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FOR030title.qxd:FOR030title 10/6/08 11:55 Page 1

FORTRESS • 30

FORT EBEN EMAEL

The key to Hitler’s victory in the West

SIMON DUNSTAN ILLUSTRATED BY HUGH JOHNSON

Series editors Marcus Cowper and Nikolai Bogdanovic
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 2

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Osprey Publishing, Dedication

Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK
443 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, USA
To Nick and Ronald without whom this book would never have
Email: [email protected]
seen the light of day.

© 2005 Osprey Publishing Ltd.

Ar tist’s note

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which
research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents the colour plates in this book were prepared are available for
Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to:
optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.
Hugh Johnson, Upper Flat, 218a Station Road, Edgware, Middlesex,
HA18 8AR, UK
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 84176 821 9 The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence
upon this matter.
Editorial by Ilios Publishing Ltd (www.iliospublishng.com)
Design: Ken Vail Graphic Design, Cambridge, UK
Acknowledgements
Index by Alison Worthington
Maps by The Map Studio Ltd
Originated by The Electronic Page Company, Cwmbran, UK
Belgian Army Museum Brussels; Nick Cuyvers; Kurt Engelmann;
Printed in China through World Print Ltd. Fort Eben Emael; Charles B. MacDonald Office of the Chief of
Military History Department of the Army; National Archives and
05 06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Records Administration; Ronald Pawly; Photo Centre de
Documentation historiques des Forces arméés; Len Shurtleff,
FOR A CATALOGUE OF ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OSPREY MILITARY AND AVIATION Great War Society; Joost Vaesen. Colour photographs by Simon
PLEASE CONTACT:
Dunstan.

NORTH AMERICA
Osprey Direct, 2427 Bond Street, University Park, IL 60466, USA
The For tress Study Group (FSG)
E-mail: [email protected]
The object of the FSG is to advance the education of the public in
the study of all aspects of fortifications and their armaments,
ALL OTHER REGIONS
especially works constructed to mount or resist artillery. The FSG
Osprey Direct UK, P.O. Box 140 Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2FA, UK
holds an annual conference in September over a long weekend
E-mail: [email protected]
with visits and evening lectures, an annual tour abroad lasting
about eight days, and an annual Members’ Day.
www.ospreypublishing.com

© Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally restricted. In return, The FSG journal FORT is published annually, and its newsletter
we ask you that you use it for personal, non-commercial purposes only. Please Casemate is published three times a year. Membership is
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Please support our continuing book publishing programme by using this pdf
responsibly.
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 3

Contents

Introduction 4
The Brialmont forts • The Schlieffen Plan • The battle of Liège • The Versailles Treaty
Position Fortifiée de Liège • The new forts

Chronology 13

Fort Eben Emael 16

The blockhouses • The gun emplacements • Armoured doors • Caserne Souterraine • Observation posts • The garrison

Fall Gelb – Case Yellow 33

Sturmabteilung Koch • The other side of the hill • The alert • ‘The sun shines red, be ready’
The first glider assault in warfare • The assault of Sturmgruppe Granit • The long lingering death of Fort Eben Emael

Blame and counterblame 58

Organization of Sturmgruppe Granit 62

Bibliography 63

Index 64
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 4

Introduction

The Brialmont forts

Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the Belgian government
undertook a comprehensive review of the country’s defences against the
threats posed by both the German Empire and the French Republic. Static field
fortifications were much in vogue across Europe in the late 19th century,
despite the emergence of evermore powerful and accurate artillery weapons.
Only the city of Antwerp featured any modern fortifications, built in response
to the threat posed by Napoleon III in 1859. The Belgian engineer Général
Henri Alexis Brialmont was tasked with updating the defences of Antwerp and
creating a ring of forts around the cities of Liège and Namur that lay astride the
natural invasion routes from the east and west. These were completed by 1890,
with Liège surrounded by a ring of 12 forts1 and Namur by nine.
The Brialmont forts were of modular design made up of four basic elements:
a gorge front, a central redoubt connected by a gallery to a counterscarp coffer.
The whole structure was landscaped into the surrounding terrain, thus
presenting a much lower profile to direct fire weapons. The central redoubt
incorporated the ammunition magazines and the fort’s principal weapons,
which were large-calibre guns, ranging from 120mm and 150mm to 210mm
howitzers, located in retractable armoured steel cupolas. Therein lay one of the
fundamental design flaws of the Brialmont forts, whereby all the major
weapons were concentrated in the central redoubt with their high explosives
magazines nearby. This was compounded by the use of inferior concrete and
construction techniques that weakened the overall integrity of the structure.
Furthermore, the two fortress rings of Liège and Namur were not mutually
supporting, and neither were several individual forts within each ring. None of
the forts was modernized between 1890 and the outbreak of war in 1914.
Général Brialmont also proposed a fortress to cover the approaches to the town
of Visé, north of Liège, but this was declined by the Belgian government 2.
It was to be the invasion route of the German First Army in August 1914.

The Schlieffen Plan

In November 1913, Belgium reaffirmed her status of neutrality that had been
guaranteed by the Great Powers since it was first declared in 1839. These countries
included Great Britain and Prussia, which was superseded in 1871 by the German
Empire. In the first years of the 20th century, the latter’s economic and military
strength grew at a prodigious rate, threatening the stability of Europe. As early as
1905, the Chief of the Great General Staff, Graf Alfred von Schlieffen, devised an
operational plan for the defeat of France. In the event of a simultaneous war
against both France and Russia, the Schlieffen Plan advocated a pre-emptive strike
against France before the unwieldy Russian Army had time to mobilize fully. As
the French were determined to recapture the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine
in time of war with their much-heralded Plan XVII, Schlieffen determined that

1 The 12 Liège forts comprised six on the eastern side of the Meuse River with, from north to south, Fort
Barchon, Fort Evegnée, Fort Fleron, Fort Chaudfontaine, Fort Embourg and Fort Boucelles, while on the
western side were, from north to south, Fort Pontisse, Fort Liers, Fort Lantin, Fort Loncin, Fort Hollogne and
Fort Flemalle. The forts contained a total of 400 heavy-calibre weapons with a garrison of approximately
500 men per fort. The perimeter of the fortress ring was 52km with the average distance between the forts
being 1,900m and the largest gap being 6,400m between the forst of Boucelles and Embourg.
2 On hearing the decision, Général Brialmont declared – ‘Vous pleurerez des larmes de sang pour n’avoir pas
4 construit ce fort’ – ‘You will shed tears of blood for not building this fort’.
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 5

the bulk of the German Army should

attack through Holland and Belgium
and envelop Paris from the north-east
as the French Army advanced into
Alsace and Lorraine. Only screening
forces were to hold the line in the two
disputed provinces and along the
borders of Prussia and Russia to the
east. Little consideration was given to
Dutch or Belgian neutrality as the
German High Command presumed
that the French would be equally
dismissive of such diplomatic niceties
and advance their own forces to the
Meuse River at the outbreak of war 3.
Once France was defeated, the
German Army would be redeployed
to the eastern front to confront the
Russians. Fundamental to the whole
Schlieffen Plan was that the vast majority of the German Army be committed to Following the outbreak of World
the concerted attack through Holland and Belgium and into northern France. The War I on 4 August 1914, the
ratio of forces for this attack as against troops on other fronts was deemed to be Brialmont forts surrounding Liège
were reduced one by one by the
9:1. On his deathbed in 1913, Graf von Schlieffen was reputed to have demanded
systematic bombardment of 21cm
‘Keep the right wing strong!’ Skoda mortars and 42cm Krupp ‘Big
Between its formulation in 1905 and the outbreak of war in 1914, the Bertha’ heavy howitzers. Fort
Schlieffen Plan was modified by General Helmuth Moltke, Schlieffen’s Loncin on the western side of Liège
successor as Chief of the Great General Staff, with the fine tuning left to the held out until 15 August, when a
dour and humourless General Erich von Ludendorff, who in the best traditions German round penetrated the main
ammunition magazine, causing a
of the Prussian military caste believed that peace was merely an inconvenient
catastrophic explosion that
interval between wars. The plan now called for stronger forces in Alsace and entombed half of the fort’s garrison
Lorraine as well as Prussia, thus weakening the right wing that was to attack of 550 men – arguably the result of
through Belgium and Luxembourg, but not Holland. The main axis of the basic design flaws and inadequate
assault was now directed over the rolling plains north of Liège, with the city construction techniques. Fort
itself to be captured by a coup de main as its railway facilities were vital to Loncin was never rebuilt after the
sustain the German advance and had to be taken undamaged. By August 1914, armistice, and it remains a memorial
to the Belgian dead of World War I
five German armies (First to Fifth) were poised to attack through Belgium and
and the gallant defenders of Liège.
Luxembourg with a further two armies (Sixth and Seventh) forming the left The Belgian forts built during the
wing. The original Schlieffen Plan had called for just two corps. Only time 1930s were designed to withstand
would tell whether the right wing had been fatally weakened. attack from heavy siege artillery and
none fell to conventional assault,
The battle of Liège although Fort Battice suffered heavy
casualties when Bunker 1 exploded.
On 2 August 1914, Germany delivered an ultimatum to the Belgian
(National Archives and Records
government demanding free passage for the German Army through Belgium Administration)
and on to France. When this was denied, the German Army invaded Belgium
two days later. As a guarantor of Belgian neutrality, Great Britain declared war
on Germany on the following day and immediately despatched the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) to the beleaguered country. On the same day,
General Carl von Bulow’s Second Army began its assault on the city of Liège in
the first battle of the World War I. The attack by 30,000 men under General
Emmich suffered heavy casualties from the defending forts and the assault
faltered. General Ludendorff, who had returned to the colours in July 1914,
assumed command and resumed the offensive with Zeppelin raids against the
city to terrorize the populace while he personally led the 14th Brigade through
the largest gap between the forts where the supporting fire was at its weakest.
The city fell on 7 August, but the surrounding forts remained unvanquished
3 The German Imperial Chancellor, Dr. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, famously dismissed the 1839 Belgian
neutrality act as ‘a scrap of paper’, and it was for ‘a scrap of paper’ that the British Empire went to war in 1914. 5
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 6

and capable of interdicting German supply lines into Belgium. It was essential
that they be captured or destroyed.
Siege artillery was demanded directly from the Krupp works in Essen. On 12
August, two massive 42cm howitzers, nicknamed ‘Dicke Bertha’, arrived
outside Liège and were assembled prior to the onslaught. The heavy howitzer
was capable of firing a projectile weighing over 775kg (1,700lb) and the first
target was Fort Pontisse threatening the advance of General Alexander von
Kluck’s First Army to the north. At 1830hrs, the first ranging shell was fired at
the fort. The report was heard over 5km away in the heart of the city. Other
rounds followed until they found their mark. The fort was pummelled to
destruction. One by one the forts were destroyed with methodical precision.
The defenders suffered untold hardship as the ventilation systems failed and
the gun emplacements collapsed around their heads. By 15 August, only the
forts of Flemalle and Hologne remained intact. A German delegation
approached the forts to discuss surrender terms. The Belgian commanders were
advised to see the destruction wrought on the other forts to forestall further
futile bloodshed. The defenders refused and the merciless bombardment
continued throughout the day. At 0730hrs on 16 August, the final position
surrendered. The battle of Liège was over 4.
On the following day, the victorious German Second Army, together with
the First and Third, continued the advance, forcing the remnants of the
Belgium Army back towards Antwerp. The capital, Brussels, was captured on 20
August. However, the rigid timetable of the Schlieffen Plan had been severely
compromised by the determined Belgian resistance. The arrival of the BEF at
Mons caused further setbacks to the plan, and it faltered irretrievably on the
Marne River. A portion of Belgium around Ypres remained in Allied hands.
There followed four years of bitter trench warfare, with all sides suffering
horrendous losses. Of the 267,000 men mobilized into the Belgian army,
13,716 were listed as dead with 44,686 wounded and 34,659 as prisoners of war
or missing in action – a casualty rate of almost 35 per cent. Another 50,000
Belgians died during the oppressive German occupation that only ended with
the Armistice on 11 November 1918.

The Versailles Treaty

There were many military lessons to be drawn from World War I. By 1917, the
Allies had developed sophisticated combined-arms tactics employing artillery,
aeroplanes, tanks and infantry in coordinated attacks that, by the end of 1918,
had battered the German Army into submission. But the cost was beyond
measure. Rapid demobilization quickly led to the loss of such capabilities and
expertise. It had been the war to end wars, and any repetition was inconceivable.
To many, the power of the defence now so outweighed that of the offensive arms
that attack was futile. To the French, the answer lay in a refinement of the field
fortifications that had proved so effective during the Great War. Marshals
Ferdinand Foch, Henri Philippe Pétain and Général Joseph Joffre favoured such a
scheme. As the saviours of France in World War I, there were few who would argue
against them. In January 1930, the Minister of War and former Minister of
Veterans Affairs, André Maginot, proposed that a powerful line of fortresses be
built from Switzerland to the Ardennes and from the Alps to the Mediterranean
Sea barring any invasion from the east. See Osprey Fortress 10: The Maginot Line
1928–45 by William Allcorn (Osprey Publishing Ltd: Oxford, 2003)
Named the Maginot Line, construction was undertaken in five phases
during the 1930s. Most of the forts were deep underground and thus

4
The psychological effect on the Allies of the destruction of the Liège forts was considerable, leading the
French to remove many artillery pieces from their static fortresses that were now deemed to be too
vulnerable. These included those from Forts Douaumont, Souville and Vaux with almost catastrophic
consequences during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. See Osprey Campaign 93: Verdun 1916 by William
6 Martin (Osprey Publishing Ltd: Oxford, 2001)
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 7

impervious to conventional artillery fire with interconnecting tunnels

stretching for scores of kilometres. Thousands of men lived subterranean lives
for months at a time to service the Maginot Line’s formidable array of artillery
weapons and machine guns. The line stretched as far as the Ardennes Forest.
which the French believed to be impassable to conventional forces. Similarly,
the line did not extend along the Franco-Belgian border, although a very basic
string of pillboxes and strongpoints was later built along the frontier. The
construction of such massive fortifications consumed a large percentage of the
defence budget, but more significantly it gave rise to a belief that the Maginot
Line was impregnable against conventional assault. Furthermore, funds were
diverted from the creation of modern mechanized forces as advocated by
younger officers, such as Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Tanks remained
subordinate to the infantry as they had been during World War I. Worst of all,
it engendered a mentality of positional warfare among the French High
Command that infected the Belgian Army as well.
The other victors of World War I drew different conclusions from the
French, beyond the common desire not to repeat the slaughter in the trenches.

NORTH
SEA

ENGLAND
H OLLA ND
London

Dunkirk Anglo-French forces GERM A NY

advance into Belgium BELG IU M
Maastricht
l

Aachen
ne

n Brussels Eben Emael

C ha Liège
sh
gli
En

Luxembourg
Sichelschnitt Plan 1940
Siegf
ried
L in e
Paris M a g i n o t Li
ne
Schlieffen Plan 1914
The Schlieffen Plan of 1914 was
designed to envelop Paris from
the north-east, but determined
resistance from the Belgian, British
FRA N CE and French armies disrupted the
N strategy and it faltered on the
Marne and Yser Rivers resulting in
four years of ghastly trench warfare.
In 1940, the Germans lured the
British and French mobile forces
into Belgium. They then unleashed
0 50 miles the ‘Sichelschnitt’ or ‘sweep of the
S WI TZERL A ND scythe’ to split the Allied armies and
0 100km
precipitate the fall of France in just
42 days. (© Osprey Publishing Ltd) 7
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 8

Britain retreated behind her bastion of the English Channel, her most effective
fortification line, and her forward defence of the Royal Navy. Eventually, with
war clouds in Europe looming once more, Britain embarked on the creation of
a strategic bomber force that would allow her to strike at her enemies without
recourse to the commitment of ground troops on the Continent. In the 1930s,
there was a belief that ‘the bomber will always get through’ to wreak havoc on
the enemy as shown to devastating effect during the Spanish Civil War of
1936–39. The British promptly negated their own argument by inventing
radar. To America, any future conflict in Europe became anathema and she
withdrew into a self-imposed period of ‘isolationism’ that effectively
emasculated the ability of any international body like the League of Nations to
constrain expansionist powers such as Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. The
common denominator of all the victors of World War I was that none was
prepared mentally or materially for the next war.
By the terms of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Germany was made to pay
dearly for her war of aggression between 1914 and 1918 – the French
demanding ‘L’Allemagne paiera!’ – ‘Germany will pay!’ – through reparations.
Parts of the Rhineland were occupied and other economic assets were
appropriated. The German army was reduced to 100,000 volunteers, and much
of the High Seas Fleet, as well as all 150 submarines, was seized by the Royal
Navy. Over a third of the army’s artillery, some 5,000 pieces and 25,000
machine guns, was surrendered to the Allies. It signalled a humiliating defeat
for the German people. Many veterans of the war felt that the German Army
had not been defeated by force of arms but had been betrayed by deceitful
politicians at home. The myth that the German Army had been ‘stabbed in the
back’ was born. It was a recipe for resentment and revenge; embodied in the
figure of Adolf Hitler.

Position Fortifiée de Liège

As one of the victorious Allies, Belgium received a proportion of the war booty,
including many of the aforementioned artillery weapons and machine guns.
On 7 September 1920, France and Belgium signed a defensive pact,
transforming their temporary wartime alliance of necessity into a lasting treaty.
In 1923, after Germany failed to deliver reparation shipments on schedule,
Belgian troops joined the French army in the occupation of the Ruhrgebiet.
However, they encountered determined passive resistance and the occupying
troops gradually withdrew from the Rhineland over the coming years. It was a
portent of the resurgence of the German nation, compounded by the rise to
power of the Nazi party in 1933. Once more the threat from the east became
apparent to the Belgian government and once more it undertook a
comprehensive review of the nation’s defences.
With the economy shattered by the war and the brutal German occupation,
Belgium was in no position to lavish large quantities of public money on defence,
ranging from 11.23 per cent in 1921 to just 3.73 per cent in 1926. The Belgian
Chief of the General Staff during the early 1920s, Général Maglinse, supported the
French doctrine of strong fortifications along the border regions while another
school of thought within the Belgian High Command and political establishment
favoured a mobile defence based on a strategic withdrawal to the Scheldt to
conform with their French ally in time of war. Neither faction prevailed and the
continuing schism ultimately led to compromise. On 22 January 1926, Général
Emile Galet replaced Général Maglinse as Chief of Staff. On 18 October 1926,
Général Galet proposed to the Minister of National Defence, M. De Broqueville,
that a commission be created to investigate the rebuilding of the Belgian
fortification system that had been largely destroyed during World War I. The
commission delivered its report on 24 February 1927 with the recommendation
that a fortified defensive line be constructed on the eastern border along the
8 Meuse River – the Position Fortifiée de Liège.
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 9

In the best bureaucratic tradition, the defence minister appointed a new

‘Commission for the Study of National Fortification’ on 21 March 1927 under
Général Borremans, the inspector general of the infantry. Its initial meeting
was held on 2 April 1927, and the very first mention of the new defensive
structure that was to become Fort Eben Emael appeared in a report on the
defence of the Limburg region on 24 January 1928.

On the other hand, faced with the specific danger menacing the area near
Maastricht where the Meuse leaves Belgian territory for eight kilometres of The creation of the Caster cutting
its length and where the enclave grows to a width of four kilometres west through Mount St Peter was a
of the river and faced with the considerable extension of the lines of triumph of civil engineering. It was
communication between Aix-la-Chapelle [Aachen] and Maastricht, the designed and built by the Belgian
Commission has unanimously decided that … all the main transportation company Entreprises Réunies with
other companies acting as sub-
roads and railways converging near Maastricht, the roads leading out of
contractors. These included the
the city and the enclave must be kept within the line of fire of German firms of Hochtief A.G. of
permanent defensive artillery, capable of opening fire within seconds to Essen and Dyckerhoff und Widman
avoid a surprise attack via Zuid Limburg and all its consequences for the of Wiesbaden, but they were not
Liège defences. involved with the construction of
The Commission has also agreed that these permanent armed defensive Fort Eben Emael. There have been
several later assertions that these
structures (estimated to contain a battery of four guns of 150 or 105mm)
companies had complete plans of
must be part of a larger line to be erected on the flanks of the Loen the fortress that allowed such a
and that this group of structures should be supported by a permanent small force as Sturmgruppe Granit
garrison … to capture Fort Eben Emael so
quickly, but that was not the case.
The report calling for the construction of this new fort, as well as the This view shows the southern end
refurbishment of the forts around Liège and Namur, was accepted in principle of the Caster cutting under
construction, with the sheer face
on 7 January 1929. On 14 May 1929, instructions were issued for the
that formed part of Fort Eben
modernization of the six Liège forts on the eastern bank of the Meuse River. Emael on the left.
These were rearming with modern artillery weapons as well as the refurbished (Photo Centre de Documentation
German guns of World War I vintage; improved ventilation systems; and historiques des Forces armées)

9
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 10

RIGHT The diagram shows the enhanced protection for the ammunition magazines, as were seven of the nine
location of the various forts forts around Namur. Interestingly, the first actual document naming Fort Eben
of the Position Fortifiée de Liège Emael appears in a secret report dated 12 June 1929 of the Deuxième Bureau
at the outbreak of World War II.
[French military intelligence] filed by Général Chardigny, the military attaché
The circles around the various
major fortresses represent the at the French embassy in Brussels, in which he revealed plans for a fort to be
ranges of their respective artillery constructed to the north of Liège, in the area of Visé. Indeed as stated
weapons, with the 120mm guns previously, it was to be just north of the invasion route of General von Gluck’s
of Fort Eben Emael reaching almost First Army in 1914, and close to where Général Brialmont had suggested the
to the German border. The inner construction of a fort in 1887: the aphorism of horses and stable doors springs
circle indicates the range of the to mind. In a subsequent report to the Ministry of War in Paris on 5 November
75mm guns, while the innermost
one is of the 81mm mortars. The
1929, Général Chardigny provided specific details of Fort Eben Emael as to its
map also shows the various towns, exact location and proposed armament.
villages and geographical features in
the vicinity of Fort Eben Emael that The new forts
are mentioned in the text, together On 30 June 1930, the occupation of the Rhineland ended and, although now
with the major Belgian army supposedly demilitarized, it no longer provided any buffer zone for the Franco-
formations in the area.
Belgian alliance from a resurgent Germany. The state of Belgium’s defences
(© Osprey Publishing Ltd)
became evermore critical. As if the dichotomy in the high command was not
enough, Belgian domestic internal politics also had a significant influence on
defence expenditure and allocation. The country was divided between two
distinct ethnic groups that spoke either French in Wallonia, the southern part,
or Flemish in the northern part. It was, and remains, a seriously divisive issue.
On 10 December 1930, the findings of the ‘Commission for the Study of
National Fortification’ were presented to the cabinet and subsequently to
parliament on 11/12 March 1931. They proposed the continued modernization
of the forts around Liège together with those of Namur and Antwerp, as well as
the construction of a new fort near the village of Eben Emael and defence
works around Ghent.
None of the various factions was overly happy with the plan and intense
political lobbying ensued with the Walloons being particularly incensed that
their region close to Luxembourg remained virtually undefended. Their cause
was embraced by the liberal politician Albert Devèze (formerly and
subsequently Minister of National Defence). It provoked a political crisis that
engulfed King Albert I. Compromises were sought but eventually the Superior
Council for National Defence under the direction of King Albert promulgated
its decision on 21 April 1931. It endorsed the modernization and extension of
the PFL with several new forts including Eben Emael; the abandonment of new
fortifications for Antwerp and Ghent; and the creation of a new army
formation, the Chasseurs Ardennais, tasked with the defence of the Ardennes
region. The modernized forts around Liège were known as Position Fortifiée de
Liège 2 or PFL 2 and the new forts, Position Fortifiée de Liège 1 as they were closer
to the border with Germany.
In the following year Albert Devèze became the Minister of National
Defence once more. He was determined to implement the plan for strong
fortifications along Belgium’s eastern border and his promise to the Walloons
to defend their interests. The debate as to the allocation of defence funds was
rekindled. The Minister of National Defence was adamant that any invasion
from the east must be contained at the border. When his Chief of the General
Staff, General Galet, disagreed he was forced to retire on 26 December 1932 to
be replaced by General Nuyten. In the meantime, military engineers conducted
field reconnaissance trips to determine the best locations for the defensive
fortifications. On the Herve Plateau, Battice and Tancrémont were chosen as
sites for two new powerful forts that greatly enhanced the defences of Liège and
Visé. Meanwhile, on 1 April 1932, the first construction works began on the site
for the fort of Eben Emael.
On 25 June 1932, an appropriation of 50 million Belgian Francs was sought
10 from the 1933 defence budget for the initial construction of new forts at Battice
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 11

and Tancrémont. However, on 18 August 1932, a budgetary crisis effectively

denied this request and on 7 September it was decided to postpone further
expenditure on the new defence line, although the purchase of the land at
Battice was undertaken. Nevertheless, the ‘Commission for the Study of
National Fortification’ continued its deliberations. Besides the two large forts at
Battice and Tancrémont, it recommended a further two smaller ones near
Mauhin and Les Waides for the defence of the Herve Plateau. In addition, there
were to be numerous infantry bunkers and machine-gun pillboxes to
supplement the major forts.
The delays in the construction of the new forts and the defences of the
eastern border were now a cause of serious concern, compounded by a failure 11
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 12

Named after King Albert I of communications between the various army departments tasked with the
(1875–1934), the extension of the enterprise. To remedy the situation, the ‘Technical Committee for
Albert Canal to avoid the waterway Fortifications’ was formed on 9 January 1933 with the backing of the Minister
passing through Dutch territory was
of National Defence, Albert Devèze. The latter also forced a bill through
inaugurated on 30 May 1930 after a
prodigious engineering endeavour parliament to expedite the appropriation of funds. Throughout the year
to cut through Mount St Peter and construction work at Fort Eben Emael continued apace. Following a council of
create the Caster cutting. With the ministers presided over by the King on 11 October 1933, definitive plans
Lanaye locks to the right linking the emerged for the defence of the realm. The construction of the forts of Battice
original Albert Canal with the and Tancrémont was the priority, together with another major fort at Aubin-
Meuse River, the cutting created a
Neufchateau in place of those at Mauhin and Les Waides. This allowed greater
natural defensive position that
became Fort Eben Emael, close to coverage of the major road running between Aachen in Germany and Visé.
the site recommended by Général These forts were built between 1935 and 1940 and featured weapon systems
Henri Brialmont as long ago as similar to those of Fort Eben Emael, although their armoured protection was
1890, to form the northern fortress greater as they were closer to the German border. In all, the cost of construction
of the Position Fortifiée de Liège. of these forts together with Fort Eben Emael was in the region of 250 million
Belgian Francs. Nevertheless, there still remained a vociferous faction within
the army that believed the money would be better spent on a radical
reorganization of the army and the mechanization of the cavalry with modern
armoured fighting vehicles. Defence procurement has always been dependent
on many, often conflicting, factors that must assess potential threats and seek
countermeasures to them. The Belgian forts were a prime example of facing the
realities of a previous war, yet the actual threat of another invasion from the
east seemed genuine and the prime responsibility of any government is to
ensure the security of its people. The construction of the most powerful
fortresses in the world seemed to fulfil that obligation.

12
08807 FOR30.qxd:08807 FOR30.qxd 17/3/09 12:26 Page 13

Chronology

21 July 1831 Belgium declares independence from the Netherlands.

19 April 1839 Major European powers guarantee Belgian neutrality with the Treaty of
London.

1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War prompts Belgium to build new fortifications around its
key cities of Antwerp, Liège and Namur.

1890 Completion of the Brialmont forts of the Position Fortifiée de Liège and Position
Fortifiée de Namur protecting Belgium from invasion from Germany and France
respectively.

3 August 1914 Germany declares war on France and invades Belgium.

4 August 1914 Britain and Belgium declare war after German troops enter Belgium. The
Liège forts resist until 18 August while those of Namur fall after only four days to
heavy German artillery.

1932–1935 Construction of Fort Eben Emael guarding the junction of the Meuse River
and the Albert Canal north of Liège.

7 March 1937 German troops march into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland in
contravention of the Versailles Treaty.

1939
1 September Germany invades Poland
3 September France and Great Britain declare war on Germany

1940
10 May Fall Gelb – the German offensive in the west begins.
0400hrs – German gliders are sighted over Belgian territory. The Belgian government
appeals to Great Britain and France for assistance.
0430hrs – German Army Group B under General von Bock advances towards the
Belgian defensive line along the Albert Canal. German Army Group A under General
von Rundstedt strikes through the Ardennes between Liège and the Moselle.
0424hrs – The first of nine gliders carrying Sturmgruppe Granit assault pioneers
lands atop Fort Eben Emael. The assault pioneers use novel shaped charges to silence
the guns of Europe’s most powerful fortress in just 30 minutes. German troops seize
intact two out of three bridges across the Albert Canal.
0630hrs – General Gamelin orders Allied troops into Belgium.
11 May 1215hrs Fort Eben Emael surrenders.
20 May Forty allied divisions are trapped in Flanders.
21 May Fort Aubin-Neufchateau surrenders.
22 May Fort Battice surrenders.
28 May At 0400hrs, King Leopold III surrenders to the Germans.
29 May Fort Tancrémont surrenders.

13
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not hesitate to violate the obligations of their order by divulging
privileged confidences to the magistrate. The Morisco could not
change his residence without permission; he was not allowed the
possession of arms; the approach within forty miles of the kingdom
of Granada was punishable with death. Notwithstanding these
severe regulations, many succeeded in evading the vigilance of the
authorities. Some took refuge in Valencia, where the feudal lords still
protected their brethren; others concealed themselves in the
Alpujarras; many escaped to Africa. In their new homes they were
generally treated with far more indulgence than in the old. Prelates
and nobles who profited by their industry not infrequently interposed
their influence to prevent persecution, interested officials connived
at breaches of the law, and it was a common occurrence for the
alguazil appointed to prevent the observance of the feast of
Ramadhan to pass his time carousing with those whom it was his
office to restrain. The condition of the Moriscoes was also rendered
less intolerable by the secret employment of both civil and
ecclesiastical dignitaries of high rank and extensive influence, at a
regular salary, to guard their rights and frustrate the iniquitous
designs of their enemies.
The once flourishing land of Granada was a desert, but the
demands of orthodox Christianity at last were satisfied. The devout
regarded with unconcealed complacency the fertile territory formerly
rich in every variety of agricultural products, and now abandoned to
sterility, but which was defiled no longer by the contaminating
presence of the heretic and the infidel. But, while the Faith was
vindicated by the expulsion of these objects of pious detestation, the
secret of prosperity had departed with them. The imported colonists
were unable, under new and unfamiliar conditions and heedless of
the frugality and patience which insure success, to render their
undertakings profitable; indeed, most of them could hardly exist.
Their taxes had, in violation of contract and on account of the
pressing exigencies of the state, been gradually increased; the
demands of importunate creditors and tyrannical officials made them
desperate; and these exactions, which exhausted the scanty returns
of an ill-conducted cultivation, kept the unfortunate immigrants in a
state of hopeless penury. They either abandoned their farms or were
forcibly ejected, and in 1597 the royal estates were sold because it
was found impossible to operate them at a profit.
While in Granada such discouraging conditions prevailed, those
portions of the kingdom which had unwillingly received the banished
Moriscoes experienced the beneficial results of their labors. The
hitherto barren regions of La Mancha and Estremadura began to
exhibit signs of unexampled fertility. The new settlers were
peaceable, frugal, industrious. In Castile they were generally
farmers; in Aragon, merchants; in Valencia, manufacturers. Not a
few attained great distinction in the practice of medicine and
surgery; and, like the Jews of former ages, they were frequently
employed by the court and the family of the sovereign. The life of
Philip III. when a child was saved by the skill of a Moorish physician,
a service which was ill-requited by the deeds of his manhood. The
exiles practically contributed the funds which supported the
monarchy. The insatiable rapacity of adventurers had soon
exhausted the available wealth of a magnificent colonial empire.
Official corruption constantly drained the ordinary sources of
revenue. In all financial difficulties taxation of the Moriscoes afforded
an unfailing and profitable means of replenishing the treasury. Their
burdens were first doubled, then quadrupled. Every species of
imposition was practised upon them. Their debtors paid them in
spurious coin, struck for their benefit. False jewels were pledged
with them for loans. The chicanery of the law was employed to
defraud them with impunity, while the most severe penalties were
inflicted upon them for trifling breaches of trust. They were
systematically swindled by cheats and usurers. In all possible ways
they were made to feel the unmerited degradation of their caste and
the utter hopelessness of relief. Yet under this weight of malevolence
and injustice they prospered and preserved at least the appearance
of equanimity. Nothing could, with truth, be alleged against their
morals. They were nominally good Christians. They attended mass.
They conformed to the customs of their rulers, wore their dress,
participated in their festivals, spoke Castilian. Their regular and
temperate lives and their buoyant spirits under misfortune promoted
extraordinary longevity. It was by no means unusual to encounter
individuals whose age had passed the limit of a century. Early
marriages and polygamous unions caused the population to increase
with amazing rapidity. The census taken regularly by the Moriscoes
to ascertain the proportion of taxes to be levied upon them and to
insure its equitable distribution demonstrated conclusively that this
growth was in a progressive ratio that was phenomenal in its
character. The enumeration made at Valencia in 1602 showed an
increase of ten thousand in three years. Modern investigation has
established the fact that a population existing under the most
favorable economic conditions will double itself every twenty-five
years. The Moriscoes were far exceeding that estimate, for their rate
of increase was triple. This wonderful augmentation must have been
coincident with the highest degree of prosperity, otherwise
subsistence could not have been provided for the multitudes of
children. This condition was not peculiar to Valencia: it was the same
in Aragon, in Castile, in Estremadura, in Andalusia. The Moors who
had failed to conquer their enemies by arms now threatened to
overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers. The Spaniards, not
being sufficiently civilized to take their census regularly or accurately,
were ignorant of the numerical strength of their own population, as
compared with that of their Moorish subjects; but it was evident that
there was a tremendous preponderance in favor of the latter.
The officials became so alarmed that just before the death of
Philip II. he was requested to prohibit any further enumeration of
the Moriscoes, because it acquainted them with their power and
must eventually prove prejudicial to the interests of the monarchy.
Besides their menacing increase, which no supervision, however
effective, could prevent, they possessed qualities that made them
highly obnoxious to their masters. Their frugality and thrift, their
shrewdness and enterprise, rendered competition with them
impossible. There was no profitable occupation in which they did not
excel. In agriculture they had no rivals. They monopolized every
industrial employment; all of the most useful trades were under their
control. They undersold the Castilian peasantry in their own markets.
Even the most opulent, instructed by previous experience,
sedulously avoided every exhibition of luxury; but the Moorish
artisan had not lost the taste and dexterity of his ancestors, and the
splendid products of the loom and the armory still commanded high
prices in the metropolitan cities of Europe. It was known that the
Moriscoes were wealthy, and popular opinion, as is invariably the
case, delighted in exaggerating the value of their possessions. While
they sold much, they consumed comparatively little and purchased
even less. Although the offence of heresy could no longer be
consistently imputed to them, specious considerations of public
policy, as well as deference to ineradicable national prejudice,
demanded their suppression. Their prosperity, secured at the
expense of their neighbors, and a standing reproach to the idleness
and incapacity of the latter, was the measure of Spanish decay. In
the existing state of the public mind, and under the direction of the
statesmen who controlled the actions of the King, a pretext could
readily be found for the perpetration of any injustice. The Moriscoes
of Valencia, the most numerous, wealthy, and influential body of
their race, protected by the nobles, had always shown less alacrity in
the observance of the duties of the Church than their brethren, and
had thus rendered themselves liable to the suspicion of apostasy. It
was declared that after a generation of espionage, prayer, and
religious instruction they were still secret Mussulmans. This opinion,
perhaps in some instances not without foundation, amounted to
absolute certainty in the narrow mind of Don Juan de Ribera,
Archbishop of Valencia, a prelate of vindictive temper, arbitrary
disposition, limited abilities, and violent prejudices. He owed much of
his reputation for piety to the fact that he had denounced to the
Inquisition more than four thousand alleged Moorish apostates.
Knowing his feelings towards them, the Moriscoes generally turned a
deaf ear to his admonitions and threats, and thus further incurred
his displeasure. The energy of Ribera was incessantly exerted for the
ruin of these supposed heretics, either by exile or by extermination.
With this end in view he addressed several memorials to Philip III.,
who had now ascended the throne, in which the objects of his wrath
were accused of every crime against the civil and the moral law,—
treason, murder, kidnapping, blasphemy, sacrilege. In these appeals
the Moriscoes were called “the sponge that absorbed the riches of
Spain.” He enforced his arguments by the extraordinary statement
that the destruction of the Armada was a divine judgment for the
indulgence exhibited towards these enemies of the Faith, and that
Philip II. was aware of it, for he himself had informed him of that
fact. The recent occurrence of earthquakes, tempests, and comets
was also sagely attributed to the same cause. The Moriscoes were
not ignorant of the designs which the Archbishop was prosecuting to
their injury, and endeavored to obtain the assistance of France and
England, both of which countries were then hostile to Spain. They
offered King Henry IV. the services of a hundred thousand well-
armed soldiers if he would invade the Peninsula. The Duke of Sully
says they even signalized their willingness to embrace Protestantism
in consideration of support, it being a form of worship not tainted
with idolatry, like that of Rome. Negotiations were privately opened
with the courts of Paris and London, and commissions were even
appointed by the latter to verify the claims of the Moriscoes; but no
conclusion was arrived at, and the plot was eventually betrayed by
the very sovereigns whose honor was pledged to the maintenance of
secrecy. An embassy was also sent to the Sultan of Turkey by the
Moors, soliciting his aid and tendering him their allegiance. No plan
which promised relief was neglected. The furious Ribera again urged
upon the King the dangers that the toleration of such a numerous
and perfidious people implied; he alleged their prosperity and their
superior intelligence as crimes against the state; and as absolute
extermination did not seem to be feasible, he suggested expulsion
as of greater inconvenience, but of equal efficacy. Once more the
nobles interposed in behalf of their vassals, and while the King was
hesitating the Moriscoes endeavored to anticipate his decision by the
formation of an extensive conspiracy. Again they were betrayed, this
time by one of their own number. Public opinion, aroused by these
occurrences, and further inflamed by ecclesiastical malice and by the
pernicious influence of the Duke of Lerma, the all-powerful minister
of Philip III., now imperatively demanded their banishment. This
nobleman, of base antecedents and unprincipled character, and
whose dominating passion was avarice, was Viceroy of Valencia. His
brother was the Grand Inquisitor Their influence easily overweighed
the remonstrances of the Pope, whose voice was raised on the side
of mercy.
On the fourth of August, 1609, the royal decree which announced
the fate of the Moriscoes of Valencia was signed at Segovia. No
precaution which prudence could suggest was neglected to prevent
disaster consequent upon its enforcement. Great bodies of troops
were placed under arms. The frontiers of the kingdom were
patrolled by cavalry. Seventy-seven ships of war, the largest in the
navy, were assembled on the coast. In every town the garrison was
doubled. Several thousand veterans disembarked from the fleet and
were distributed at those points where the Morisco population was
most numerous. Such preparations left no alternative but
submission, and the Valencians, anticipating the final movement
which would deliver the unhappy Moors into their hands, began to
rob and persecute them without pity. Even after all had been
arranged for the removal, the nobles urged Philip to revoke an order
which must cause incalculable injury to his kingdom. The most
solemn and binding guarantees were offered for the public safety
and for the peaceable behavior of the Moriscoes. It was
demonstrated that the manufacturing and agricultural interests of
the entire monarchy were involved; that a population of a million
souls, whose industry represented of itself a source of wealth which
could not be replaced, would be practically exterminated; that the
educational and religious foundations of the realm alone received
from Moorish tributaries an annual sum exceeding a million
doubloons of gold. It was also shown that the vassals of the
Valencian nobles paid them each year four million ducats, nearly
thirty-two million dollars. The alleged conspiracies were imputed to
the malice of the monks, who invented them in the cloister; the
heresies to ignorance of the clergy, too idle or too negligent to afford
their parishioners instruction. The evil results of the iniquitous
decree had already begun to manifest themselves. The cultivation of
the soil had almost ceased. The markets were deserted. Commerce
languished, and the Moriscoes, to avoid the insults of the populace
to which they were now subjected, only appeared in the streets
when impelled to do so by absolute necessity. The Archiepiscopal
See of Valencia, which derived its revenues almost entirely from
Morisco taxation, was threatened with bankruptcy, and Don Juan de
Ribera, realizing when too late the disastrous consequences of the
project he had so sedulously advocated, now in vain endeavored to
stem the tide of public bigotry and official madness. While bewailing
his unhappy condition to his clerical subordinates, he was heard to
plaintively remark, “My brethren, hereafter we shall be compelled to
live upon herbs and to mend our own shoes.”
Philip refused to reconsider his determination, and the nobility
manifested their loyalty by the unflinching support of a measure
running directly counter to their interests. On the twenty-second of
September, 1609, the edict of expulsion was proclaimed by heralds
throughout the kingdom of Valencia. It represented that by a special
act of royal clemency “the heretics, apostates, traitors, criminals
guilty of lése-majesté human and divine,” were punished with exile
rather than with death, to which the strict construction of the laws
condemned them. It permitted the removal of such effects as could
be carried, and as much of their harvests as was necessary for
subsistence during their journey; all else was to be forfeited to their
suzerains. They were forbidden to sell their lands or houses. Three
days of preparation were granted; after that they were declared the
legitimate prey of every assailant. Dire penalties were denounced
against all who should conceal them or in any way assist in the
evasion of the edict. Those who had intermarried with Christians
could remain, if they desired; and six per cent. of the families were
to be reserved by the lords, that the horticultural and mechanical
dexterity which had enriched the country might not be absolutely
extinguished. These subjects of interested clemency refused to
accept this invidious concession, however, and hastened to join their
countrymen beyond the sea.
 The wretched Moriscoes received the tidings of their expatriation
with almost the despair with which they would have listened to a
sentence of death. Astonishment, arising from the suddenness of the
notice and the inadequate time allotted them for preparation, was
mingled with their dismay. The traditions of centuries, the souvenirs
of national glory, the memory of their ancestors, contributed to
endear them to their native land. There were centred the most
cherished associations of a numerous and cultivated race. All around
were the visible signs of thrift and opulence and their results, won
by laborious exertion from the soil. The disfigured but still
magnificent monuments of fallen dynasties recalled the departed
glory of Arab genius and Moslem power. The loss of their wealth, the
sacrifice of their possessions, portended the endurance of calamities
for which they were ill-prepared, and of whose dreadful character
their most gloomy apprehensions could convey no adequate
conception. In every Moorish community appeared the signs of
unutterable misery and woe. The shrieks of frenzied women pierced
the air. Old men sobbed upon the hearthstones where had been
passed the happy days of infancy and youth. Overcome with grief,
life-long friends met in the streets without notice or salutation. Even
little children, unable to comprehend, yet awed by the prevailing
sorrow, ceased their play to mingle their tears with those of their
parents.
As the disconsolate and sobbing multitude, urged on by the
ferocious soldiery taught by their religion to regard these victims of
national prejudice as the enemies of Christ, left their homes behind
forever, their trials and sufferings increased with their progress. The
government provided them with neither food, shelter, nor
transportation. The difficulties of the march were aggravated by
clouds of dust and by the pitiless heat of summer. Many were born
on the highway. Great numbers fell from exhaustion. Some, in
desperation, committed suicide. Every straggler was butchered by
the armed rabble which, equally ravenous for plunder or blood,
constantly hung on the flanks of the slowly moving column. Many
were assassinated by Old Christians, men of Moorish ancestry, the
conversion of whose forefathers dated before the Conquest, and
who told their beads and muttered prayers after each murder, as if
they had committed an action acceptable to God. The armed
brigands who composed the escort vied with the mob in their
atrocities. The men were openly killed, the women violated. Their
property was appropriated by force. Some died of hunger. Parents, in
their extremity, became so oblivious of the instincts of nature as to
barter their children for a morsel of bread. When they embarked for
Africa they fared even worse than they had done on land. On the
sea the opportunities for outrage were multiplied, the means of
escape and detection diminished. No pen can portray the horrors
visited upon the unhappy Moriscoes, helpless in the midst of savage
enemies who were insensible to pity, hardened by cruelty, and
dominated by the furious lust of beauty and gold.
The decree was not received everywhere with the same
submission as at the city of Valencia. There the exiles, overawed by
the large military force, yielded without disturbance. Half-crazed by
misfortune, they even feigned exultation, marched on board the
ships dressed in holiday costume and headed by bands of music,
and in token of delight gave themselves up to the most extravagant
exhibitions of joy. Some kissed the shore, others plunged into the
sea, others again quaffed the briny water as if it were a delicious
beverage. Before embarking they sold much of their property, and
articles of great elegance and beauty—curiously wrought vessels of
gold and enamel, silken veils embroidered with silver, magnificent
garments—were disposed of for a small fraction of their value.
During these transactions, and in settlement of their passage to
Africa, the Moriscoes succeeded in placing in circulation an immense
amount of counterfeit money which they had obtained in Catalonia,
thus literally paying the Spaniards in their own coin. The portable
wealth of which the kingdom was deprived by their banishment
cannot be estimated. It amounted, however, to many millions of
ducats. Some of the exiles were known to possess a hundred
thousand pieces of gold, an enormous fortune in those times. It was
ascertained after their departure that their lords, in defiance of law,
had purchased many of their estates, and had connived at the sale
or concealment of a great amount of their personal property. Those
who succeeded in reaching the cities were received with courteous
hospitality, but the desert tribes showed scant mercy to the
multitudes that fell into their hands.
Elsewhere in the kingdom the Moriscoes stubbornly resisted the
decree of expatriation. The Sierra de Bernia and the Vale of Alahuar
were the scene of the most serious disturbances, and at one time
twenty thousand insurgents were in the field. Armed for the most
part with clubs, their valor was ineffectual in the presence of veteran
troops. The women alone were spared; the men were butchered;
the brains of children were beaten out against the walls. The
garrison of the castle of Pop, which for a few weeks defied the
Spanish army, alone obtained advantageous terms. Of the one
hundred and fifty thousand Moors exiled from Valencia, at least two-
thirds perished. A large number had previously succumbed to
persecution or had escaped, and including these the total number of
victims of the inauguration of the insane policy of Philip III. was at
least two hundred thousand. The continuance of that policy until its
aim had been fully accomplished had already been determined on by
the councillors of the King. The secrecy which concealed their design
did not impose upon those who were the objects of it. They began
by tens of thousands to emigrate quietly to Africa. Then the decree,
which had been signed a month before, was published, with an
attempt to give the impression that it had been provoked by a
circumstance of which it was really the cause, namely, the agitation
of the Moriscoes. The latter were peremptorily commanded to leave
the kingdom within eight days. They were forbidden to take with
them money, gold, jewels, bills of exchange, or merchandise. They
were not permitted to dispose of their estates. In Catalonia their
property was confiscated, “in satisfaction of debts which they might
have owed to Christians,” and three days only were allowed them in
which to prepare for departure. Their little children were to be left
behind to the tender mercies of their oppressors, in order that their
salvation might be assured. Those of the northern provinces were
prohibited from moving southward; those of Andalusia were directed
to emigrate by sea. Within the allotted time all were in motion. The
embarkation of the exiles destined for Africa was effected without
difficulty. But their brethren of Castile and Aragon were refused
admission into France, by the direct order of Henry IV., to whose
agency was largely attributable their deplorable condition. His
opportune death somewhat relaxed official severity, and a great
number entered Provence. Although they were peaceable and
inoffensive, the French were anxious to be rid of their unwelcome
guests. Free transportation was furnished them by the city of
Marseilles, and they were distributed through Turkey, Italy, and
Africa. So many died during the passage by sea that their dead
bodies encumbered the beach, and the peasants refused for a long
time to eat fish, declaring that it had the taste of human flesh. The
progress of the unfortunates driven northward was marked by daily
scenes of persecution and agony. The commissioners appointed to
supervise the emigration connived at the evasion of the decree for
their own profit. They extorted enormous sums for protection, which
their duty required them to afford without compensation, and which,
even after these impositions, was insolently denied. Those things
which the ordinary dictates of humanity delight to bestow were sold
to the hapless wanderers at fabulous prices. For the shade of the
trees on the highway the grasping and unprincipled peasant exacted
a rental; and the water dipped from the streams in the trembling
hands of the sufferers commanded a higher price than that usually
paid for the wine of the country. The little which the commissioners
overlooked was seized by rapacious French officials, and the
condition of the Moriscoes was still further aggravated by the
absconding of those of their number to whom the common purse
had been intrusted.
In the merciless proscription thus imposed upon an entire people,
an insignificant number temporarily escaped. In the latter were
included young children torn from their parents to be educated by
the Church, and such persons “of good life and religion” as the
clergy, through interested or generous motives, chose to recommend
to royal indulgence. In 1611 the exemption enjoyed by these classes
was removed; searching inquiry was instituted throughout the
kingdom, and every individual of Moorish blood who could be
discovered was inexorably condemned to banishment or slavery. By
the persecution of the Moriscoes and the losses by war,
assassination, voluntary emigration, and enforced exile, Spain was
deprived of the services of more than a million of the most
intelligent, laborious, and skilful subjects in Christendom. Those who
were finally excluded were probably not more than half of the entire
Moorish population. No statistics are accessible in our day from
which an estimate can be formed of the vast number that perished
by famine, by torture, by massacre. Their trials were not at an end
even in Africa; they were pursued for sectarian differences, and
some who were sincere Christians returned to Spain, where they
were at once sentenced to the galleys. The skill and thrift of the
Moriscoes, qualities which should have made them desirable,
rendered them everywhere unpopular; they monopolized the trade
of the Barbary coast, even driving out the Jews; in Algiers the
populace rose against them, all were expelled, and large numbers
were remorselessly butchered. Hatred of their oppressors induced
many of hitherto peaceful occupations to embrace the trade of
piracy, and the southern coast of the Peninsula had reason to long
remember the exploits of the Morisco corsairs.
The ruthless barbarity, the blind and reckless folly of this
measure, was followed by an everlasting curse of barrenness,
ignorance, and penury. The sudden removal of enormous amounts
of portable wealth deranged every kind of trade. The circulation of
counterfeit money impaired public confidence. In Valencia four
hundred and fifty villages were abandoned. The absence of the most
industrious and prosperous class of its inhabitants was apparent in
every community of Castile. Catalonia lost three-quarters of its
population. The districts of Aragon rendered desolate by Moorish
expulsion have never been repeopled. Agricultural science and
mechanical skill disappeared. The hatred and disdain entertained by
the Spaniards for the conquered race had never permitted them to
profit by the experience and ingenuity of the latter. Intercourse with
a Moor brought moral and social contamination. Still less could the
admission of inferiority, which the adoption of his methods implied,
be tolerated by the haughty, the vainglorious, the impecunious
hidalgo.
The effects of the discouragement of all forms of art and industry
consequent upon war and persecution had been felt long previous to
the expulsion of the Moriscoes in every part of the Peninsula. For
many years after the capture of Cordova by Ferdinand III., it was
found necessary to bring provisions from the North, not only for the
support of the army, but to rescue from famine the sparse and
thriftless population of a province which under the Ommeyade
khalifs maintained with ease the great capital, as well as twelve
thousand villages and hamlets.
The decline in the number of inhabitants under Spanish rule
indicates the utter stagnation of trade and agriculture. In 1492 the
population of Castile was six and three-quarter million; in 1700 there
were in the entire kingdom of Spain but six million souls—such had
been the significant retrogression in two hundred years.
The combined revenues of the Spanish Crown at the close of the
fifteenth century amounted to a sum equal to three hundred
thousand dollars, about one-thousandth of the annual receipts of the
imperial treasury at the death of Abd-al-Rahman III., seven hundred
years before.
Fifty years after the banishment of the Moors, the combined
population of the cities of Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Granada, had
decreased by more than four-fifths; it is now about one-tenth of its
amount during the Moslem domination. In 1788 there were fifteen
hundred and eleven deserted towns in the Peninsula. Toledo,
celebrated for its silken fabrics, in the latter part of the fifteenth
century had sixty thousand looms; in 1651 it had five thousand; to-
day it has none. The same industry was pursued with great success
at Seville; in the seventeenth century the number of its looms had
decreased from sixteen thousand to sixteen. All other branches of
manufactures declined in the same proportion. Even a large part of
the kingdom of Valencia, the garden of Europe, was for years an
uninhabited wilderness. With the Moslem expulsion the knowledge
of many arts, once the source of great profit, was hopelessly lost.
To the pious Spaniard all these sacrifices were as nothing when
compared with the triumph of the Faith. The ports were unoccupied,
the quays grass-grown, but the armies of the Cross had conquered.
The manufactories had fallen into decay, the streets were silent, the
highways were deserted except by the timorous traveller and the
lurking robber, but not a Moslem or a Jewish heretic was to be
encountered in His Most Catholic Majesty’s dominions. At the close
of the seventeenth century, throughout the entire Peninsula, once
the centre of learning in Europe, the resort of scholars of every land,
the seat of the greatest educational institutions of the Middle Ages,
not a single academy existed where instruction could be obtained in
astronomy, natural philosophy, or any branch of mathematics. A
hundred years later no one could be found who understood even the
rudiments of chemistry. To-day, among the inhabitants of Spain,
according to the published tables of statistics, only one person in
every four can read. But what mattered the destruction of
commerce, the decay of production, the dearth of intelligence, if the
land was purged of false doctrines?, Was it not a source of national
congratulation that ecclesiastical authority was once more
paramount; that half of the able-bodied population, male and
female, were devoted to monastic life; that magnificent religious
foundations, such as the world had never before seen, arose on
every side; that, though the royal treasury was bankrupt, the annual
revenues of the Church amounted to nearly fifty-three million
dollars? Surely these manifold divine blessings were not to be
weighed with the transitory benefits derived from the labors of a
mass of perverse and unregenerate heretics!
The results, both immediate and remote, of this crime against
civilization thus proved fatal to Spain. Its principal sources of
subsistence removed, the kingdom was desolated by famine. It
became necessary to extend public aid to many noble families, once
affluent, but now impoverished by the suicidal course of the crown.
Popular sentiment, exasperated by distress, denounced in unsparing
terms the authors of the national calamity. The Archbishop of
Valencia, unable to endure the daily reproaches to which he was
subjected, and overcome by the sufferings for which he was
responsible, died of remorse. Silence and gloom occupied vast tracts
formerly covered by exuberant vegetation. In the place of the farmer
and the mechanic appeared the brigand and the outlaw. Deprived of
protection, the open country was abandoned; the peasantry sought
the security of fortified places, and all occupations whose pursuit
implied exposure to the danger of violence were necessarily
suspended. The conditions controlling every rank of society which
were established in the Peninsula by the blind and savage prejudices
of the seventeenth century are largely prevalent to-day. A dreadful
retribution has followed a tragedy whose example happily no other
nation has ventured to imitate; and which, from the hour of its
occurrence, has afflicted with every misfortune to the last generation
the people responsible for its hideous atrocities.
 CHAPTER XXVII
GENERAL CONDITION OF EUROPE FROM THE VIII. TO THE XVI.
CENTURY

700–1500
Effects of Barbarian Supremacy on the Nations of Europe—Rise of the
Papal Power—Character of the Popes—Their Vices and Crimes—
The Interdict—Corrupt Practices of Prelates and Degradation of
the Papacy—Institution of the Monastic Orders—Their Great
Influence—Their Final Degeneracy—Wealth of the Religious
Houses—The Byzantine System—Its Characteristics—Power of the
Eunuchs—Splendor of Constantinople—Destruction of Learning—
Debased Condition of the Greeks—The People of Western Europe
—Tyranny of Caste and its Effects—Feudal Oppression—Life of the
Noble—His Amusements—The Serf and his Degradation—His
Hopeless Existence—Treatment of the Jews—Prevalence of
Epidemics—Religious Festivals—General Ignorance—Scarcity and
Value of Books—Persecution of Learning—The Empire of the
Church—Its Extraordinary Vitality.
In order that the reader may thoroughly understand and properly
appreciate the moral and intellectual supremacy of the Spanish
Arabs and their prodigious advance in the domain of science and the
arts, I have thought it advisable, by way of contrast, to present to
him a short and superficial sketch of the religious, political, and
domestic conditions which prevailed in the society of
contemporaneous Europe. The extent of this vast and
comprehensive subject—one which has exhausted the erudition of
many great historians, whose works of themselves would constitute
a considerable library—must, therefore, excuse the incomplete and
cursory character of this chapter; while its importance as a standard
of comparison will account for an apparent deviation from the
general plan embraced by these volumes.
 The elegant luxury and refined civilization of the Romans had
disappeared amidst the universal anarchy which followed the
dissolution of their empire. The boundaries of great states and
kingdoms had been obliterated. Provinces once famed for their
fertility were now the haunts of prowling beasts and truculent
barbarians. The despotic but generally salutary government of the
Cæsars had everywhere, save in the immediate vicinity of
Byzantium, been replaced by the capricious and irregular jurisdiction
of petty chieftains, whose violent passions were restrained only by
their weakness, and of marauding princes, ambitious to destroy
every vestige of that architectural magnificence and mental culture
whose monuments they despised, and whose example they had
neither the desire nor the capacity to emulate. Instead of a smiling
landscape, everywhere exhibiting the traces of agricultural skill and
laborious and patient industry, a prospect of universal desolation met
the eye of the anxious and hurrying wayfarer. Moss-grown heaps of
rubbish alone marked the site of many a once flourishing and
opulent city. The towering aqueducts,—those engineering marvels of
the ancient world,—whose majestic ruins still excite the admiration
of all mankind, were broken and fallen into decay. The peerless
temples and altars of the gods had been desecrated by the hands of
sacrilegious Goth, Hun, and Lombard. Bands of brigands, insensible
to pity, swarmed upon the highways. In the cities the equitable
decisions of the prætor had been supplanted by the extortions of
ecclesiastical fraud and barbarian insolence. The vices prevalent
during the most abandoned period of Roman licentiousness had
survived, and had been aggravated by the unfeeling cruelty of the
conquerors. No scruples of humanity or delicacy suggested the
concealment of the most revolting orgies. The streets of the Eternal
City exhibited enormities whose very mention the rules of modern
propriety do not tolerate. Banquets where the brutal propensities of
the turbulent and uncouth guests were indulged to the utmost
constantly afforded provocation for bloodshed and murder.
Knowledge of letters, understanding and appreciation of the arts,
had already wholly vanished. The literary masterpieces of classic
genius remained unknown or forgotten in the insignificant collections
of scattered libraries, or had been buried under the smoking ruins of
those institutions of learning which once adorned the capitals and
the provincial cities of Greece and Italy.
By the accident of geographical position, by the adoption of
familiar political maxims, and by the incorporation into its ritual of
many ceremonies long endeared to the votaries of Paganism, the
Church of Rome had secured an influence over the minds of men
which under any other circumstances it could scarcely have
acquired. The revered name and dignity of Supreme Pontiff imparted
authority to its decrees and gave prestige to its decisions on
questions of doctrine. The five Christian emperors, from Constantine
to Gratian, adopted without alteration the attributes and wore the
insignia of the sacred office established by Numa and usurped by
Augustus. The assumption of imperial power is shown by the extent
of Papal jurisdiction long sharply defined by the ancient limits of the
empire. The adoption of the Latin idiom enabled the Church to
communicate secretly with its servants in the most distant countries;
while at the same time it invested the proceedings of its worship
with a mystery which awed the ignorant and fanatic believer. The
splendid ceremonial, the imposing temples, the elaborate vestments,
the costly furniture of the altar enriched with gold and jewels, the
incense, the solemn chants, the consecration of the Host,—all
powerfully impressed the superstitious children of the slaves of
ancient mythology, in whose minds still lingered traces of those
traditions which had been received by their fathers with the implicit
faith due to the oracles of the gods.
In the course of centuries, the primitive simplicity of the Gospel
and the purity of life which distinguished the first Christians had
been lost in the complex theology, in the unseemly contests for
precedence, in the crimes and the licentiousness which distracted
the society of the Eternal City. From a simple priest, whose tenure of
office was dependent on the pleasure of his associates, the Bishop
of Rome had been exalted into a mighty sovereign, responsible only
to the powers of Heaven. The palace of the Vatican exhibited all the
vices of the most corrupt of courts. The assumption of infallibility,—
an inevitable result of the preposterous claims of the Papacy,—
through the contradictory interpretations of different individuals
whose interests were conflicting led to the most opposite
conclusions, often to results fatal to the peace and honor of the
Church. The faith of the populace was weakened. Infidelity in the
priesthood became too common to excite remark. The universal
depravity was incredible and appalling. The general demoralization
resulting from the example of the clergy, whose atheism and
debauchery were proverbial, threatened the existence of society, a
catastrophe which the thorough organization of the hierarchy alone
prevented. Even in the fifteenth century Machiavelli wrote, “The
nearer a nation is to Rome the more impious are the people.” When
the German Schopp called the famous scholar, Casaubon, an atheist,
the latter retorted: “If I were an atheist I should now be at Rome,
where I have often been invited.” The effects of this superb
ecclesiastical organization were not long in manifesting themselves.
The legitimate resources of power were aided by every device of
fraud, of oppression, of imposture, of forgery. A succession of able
and unprincipled pontiffs fastened on Christendom a yoke which the
intelligence and the science of subsequent generations have not
even yet been able to entirely remove. The temporal supremacy of
the Cæsars was re-established over Europe; the dogmas of
Catholicism were preached in distant continents unknown to the
ancient world; and a tyranny far more terrible in its consequences
than that experienced under the cruel rule of Nero and Domitian was
imposed upon the intellectual aspirations of mankind.
No branch of history affords such a significant illustration of
human craft and human weakness as the story of the ambition, the
intrigues, and the vices of the Popes. In its consideration, the fact
must never be lost sight of that the Holy Father was, as a necessary
consequence of his creed, the earthly embodiment of spiritual
perfection,—the vicegerent of Almighty God. Either the admission of
a single error of judgment, or a controversy involving the most
insignificant tenet sustained by one pope and disputed by his
successor, was fatal to the claim of infallibility, which was the
foundation of the entire ecclesiastical system. The omniscience
conferred by the apostolic succession, which traced its origin to the
Saviour Himself, could never be mistaken. The example of the
Supreme Pontiff, the relations he sustained to the great officials of
his court, his occupations, his diversions, his tastes, his habits, his
conversation, were of far greater importance in the eyes of the
meanest peasant of some remote kingdom who acknowledged his
mission than were the most glorious achievements of any temporal
sovereign. The possibilities for the attainment to positions of such
authority and influence as were offered by the Roman Catholic
hierarchy had been unknown to Paganism. These opportunities
enabled men of base origin, but of extraordinary talents, to reach
the chair of St. Peter, men whose faults were overlooked or palliated
by the indulgent spirit of the age on account of the successful
prosecution of their schemes and the veneration which attached to
their calling.
Thus, among the powers of the earth, highest in rank, greatest in
renown, supreme in influence, pre-eminent in infamy, was the
Papacy of Rome. The maintenance of an uniform standard of
orthodoxy was little considered by the spiritual potentate whose will
was the law of Christendom. It is well known to every student of
Church history that Jewish doctrines predominated in the early days
of Christianity and controlled the policy of its priesthood. The Pagan
ideas and ceremonies inherited from the Roman pontiffs it never laid
aside. Every form of heterodox belief was entertained at different
periods by the incumbents of the Holy See. St. Clement was an
Arian; Anastasius a Nestorian; Honorius a Monothelite; John XXII. an
unconcealed atheist. The contradictory dogmas, the acrimonious
disputes, the frightful anathemas, that resulted from the adoption of
these heretical principles of doctrine were the public reproach of the
Christian world. As the power of the Papacy increased, its possession
became more and more an object to ambitious and unscrupulous
adventurers. It was sought and obtained by arts countenanced only
by the vilest of demagogues. It was sold by one Pope to another;
and, like the imperial laurel appropriated by the Pretorian Guards, it
was put up at auction by cardinals and became the property of the
most wealthy purchaser. Some of the Holy Fathers had not taken
orders; others had not even received the sacraments of baptism and
communion before being invested with the pontifical dignity. In some
instances the tiara and the mitre were placed upon the brows of
children. Neither John XII. nor Benedict IX. had attained the age of
thirteen years when intrusted with the direction of the spiritual
affairs of Christendom. An infant of five years was consecrated
Archbishop of Rheims. Another who was only ten was placed upon
the episcopal throne of Narbonne. Alonso of Aragon, the natural son
of Ferdinand the Catholic, was made Archbishop of Saragossa at the
age of six. The origin of the vicars of Christ was sometimes of the
most obscure and often of the most disgraceful character. Stephen
VII., John X., John XI., John XII., Boniface VII., Gregory VII., were
the sons of courtesans. In some instances the infamy was further
increased by the additional stigma attaching to the crime of incest.
The famous courtesan Marozia, who for the greater part of her life
disposed of the Papacy at her will, is credited with the installation of
eight Popes, all her lovers or her children, one of whom was at once
her son and grandson. The empire she acquired by her talents and
her beauty lasted almost a quarter of a century. To that epoch is
ascribed an occurrence that many writers have designated as
fabulous, but which is established by evidence far more convincing
than many events that have successfully withstood the most
formidable assaults of hostile criticism. It was long asserted by
chroniclers of the orthodox faith, and universally credited, that in the
capital of Christianity, hallowed by the glorious deaths of countless
martyrs, linked with the proud associations of the rise and progress
of the spiritual power of the Papacy, and ennobled by the most
signal victories of the Church, a monstrous prodigy had occurred. It
was said that Pope John VIII., whose sex had hitherto been
unsuspected save by those favored with her intimacy, while
returning from the celebration of a solemn festival, at the head of a
procession of cardinals and bishops and surrounded with the
glittering emblems of pontifical power and majesty, had been seized
with the throes of parturition in one of the most public thoroughfares
of Rome.
The original acceptance of and belief in this portentous
catastrophe, and its subsequent denial, form one of the most curious
episodes in the annals of the Church. For five centuries it was
implicitly received as historic truth. The life of Pope Joan long
occupied a prominent place in the biographies of the successors of
St. Peter, dedicated to eminent prelates, often to the Pontiffs
themselves. The occurrence—whose locality was marked by the
statue of a woman wearing the Papal insignia and holding a child in
her arms—was minutely described in the works of learned and
respectable historians. This memorial was thrown into the Tiber by
the order of Sixtus V. Her bust, destroyed by Charles VIII. during the
French invasion of Italy, was long an ornament of one of the
churches of Sienna. Until the time of Leo X. certain ceremonies,
which cannot be described, were publicly instituted at the election of
every Pope to determine his sex. To these even the licentious Borgia
was forced to conform. John Huss, when arraigned before the
Council of Constance, amidst an unbroken silence, reproached the
ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled to condemn him, and whom the
slightest heretical assertion roused to tumultuous fury, with the
imposture which had so signally demonstrated the weakness of the
vaunted inspiration of the Papacy. More than five hundred writers,
whose interests were identical with those of the Vatican—among
them chroniclers, polemic divines, authorities on the history of the
Church and its discipline, all enthusiastic members of the Roman
Catholic communion—have confirmed the existence of a female
Pope.
But, whether true or false, the disgrace consequent upon this
gigantic scandal was insignificant when compared with the moral
effect of the long series of crimes which disfigure the annals of Papal
Rome. The shameless venality of the Princes of the Church had from
the most remote times disgraced the proceedings by which was
elevated to the throne of the apostles the immaculate Vicar of God.
So corrupt was the ecclesiastical society of the capital that no Pontiff
who endeavored to live a moral life was secure for a single hour.
Celestine was poisoned at the instance of the cardinals eighteen
days after receiving the tiara. Adrian V. was poisoned in the conclave
itself before his election. The partisans of antagonistic claimants of
the Papacy pursued each other with a vindictiveness scarcely
equalled by the most intense bitterness of political faction. Each
aspirant to the pontifical dignity denounced his opponent as an anti-
pope, and exhausted the rich vocabulary of clerical invective in
consigning him to the vengeance of Heaven. The defeated candidate
was subjected to every variety of torture; to the deprivation of his
nose, his eyes, his tongue; to the suffering of confinement in
noisome dungeons; to the pangs of prolonged starvation. The
temporal enemies of the Holy Father fared even worse than his rivals
for spiritual supremacy. No deed was considered too flagitious for
the removal of a dangerous and obstinate adversary. Innocent IV.
employed the trusted physician and friend of the Emperor Frederick
II. to compass his destruction. The Emperor Henry VII. was
poisoned by order of Clement V. The assassination of the Medici
under Sixtus IV. was planned by that Pope, and carried out before
the altar, the signal for attack being the elevation of the Host by the
celebrant, an archbishop. Half of the population of Rome was
sacrificed to gratify the malignity of Formosus, whose quarrels long
survived him and desolated the fairest provinces of Italy. Three years
after the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain by Gregory IX. its
victims already numbered tens of thousands.
In the variety and shrewdness of schemes for procuring money
the statesmen of no government have ever equalled the astute
financiers of the Apostolic See. In addition to the infinite number of
vexatious and cruel expedients suggested by the possession and
exercise of irresponsible power, the Popes employed means which
violated every precept of morality, but whose successful issue
demonstrated the practical wisdom which had inspired them. Simony
was invariably practised, and not infrequently defended, even by
those whose manifest duty it was to suppress it. The wealthiest
candidate for the Papacy, whose physical infirmities indicated a
speedy demise, had the best prospect for the realization of his
ambition. The price of a cardinal’s hat varied from one thousand to
ten thousand florins; the pallium of an archbishop was rated still
higher in the ecclesiastical market, for the dignity of which it was the
symbol usually brought thirty thousand ducats in gold. To meet this
tax demanded at the death of every metropolitan, the new
incumbent was sometimes reduced to pledge the furniture of the
altar as security to Jewish usurers, who alone were able to raise
such exorbitant amounts; and it was a source of complaint among
the devout that Hebrew children had been seen to amuse
themselves with the utensils consecrated to pious uses, and that in
the unhallowed orgies of their fathers sacred vessels were habitually
profaned which had originally been destined to receive the body and
blood of Christ. When the exigencies of the Pontiff required it, the
sacrifice of a few cardinals afforded a safe and easy means of
replenishing the Papal treasury by the sale of the vacant dignities
and by the reversion of the estates of the victims to the domain of
the Holy See. It is a well-known fact that Alexander VI. died from
drinking poisoned wine intended for certain princes of the Church
whom he had invited to share his treacherous hospitality. Great
wealth was obtained by the sale of absolutions granted by one Pope
from the anathemas of his predecessor. This device suggested the
traffic in indulgences, promising immunity from all punishment for
crime. The avarice of John XXII. prompted him to draw up and
promulgate a schedule of fines, so that by the payment of trifling
sums the culprit was completely absolved from the moral and
secular consequences of the most atrocious offences in the criminal
calendar.
In their relations with foreign courts the Popes brought to bear
every source of corruption and violence for the accomplishment of
their ends. They availed themselves of the prestige attaching to their
sacred office for the encouragement of insurrection and parricide.
They openly sold the investitures of distant kingdoms. They armed
the servant against his master, the vassal against his lord, the
subject against his king. They prohibited the education of children as
inimical to the interests of the clergy, who alone were declared
worthy to enjoy the benefits of learning. When an obnoxious enemy
was to be removed, they did not shrink from selecting instruments at
whose employment honor and piety alike revolt,—the envenomed
poniard, the sacramental elements mingled with deadly poisons and
yet blessed by the ceremonies of the officiating prelate, whose
instructions impressed the unsuspicious victim with the belief that he
knelt in the very presence of God. According to Montaigne, the Holy
Father was accustomed to use during the pontifical mass a
contrivance which counteracted the effects of a consecrated draught
which might otherwise be a messenger of death. From having been
the vassals of the Emperor, the tributaries of the Saracen Emirs, and
the tools of the Kings of France, the Popes in time arrogated to
themselves imperial prerogatives; and his title to the crown was not
considered as vested in a sovereign until it had been placed upon his
brow by an ecclesiastic duly commissioned by the Successor of St.
Peter. Through the insidious influence of a superstition, fostered by
the ignorance of the time, the authority of powerful monarchs was
disputed in their capitals. Degrading penances were imposed upon
and performed by them without remonstrance. The humiliation of
the prince in the eyes of his people increased, in a corresponding
degree, the importance of the spiritual ruler who could inflict such
punishments.
By excommunication and interdict—the one cutting off an
individual from the fellowship of believers, the other aimed at an
entire community or kingdom and involving the innocent with the
guilty—the vengeance of the Church was visited upon all, of
whatever rank, who had violated her canons or interfered with her
projects of ambition. It is difficult in our age to appreciate the grave
effects of ecclesiastical fulminations which the progress of
intelligence and the development of civilization have long since
deprived of their terrors. Of excommunication, anything besides a
human being might be the subject, from a comet to rats, worms,
and every kind of vermin. The interdict was equivalent to a dreadful
curse inflicted by the vicegerent of God. With awe-inspiring
ceremonies, usually performed at midnight to increase their
impressive effect, the decree of the Holy See was solemnly
proclaimed. In gloomy silence, occasionally broken by sobs and half-
stifled lamentations, the terror-stricken multitude listened to a
sentence which, in their eyes, exceeded, through the direful
consequences it entailed, the severest penalty that any earthly
tribunal could inflict. The churches were closed. The bells were
silent. The tapers burning on the altars were extinguished. The relics
were concealed. Before every house of worship where the Host was
enshrined the consecrated wafer was publicly committed to the
flames. The crucifixes of chapel and cathedral alike, enveloped in
folds of black cloth, were hidden from the reverential gaze of those
on whose heads had fallen the censure of the Almighty. All religious
ceremonies were suspended save the aspersion, which secured for
the Church the hope of another devotee, the solemnization of
marriage, and the final rites which dismissed the passing soul on the
threshold of eternity. The endearments of conjugal affection, the last
blessing of the parent, the diversions of youth, the familiar greetings
of friendship and esteem, were all prohibited. Surrounded by black-
garbed priests bearing torches, an officiating cardinal, robed in
violet,—the mourning of his order,—read the fatal edict which cut off
absolutely the only medium of communication between the sinner
and his God. From that moment the people were deprived of those
welcome ministrations which had been their pleasure and
consolation from infancy; which had directed their footsteps; which
had confirmed their wavering resolution in many an emergency;
which had relieved their sufferings; which had enhanced their
happiness and furnished almost their sole amusements. No
opportunity was neglected to impress the offending children of Rome
with the awful consequences of the malediction which the perversity
of their rulers had inflicted upon them. Subjects were absolved from
their allegiance. The channels of commerce were closed. Trade of
every kind was suspended. Worshippers, whose piety urged them, in
spite of ecclesiastical menace, to frequent the portals of the church,
were rudely driven back. The use of meat was forbidden, as in Lent;
the familiar objects connected with the service of religion
disappeared; the bells, deprived of their clappers, were taken down
from the steeples; the sacred effigies of the saints were laid upon
the ground and sedulously concealed from the profane gaze of an
accursed people; the rich trappings of the shrines, the utensils of the
mass, the vestments of the priests, were collected and carried away.
The festivals which stimulated the devotion and amused the leisure
of the gay and careless multitude were discontinued; the procession,
which impressed all classes with its solemnity and magnificence, no
longer moved with barbaric pomp through the crowded streets lined
with long rows of kneeling worshippers; the voice of prayer was
unheard; marriages were celebrated in church-yards; the bodies of
the dead, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground and deprived
even of the ordinary rites of sepulture, were cast unceremoniously
beyond the walls of cities, to be devoured by unclean beasts and to
poison the air with noxious odors.
When the ban was removed, the purification of every edifice,
altar, and vessel, the reconsecration of every relic and image,—rites
which demanded heavy contributions,—evinced the foresight and
thrift of the priesthood.
Such were the frightful methods by which the Papacy, in an age
of ignorance, punished a nation for the offences of a sovereign who
had thwarted its schemes, defied its power, or incurred its enmity. In
the estimation of the credulous—and in those days all were
credulous—the interdict was not only a general curse enforced by
every circumstance which could appeal to the prejudices of the
devout; it was the sudden intercepting of the means of salvation,
only attainable through the agency of the servants of the Church.
Mediæval writers have left us affecting accounts of the universal
wretchedness which the use of this instrument of ecclesiastical
tyranny produced. It rarely failed of success, for no monarch,
however bold or arbitrary, could long withstand its power; and the
mere threat of its exercise was often sufficient to strike terror into a
whole people and to peremptorily check the well-conceived designs
of ambitious royalty. The interdict only fell into disuse after the
foundation of the Inquisition, the most effective and formidable
weapon ever devised by the merciless spirit of Papal despotism.
With the financial exhaustion induced by profuse expenditure in
every species of luxury and vice, new and ingenious expedients were
invented for the relief of the pressing necessities of the Vatican. The
institution and frequent recurrence of the Jubilee, with its concourse
of millions of fanatics, each bearing his offering to the insatiable
genius of Rome; the Crusades, which acquired for the Papacy
incalculable wealth by the conveyance of lands for a nominal
consideration and the generous contributions of pilgrims; the
Constitutions of Leo, which declared the real property of
ecclesiastical foundations to be inalienable; the Inquisition, whose
origin was more political than moral, and by whose rules one-half of
the property of the condemned was forfeited to the sovereign and
one-half to the Church, are prominent examples of the financial
ability of the Popes.
The personal characters of the infallible and inspired guides of the
Christian world cannot be delineated in the fulness of their impious
depravity. The moral supremacy assumed by them as the
representatives of celestial power was presumed to excuse the open
indulgence of vices which even the most licentious temporal
potentates sedulously veiled from the eyes of mankind. For more
than two centuries the Papal court presented an almost
uninterrupted exhibition of profligacy, which scandalized devout
believers, whose imagination had invested the Holy Father with the
attributes of divinity, and excited the horror of the few eminent and
consistent Christian prelates who remained pure amidst the general
contamination. Some priests celebrated mass in a state of
intoxication. Others paraded the streets with a train of bacchantes
singing profane and licentious songs. They presented their boon
companions with the sacred vessels of the altar. Archbishops
appointed women of infamous antecedents to the superintendence
of convents. The Vatican swarmed with catamites and courtesans.
Colonies of nuns, members of the seraglios of the cardinals and the
Pope, occupied houses adjoining the sanctuary of St. Peter’s. The
satellites of the Papacy obtained the most lucrative employments by
means of unnatural blandishments and ministrations of unspeakable
vileness. The most debased ideas were entertained of the
ecclesiastical functions devolving upon the head of the Christian
communion. Ministers of religion were consecrated in stables.
Cathedrals were made the theatre of mummeries and obscene
dances. Virgins were torn from the precincts of the sanctuary and
dragged to the Papal harem. In the time of John XII. no woman was
safe from indignity and outrage in the very temple of God. Boniface
IX. sold a cardinal’s hat to a profligate adventurer named Bathalzar
Cossa, who afterwards seized the tiara by force and passed from the
deck of a pirate galley to the Apostolic Throne. The latter, under the
name of John XXIII., in a few years attained a reputation remarkable
even in the annals of Papal degradation. He was deposed by the
Council of Constance after conviction of every offence of which a
depraved imagination could conceive. The infallibility of his mission
was thus impugned both by his irregular appointment and by the
intervention of his spiritual subordinates who effected his deposition.
It was an axiom of the canon law, inevitably resulting from the
original spurious grant of pontifical authority, that no guilt or heresy
of the Pope could divest him of his spiritual powers or of the sanctity
which enveloped his person as the Vicar of God. A dire necessity
alone could impel a council to violate this fundamental principle
upon which depended the prestige of the Papacy. The impiety of the
Holy Fathers was not less prominent than their defiance of the rules
of morality. Boniface VIII. openly blasphemed the name of Christ.
John XXII. ridiculed the sacraments. At the banquets of John XII.,
Venus and Bacchus were in turn toasted by noisy revellers of both
sexes, the favorite associates of that Pontiff.
The admissions of Pius II., in his correspondence preserved in the
Vatican, indicate without concealment the practice of the grossest
libertinage. From the orgies of Benedict XII. dates the famous
proverb, “Bibere papaliter,” “To drink like a Pope.” Sixtus IV., who
inaugurated the custom of licensing the brothels of Rome, derived
annually from this horrible traffic the enormous sum of thirty
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