful country
in Europe. Towards the end of the fourteenth century
it gained greatly in wealth and territory by uniting
w i t h itself the province of Flanders. This union came
about through the marriage of the heiress of the Count
of Flanders w i t h a Duke of Burgundy. The province
of Flanders included, as we have seen, semi-indepen-
dent and wealthy cities such as Bruges and Ghent.
Its addition to the dukedom of Burgundy made that
chief vassal fully equal in possession of territory and
resources w i t h his overlord, the K i n g of France. The
story of the next many years in Europe is largely the
story of the struggle between this great vassal and
his lord. Possibly it was a struggle which saved our
England, for England was very wearied and weakened
by foreign war ; she was full of discontent at home ;
her fleet had been beaten and broken up. If her old
enemy of France had been able to attack her w i t h any
united force at this moment, it would have been hard
for her to make head against i t .
The threat of Burgundy gave the French king
business to attend to nearer home. Unfortunately it
also gave England an easy opportunity of vexing her
ancient enemy by lending her aid to the Duke.
 AGINCOURT 199
H e n r y V . , the Prince H a l of Shakespeare's dramas,
developed from a foolish prince into a wise king, but
he was not wise enough to resist the temptation,
given h i m by the rivalry between the French king
and the powerful Duke, to regain what England once
held on the Continent. He was wise enough, however,
to conduct his campaign in a different manner from
that in which former leaders of English armies in
France had waged war. The Black Prince and others
had marched, conquering and raiding, into the country,
w i t h very little apparent plan. Henry V.'s first
enterprise was indeed rather of the same kind, and
nearly ended in a disastrous failure. B u t he turned
the threatened disaster into a resounding victory in
the battle of Agincourt. The chivalry of France was
caught up in marshy ground, and the archers of
England shot them down. It was a repetition of
Cr6cy and of Poitiers. The slaughter of Frenchmen
of distinction and high b i r t h was very great, and this
wonderful victory made the English soldier a terror in
France for years to come.
B u t the danger, from which only a wonderful
victory could have rescued him, seems to haye taught
Henry a lesson. In his next campaign he set to work
in a methodical way to conquer Normandy, making
the country safe behind h i m as he progressed. It was
a slower way than that of the Black Prince, but far
more sure.
The French king was kept busy by Burgundy. He
could send no help to his vassal of Normandy, and
the whole of Normandy fell into Henry's hand. The
Burgundians meantime had captured Paris ; and now
a desperate deed of treachery was done by the heir to
the French throne. The actual K i n g of France was
insane, and incapable of taking any part in the govern-
ment.
To break, as he thought, the Burgundian power,
200 ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BURGUNDY
the Dauphin, that is, the eldest son of the king,
murdered the Duke of Burgundy even as the latter
knelt before h i m to do homage. The Duke's purpose
in doing this homage was to unite the forces of Bur-
gundy and France against the growing power of Henry.
After this desperate deed the Burgundians deemed it
their best course to make terms w i t h Henry, and the
terms they made were that he should marry the
daughter of the mad K i n g of France and should be
placed, w i t h the help of Burgundy, on the French
throne as soon as the mad king died—excluding the
Dauphin from the succession.
They were terms which committed Henry to a
constant war w i t h the Dauphin's forces. In this he
was consistently successful; but the project formed by
his treaty w i t h the Burgundians was broken by his
early death. Henry V I . , his son and successor as
K i n g of England, was then two years old.
The English regent, who had charge of the kingdom
while Henry V I . was under full age, carried on the war
in France against the party of the Dauphin. A n d it
was waged w i t h steady success, so that the Dauphin,
now come to the throne as Charles V I I . , was on the
point of giving up all as lost, when the tide of England's
victory was checked and then turned back by one of
the most wonderful persons whom we meet in the
whole course of the story—Joan of Arc.
This peasant girl, becoming prophetess, led the
soldiers of France to victory and inspired them w i t h
the belief that heaven was on their side. F r o m that
moment the tide turned and all went in France's
favour. The " Maid of Orleans," Joan herself, was
captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, and
to our shame was burnt by the English as a heretic.
B u t the French successes continued, none the less ;
the Burgundians wavered and went over to the K i n g
of France again ; and precisely in the middle year of
 W A R S OF T H E ROSES 201
the fifteenth century, 1450, the English lost Normandy
and all their hold on Northern France.
Three years later that strip of Guienne, the coast
line from Bordeaux southward, went the same way,
and England was left w i t h not a foot of French soil
except the town of Calais.
A n d now it would seem as if England might at
length hope to settle her own troubles w i t h i n her
island boundaries. If that was a hope which any men
of that day entertained it was grievously disappointed,
for she was just about to enter on those terrible years
of civil war between the two great dukedoms of Y o r k
and Lancaster, each claiming the throne, which went
on during nearly all the latter half of the century.
For their badge and emblem the Yorkists had a white
rose and the Lancastrians a red, and from these roses
those dreadful wars are known as the Wars of the
Roses.
The English people had naturally been bitterly
disappointed by the final result of the French war.
England continued under the practical governance of
the regents even after the king had come of age, and
their rule caused great dissatisfaction. A dangerous
mob under one Jack Cade got the better of the king's
troops and held the city of London for two days. B u t
his mob was undisciplined, and when the citizens took
arms in their own defence the rebellion was soon put
down. It was a sign, however, of the general discon-
tent that the rebellion could have even such success as
this.
What helped to make the Wars of the Roses so
prolonged and so bitter was that the claim of each of
the rivals was so nearly equal. In an outlined story,
such as this that I am t r y i n g to tell, there is no place
for the details of the claims of each ; but we may note
that the claim as to the strict right of succession was
complicated by the claim put forward by the Y o r k
202 ENGLAND, FRANCE, A N D BURGUNDY
party that they stood for the national welfare against
the bad government of the Lancastrian king and his
regents. The Lancastrians posed as pure loyalists,
affirming that they stood for the legitimate rights of
succession to the throne. Certainly the evils of their
government were obvious to all men. They had lost
France; England was without a fleet to protect her
shores, and the French landed and raided ; the oversea
trade of England w i t h the Continent was nearly
ruined. Victory went now to one and now to another
of the evenly balanced forces, and w i t h each successive
victory the vengeance taken by the victors, in retalia-
tion for what their side had suffered when it was
defeated, became more and more sanguinary. In one
of the battles, that fought at Towton in 1461, which
was a great Yorkist victory, the statement that more
than 36,000 men were killed seems to be generally
accepted, though it is scarcely credible when we
consider the small population of England at this time.
More than three-quarters of the loss was suffered by
the Lancastrians. Moreover, of twelve of what are
regarded as the great battles of these wars, it is notable
that the Yorkists won nine and the Lancastrians only
three; yet the final battle, that of Bosworth Field,
the battle which " counted " above all the others, was
won by the Lancastrians, and its result was to place
Henry V I I . on the throne. Bosworth and 1485 are
usually named as the place and date of the last battle
in the long drawn-out Wars of the Roses, but in fact
the struggle was maintained t i l l within three years of
the end of the century, and the really last battle was
fought, again to a Lancastrian victory, at Blackheath
i n 1497.
In the beginning of the wars the unfortunate
Henry VI. was twice taken prisoner. K i n g Edward I V .
then comes to the throne. Henry is released,
regains the throne and Edward flees abroad. He gets
 USE O F F I R E A R M S 203

the help of the Duke of Burgundy, and w i t h a force of

Burgundian soldiers returns, and dethrones Henry.
We may note that these Burgundians were armed w i t h
what were called arquebuses, firing gunpowder,
ignited by a match. The arquebuses were made
somewhat after the pattern of the crossbow, but of
course without the bow, and w i t h a barrel in place of
the open trough for the bolt. It was not the first time
of the use of firearms in England, but there seem to
have been more soldiers thus armed, in the battle
which brought Edward to the throne again, than ever
before.
These Wars of the Roses, though they were waged
for long, and though the vengeance taken by the
successive victors was heavy, seem to have interfered
surprisingly little w i t h the agriculture and not greatly
w i t h the commerce of the country. Although the
victors' vengeance was dire, it was directed mainly
against the chiefs of the conquered side. It did not
fall on the rank and file. Population, in spite of the
war, increased both in town and country, and in rural
districts the tenant farmer more and more took the place
of the villein. The result was that when Edward I V .
had firmly established himself on the throne he
found himself very largely free of that menace from
the great barons which had been a check on the
authority of the kings before h i m and had won p r i v i -
leges and charters from them. Many of the great men
had been killed in battle or in the executions which
followed a victory.
Therefore, had Edward so pleased, he might, as it
seems, have been a king almost as autocratic as any of
the Tudors who followed him after the brief reign of
Richard I I I . Before the Tudor family succeeded
the Plantagenets, more battles were to be fought
and the nobility were still further to be weakened.
But Edward was strong enough over them. He,
204 ENGLAND, FRANCE, A N D B U R G U N D Y
fortunately for England, cared for prosperity rather
than for glory. He not only encouraged commerce, but
was something of a merchant on his own account,
owning trading vessels and making much money by
the venture. The weaving trade, under him, extended
in England and its great centre at Coventry was
established.
He did indeed send an army to the Continent, to
aid Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who was his
brother-in-law, against Louis X I . of France, but even
this turned into a financial venture, for he allowed
Louis to bribe h i m out and took his army home again.
A n d here we touch a point, in the relations between
Burgundy and France, which is the point on which the
final result of these relations turned. The result was
that France, under Louis X L , gained a complete victory
and that he became really sovereign over the land in
which the sovereignty of the French kings had been
disputed very long and very hardly. B u t the point
on which the relations turned towards that result is
indicated by the very title given to Charles of
Burgundy, " the B o l d , " while the extraordinary
character of the K i n g of France is hinted by the means
he employed to get r i d of Edward and the English
army. He made appeal to the chief desire of Edward's
heart, the love of money. Louis is known in history
as perhaps the master diplomat and schemer of all the
many that its pages show us. He was a master in
detecting and in playing upon the weaknesses of men's
characters. So he played on Edward's avarice.
Against this cunning and scheming, for which the
king had a genius, his great vassal had perhaps in
excess that quality of boldness which his title implies.
He was over-venturesome and hasty, and Louis waited
and schemed, like a spider in the web's centre, and
finally sucked the blood of the buzzing impetuous fly.
The claims of the first Tudor king to the throne of
 T H E FIRST TUDOR K I N G 205
England will be seen to be none too sound, i f looked at
critically. Largely it was Henry's own ability t h a t
enabled h i m to establish himself and to make a final
end of the opposition and rebellions after he had been
for twelve years king. It was an ability and strength
of purpose characteristic of all his successors u n t i l the
throne of England passed from the Tudors to the
Scottish Stuarts. Yet always the despotism of the
English kings differed from that of the French kings in
this important point : that whereas the French kings
had their foot on the necks of both bar.ons and com-
mons, in England even those who were most autocratic
over their nobility always kept a wary eye on their
commons, and not even Mary in her zeal for the
Roman Catholic religion dared to go too far in opposi-
tion to the feeling of the country.
 CHAPTER X X I I
THE TEUTON AND THE SLAV

T H U S we have traced i n outline the course of the great

story up to, or about, the year 1500, in respect of three
of the nations which were among the foremost actors
in i t , England, France, and Spain. We have seen each
of them establishing themselves w i t h i n something very
like the national boundaries which enclose them to-day.
England and Scotland have not yet come into union,
but the Tweed is in 1500, as now, the boundary river
between them.
France, by the subtlety of Louis X I . , has gained
the mastery of all her great vassal lords. The English,
it is true, still hold Calais, but no other possession on
the Continent. A n d the boundary of France goes
further north in 1500 than now, for it includes that
count-ship, or province, of Flanders which had been
brought into the possession of France's most powerful
and dangerous vassal the Duke of Burgundy.
Northward, again, Holland and Scandinavia (the
present Norway and Sweden)—with Denmark, some-
times the most powerful of them all—did not take much
part as nations in the great story, but, as we have seen,
the Northmen came very largely into its making by
reason of their sea-faring raids and settlements upon
the coasts of all the Western world. F r o m Normandy
they came to England and they conquered. They
established themselves as kings of Sicily. A Northman,
Baldwin, became Eastern Emperor at Constantinople.
Spain we have seen coming together, by the union
of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella,
206
 CONSTANTINOPLE.
Fountain and Square of St. Sophia.
208 T H E T E U T O N A N D T H E SLAV
w i t h i n its present boundaries of sea and mountains.
It has finally overthrown the last stronghold of
Mahommedan power in the western part of Europe
by the conquest of Granada. Portugal ever since
the time of the second Crusade has kept its inde-
pendence.
On the other, the eastern side of Europe, however,
we find that another Mahommedan power, of quite
different race from any of the Syrians, Arabians, and
Africans who composed the mixed Moslem force
which occupied Spain, has taken firm possession of
Constantinople itself and of a vast area of Europe
northward—the Turks.
Constantine had been an Emperor of wise foresight
when he surrounded w i t h strong defensive walls the
fine city which he built beside the older Byzantium.
It was the gate commanding the narrow sea-way
separating Europe from Asia. Its harbour, later known
as the Golden H o r n , was spacious and secure for ships
of commerce or ships of war. I t s importance was
obvious. Long before its capture by the Crusaders at
the beginning of the thirteenth century it had seen the
barbarians from the north hammering at its walls.
Already the growing nation which had Moscow for
its chief city, and which was beginning to be called
Russia, had commenced its attempts—of which there
have been very many in later story—to reach down to
Constantinople.
Partly by fighting and partly by bribing, the
Emperor of the East had succeeded in keeping the
barbarians off, but the attack of the Crusaders, w i t h
the Venetian fleet to aid, prevailed as we have seen.
Baldwin and his successors reigned at Constantinople
for more than fifty years.
The effect of that capture of the capital of the East
by the Western powers was curious. It led to the
incursion into Greece, and into all that south-eastern
 G O T H I C D U K E S I N GREECE 209
corner of Europe over which the Emperor at Constan-
tinople was supposed to be sovereign, of many members
of the most important families of the Western world,
especially French and Burgundian. A n d so we have
at this time as actors in our stories men w i t h such titles
as Duke of Thebes and Duke of Athens, but w i t h names
that are Gothic or L a t i n in origin.
This hold of the West on the East, however, lasted
only a little more than half a century, and then the
Greeks regained the capital city and again a Greek
Emperor reigned. A n d gradually, after the loss of the
Empire, the lords from the West lost much of their
power in their own territories also.
So this was but a quickly passing act in the story.
There was an attempt at union between the Greek and
the Roman Churches during that half-century. The
Pope of Rome was officially recognised as the superior
of the Patriarch at Constantinople. B u t it does not
seem that his authority made much difference to the
doctrine which the bishops in the Eastern world
professed, nor in their way of conducting their religious
affairs. A n d after the temporary union the Churches
fell apart again, as before. ^
Now we saw, in a former chapter of the story—
Chapter X V I . — h o w the great mass of the Slavonic
peoples, pressing from the east westward, had been
divided by the Hungarians, of different race from
themselves, thrusting in like a wedge. The wedge
split them into two parts, of which the northern,
consisting chiefly of Russia and Poland, was far
larger than the southern. The principal Slavonic
peoples in the southern part were the Bulgarians and
Serbians settled in those territories, or nearly so,
which Bulgaria occupies now and which Serbia did
occupy u n t i l the Great War. The place of the latter
we now see marked on our modern maps as forming
part of the larger State of Jugo-Slavia.
210 T H E T E U T O N A N D T H E SLAV
We have said something already about the begin
nings of that vast and unfortunate country which h
now called Russia. We saw how the name of the
country and its first rulers came down from Scan-
dinavia. The Scandinavians were great people, with
unusual gifts of governing and organising at a time
when these were very rare and precious gifts among
the tribes and nations of Northern Europe. They
must have had a touch of the genius which made the
ancient Romans so masterful and effective.
The first capital of that infant Russia, which was
destined to grow into such a giant, was Novgorod, not
very far from where its later capital of Petrograd
now stands. As w i t h other famous cities in other
lands, Novgorod was important because of its situation
on a navigable waterway. Then from it again there
stretched waterways to the south, both to the Caspian
and to the Black Sea. The enterprising Scandinavians
who went down to the Mediterranean and took
possession of many coast towns and of islands in the
Ionian Sea did not all go sea-roving round France and
Spain and I t a l y to the eastward. The majority, I
expect, did go by sea; but there is record of many
going by the land (or river) route, through Russia.
Soon the people that had occupied Novgorod and its
neighbourhood spread eastward to another settlement
called Nijni-Novgorod, which, as you may see on the
map, is also on a great waterway. We may always
find a reason for the growth of a big city, if we go
a-hunting for the reason ; and it is always an interesting
hunt.
Another tribe or nation of these same Slavonic
people began to grow in numbers and importance.
They had their capital at Moscow.
During the first half of the thirteenth century
these Slavs, whose pressure on his borders gave trouble
to the German Emperor, were being pressed in their t u r n
 THE TARTARS 211

by a people coming from farther east, from the very

borders of China. They were'a people from Mongolia,
called Tartars, and they lived the hardy, nomadic life.
They moved less like armies than like nations, taking
all their belongings, their wives and children, w i t h
them. They were very numerous and very fierce.
They came down upon these Slavs repeatedly, but it
appears to have made but little difference whether they
were victors or vanquished ; for if they won they did
not settle on the conquered territory ; they went
away again. A n d if they were defeated there was no
permanence about their defeat; they came back again.
They were a constant vexation and menace.
So the story went, during all that half-century or so
—at one time the Tartars overrunning nearly all
Russia, as well as parts of Poland, except Novgorod
itself. Later again they captured Novgorod. B u t by
that time, that is to say just a little before the date
at which the Greeks regained Constantinople—namely
1261—Moscow and the Muscovite province had
increased in importance and strength. It seems that
this capture by the Tartars of the capital of the southern
province gave Moscow the opportunity to' assert and
make good a claim to authority over both provinces,
for the Tsar or Czar (or Caesar, or Kaiser) of Moscow
entered into an alliance w i t h the K h a n (or chieftain)
of the Tartar horde, and it is in this alliance that we
may see the seed from which grew that immense
Russia of to-day, which includes part of Mongolia
itself, where those Tartar hordes came from.
The story of the next two centuries in Russia is
really the story of the growth of the country from this
seed. Other Slavonic peoples that grew powerful at
the same time as, and in some r i v a l r y w i t h , Russia,
were the Poles and Lithuanians. The latter were a
fierce barbarous people. Probably they were a branch
of the Slavonic family, but less civilised than the
15
212 T H E TEUTON A N D T H E SLAV
others and a constant menace both to Poles and
Russians.
Now you will perhaps remember that at the time
of the second Crusade, that is in the middle of the
twelfth century, a body of knights raised to go to
Palestine requested the Pope's leave to go instead
against a tribe called the Wends, who were pressing in
upon Germany through the country that now is
Prussia. The Wends were a pagan people and the
Pope's leave was granted. This body of knights were
called the Knights of the Sword, but they were
absorbed later by the larger body called the Teutonic
Order. This Order got possession of extensive territory
along the south shore of the Baltic, and there the
knights and their retainers maintained themselves—a
Teutonic force lying between the Slavs and the ports
on the Baltic. That was a position which was tolerably
sure to lead to trouble. Several times in course of
this great story we have seen a foreign army invited
into a country and establishing itself there in a manner
quite unexpected by the hosts. Actually it was on the
invitation of one of the grandees of Poland that these
Teutonic knights came to settle on their borders.
They were established to the north of Poland, and on
the eastern side they were bounded by the Lithuanians.
A n d against these Lithuanians they would naturally
fight, according to the purpose w i t h which their order
had been founded, because the Lithuanians were
pagans u n t i l about halfway through the thirteenth
century. At that time their ruler was converted to
Christianity, and proclaimed Christianity as the State
religion ; and early in the next century they made an
alliance w i t h the Poles, their kinsmen. The Poles had
been very hardly beset during the early part of the
fourteenth century by those Teutonic guests who had
come in on their invitation, but they heavily defeated
the knights in 1332, and by their alliance w i t h the
 TEUTON AND SLAV 213
Lithuanians they became strong. The Teutonic Order
had henceforth to stand on the defensive, trying, but
in vain, to hold the lands that it had won.
In course of the fifteenth century, Russia grew
in strength, by her alliance w i t h the Tartars, and she
too began to press upon the Teutonic knights. The
knights were gallant fighters in these days of their
adversity, and just after the end of the century they
won a victory over the Tsar's forces which led to a
fifty years' truce. B u t the terms of the truce did not
give the victors any increase of territory. It did but
confirm their position for a while, and for a while only,
as masters of what they still held. If you look at a
modern map i t will show you no trace of these Teutonic
knights and their possessions, once so extensive.
Their story, which is part of the larger story of the
long struggle between Teuton and Slav, ended in a
complete victory for the Slav. Nearly at the date of
this treaty between the knights and the Tsar, the great
State of Lithuania was merged in the Kingdom of
Poland. Together they became a great power, while
Cracow, the Polish capital, and other towns favoured
by their positions on navigable waterways grew rich
and prosperous.
We saw, in Chapter X V I . , that one of the German
States, that of Austria (the eastern land), lay especially
exposed to the pressure of the Slavs. Because it lay
in that exposed position, it had need to be strong.
A n d it was for the advantage of the whole German
Empire further to its west that it should be thus
strong, because only by its strength could it act as an
effective defence against these eastern enemies. There-
fore it was granted privileges. Its ruler was raised to
the rank of Duke, and later to Archduke. The situation
of its capital, Vienna, on that great waterway, the
Danube River, brought wealth. A l l through the
fourteenth century Austria was gradually adding to
214 T H E T E U T O N A N D T H E SLAV
her territory by conquest of weaker States along her
borders.
It was in 1273 that Rudolph, Count of Habsburg,
in the north of what now is Switzerland, became ruler
of Austria ; and the Habsburgs, or Hapsburgs, have
been the ruling family in Austria ever since, u n t i l the
Austrian Emperor's resignation on the loss of the Great
War. Rudolph was also K i n g of Germany. His
claim to Austria was not very clear, but he was able
to establish it because of the division of parties caused
by the dying out of the direct descendants of the former
ruling family.
It was for a like reason that Hungary, lying up
against Austria's eastern border, and frequently at
war w i t h her, was able, after the middle of the fifteenth
century, to annex some of Austria's most easterly
possessions. B u t it was Austria's fortune at this
crisis to have as her Archduke a bold and able man
of the Habsburg line, Maximilian I . , who was after-
wards elected Emperor. Austria was by now an arch-
duchy, but she was not yet an " electorate " ; that is
to say she had no vote, as those German States that
were "electorates" had a vote, for the choice of an
Emperor. For it was thus, by vote among those States
that had the right of " election," that one was chosen
to sit on the throne of Charlemagne. When you read
of a ruler as an " Elector "—say of Hanover or of
whatever State i t be—you will know that i t means that
he was ruler of a State that had this right of election.
Maximilian then, later thus chosen Emperor, led
and organised Austria w i t h such success that by the
end of the century, that is to say before the year 1500,
he had regained all the territory that Hungary had
lately taken, and restored to Austria all her old
possessions. He had extended her boundaries to very
much those which she continued to hold right up to the
re-arrangement made after the Great War.
 T H E SWISS CANTONS 215
Thus this powerful family of Habsburgs estab-
lished themselves in Austria, and at the same time
established Austria as the most powerful State in
Germany, although she did not have a vote in the
Emperor's election. B u t the Habsburgs had posses-
sions in other parts of Europe as well as in Austria. The
castle from which their name was taken was near the
junction of the Aar w i t h the Rhine, in the north of that
country which we now call Switzerland. It began to be
so called about the middle of the fourteenth century,
and the name was taken from one of its cantons, or
divisions, the canton of Schwyz. B u t at first the name
did not cover anything like the territory to # which it
soon was applied. In the fourteenth century it stood
for a confederation of eight cantons.
The confederation grew out of an " Everlasting
League," as it was called, which was formed shortly
after the death of that Rudolph, the first Habsburg
ruler of Austria, to resist the political claims of the
Habsburgs. Apparently the founders of the League
did not dispute the right of the Habsburgs as owners
of extensive lands. The Habsburgs might deal w i t h
the land and any profits they might derive from it as
they would. What the confederates disputed was their
claim to govern.
Nearly all through the fourteenth century this
claim was being disputed, sometimes diplomatically,
and sometimes by active war. Twice the Habsburgs
raised an army to go against these audacious rebels,
as they deemed them. The story of W i l l i a m Tell
shooting the apple on his son's head belongs to this
period. We need not accept it as actual historical
fact, but rather as a legend expressive of the patriotism
of the Swiss cantons. The confederates were very
few in numbers, but they had the courage common
among mountaineers, and in their mountainous country
they could defend themselves against a far larger force
216 T H E TEUTON A N D T H E SLAV
of invaders. The numbers of the opposing armies
that met in these conflicts were curiously unequal.
In one great battle, that of Morgarten, early in the
century, the attacking force is estimated at anything
between 15,000 and 20,000, and the defending force
at between 1,300 and 1,500. Yet the larger force,
charging up the mountains and being beset w i t h huge
stones hurled at them by the defenders on the ridges,
were utterly defeated. The same thing happened again
towards the end of the century at the battle of Sem-
pach. After that the Habsburgs made little further
attempt to enforce their claims, but i t was not t i l l
towards the end of the following century that the claim
was formally renounced in a treaty called the " Ever-
lasting Compact."
The Swiss seem to have been fond of that dangerous
word, as applied to leagues and compacts, " ever-
lasting. "
In the course of the fifteenth century other cantons
were taken into the confederacy.
In the contest between Louis X I . of France and
his great vassal the Duke of Burgundy, the Swiss were
brought into alliance w i t h the French, the winning
side, and they were consistently successful in a series
of battles w i t h the Burgundians. Maximilian, the
Habsburg, was on the other, the Burgundian, side,
for he had married the daughter of the Duke of Bur-
gundy. Their alliance w i t h the French added to the
strength of the Swiss, and by the end of that century
they had succeeded in throwing off any authority that
the Emperor might still claim to wield over them, just
as they had thrown off the claim of the Habsburgs at
the end of the century before.
B u t the power of the Emperor was growing more
and more nominal, and less and less real, and many
States and cities were shaking off its burden. It was
a time when authority both of Church and State was
 T H E HUSSITE RISING 217
in dispute. John Huss, a Bohemian preacher, at the
beginning of the fifteenth cehtury, had taken up, as
we have seen on p. 195, the doctrines of our Wycliffe
and preached eloquently against the evil practices
which had come into the Church. He had a very
large following. Just as had happened in England, the
Hussite attack on the authority of the Church became
associated w i t h an attack on the civil authority too.
B u t this latter att'ack was checked in England by the
defeat of W a t Tyler's rebellion and by the cruel
measures taken to put down the Lollards, who carried
on the doctrines of Wycliffe. Huss was burnt, as a
heretic, at Rome, whither he had been summoned to
give an account of his doings, in spite of an assurance
of safe-conduct made to h i m by the K i n g of the Romans.
This made Huss a martyr in the eyes of his followers,
and his popular movement in Bohemia gained great
force. A regular Hussite army was formed. The
Bohemians were akin to the Slavs rather than the
Teutons, and this revolutionary force became a
menace not only in Bohemia itself but in other States
of the Empire. When armies were sent against the
Hussites, the latter, fired, like the Puritans later, w i t h
religious zeal, always had the advantage. B u t they
do not seem to have tried to take possession of territory.
They fought for what may be shortly called reformation
in the Church. The great Reformation, under Luther's
lead, was still to come, in the following century, but
we may regard our own Wycliffe as its forerunner,
w i t h Huss as his disciple, preparing the way for Luther.
The Hussite revolution was set to rest by a compact,
made in 1436, to which the Church of Rome itself was
a party. Larger freedom in religious ceremonies, and
relinquishment by the clergy of their worldly wealth,
were the two principal points agreed in the compact.
B u t the agreement was not very faithfully carried out.
 CHAPTER XXIII

THE TURKS IN EUROPE

I HAVE now tried to tell you the story—up to the year

1500 and the beginning of that century which was to
see the new b i r t h of learning and the reformation in
the Church—of the way in which most of the countries
of Europe settled down nearly into the shape in which
we see them now, or see them in maps made before the
Great War. There remains one corner of the picture,
the south-eastern corner, which we still have to look
a t ; and there we find that a people entirely strange to
Europe entered into possession during the fifteenth
century. That people were the Ottoman Turks who
had succeeded to the rule of the Mahommedan world,
which they had wrested from their own kinsmen the
Seljuk Turks.
The story of this branch of the Turkish nation is the
common story of a people coming West by reason of
pressure of other tribes from the East. Mongols, from
the borders of China, seem to have been the oppressors,
from the East, of the Ottomans.
Before the middle of the thirteenth century they
were settled near Angora, in what was then called the
Kingdom of Rum. It was in the possession of the
Seljuk Turks. B u t the Seljuk kingdom was breaking
up. The Greeks of the Eastern Empire were attacking
it heavily. The Ottomans, perhaps a hardier people
than the Seljuks, because they had more lately been
leading the nomadic, wandering life, supported their
218
 MAYORS OF T H E P A L A C E 219
kinsmen and hosts, and it ended in the Ottomans
becoming the leaders of the Turks in Asia Minor.
The Greeks were only a little more united and efficient
than the Seljuks, and before the middle of the four-
teenth century the Ottomans had the whole of Asia
Minor in their hands.
Their fighting force was much increased by the
formation of a standing army, called the Janissaries.
They numbered Some 12,000 at this time, though
this number was more than quadrupled in later cen-
turies. The force was chiefly composed of Christian
captives. B u t these troops had such large privileges
allowed them that there was no difficulty in filling
their ranks.
A n d then happened that which we have seen
occurring again and again in course of the story. Just
as the Vandals were invited into Africa, just as the
Moslems were invited into Spain, and just as both
these guests stayed a great deal longer and made
themselves much more at home than their hosts had
expected, so now the Ottomans were invited into
Europe to assist the Mayor of the Palace, as he was
called, in Constantinople, who had seizea^the Govern-
ment. This title of Mayor of the Palace, for the chief
officer or prime minister, was taken from the Frankish
court. The power of these Mayors of the Palace
became, as we have seen, very great among the
Franks, and the office often passed from father to
son. The first of the Capets had been Mayor of the
Palace to the last Carolingian.
The Ottomans accepted the invitation. They
crossed into Europe. They established the usurper on
the throne. They drove his enemies right up into the
Balkans. A n d , for the time being, they returned to
their own land. B u t they had learnt that this corner
of Europe was a desirable territory and that it was
undefended by any effective force. Bulgarians,
220 T H E TURKS IN EUROPE
Serbians, Bosnians, and Albanians held the lands, or
nearly those same lands, that you will see marked
under their names on any map of Europe made before
the Great War. By the end of the fourteenth century
the Ottomans had overrun all these countries and had
organised them under Turkish rule. They had taken
Adrianople, the city of second importance in the
Eastern Empire. They had spread terror westerly in
Europe by a great victory won over a Christian army
of twice the number of the Ottoman force at Kossovo,
and again by a victory, in which many crusading
knights were killed, at Nicopolis. At the very end
of the century they were besieging Constantinople itself;
but for a while the capital of the Empire was delivered
from their hands. Partly by the stubborn courage of
the besieged forces in the city, partly by bribery, and
partly by a new danger appearing on the eastern
border of their own kingdom in Asia, they were induced
to raise the siege.
The new danger came, as ever, from the east. It
was really Timur, or Tamerlane, w i t h his Tartar hordes,
who saved Constantinople, the capital city of Eastern
Christendom, for another half-century from the Turks.
The Tartars came in irresistible numbers. They
swept over nearly all Asia Minor and down into E g y p t
where the Caliph, the religious head of Mahommedan-
ism, ruled. A n d then, as always before, they went
back again. The ravaged countries were left to
recover as best they could, and the Ottomans resumed
their campaign in Europe.
Constantinople, again besieged in 1422, was again
saved for a while by the appearance of a r i v a l claimant
to the Sultanship of Turkey. B u t the Turks pushed
northwards into Hungary, where the Hungarians
opposed them w i t h a resolute resistance. Battles were
fought w i t h varying result, u n t i l , again on the fatal
battlefield of Kossovo, the, Moslem won another great
 TURKS T A K E CONSTANTINOPLE 221
victory. The siege of Constantinople was recom-
menced w i t h more vigour than ever. In 1453 the
long-deferred end came. The city was taken by
assault. The Christian Church of St. Sophia became
the Moslem mosque.
There is little more to say, to complete the story of
the Turks in this south-eastern corner of Europe.
They d i d not rest content w i t h their conquests, but
were constantly pushing northward and westward.
The Christian nations generally, but by no means
always, united to oppose them. They fought their
conquering way as far north as Poland, and for a
while we find Poland in alliance w i t h the Moslem
power. Yet fighting broke out afresh, and a large
portion of Poland was laid waste. Peace was again
made between the two in the first year of the sixteenth
century, and it was a peace that had some permanence,
b u t it enlarged still further the bounds of the Turkish
possessions.
In the midst of all this fighting by land in Europe,
the Turks had found leisure to attend to naval matters
and to the building and outfit of a large fleet. A n d
w i t h a fleet thus in constant readiness for action in
the eastern waters of the Mediterranean Sea, there
was one power, at least, w i t h which it was certain to
come into collision—the great naval power of Venice.
Ever since the fourth Crusade in which Constan-
tinople had been taken, largely by the aid of the
Venetian navy, Venice had held many of the islands in
the Ægean Sea and had a hold on cities on the Levan-
tine coast.
She was not the only Italian State, as we have seen,
to be powerful at sea. There was Genoa, on the
western side of the peninsula. We have also seen w h y
the situation of Venice was the more favourable—
because she looked eastward, and so was the gate by
which the wealth of the East came into Western Europe.
 V E N I C E A N D GENOA 223

It was largely by the help of the Genoese navy that

the Greeks had retaken Constantinople, in 1261, from
the Latins. Naval encounters between the fleets of
these two rival Italian States were many during the
next century and a half. Now one had the victory
and now the other. B u t always the greater resources
and wealth were on the side of Venice.
Nevertheless she was very hardly beset about the
year 1380. Her main fleet had been beaten, the navy
of Genoa held her blockaded by sea, and the enemy
State of Padua prevented provisions coming to her by
land. She was in imminent danger of starvation.
A n d then the Genoese fleet suffered just that
disaster which the Athenian fleet had suffered in its
blockade of Syracuse. The Venetians contrived to
block the waterway which gave entrance and exit to
the lagoon in which the blockading ships of the
Genoese lay. They found themselves entrapped
precisely as they had proposed to trap the Venetians,
and finally had to surrender and hand over the greater
part of their fleet. It was a disaster from which
Genoa never recovered, and Venice was left mistress of
the Mediterranean. <
She was mistress, almost without dispute, until the
Turkish navy was sufficiently strong to oppose her.
The first war between them which went on for fifteen
years from 1464, was indecisive, but it ended w i t h
Venice paying tribute to Turkey for her trading rights.
Venice had no friends. She had been nearly starved
out by Padua, lying just inland of her own territory ;
and lest this should happen to her again she had
fought, and fought w i t h success, to add to her mainland
territory. Therefore she had not a neighbour w i t h
whom she was not on terms of enmity. A l l were
jealous of her and all feared her.
Thus it happened that in the very last year of the
fifteenth century, when war w i t h Turkey broke out
224 T H E TURKS IN EUROPE
again, we see the curious spectacle of the Pope himself,
of the Emperor, and of \he rulers of three other great
states of I t a l y , Naples, Florence, and Milan, all, in
some degree, favouring the Turkish and Moslem
Sultan in his fight against the Italian and Christian
ruler of Venice. Less than fifty years earlier, after the
taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the Pope had
imposed and endeavoured to collect a tax of one-tenth
of the value of all benefices—or of all paid offices in
the Church—in order to raise a force to evict the
Turks. B u t now he had come to regard the Moslem
T u r k as a less dangerous enemy than the Venetian
Christian.
In that final year, moreover, the Turks gained their
first really crippling naval victory over the Venetians at
Sapienza ; and for Venice it was the beginning of the
end of her great power.
Thus at the opening of the sixteenth century we
find the T u r k established nearly as far in Europe as it
was his destiny to plant himself. He had all that
country of the Balkans which various races of the
Slavs had held before h i m and which they again now
hold, after h i m ; and he had parts of what before,
and also later again, were Austria. Therefore of those
Balkans and of those Austrian provinces, he was in no
more than temporary possession.
 CHAPTER X X I V

THE NEW DAWN

IN every part of the Western world we see the leadmg

nations settling down at the beginning of the sixteenth
century w i t h i n boundaries nearly the same as those
which define them at the beginning of the twentieth.
A n d for the most part those boundaries remain, in
spite of the upheaval caused by the Great War.
There is, however, one notable exception, namely
I t a l y . The very idea of a united I t a l y does not seem
to have been in men's minds u n t i l later. The country
which we now know by that name was then, as we
have seen, divided between five principal States, Milan,
Venice, Florence, the Papal State, and Naples w i t h Sicily.
Government in the rich and powerful cities was
constantly changing hands. In Rome itself, where
the situation was made more difficult and complicated
than anywhere else, because of the Pope and his claim
to governing power, the changes were bewildering.
The power of the aristocracy was much broken in the
middle of the fourteenth century when Rienzi, " Last
of the Tribunes," led the democracy. Rienzi was the
friend of Petrarch, and Bulwer L y t t o n has made h i m
the hero of an exciting novel. B u t the Pope returned
to Rome from Avignon in 1367, and though there
were for a while rival Popes in Avignon and in Rome,
yet by the end of the century the republican govern-
ment of Rome had been overthrown and the Pope had
gained supremacy.
He never really lost i t . At one moment in the
225
 226 THE NEW DAWN
fifteenth century the forces of the K i n g of Naples tool
and sacked Rome itself.* At another the Pope had t(
flee before his own barons. B u t he soon came back
One of his successors only saved himself from these
same barons, or their descendants, by the aid of Naples
Nevertheless by the end of the century, which is the
date of the end of the present story, the power of the
nobles had received what really was its death blow. In
Florence and in Rome their chiefs were simultaneously
massacred. The Papal power was finally established.
Venice, as we have seen, was for a while by far the
strongest and the most wealthy of the Italian States,
B u t now the new naval power in the Mediterranean,
the power of the Turks, was limiting and diminishing
her strength, and shortly before the end of the fifteenth
century two Portuguese navigators made a discovery
of which the effect was to l i m i t and diminish her
wealth. If you w i l l look at the map of the world you
will see how far the Continent of Africa extends south-
wards, and you must understand that at the time about
which our story is telling us now, no one knew how
far southward this Continent stretched. Hitherto no
navigator had come to its southern end. Many had
gone sailing, sailing, south, but still that land was
always there, on their left hand, on the eastern side,
u n t i l these Portuguese navigators, Bartolomeo Diaz
and Vasco da Gama, sailed yet further than any before
them, came to the southern end of the great Continent,
and found an open sea over which they might sail
eastward. They had rounded what afterwards was
named the Cape of Good Hope.
A n d what difference did that make to Venice ?
It made this difference—that whereas she had been
the gate from the East, the port by which the riches
and products of the East came into the Western
world, this discovery that man could go sailing east-
ward, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, meant
 I N D I A A N D AMERICA 227
the opening of a new door through which those rich
products could be brought to Western Europe. And
it was a more convenient way of bringing them,
because it did not require all the old long overland
travel, perhaps from India through Asia Minor, and
then the putting of the merchandise on shipboard to be
carried to Venice, and then again the unshipping at
Venice and the overland carriage again. This over-
land route was one way. Another was by way of
ports on the Red Sea and thence across the Isthmus
of Suez to the Mediterranean. Instead of all this
complicated business, there might now be the one
shipping in some port, say of India, and the unship-
ping, perhaps in Lisbon.
Thus the East was opened to the West, and almost
at the same moment a new and further West was
opened w i t h the discovery of America by Christopher
Columbus (after whom that great land is sometimes
called Columbia) and by that Vespucci, whose baptis-
mal name was Amerigo, after whom it is more
commonly called.
Thus immensely, in two opposite directions, was
the scene of the great story extended. ^ A n d the dis-
coveries to which men's minds were turned were not
only those about the geography of the world they lived
in, and the way in which its continents and its seas
were shaped. Their minds began to t u r n w i t h a new
interest to art, to learning and to the beauty of the
world.
A l l through this great story we have seen how
wonderfully Rome, in spite of perpetual changes in
her government and continual fighting between the
various parties trying to get the upper hand, led the
world, at one time dominating all by the organisation
of her Empire, at another bending the spirits of men
and directing their actions by the influence of the
Church.
228 THE NEW DAWN
A l l over Italy, for many a century, the like con-
tentions and changes in government were frequent,
and it was in the very midst of the turbulence and of

COLUMBUS.

the fighting of city against city that Dante, greatest

of Italian poets, and among the very greatest of all
time, came into fame and wrote his " Divine Comedy."
He was chief magistrate of Florence in 1300, born of
 THE RENAISSANCE 229
a family that favoured the Guelphs and married to a
lady of a family very strongly disposed to the Ghibel-
lines. So he had his full share in the troubles of the
times.
Second only to h i m among the poets of I t a l y was
Petrarch, his disciple. Petrarch is famous as the
inventor of the " sonnet " form of verse. He was a
student of the ancient classical literature of which the
very existence seems to have been almost forgotten
since the inroads of the Goths.
Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, a collection of
prose stories which may perhaps be regarded as the
foundations of the modern novel, was a contemporary
and a friend of Petrarch. Our own poet Chaucer,
born a quarter of a century later, was indebted to him
for some of the stories which he told in verse form.
Boccaccio, even more than Petrarch, was a lover of the
classical literature of Greece, of the I l i a d and the
Odyssey.
In this revival of a love for the ancient literature,
and in the works in verse and prose which these great
artists created, we cannot trace that they were
influenced by the troubadours and trouveres of more
than a century earlier. They went back further, to
the best models of antiquity. Therefore we have to
regard these wonderful Italians as the true originators
of that new interest in learning and in all the arts
which received the name of the Renaissance, or new
birth. For its full growth and development it had to
wait u n t i l the dawn of the sixteenth century. By that
time the art of printing had been invented. Learning
in all its branches had received a great impetus at all
the universities in every country in Europe. The
first English printing press was set up by Caxton, who
brought it from Flanders in 1476.
Though the new b i r t h of literature was thus
delayed, some of the greatest of the Italian painters
230 THE NEW DAWN
were hard at work during the fifteenth century.
Cimabue, indeed, who may be said to have been the
first of the real I t a l i a n painters, since all before him
had followed the stiff Byzantine style, dates back to
the latter half of the thirteenth. Ghirlandajo, his
pupil, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, the
great Venetian painter, and many more of great
fame, were at work before the fifteenth century closed.
Even in a story sketched in its most bare outlines,
as is this, and told w i t h as few names and as few dates
as possible, it seemed necessary to mention some of
these glorious artists and to realise that the end was
at hand of those Middle Ages which have also been
called Dark Ages, because of the dark ignorance and
barbarity in which humanity at that time was plunged.
Some of the goldsmith's and silversmith's work of the
day was very finely executed, and many of the finest
painters and sculptors themselves did not scorn to
work at the jeweller's craft. B u t the real glory which
lightens the general darkness of the Middle Ages, is
the splendour of the architecture—the cathedrals and
churches, the public buildings and the palaces of the
great nobles. The richness of the church architecture
in our own country we have shortly noticed already,
and all over the world beautiful and noble structures
were raised in those troubled ages when most of the
arts were little studied. Generally the building is in
one or other of the successive varieties of the Gothic
style. In Spain we see many traces of the Eastern
taste of the Moslems for towers and domes and " mina-
rets," as those slender towers w i t h their balconies for
prayer are called. Asiatic influence is found, though
far less often, in some I t a l i a n buildings also.
Now we may do well to take a look round the world,
the scene of this greatest of all stories, and see to what
condition we have traced its progress at this point of
time—say A . D . 1500 or a year or two before or after
 T H E N A T I O N S I N 1500 A . D . 231
that central date. We see, regarding it as a whole,
that the nations have been engaged, after the break-up
that followed the ruin of the Roman Empire, in framing
their territories into something like the shape which
we may find on the map now. A n d generally they
have followed the same course, have gone through the
same struggles and changes, in their way towards
assuming that shape. For at first they split up into
a number of small independent bodies, each under the
rule of a lord. "Nominally there was an overlord, but
his sovereignty for a while was not very effective. It
was but gradually that he made it real. Some of the
nations differed from others in their local conditions.
Thus Spain, rather cut off by the Pyrenees from the
main story, had its own peculiar difficulties w i t h the
Moslems. The sovereignty of Italy, w i t h its five
principal States, was complicated by the claims of
Pope and Emperor, of Guelph and Ghibelline and of
the different city States asserting each its independence.
B u t on the whole, what we are able to see is a tendency
for the sovereign overlord gradually to make his power
good over the lesser lords, and so to produce some-
thing like those national unities which we find now.
The position of Spain, to take that"outlying part
of the big story first, is that she has just succeeded in
overthrowing the Moors in their last Spanish strong-
hold in Granada. She has almost completed national
unity by the marriage of Isabella, the Queen of Castile,
w i t h Ferdinand, the K i n g of Aragon. Then, w i t h all
her long sea-coast and the sea-going habits of its
inhabitants, she will become for a while the greatest
naval power in the world and play a leading part in the
story. Portugal is independent of her and is opening up
the trade w i t h the East round the Cape of Good Hope.
I t a l y , as we have seen, is split into the five principal
States, and has far to go yet before she can be one
nation.
232 THE NEW DAWN
France has unified herself, and so has England, but
we have to notice this difference between the con-
ditions of the one and of the other, that in France the
king has made himself despotic over his nobles and all
his people.
England, no longer hampered by the possession of
any territory on the Continent except the single city
of Calais, which will be lost t o her in the course of the
century to follow, is more fortunate than France in
that her nobles have won from the king a more liberal
constitution, based upon Magna Carta. She will
attain a freedom equal to that of France by less
terrible means, though not without wars of Royalists
and Puritans and the beheading of a king.
Scandinavian countries have for a time, as we
have seen, been of the greatest importance in our story,
pouring forth swarms of Northmen to make settle-
ment and conquest in all quarters of the known
world, but it has not been as nations, but rather in
companies of sea-going raiders, that they have so
wrought. For the moment those nations are not in
the forefront of the world story.
Neither have the German States formed themselves
as yet into any formidable nation. The power, always
rather vague and ill-defined, of the Emperor has much
decreased, and Switzerland and other States have
shaken themselves free of i t .
The T u r k is pressing Austria and Hungary very
hard. He holds, for a time, large provinces which had
been Austria's, and which will be hers again, and,
besides, he has established himself in that territory
which is now the Balkan States and Greece, and is in
possession of all that he now has of Asia Minor, w i t h
E g y p t and the northern African coast in addition.
Poland, though she too has felt the Turkish
pressure, has become a strong kingdom, and Russia,
from her capital of Moscow, is growing in power after
 THE NEW DAWN 233

combining w i t h those Tartar, tribes which at one time

threatened to destroy her.

A n d in all the years of the story w i t h which this

volume deals, we see that there has been one force
constantly working, through all the time and over all
the scene except where the Moslem has prevailed—
the force of the Church. It is a divided force, for
Eastern Christendom looks to the Patriarch of the
Greek Church as its head ; but the more important and
powerful West looks to the Pope at Rome.

We have brought the story through some of the

darkest times that mankind has known. A r t and
culture have nearly been destroyed under the barbarian
invasions and the years of fighting. Now the Renais-
sance, the new b i r t h of learning and of art, is at hand.
Already we have seen hints of it and hopes of i t , like
flowers coming out in early spring, only to be nipped
by late frost. There was that wonderful music of the
troubadours of the Langue d'oc in the thirteenth
century, w i t h the ruder and less accomplished art of
the trouveres in Northern France, of the minnesingers
in Germany, and of the English minstrel's.
B u t it is in I t a l y only that we can say that the
Renaissance has arrived—in that land where the great
painters have been at work, where Dante has sung his
divine comedy, where Petrarch has written his sonnets,
and where the despots of the cities have employed
artists and architects to adorn the l i t t l e States over
which they tyrannised. Moreover, through nearly all
Europe, and even in the gloom of the Dark Ages
itself, there has been the most wonderful building of
churches and cathedrals, of abbeys and ecclesiastical
edifices, here and there of kings' palaces and of build-
ings for public use. Our England, too, has had her
poets, of whom the chief is Chaucer rhyming his
234 THE NEW DAWN
" Canterbury Tales," his " Romaunt of the Rose"
and other beautiful pieces.
But except in Italy, these early promises of art and
of literature have not been followed up. They are
only now, that we leave the story, on the very edge of
larger fulfilment. The Dark Ages are dispelled. The

A S H U ' OF T H E T I M E OF COLUMBUS.
( F r o m The History of Ereryday Things (Queruicll), by permission of
Messrs. 13. T. B a t s f o d , Ltd.)

dawn comes glimmering out of Italy, northwards.

And the scene of the story is being expanded vastly.
Columbus has touched America. Da Gama has
circled the Cape of Good Hope. The world as known
to Western men is about to spread itself to far more
than double its former size. We have come to a new
world-stage with new plays and new players.
 INDEX
Adrian, English Pope, 152 Burgundy, boundaries of, 160
Adrianople, battles at, 28, 220 Burgundy, Duke of, 160 ; mur-
Africa, Count of, 34 et seq. dered, 200
Agincourt, battle at, 199 Byzantium, 2 et passim
Albigenses, the, 161, 172 el seq.
Alfred the Great, 118 et seq. Cade, Jack, 201
Alphonso V I I . , 179 Cairleon, 11
Amerigo, 227 Caesar, Julius, 2
Angevins, the, 150 Caesars, the t w o , 24
Angli, 38 Caliphs, the, 71
Anglo-Saxons, the, 39 et passim Canterbury, a great city, 112
Angora, 218 Canute, 121
Aragon, 179 Cape of Good Hope, 226
Architecture, in D a r k Ages, 230 1 Capets, the, 128
Armour, changes i n , 187 Carthage, 35
A t t i l a at Chalons, 36 Castile, kingdom of, 177
Augusti, the t w o , 24 Caxton, 229
Augustine, St., 61 Chapmen, the, 111
Austria, 144, 214 et seq. Charlemagne, 52, 64, 77, 90 et
Avars, 143 passim
Avebury, 98 Charles Martel, 87
Charles the B o l d , 204
Bagdad, Caliphs at, 74, 75 Chaucer, 192, 229
B a l d w i n , Eastern Emperor, 167 Chester, 11
Bannockburn, battle at, 184 Church, the, its power, 129 et
Barbarians, the, 8, 17 et seq. passim; its growing wealth,
Basques, the, 38 130, 181 ; its favour to
Belisarius, 44, 47, 49, 53 Crusades, 131 ; its increasing
Berbers, 68, 73 strength, 169 ; evils in the, 172
Birmingham, 114 Celts, the, 3 et passim
Black Death, the, 185 Ceorls, 20, 107 et seq.
Boadicea, 38 Cid Campeador, the, 133
Boccaccio, 192, 229 Cimabue, 230
Bosworth Field, battle at, 202 Claudius, 3
B r i t a i n , 2 et passim Clientes, 82
Bruce, Robert, 184 Clovis, 49, 80
Brythons, 8 Colchester, 5
Burgundi, 49, 53 College of Cardinals, 153
235
236 INDEX
Colonna, the, 166 Gallic Empire, the, 15
Columbus, 180, 227 Game laws of Canute, 147
Comitatus, 82 Gaul, 2, 3, 14
Common land, 107 Gauls, 8
Constantine, the Great, 25 ; dona- Genoa, 166
t i o n of, 65, 152 Germans, 26 et passim
Constantinople, 25 et passim; Germany, kingdom of, 126
taken by Crusaders, 167 ; taken Ghibelline, 165
by Turks, 221 Ghirlandajo, 230
Cordova, Moorish capital, 1 7 7 ; Goidels, the, 4
taken b y Ferdinand I I I . , 177 Gothic arch, 100, 190; archi-
Counts, the, 81 tecture, 191 ; furniture, 102 ;
Cracow, capital of Poland, 213 house, how built, 100
Cr^cy, battle at, 185 Goths, 15 et passim
Crusades, 131 et seq. Granada, Moorish kingdom, 179
Curia, the, 89 Guelph, 165
Gunpowder, 203
Dacia, 8, 28
Dante, 192, 228 Habsburgs, the, 214 et seq.
Danegeld, the, 120 et seq. Hadrian, 6, 10
Danes, the, 64, 111, 118 et seq. Harold, 122 et seq.
Days of the week, 41 Henry I I . , 149
Decius, 15, 28 Henry I I I . , 182
Diocletian, 24 H e n r y I V . , 197
Domesday Book, 96 Henry V . , 197, 199
Druids, their religion, 41 Henry V I I . , 202
Dukes of duchies, 88 Heptarchy, the, 92
H o l y Island, 42, 62
Homage, 135
Earls of the shires, 117 Hundred Court, the, 98
E d w a r d I V . , 203, 204 Hundred Years' War, the, 184
E d w a r d the Black Prince, 180 Hungary, 143, 144 et passim
Egbert, 94, 112 Huns, 26 et passim
Empire, the divided, 22 et seq. Huss, 195, 217
England, 39 et passim
English, the, 3, 17 Iberians, the, 8
Eorls, 20, 108 et seq. Immunities, 8 1 , 85
Ethelred, 121 Indo-Europeans, the, 22
Everlasting League, the, 215 Indulgences, 172
Excommunication, its effect, 168 Inquisition, the, 173
Investitures, 152
Farmers in England, 186 Iona, 42, 62
Ferdinand and Isabella, 180 Ireland, conquest of, 151 ; gold i n ,
Feudal System, the, 82 et seq. 99
France, kingdom of, 126 Islam, 70
Frankish clergy, their value, 78 I t a l i a n cities, independence of,
Franks, the, 14, 33, 37 et passim ; 163 et seq.
the Ripuarian, 80 ; the Salian,
80 Janissaries, the, 219
Frederick I I . , 168 Jerusalem, kingdom of, 1 8 6 ;
Frisians, the, 63 regained by Saracens, 188
 INDEX 237
Jews in Spain, 176 Northmen in Sicily, etc., 134 et
Joan of A r c , 200 passim
Joglars, 157 Northumbria, 40
John, K i n g of England, 150, 159 Novgorod, 210
John of Gaunt, 179, 180
Julian the Apostate, 57 Odoacer, 46, 47
Jutes, 3, 17, 38 Orsini, 166
Jutland, 3 Ostrogoths, 29, 37, 47 et seq.
Oswi, 42, 62, 63
Knights-errant, 155 Ottoman Turks, 218 et seq.
Knights of the sword, 141, 212
Kossovo, battle at, 220 Paladins, the, 90
Palmyra, Prince of, 15
Leonardo da V i n c i , 230 Papacy, its possessions, 88
Lewes, battle at, 183 Papal State, the, 170
Lisbon taken from Moors, 137 Parliament, beginnings of, 182
Lithuanians, the, 211 et seq. Patriarchs, the, 57
Lollards, the, 195, 217 Patrocinium, 92
L o m b a r d League, the, 164 Paul, St., 54, 55
L o m b a r d Street, 66 Penda, 42, 6 1 , 62
Lombards, the, 50, 52 Pepin, first Carolingian, 87
London, 113, 114 Persians, the, 22 et passim
Louis X L , 201 Peter, St., 54, 55
Luther, 195, 217 Peter the H e r m i t , 134
Petrarch, 192, 229
Petrograd, 210
Magna Carta, 150 Philip of France, 159 et seq.
Magyars, 143 Picts, 6, 88
Mahomet, 67 et seq. Pikemen, the Scottish, 188
Manchester, 114 Plantagenets, the, 159
Matilda, her claim to crown, Poitiers, battle at, 185
149 Poles, 211 et sear
Maximilian I . , 214 Pope, the, 54 et passim
Mayor of Palace, 86 Pope, t w o at once, 170
Memoria teehnica, 50, 51 Portugal, kingdom of, 137
Mercia, 40 Precarium, 83, 92
Merovingian kings, 80
Michael Angelo, 230 Ravenna, 52
Minnesingers, 154 Renaissance, the, 229
Minstrels, 103 Rent, its origin, 108
Moorish " Conquest" of Spain, 175 Richard, Coeur de L i o n , 158
et seq. Richard I I . , his French treaty, 196
Moors, 68 et seq. Rienzi, 225
Morgarten, battle of, 216 Roman citizenship, 9
Moscow, 208 Roman Empire, 1 et passim ;
Mote H i l l , the, 20 boundaries of the, 7 ; walls of
the, 6
Navarre, 179 Roman legions, 9 et seq.
Nicopolis, battle at, 220 Roman posts, 2
Nordic, the race, 120 Roman roads, 1
Normandy, its origin, 127 Rome, 1 et passim
288 IN]
Roncesvalles, battle at, 90 Tsar, the, of Moscow, 211
Rudolph, of Habsburgh, 214 Tudors, the, 203
Russia, 142 et passim Turks, the, 132 et passim

Salian Franks, 48 et seq., 79 et seq. Valens, 26

Sapienza, battle at, 224 Valentinian, 26
Saracens, 58, 67 et seq. Vandals, 8 1 , 82 et seq.
Saxons, 3 et passim Vasco da Gama, 226
Scotland, a fief of England, 151 Vassals, their duties, 84
Seljuk Turks, 218 Venice, its power, 166 et seq.;
Sempach, battle of, 216 defeats Genoa, 223
Seville regained by Christians, Visigoths, 29, 31 et seq.
179
Sleswig, 8, 17, 38 Wales, Prince of, 183
Statute of M o r t m a i n , 194 Wallace, W i l l i a m , 184
Stephen, his claim to Crown, 149 Wars of the Roses, 201
Switzerland, its rise, 215 W a t Tyler, his rebellion, 195
W a t l i n g Street, 99, 119
Tacitus, 17 Wends, H o l y W a r against, 187,
Tapestry, 101 140 et seq., 212
Tartars, 211, 220 Wessex, 40
Tenterhooks, 102 Westminster Abbey, 191
T e r t r y , battle at, 86 Westminster, ford at, 97
Teutonic Order, the, 142, 212 W h i t b y , Synod at, 63
Thane, the, 116 W i l l i a m I . , his claim t o the Crown,
Theodoric, 47 122
Theodosius the Great, 28 W i l l i a m Rufus, 146
T i m u r , 220 Winchester, a great city, 113
Tithes, their origin, 110 W o o l , its importance, 110;
T i t i a n , 280 shipped to Klanders, 188
Toulouse, kingdom of, 33 Wycliffe, 194, 217
Tours, battle at, 87
T o w t o n , battle at, 202 Y o r k , 11
Troubadours, 153, 156
Trouveres, 153, 156 Zenobia, 15, 16

THE END
A Companion to the present Volume, containing the beginning
of " The Story."

THE GREATEST STORY IN

THE WORLD: PERIOD I.
From the Earliest Times to A.D. 100.

BY HORACE G. HUTCHINSON, B.A.

This book is an attempt to present, in a form which will appeal
to young people, the story of the beginnings of History. The
scene is laid in that centre of all early civilisation, the Medi-
terranean, and the fortunes of all the mighty nations that lived
and fought round its shores are traced in bold outline : Egypt,
Crete, Babylon—the Jews, Greeks, and Romans—all contribute
their chapters to this wonderful story. The author finally gathers
all the threads together, and leaves the reader at Rome at the
dawn of the new era of Christianity. With Illustrations.

" The story which Mr. Hutchinson tells, with simplicity and
charm, is an outline of the progress of Mediterranean civilization,
from early Egypt to the fall of Jerusalem."—Times Educational
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" He passes in simple but skilful review before us the doings
and mis-doings of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Jews, Persians, and
Greeks, to the victories of Alexander the Great. It is all very well
arranged, and Mr. Hutchinson deserves the gratitude of many a
student for his masterly re-telling of the oldest of old stories."—
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" Mr. Hutchinson has done his work well."—Observer.
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charming little book forms an admirable preliminary to the study
of world-history."—Journal of Education and School World.

With Illustrations and a Map. 3s. 6d.

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