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The Junior Classics
A LIBRARY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
[Illustration: CATHRINE DOUGLAS THRUST HER ARM THROUGH THE EMPTY
STAPLES _From the painting by J P Shelton_]
THE JUNIOR CLASSICS
SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY WILLIAM PATTEN
MANAGING EDITOR OF THE HARVARD CLASSICS
INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL. D.
PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
WITH A READING GUIDE BY WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
PRESIDENT SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON, MASS., SINCE 1917[-1939]
VOLUME SEVEN
Stories of Courage and Heroism
CONTENTS
PREFACE
How Phidias Helped the Image-Maker _Beatrice Harraden_
The Fight at the Pass of Thermopyle _Charlotte M. Yonge_
The Bravery of Regulus _Charlotte M. Yonge_
The Rabbi Who Found the Diadem _Dr. A. S. Isaacs_
How Livia Won the Brooch _Beatrice Harraden_
Julius Cesar Crossing the Rubicon _Jacob Abbott_
Fearless Saint Genevieve, Patron Saint of Paris _Charlotte M. Yonge_
The Boy Viking--Olaf II of Norway _E. S. Brooks_
The Boy-Heroes of Crecy and Poitiers _Treadwell Walden_
The Noble Burghers of Calais _Charlotte M. Yonge_
The Story of Joan of Arc, the Maid Who Saved France _Anonymous_
How Joan the Maid Took Largess from the English _Anonymous_
Death of Joan the Maid _Anonymous_
How Catherine Douglas Tried to Save King James of Scotland _Charlotte
M. Yonge_
The Brave Queen of Hungary _Charlotte M. Yonge_
The Story of Christopher Columbus for Little Children _Elizabeth
Harrison_
A Sea-Fight in the Time of Queen Bess _Charles Kingsley_
A Brave Scottish Chief _Anonymous_
The Adventure of Grizel Cochrane _Arthur Quiller-Couch_
The Sunken Treasure _Nathaniel Hawthorne_
The Lost Exiles of Texas _Arthur Oilman_
The Boy Conqueror--Charles XII of Sweden _E. S. Brooks_
The True Story of a Kidnapped Boy as Told by Himself _Peter
Williamson_
The Prisoner Who Would Not Stay in Prison _Anonymous_
A White Boy Among the Indians, as Told by Himself _John Tanner_
Evangeline of Acadia _Henry W. Longfellow_
Jabez Rockwell's Powder-Horn _Ralph D. Paine_
A Man Who Coveted Washington's Shoes _Frank R. Stockton._
A Famous Fight Between an English and a French Frigate _Rev. W. H.
Fitchett_
The Trick of an Indian Spy _Arthur Quiller-Couch_
The Man in the "Auger Hole" _Frank R. Stockton._
The Remarkable Voyage of the _Bounty_ _Anonymous_
The Two Boy Hostages at the Siege of Seringapatam _Anonymous_
The Man Who Spoiled Napoleon's "Destiny" _Rev. W. H. Fitchett_
A Fire-Fighter's Rescue from the Flames _Arthur Quiller-Couch_
How Napoleon Rewarded His Men _Baron de Marbot_
A Rescue from Shipwreck _Arthur Quiller-Couch_
Rebecca the Drummer _Charles Barnard_
The Messenger _M. E. M. Davis_
Humphry Davy and the Safety-Lamp _George C. Towle_
Kit Carson's Duel _Emerson Hough_
The Story of Grace Darling _Anonymous_
The Struggles of Charles Goodyear _George C. Towle_
Old Johnny Appleseed _Elizabeth Harrison_
The Little Post-Boy _Bayard Taylor_
How June Found Massa Linkum _Elizabeth S. Phelps_
The Story of a Forest Fire _Raymond S. Spears_
ILLUSTRATIONS
CATHERINE DOUGLAS THRUST HER ARM THROUGH THE EMPTY STAPLES
How Catherine Douglas Tried to Save King James of Scotland
_Frontispiece illustration in color from the painting by J. R.
Skelton_
HE SHOOK HIS CLENCHED FIST AT THE OBSTRUCTED SEA-STRAIT
The Boy Viking--Olaf II of Norway
_From the drawing by Gertrude Demain Hammond_
"FIGHT ON!" CRIED THE MAID; "THE PLACE IS OURS"
The Story of Joan of Arc
_From the painting by William Rainey_
THEN HE OFFERED A FERVENT PRAYER OF THANKS
A Story of Christopher Columbus
PREFACE
The stories in this volume are true stories, and have been arranged
in chronological order, an arrangement that will aid the reader to
remember the times to which the stories relate.
Almost any encyclopedia can be consulted for general details of
the life stories of the interesting people whose names crowd the
volume except perhaps in the cases of Peter Williamson and John
Tanner, "The True Story of a Kidnapped Boy," and "A White Boy Among
the Indians." Peter Williamson was kidnapped in Glasgow, Scotland,
when he was eight years old, was captured by the Cherokee Indians
in 1745, and (though the story does not tell this) he returned to
England and became a prominent citizen. He first made the British
Government pay damages for his kidnapping, gave the first exhibition
in England of Indian war dances, and was the first Englishman to
publish a street directory. He was finally pensioned by the Government
for his services in establishing a penny post.
John Tanner, the son of a clergyman, was stolen by the Indians some
years later. His mother died when he was very young, his father
treated him harshly, and so when the Indians kidnapped him he made
no effort to escape. John remained among them until he was an old
man, and the story of his life, which he was obliged to dictate
to others as he could neither read nor write, was first published
about 1830. The stories of these boys are considered to be two
of the most reliable early accounts we possess of life among the
Indians.
Acknowledgment for permission to include several stories included
in this volume is made in Volume X.
WILLIAM PATTEN.
HOW PHIDIAS HELPED THE IMAGE-MAKER
By Beatrice Harraden
During the time when Pericles was at the head of the state at
Athens he spared no pains and no money to make the city beautiful.
He himself was a lover and patron of the arts, and he was determined
that Athens should become the very centre of art and refinement,
and that she should have splendid public buildings and splendid
sculptures and paintings. So he gathered round him all the great
sculptors and painters, and set them to work to carry out his
ambitious plans; and some of you know that the "Age of Pericles"
is still spoken of as an age in which art advanced towards and
attained to a marvellous perfection.
On the Acropolis, or Citadel of Athens, rose the magnificent
Temple of Athena, called the Parthenon, built under the direction
of Phidias, the most celebrated sculptor of that time, who adorned
it with many of his works, and especially with the huge statue of
Athena in ivory, forty-seven feet in height. The Acropolis was also
enriched with another figure of Athena in bronze--also the work of
Phidias.
The statue was called the "Athena Promachus"; that is "The Defender."
If you turn to your Grecian History you will find a full description
of the Parthenon and the other temples of the gods and heroes and
guardian deities of the city. But I want to tell you something
about Phidias himself, and little Iris, an image-maker's daughter.
It was in the year 450 B.C., in the early summer, and Phidias, who
had been working all the day, strolled quietly along the streets
of Athens.
As he passed by the Agora (or market-place), he chanced to look up,
and he saw a young girl of about thirteen years sitting near him.
Her face was of the purest beauty; her head was gracefully poised
on her shoulders; her expression was sadness itself. She looked
poor and in distress. She came forward and begged for help; and
there was something in her manner, as well as in her face, which
made Phidias pause and listen to her.
"My father lies ill," she said plaintively, "and he cannot do
his work, and so we can get no food: nothing to make him well and
strong again. If I could only do his work for him I should not mind;
and then I should not beg. He does not know I came out to beg--he
would never forgive me; but I could not bear to see him lying there
without food."
"And who is your father?" asked Phidias kindly.
"His name is Aristeus," she said, "and he is a maker of images--little
clay figures of gods and goddesses and heroes. Indeed, he is clever;
and I am sure you would praise the 'Hercules' he finished before
he was taken ill."
"Take me to your home," Phidias said to the girl; as they passed
on together he asked her many questions about the image-maker. She
was proud of her father; and Phidias smiled to himself when he heard
her speak of this father as though he were the greatest sculptor
in Athens. He liked to hear her speak so enthusiastically.
"Is it not wonderful," she said, "to take the clay and work in into
forms? Not everyone could do that--could you do it?"
Phidias laughed.
"Perhaps not so well as your father," he answered kindly. "Still,
I can do it."
A sudden thought struck Iris.
"Perhaps you would help father?" she said eagerly. "Ah! but I ought
not to have said that."
"Perhaps I can help him," replied Phidias good-naturedly. "Anyway,
take me to him."
She led him through some side streets into the poorest parts of the
city, and stopped before a little window, where a few roughly-wrought
images and vases were exposed to view. She beckoned to him to follow
her, and opening the door, crept gently into a room which served
as their workshop and dwelling-place. Phidias saw a man stretched
out on a couch at the farther end of the room, near a bench where
many images and pots of all sorts lay unfinished.
"This is our home," whispered Iris proudly, "and that is my father
yonder."
The image-maker looked up and called for Iris.
"I am so faint, child," he murmured. "If I could only become strong
again I could get back to my work. It is so hard to lie here and
die."
Phidias bent over him.
"You shall not die," he said, "if money can do you any good. I met
your little daughter, and she told me that you were an image-maker;
and that interested me, because I, too, can make images, though
perhaps not as well as you. Still, I thought I should like to come
and see you and help you; and if you will let me, I will try and
make a few images for you, so that your daughter may go out and
sell them, and bring you home money. And meanwhile, she shall fetch
you some food to nourish you."
Then he turned to Iris, and putting some coins into her hands bade
her go out and bring what she thought fit. She did not know how to
thank him, but hurried away on her glad errand, and Phidias talked
kindly to his fellow-worker, and then, throwing aside his cloak,
sat down at the bench and busied himself with modelling the clay.
It was so different from his ordinary work that he could not help
smiling.
"This is rather easier," he thought to himself, "than carving
from the marble a statue of Athena. What a strange occupation!"
Nevertheless, he was so interested in modelling the quaint little
images that he did not perceive that Iris had returned, until he
looked up, and saw her standing near him, watching him with wonder,
which she could not conceal.
"Oh, how clever!" she cried. "Father, if you could only see what
he is doing!"
"Nay, child," said the sculptor, laughing; "get your father his
food, and leave me to my work. I am going to model a little image
of the goddess Athena, for I think the folk will like to buy
that, since that rogue Phidias has set up his statue of her in the
Parthenon."
"Phidias, the prince of sculptors!" said the image-maker. "May the
gods preserve his life; for he is the greatest glory of all Athens!"
"Ay," said Iris, as she prepared her father's food, "that is what
we all call him--the greatest glory of all Athens."
"We think of him," said Aristeus, feebly, "and that helps us in
our work. Yes, it helps even us poor image-makers. When I saw the
beautiful Athena I came home cheered and encouraged. May Phidias
be watched over and blessed all his life!"
The tears came into the eyes of Phidias as he bent over his work;
it was a pleasure to him to think that his fame gained for him a
resting-place of love and gratitude in the hearts of the poorest
citizens of Athens. He valued this tribute of the image-maker far
more than the praises of the rich and great. Before he left, he
saw that both father and daughter were much refreshed by the food
which his bounty had given to them, and he bade Aristeus be of good
cheer, because he would surely regain his health and strength.
"And because you love your art," he said, "I shall be a friend
to you and help you. And I shall come again to-morrow and do some
work for you--that is to say, if you approve of what I have already
done, and then Iris will be able to go out and sell the figures."
He hastened away before they were able to thank him, and he left
them wondering who this new friend could be. They talked of him
for a long time, of his kindness and his skill; and Aristeus dreamt
that night about the stranger who had come to work for him.
The next day Phidias came again, and took his place at the
image-maker's bench, just as if he were always accustomed to sit
there. Aristeus, who was better, watched him curiously, but asked
no questions.
But Iris said to him: "My father and I talk of you, and wonder who
you are."
Phidias laughed.
"Perhaps I shall tell you some day," he answered. "There, child,
what do you think of that little vase? When it is baked it will be
a pretty thing."
As the days went on, the image-maker recovered his strength; and
meanwhile Phidias had filled the little shop with dainty-wrought
images and graceful vases, such as had never been seen there before.
One evening, when Aristeus was leaning against Iris, and admiring
the stranger's work, the door opened and Phidias came in.
"What, friend," he said cheerily, "you are better to-night I see!"
"Last night," said Aristeus, "I dreamt that the friend who held out
a brother's hand to me and helped me in my trouble was the great
Phidias himself. It did not seem wonderful to me, for only the
great do such things as you have done for me. You must be great."
"I do not know about that," said the sculptor, smiling, "and
after all, I have not done so much for you. I have only helped
a brother-workman: for I am an image-maker too--and my name is
Phidias."
Then Aristeus bent down and reverently kissed the great sculptor's
hands.
"I cannot find words with which to thank you," he murmured, "but I
shall pray to the gods night and day that they will for ever bless
Phidias, and keep his fame pure, and his hands strong to fashion
forms of beauty. And this I know well: that he will always have
a resting-place of love and gratitude in the poor image-maker's
heart."
And Phidias went on his way, tenfold richer and happier for the
image-maker's words. For there is something lovelier than fame
and wealth, my children; it is the opportunity of giving the best
of one's self and the best of one's powers to aid those of our
fellow-workers who need our active help.
THE FIGHT AT THE PASS OF THERMOPYLAe
By Charlotte M. Yonge
There was trembling in Greece. "The Great King," as the Greeks
called Xerxes, the chief ruler of the East, was marshaling his
forces against the little free states that nestled amid the rocks
and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean--the whole of which together
would hardly equal one province of the huge Asiatic realm! Moreover,
it was a war not only on the men but on their gods. The Persians
were zealous adorers of the sun and the fire, they abhorred the
idol-worship of the Greeks, and defiled and plundered every temple
that fell in their way. Death and desolation were almost the best
that could be looked for at such hands--slavery and torture from
cruelly barbarous masters would only too surely be the lot of
numbers, should their land fall a prey to the conquerors.
The muster place was at Sardis, and there Greek spies had seen the
multitudes assembling and the state and magnificence of the king's
attendants. Envoys had come from him to demand earth and water from
each state in Greece, as emblems that land and sea were his, but
each state was resolved to be free, and only Thessaly, that which
lay first in his path, consented to yield the token of subjugation. A
council was held at the Isthmus of Corinth, and attended by deputies
from all the states of Greece to consider of the best means of
defense. The ships of the enemy would coast round the shores of
the Aegean Sea, the land army would cross the Hellespont on a bridge
of boats lashed together, and march southwards into Greece. The
only hope of averting the danger lay in defending such passages
as, from the nature of the ground, were so narrow that only a few
persons could fight hand to hand at once, so that courage would be
of more avail than numbers.
The first of these passes was called Tempe, and a body of troops
was sent to guard it; but they found that this was useless and
impossible, and came back again. The next was at Thermopyle. Look
in your map of the Archipelago, or Aegean Sea, as it was then called,
for the great island of Negropont, or by its old name, Euboea. It
looks like a piece broken off from the coast, and to the north is
shaped like the head of a bird, with the beak running into a gulf,
that would fit over it, upon the main land, and between the island
and the coast is an exceedingly narrow strait. The Persian army
would have to march round the edge of the gulf. They could not cut
straight across the country, because the ridge of mountains called
Oeta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the woods, rocks,
and precipices came down so near the seashore, that in two places
there was only room for one single wheel track between the steeps
and the impassable morass that formed the border of the gulf on
its south side. These two very narrow places were called the gates
of the pass, and were about a mile apart. There was a little more
width left in the intervening space; but in this there were a
number of springs of warm mineral water, salt and sulphurous, which
were used for the sick to bathe in, and thus the place was called
Thermopyle, or the Hot Gates. A wall had once been built across
the westernmost of these narrow places, when the Thessalians and
Phocians, who lived on either side of it, had been at war with one
another; but it had been allowed to go to decay, since the Phocians
had found out that there was a very steep narrow mountain path
along the bed of a torrent, by which it was possible to cross from
one territory to the other without going round this marshy coast
road.
This was, therefore, an excellent place to defend. The Greek
ships were all drawn up on the further side of Euboea to prevent
the Persian vessels from getting into the strait and landing men
beyond the pass, and a division of the army was sent off to guard
the Hot Gates. The council at the Isthmus did not know of the
mountain pathway, and thought that all would be safe as long as
the Persians were kept out of the coast path.
The troops sent for this purpose were from different cities,
and amounted to about 4,000 who were to keep the pass against two
millions. The leader of them was Leonidas, who had newly become
one of the two kings of Sparta, the city that above all in Greece
trained its sons to be hardy soldiers, dreading death infinitely
less than shame. Leonidas had already made up his mind that the
expedition would probably be his death, perhaps because a prophecy
had been given at the Temple at Delphi that Sparta should be saved
by the death of one of her kings of the race of Hercules. He was
allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these he chose most
carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but selecting
those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether destroyed.
These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share
of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. It is
even said that the 300 celebrated their own funeral rites before
they set out lest they should be deprived of them by the enemy,
since, as we have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the
spirits of the dead found no rest till their obsequies had been
performed. Such preparations did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas
and his men, and his wife, Gorgo, not a woman to be faint-hearted
or hold him back. Long before, when she was a very little girl, a
word of hers had saved her father from listening to a traitorous
message from the King of Persia; and every Spartan lady was bred
up to be able to say to those she best loved that they must come
home from battle "with the shield or on it"--either carrying it
victoriously or borne upon it as a corpse.
When Leonidas came to Thermopyle, the Phocians told him of the
mountain path through the chestnut woods of Mount ita, and begged
to have the privilege of guarding it on a spot high up on the
mountain side, assuring him that it was very hard to find at the
other end, and that there was every probability that the enemy
would never discover it. He consented, and encamping around the warm
springs, caused the broken wall to be repaired, and made ready to
meet the foe.
The Persian army were seen covering the whole country like locusts,
and the hearts of some of the southern Greeks in the pass began to
sink. Their homes in the Peloponnesus were comparatively secure--had
they not better fall back and reserve themselves to defend the
Isthmus of Corinth? But Leonidas, though Sparta was safe below the
Isthmus, had no intention of abandoning his northern allies, and
kept the other Peloponnesians to their posts, only sending messengers
for further help.
Presently a Persian on horseback rode up to reconnoiter the pass. He
could not see over the wall, but in front of it and on the ramparts,
he saw the Spartans, some of them engaged in active sports, and
others in combing their long hair. He rode back to the king, and
told him what he had seen. Now Xerxes had in his camp an exiled
Spartan prince, named Demaratus, who had become a traitor to his
country, and was serving as counselor to the enemy. Xerxes sent for
him, and asked whether his countrymen were mad to be thus employed
instead of fleeing away; but Demaratus made answer that a hard fight
was no doubt in preparation, and that it was the custom of the
Spartans to array their hair with especial care when they were about
to enter upon any great peril. Xerxes would, however, not believe
that so petty a force could intend to resist him, and waited four
days, probably expecting his fleet to assist him, but as it did
not appear, the attack was made.
The Greeks, stronger men and more heavily armed, were far better
able to fight to advantage than the Persians with their short spears
and wicker shields, and beat them off with great ease. It is said
that Xerxes three times leapt off his throne in despair at the
sight of his troops being driven backwards; and thus for two days
it seemed as easy to force a way through the Spartans as through
the rocks themselves. Nay, how could slavish troops, dragged from
home to spread the victories of an ambitious king, fight like freemen
who felt that their strokes were to defend their homes and children?
That evening a wretched man, named Ephialtes, crept into the Persian
camp, and offered, for a great sum of money, to show the mountain
path that would enable the enemy to take the brave defenders in the
rear! A Persian general, named Hydarnes, was sent off at nightfall
with a detachment to secure this passage, and was guided through
the thick forests that clothed the hill-side. In the stillness of
the air, at daybreak, the Phocian guards of the path were startled
by the crackling of the chestnut leaves under the tread of many
feet. They started up, but a shower of arrows was discharged on them,
and forgetting all save the present alarm, they fled to a higher
part of the mountain, and the enemy, without waiting to pursue
them, began to descend.
As day dawned, morning light showed the watchers of the Grecian
camp below a glittering and shimmering in the torrent bed where
the shaggy forests opened; but it was not the sparkle of water, but
the shine of gilded helmets and the gleaming of silvered spears.
Moreover, a man crept over to the wall from the Persian camp
with tidings that the path had been betrayed, that the enemy were
climbing it, and would come down beyond the Eastern Gate. Still,
the way was rugged and circuitous, the Persians would hardly descend
before midday, and there was ample time for the Greeks to escape
before they could thus be shut in by the enemy.
There was a short council held over the morning sacrifice. Megistias,
the seer, on inspecting the entrails of the slain victim, declared
that their appearance boded disaster. Leonidas ordered him to
retire, but he refused, though he sent home his only son.
There was no disgrace in leaving a post that could not be held,
and Leonidas recommended all the allied troops under his command
to march away while yet the way was open. As to himself and his
Spartans, they had made up their minds to die at their post, and
there could be no doubt that the example of such a resolution would
do more to save Greece than their best efforts could ever do if
they were careful to reserve themselves for another occasion.
All the allies consented to retreat, except the eighty men who came
from Mycene and the 700 Thespians, who declared that they would
not desert Leonidas. There were also 400 Thebans who remained; and
thus the whole number that stayed with Leonidas to confront two
million of enemies were fourteen hundred warriors, besides the helots
or attendants on the 300 Spartans, whose number is not known, but
there was probably at least one to each.
Leonidas had two kinsmen in the camp, like himself, claiming the
blood of Hercules, and he tried to save them by giving them letters
and messages to Sparta; but one answered that "he had come to fight,
not to carry letters;" and the other, that "his deeds would tell
all that Sparta wished to know." Another Spartan, named Dienices,
when told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows
darkened the sun, replied, "So much the better, we shall fight in
the shade." Two of the 300 had been sent to a neighboring village,
suffering severely from a complaint in the eyes. One of them
called Eurytus, put on his armor, and commanded his helot to lead
him to his place in the ranks; the other, called Aristodemus, was
so overpowered with illness that he allowed himself to be carried
away with the retreating allies. It was still early in the day
when all were gone, and Leonidas gave the word to his men to take
their last meal. "Tonight," he said, "we shall sup with Pluto."
Hitherto, he had stood on the defensive, and had husbanded the
lives of his men; but he now desired to make as great a slaughter
as possible, so as to inspire the enemy with dread of the Grecian
name. He therefore marched out beyond the wall, without waiting
to be attacked, and the battle began. The Persian captains went
behind their wretched troops and scourged them on to the fight
with whips! Poor wretches, they were driven on to be slaughtered,
pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into the sea, or trampled
into the mud of the morass; but their inexhaustible numbers told
at length. The spears of the Greeks broke under hard service,
and their swords alone remained; they began to fall, and Leonidas
himself was among the first of the slain. Hotter than ever was the
fight over his body, and two Persian princes, brothers of Xerxes,
were there killed; but at length word was brought that Hydarnes was
over the pass, and that the few remaining men were thus enclosed
on all sides. The Spartans and Thespians made their way to a little
hillock within the wall, resolved to let this be the place of their
last stand; but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they
came towards the Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for
mercy. Quarter was given to them, but they were all branded with
the king's mark as untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably
at this time escaped into the mountains; while the small desperate
band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last,
some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands
and teeth, till not one living man remained amongst them when the
sun went down. There was only a mound of slain, bristled over with
arrows.
Twenty thousand Persians had died before that handful of men! Xerxes
asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like these, and
was told there were 8,000. The body of the brave king was buried
where he fell, as were those of the other dead. Much envied were
they by the unhappy Aristodemus, who found himself called by no
name but the "Coward," and was shunned by all his fellow-citizens.
No one would give him fire or water, and after a year of misery,
he redeemed his honor by perishing in the forefront of the battle
of Plataea, which was the last blow that drove the Persians
ingloriously from Greece.
The Greeks then united in doing honor to the brave warriors who,
had they been better supported, might have saved the whole country
from invasion. The poet Simonides wrote the inscriptions that were
engraved upon the pillars that were set up in the pass to commemorate
this great action. One was outside the wall, where most of the
fighting had been. It seems to have been in honor of the whole
number who had for two days resisted--
"Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads [Footnote: A myriad consisted of ten
thousand.] bravely stand."
In honor of the Spartans was another column--
"Go, traveler, to Sparta tell
That here, obeying her, we fell."
On the little hillock of the last resistance was placed the figure
of a stone lion, in memory of Leonidas, so fitly named the lion-like,
and the names of the 300 were likewise engraven on a pillar at
Sparta.
Lion, pillars, and inscriptions have all long since passed away,
even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed,
and there are miles of solid ground between Mount ita and the gulf,
so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone
or brass--nay, than the very battle-field itself--has been the name
of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred years have sped since he
braced himself to perish for his country's sake in that narrow,
marshy coast road, under the brow of the wooded crags, with the
sea by his side. Since that time how many hearts have glowed, how
many arms have been nerved at the remembrance of the Pass of Thermopyle,
and the defeat that was worth so much more than a victory!
THE BRAVERY OF REGULUS
By Charlotte M. Yonge
The first wars that the Romans engaged in beyond the bounds of
Italy, were with the Carthaginians.
The first dispute between Rome and Carthage was about their
possession in the island of Sicily; and the war thus begun had
lasted eight years, when it was resolved to send an army to fight
the Carthaginians on their own shores. The army and fleet were
placed under the command of the two consuls, Lucius Manlius and
Marcus Attilius Regulus. On the way, there was a great sea-fight
with the Carthaginian fleet, and this was the first naval battle
that the Romans ever gained. It made the way to Africa free; but
the soldiers, who had never been so far from home before, murmured,
for they expected to meet not only human enemies, but monstrous
serpents, lions, elephants, asses with horns, and dog-headed monsters,
to have a scorching sun overhead, and a noisome marsh under their
feet. However, Regulus sternly put a stop to all murmurs, by
making it known that disaffection would be punished by death, and
the army safely landed, and set up a fortification at Clypea, and
plundered the whole country round. Orders here came from Rome that
Manlius should return thither, but that Regulus should remain to
carry on the war. This was a great grief to him. He was a very poor
man, with nothing of his own but a little farm of seven acres, and
the person whom he had employed to cultivate it had died in his
absence; a hired laborer had undertaken the care of it, but had
been unfaithful, and had run away with his tools and his cattle, so
that he was afraid that, unless he could return quickly, his wife
and children would starve. However, the Senate engaged to provide
for his family, and he remained, making expeditions into the country
round, in the course of which the Romans really did fall in with
a serpent, as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was
said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the river
Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went
to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to
attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls; and
only succeeded with much difficulty in destroying it.
The country was most beautiful, covered with fertile corn-fields
and full of rich fruit-trees, and all the rich Carthaginians had
country-houses and gardens, which were made delicious with fountains,
trees, land flowers. The Roman soldiers, plain, hardy, fierce, and
pitiless, did, it must be feared, cruel damage among these peaceful
scenes; they boasted of having sacked 300 villages, and mercy
was not yet known to them. The Carthaginian army, though strong
in horsemen and in elephants, kept upon the hills and did nothing
to save the country, and the wild desert tribes of Numidians came
rushing in to plunder what the Romans had left. The Carthaginians
sent to offer terms of peace; but Regulus, who had become uplifted
by his conquests, made such demands that the messengers remonstrated.
He answered, "Men who are good for anything should either conquer
or submit to their betters;" and he sent them rudely away, like a
stern old Roman as he was.
His merit was that he had no more mercy on himself than on others.
The Carthaginians were driven to extremity, and made horrible
offerings to Moloch, giving the little children of the noblest
families to be dropped into the fire between the brazen hands of
his statue, and grown-up people of the noblest families rushed in
of their own accord, hoping thus to propitiate their gods, and obtain
safety for their country. Their time was not yet fully come, and
a respite was granted to them. They had sent, in their distress,
to hire soldiers in Greece, and among these came a Spartan, named
Xanthippus, who at once took the command, and led the army out to
battle, with a long line of elephants ranged in front of them, and
with clouds of horsemen hovering on the wings, The Romans had not
yet learnt the best mode of fighting with elephants, namely, to
leave lanes in their columns where these huge beasts might advance
harmlessly; instead of which, the ranks were thrust and trampled
down by the creatures' bulk, and they suffered a terrible defeat;
Regulus himself was seized by the horsemen, and dragged into
Carthage, where the victors feasted and rejoiced through half the
night, and testified their thanks to Moloch by offering in his
fires the bravest of their captives.
Regulus himself was not, however, one of these victims. He was
kept a close prisoner for two years, pining and sickening in his
loneliness, while in the meantime the war continued, and at last
a victory so decisive was gained by the Romans, that the people
of Carthage were discouraged, and resolved to ask terms of peace.
They thought that no one would be so readily listened to at Rome
as Regulus, and they therefore sent him there with their envoys,
having first made him swear that he would come back to his prison
if there should neither be peace nor an exchange of prisoners. They
little knew how much more a true-hearted Roman cared for his city
than for himself--for his word than for his life.
Worn and dejected, the captive warrior came to the outside of the
gates of his own city, and there paused, refusing to enter. "I
am no longer a Roman citizen," he said; "I am but the barbarians'
slave, and the Senate may not give audience to strangers within
the walls."
His wife Marcia ran out to greet him, with his two sons, but he
did not look up, and received their caresses as one beneath their
notice, as a mere slave, and he continued, in spite of all entreaty,
to remain outside the city, and would not even go to the little
farm he had loved so well.
The Roman Senate, as he would not come in to them, came out to hold
their meeting in the Campagna.
The ambassadors spoke first, then Regulus, standing up, said,
as one repeating a task, "Conscript fathers, being a slave to the
Carthaginians, I come on the part of my masters to treat with you
concerning peace, and an exchange of prisoners." He then turned to
go away with the ambassadors, as a stranger might not be present
at the deliberations of the Senate. His old friends pressed him to
stay and give his opinion as a senator who had twice been consul;
but he refused to degrade that dignity by claiming it, slave as he
was. But, at the command of his Carthaginian masters, he remained,
though not taking his seat.
Then he spoke. He told the senators to persevere in the war. He
said he had seen the distress of Carthage, and that a peace would
be only to her advantage, not to that of Rome, and therefore he
strongly advised that the war should continue. Then, as to the
exchange of prisoners, the Carthaginian generals, who were in the
hands of the Romans, were in full health and strength, whilst he
himself was too much broken down to be fit for service again, and
indeed he believed that his enemies had given him a slow poison,
and that he could not live long. Thus he insisted that no exchange
of prisoners should be made.
It was wonderful, even to Romans, to hear a man thus pleading
against himself, and their chief priest came forward, and declared
that, as his oath had been wrested from him by force, he was not
bound by it to return to his captivity. But Regulus was too noble
to listen to this for a moment. "Have you resolved to dishonor me?"
he said. "I am not ignorant that death and the extremest tortures
are preparing for me; but what are these to the shame of an infamous
action, or the wounds of a guilty mind? Slave as I am to Carthage,
I have still the spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to return. It is
my duty to go; let the gods take care of the rest."
The Senate decided to follow the advice of Regulus, though they
bitterly regretted his sacrifice. His wife wept and entreated in
vain that they would detain him; they could merely repeat their
permission to him to remain; but nothing could prevail with him
to break his word, and he turned back to the chains and death he
expected as calmly as if he had been returning to his home. This
was in the year B.C. 249.
"Let the gods take care of the rest," said the Roman; the gods whom
alone he knew, and through whom he ignorantly worshiped the true
God, whose Light was shining out even in this heathen's truth and
constancy. How his trust was fulfilled is not known. The Senate,
after the next victory, gave two Carthaginian generals to his
wife and sons to hold as pledges for his good treatment; but when
tidings arrived that Regulus was dead, Marcia began to treat them
both with savage cruelty, though one of them assured her that he
had been careful to have her husband well used. Horrible stories
were told that Regulus had been put out in the sun with his eyelids
cut off, rolled down a hill in a barrel with spikes, killed by
being constantly kept awake, or else crucified. Marcia seems to have
heard, and perhaps believed in these horrors, and avenged them on
her unhappy captives till one had died, and the Senate sent for
her sons and severely reprimanded them. They declared it was their
mother's doing, not theirs, and thenceforth were careful of the
comfort of the remaining prisoner.
It may thus be hoped that the frightful tale of Regulus' sufferings
was but formed by report acting on the fancy of a vindictive woman,
and that Regulus was permitted to die in peace of the disease brought
on far more probably by the climate and imprisonment, than by the
poison to which he ascribed it. It is not the tortures he may have
endured that make him one of the noblest characters of history,
but the resolution that would neither let him save himself at the
risk of his country's prosperity, nor forfeit the word that he had
pledged.
THE RABBI WHO FOUND THE DIADEM
Translated from the Talmud by Dr. A. S. Isaacs
Great was the alarm in the palace of Rome, which soon spread throughout
the entire city. The empress had lost her costly diadem, and it
could not be found. They searched in every direction, but all in
vain. Half distracted, for the mishap boded no good to her or her
house, the empress redoubled her exertions to regain her precious
possession, but without result. As a last resource it was proclaimed
in the public streets: "The empress has lost a precious diadem.
Whoever restores it within thirty days shall receive a princely
reward. But he who delays, and brings it after thirty days, shall
lose his head."
In those times all nationalities flocked toward Rome; all classes
and creeds could be met in its stately halls and crowded thoroughfares.
Among the rest was a rabbi, a learned sage from the East, who loved
goodness, and lived a righteous life in the stir and turmoil of
the Western world. It chanced one night as he was strolling up and
down, in busy meditation, beneath the clear, moonlit sky, he saw
the diadem sparkling at his feet. He seized it quickly, brought
it to his dwelling, where he guarded it carefully until the thirty
days had expired, when he resolved to return it to the owner.
He proceeded to the palace, and, undismayed at sight of long lines
of soldiery and officials, asked for an audience with the empress.
"What dost thou mean by this?" she inquired, when he told her his
story and gave her the diadem. "Why didst thou delay until this
hour? Dost thou know the penalty? Thy head must be forfeited."
"I delayed until now," the rabbi answered calmly, "so that thou
mightst know that I return thy diadem, not for the sake of the
reward, still less out of fear of punishment; but solely to comply
with the Divine command not to withhold from another the property
which belongs to him."
"Blessed be thy God!" the empress answered, and dismissed the rabbi
without further reproof; for had he not done right for right's
sake?
HOW LIVIA WON THE BROOCH
By Beatrice Harraden
It was the day before the public games in Rome, in the year 123
B.C., and a tall man of magnificent appearance and strength was
standing outside the Temple of Hercules, talking to a young girl
whose face bore some resemblance to his own. The people passing by
looked at them, and said, half aloud, "There stands the gladiator
Naevus. I wonder how he will bear himself in the Public Games on
the morrow?"
And another man, who was talking eagerly with his companion, stopped
when he caught sight of the gladiator (who was a well-known figure
in Rome), and said, in a loud voice, "That is the man I told you
about, Fabricius. A fine fellow, is he not? To-morrow he will fight
with the new hero, Lucius And, of course, he will be victorious,
as usual. If he disappoints my hopes, I shall lose a great deal of
money."
"You have plenty to spare!" laughed his friend, as they passed on
together.
The gladiator did not take the slightest notice of any remarks
which were made about him; indeed, it was doubtful whether he heard
them, being engaged in earnest conversation with the young girl,
his daughter.
"Do not be anxious about me, Marcella," he said, seeing that the
tears were falling from her eyes. "I shall be victorious, as I have
always been, and then, child, I shall buy your freedom, together
with my own, and we shall leave Rome, and return to Sicily."
"Nay, father," she answered, between her sobs, "I never doubted
your strength, but my heart is full of fears for you; and yet I
am proud when I hear every one praising you. Last night my master
Claudius gave a great banquet, and when I came to hand round the
ewer of rose-water, I heard the guests say that Naevus was the
strongest and finest gladiator that Rome had ever known. My master
Claudius and two of the guests praised the new man Lucius, but the
others would not hear a word in his favour."
The gladiator smiled.
"You shall be proud of me to-morrow, Marcella," he said, "I have
just been offering up my prayers to the god Hercules; and in the
name of Hercules I promise you, child, that I shall conquer the new
man Lucius, and that to-morrow's combat shall be my last fight. So
you may go home in peace. You look tired, child. Ah! it is a bitter
thing to be a slave! But courage, Marcella; a few days more of
slavery, and then we shall be free. For this end I have fought in
the arena; and this hope has given me strength and skill."
She took from her neck a piece of fine cord, to which was attached
a tiny stone. She put it in his great hand.
"Father," she said pleadingly, "the Greek physician gave this to
me. He told me it was an Eastern charm to keep the lives of those
who wore it. Will you wear it on the morrow?"
He laughingly assented, and the two walked together as far as the
Forum, where they parted.
But Marcella was not proud any more; she was sad.
She had had many a dream of freedom, but she would have gladly
given up all chances of realizing that dream, if only to feel that
her father's life was not in danger. She would have gladly been a
slave ten times over rather than that he should risk his life in
those fearful contests.
Marcella, who was a slave in the house of Claudius Flaccus, a great
Roman noble, now hastened home to her duties. Her little mistress
Livia, Claudius' only daughter, wondered to see her looking so pale
and sad.
"Why, you should be glad like I am, Marcella," she cried, as she
showed the slave-maiden the necklace of pearls that she had just
finished stringing. "See, Marcella! I shall wear these to-morrow
when we go to the Circus Maximus. And what do you think? My father
has promised me a brooch of precious stones if the new gladiator,
Lucius, is successful to-morrow. Oh, how I hope he will be!"
Marcella tried to restrain her tears, but it was of no avail. She
threw herself on the couch, and buried her face in the soft cushions,
and wept as if her heart would break. Her little mistress Livia
bent over her, and tried to comfort her.
"Marcella," she whispered, "it was unkind of me to say that. I
forgot about your father. Please forgive me, Marcella, for I do love
you, although you are only a slave. And I do not want the brooch;
I should not like to wear it now. Please, Marcella, do not cry any
more."
The slave raised her head and smiled through her tears.
"You did not mean to be unkind, dear little mistress," she said, as
she kissed the hand which had been caressing her own golden hair.
"I am sure you did not mean to be unkind; but I am in great trouble,
and I have just said 'Good-bye' to my father, and I can think of
no one else but him. When those we love are in danger we cannot
help being anxious, can we?"
At that moment the curtains were drawn aside, and Claudius himself
came into the beautiful apartment. Livia ran to greet him; she
was a child of ten years old, bright and winning in her ways, in
beauty and bearing every inch the child of a patrician. She was
dressed in soft silk of dark purple.
"I do not want the brooch," she said, as she put up her face to be
kissed. "I want Marcella's father to be victorious to-morrow."
Claudius frowned.
"What has Marcella's father got to do with you, little one?" he
asked roughly. "Neither he nor she is anything to you, a patrician's
daughter. Slaves both of them! Let me hear no more of them. And as
for the brooch, it shall be a handsome one."
But when he had gone Livia turned to the slave and said, "I shall
never wear that brooch, Marcella."
So the day wore into the night, and all through the night Marcella
lay awake, wondering what the morrow would bring forth. When at
last she fell asleep she dreamed that she was in the Circus Maximus
watching her father, who was fighting with a new gladiator. She saw
her father fall. She heard the cries of the populace. She herself,
a girl of fourteen summers, sprang up to help him. And then she
awoke.
"Ah, it was only a dream!" she cried, with a sigh of relief. "Father
will win the fight to-morrow, and then he will buy his own freedom
and mine, too."
It was a beautiful day for the Public Games. People had come from
all parts of the country, and the streets of Rome were crowded with
all manner of folk.
The AEdile whose duty it was to arrange the Public Games had
provided a very costly entertainment, and great excitement prevailed
everywhere to know the issue of the contest between the gladiators
Naevus and Lucius. It was a wonderful sight to see the Circus
Maximus crowded with the rich and luxurious patrician nobles and
ladies arid their retinues of slaves, and the poorer classes, all
bent on amusing themselves on this great public festival.
No doubt, amongst all those masses there were many anxious hearts, but
none so anxious as that of the slave-girl Marcella. She sat behind
her little mistress, eagerly expectant. At last a peal of trumpets
and a clash of cymbals, accompanied by some wild kind of music,
announced that the performance was about to begin. The folding-doors
under the archway were flung open, and the gladiators marched in
slowly, two by two. In all the pride of their strength and bearing
they walked once round the arena, and then they stepped aside to
wait until their turn came. The performance began with some fights
between animals; for at the time of which we are speaking the
Romans had learned to love this cruel bloodshed, and had learned
to despise the less exciting, if more manly, trials of strength in
which their ancestors had delighted. When this part of the cruel
amusement was over the trumpets again sounded, and the gladiators
made ready for their contest. Then it was that Marcella's heart
beat wildly with fear. She saw her father advance together with the
other gladiator; she saw their swords flash; she heard the people
around her call out the name now of Naevus, and now of Lucius; she
heard one near her say:
"He of the red scarf will prove the stronger mark my words."
Marcella's father wore the red scarf,
"Nay, nay," answered the speaker's companion. "He of the green
scarf will win the day."
It was all that Marcella could do to prevent herself from saying,
"The gladiator with the red scarf will prove the stronger--he must
prove the stronger."
She sat spell-bound, watching for the event of the contest, which
had now begun between the two in real earnest. The people encouraged
now the one and now the other. At this moment it seemed probable
that the new man, Lucius, would be the winner; at that moment the
tide had turned in the favour of Naevus. But suddenly there was a
loud cry, for Lucius had felled Naevus to the ground, and now stood
over him with his sword ready for use, waiting to learn from the
populace whether the favourite gladiator was to be spared or killed.
The slave-girl Marcella had risen from her seat.
"That is my father," she cried; "spare him--spare him!"
But no one heard her or noticed her, and the signal for mercy was
not shown; on the contrary, the thumbs of thousands of hands pointed
upwards; and that meant that the vanquished man, who had been
the hero of so many contests, having now failed of his accustomed
valour, was to die. So Lucius gave him a thrust with his sword,
and he died while he was being carried away from the arena.
"You have won your brooch, little daughter," laughed Claudius, as
he bent over and fondled Livia's hair. "And it shall be a costly
brooch, worthy of a patrician's daughter."
But Livia's eyes were full of tears,
"I could never wear it," she sobbed; "I should always be thinking
of Marcella's father."
Poor Marcella! and she thought the little charm which he had worn
for her sake would preserve his life. Ah! it was cruel to think
that she would never see him again, and that all their hopes of
freedom and their plans for the future had ended. Well might she
weep.
That was hundreds of years ago, you know, but still the same story
goes on, and all through the centuries sorrow comes to us, just as
we think we are grasping happiness, and we have to be brave and bear
that sorrow. But sometimes we are helped by friends, even as Livia
helped Marcella. For she did help her; she loved her as a sister,
and treated her as such. And as time went on the little patrician
lady claimed a gift from her father Claudius, a gift which was far
more costly than any brooch--it was the freedom of the Sicilian
slave Marcella, the gladiator's daughter.
JULIUS CAeSAR CROSSING THE RUBICON
By Jacob Abbott
There was a little stream in ancient times, in the north of Italy,
which flowed eastward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon.
This stream has been immortalized by the transactions which we are
now about to describe.
The Rubicon was a very important boundary, and yet it was in itself
so small and insignificant that it is now impossible to determine
which of two or three little brooks here running into the sea
is entitled to its name and renown. In history the Rubicon is a
grand, permanent, and conspicuous stream, gazed upon with continued
interest by all mankind for nearly twenty centuries; in nature it
is an uncertain rivulet, for a long time doubtful and undetermined,
and finally lost.
The Rubicon originally derived its importance from the fact that
it was the boundary between all that part of the north of Italy
which is formed by the valley of the Po, one of the richest and
most magnificent countries of the world, and the more southern
Roman territories. This country of the Po constituted what was in
those days called the hither Gaul, and was a Roman province. It
belonged now to Cesar's jurisdiction, as the commander in Gaul.
All south of the Rubicon was territory reserved for the immediate
jurisdiction of the city. The Romans, in order to protect themselves
from any danger which might threaten their own liberties from the
immense armies which they raised for the conquest of foreign nations,
had imposed on every side very strict limitations and restrictions
in respect to the approach of these armies to the capital. The
Rubicon was the limit on this northern side. Generals commanding
in Gaul were never to pass it. To cross the Rubicon with an army
on the way to Rome was rebellion and treason. Hence the Rubicon
became, as it were, the visible sign and symbol of civil restriction
to military power.
As Cesar found the time of his service in Gaul drawing toward
a conclusion, he turned his thoughts more and more toward Rome,
endeavoring to strengthen his interest there by every means in his
power, and to circumvent and thwart the designs of Pompey. He had
agents and partisans in Rome who acted for him and in his name. He
sent immense sums of money to these men, to be employed in such ways
as would most tend to secure the favor of the people. He ordered
the Forum to be rebuilt with great magnificence. He arranged great
celebrations, in which the people were entertained with an endless
succession of games, spectacles, and public feasts. When his
daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died, he celebrated her funeral with
indescribable splendor. He distributed corn in immense quantities
among the people, and he sent a great many captives home, to be
trained as gladiators to fight in the theatres for their amusement.
In many cases, too, where he found men of talents and influence among
the populace, who had become involved in debt by their dissipations
and extravagance, he paid their debts, and thus secured their
influence on his side. Men were astounded at the magnitude of
these expenditures, and, while the multitude rejoiced thoughtlessly
in the pleasures thus provided for them, the more reflecting and
considerate trembled at the greatness of the power which was so
rapidly rising to overshadow the land.
It increased their anxiety to observe that Pompey was gaining the
same kind of influence and ascendency, too. He had not the advantage
which Cesar enjoyed in the prodigious wealth obtained from the rich
countries over which Cesar ruled, but he possessed, instead of it,
the advantage of being all the time at Rome, and of securing, by
his character and action there, a very wide personal popularity
and influence. Pompey was, in fact, the idol of the people. At one
time, when he was absent from Rome, at Naples, he was taken sick.
After being for some days in considerable danger, the crisis passed
favorably, and he recovered. Some of the people of Naples proposed
a public thanksgiving to the gods, to celebrate his restoration to
health. The plan was adopted by acclamation, and the example thus
set extended from city to city, until it had spread throughout
Italy, and the whole country was filled with processions, games,
shows, and celebrations, which were instituted everywhere in honor
of the event. And when Pompey returned from Naples to Rome the
towns on the way could not afford room for the crowds that came
forth to meet him. The high roads, the villages, the ports, says
Plutarch, were filled with sacrifices and entertainments. Many
received him with garlands on their heads and torches in their hands,
and, as they conducted him along, strewed the way with flowers.
In fact, Pompey considered himself as standing far above Cesar in
fame and power, and this general burst of enthusiasm and applause
educed by his recovery from sickness confirmed him in this idea.
He felt no solicitude, he said, in respect to Cesar. He should take
no special precautions against any hostile designs which he might
entertain on his return from Gaul. It was he himself, he said, that
had raised Cesar up to whatever of elevation he had attained, and
he could put him down even more easily than he had exalted him.
In the meantime, the period was drawing near in which Cesar's command
in the provinces was to expire; and, anticipating the struggle
with Pompey which was about to ensue, he conducted several of his
legions through the passes of the Alps and advanced gradually,
as he had a right to do, across the country of the Po toward the
Rubicon, revolving in his capacious mind, as he came, the various
plans by which he might hope to gain the ascendency over the power
of his mighty rival and make himself supreme.
He concluded that it would be his wisest policy not to attempt to
intimidate Pompey by great and open preparations for war, which
might tend to arouse him to vigorous measures of resistance, but
rather to cover and conceal his designs, and thus throw his enemy
off his guard. He advanced, therefore, toward the Rubicon with a
small force. He established his headquarters at Ravenna, a city
not far from the river, and employed himself in objects of local
interest there in order to avert as much as possible the minds
of the people from imagining that he was contemplating any great
design. Pompey sent to him to demand the return of a certain legion
which he had lent him from his own army at a time when they were
friends. Cesar complied with this demand without any hesitation,
and sent the legion home. He sent with this legion, also, some
other troops which were properly his own, thus evincing a degree of
indifference in respect to the amount of the force retained under
his command which seemed wholly inconsistent with the idea that he
contemplated any resistance to the authority of the government at
Rome.
In the meantime, the struggle at Rome between the partisans of
Cesar and Pompey grew more and more violent and alarming. Cesar,
through his friends in the city, demanded to be elected consul.
The other side insisted that he must first, if that was his wish,
resign the command of his army, come to Rome, and present himself
as a candidate in the character of a private citizen. This the
constitution of the state very properly required. In answer to
this requisition, Cesar rejoined that, if Pompey would lay down
his military commands, he would do so too; if not, it was unjust to
require it of him. The services, he added, which he had performed
for his country demanded some recompense, which, moreover, they
ought to be willing to award even if in order to do it it were
necessary to relax somewhat in his favor the strictness of ordinary
rules. To a large part of the people of the city these demands
of Cesar appeared reasonable. They were clamorous to have them
allowed. The partisans of Pompey, with the stern and inflexible
Cato at their head, deemed them wholly inadmissible and contended
with the most determined violence against them. The whole city was
filled with the excitement of this struggle, into which all the
active and turbulent spirits of the capital plunged with the most
furious zeal, while the more considerate and thoughtful of the
population, remembering the days of Marius and Sylla, trembled
at the impending danger. Pompey himself had no fear. He urged the
Senate to resist to the utmost all of Cesar's claims, saying if Cesar
should be so presumptuous as to attempt to march to Rome he could
raise troops enough by stamping with his foot to put him down.
It would require a volume to contain a full account of the disputes
and tumults, the manoeuvres and debates, the votes and decrees,
which marked the successive stages of this quarrel. Pompey himself
was all the time without the city. He was in command of an army
there, and no general, while in command, was allowed to come within
the gates. At last an exciting debate was broken up in the Senate
by one of the consuls rising to depart, saying that he would hear
the subject discussed no longer. The time had arrived for action,
and he should send a commander, with an armed force, to defend the
country from Cesar's threatened invasion. Cesar's leading friends,
two tribunes of the people, disguised themselves as slaves and
fled to the north to join their master. The country was filled with
commotion and panic. The Commonwealth had obviously more fear of
Cesar than confidence in Pompey. The country was full of rumors in
respect to Cesar's power, and the threatening attitude which he was
assuming, while they who had insisted on resistance seemed, after
all, to have provided very inadequate means with which to resist.
A thousand plans were formed, and clamorously insisted upon by
their respective advocates, for averting the danger. This only
added to the confusion, and the city became at length pervaded with
a universal terror.
While this was the state of things at Rome, Cesar was quietly
established at Ravenna, thirty or forty miles from the frontier.
He was erecting a building for a fencing school there, and his mind
seemed to be occupied very busily with the plans and models of the
edifice which the architects had formed. Of course, in his intended
march to Rome, his reliance was not to be so much on the force
which he should take with him, as on the cooperation and support
which he expected to find there. It was his policy, therefore,
to move as quietly and privately as possible, and with as little
display of violence, and to avoid everything which might indicate
his intended march to any spies which might be around him, or to any
other persons who might be disposed to report what they observed,
at Rome. Accordingly, on the very eve of his departure, he busied
himself with his fencing school, and assumed with his officers and
soldiers a careless and unconcerned air, which prevented any one
from suspecting his design.
In the course of the day, he privately sent forward some cohorts
to the southward, with orders for them to encamp on the banks of
the Rubicon. When night came, he sat down to supper as usual and
conversed with his friends in his ordinary manner, and went with
them afterward to a public entertainment. As soon as it was dark
and the streets were still, he set off secretly from the city,
accompanied by a very few attendants. Instead of making use of
his ordinary equipage, the parading of which would have attracted
attention to his movements, he had some mules taken from a neighboring
bakehouse and harnessed into his chaise. There were torch-bearers
provided to light the way. The cavalcade drove on during the
night, finding, however, the hasty preparations which had been made
inadequate for the occasion. The torches went out, the guides lost
their way, and the future conqueror of the world wandered about
bewildered and lost, until, just after break of day, the party met
with a peasant who undertook to guide them. Under his direction they
made their way to the main road again, and advanced then without
further difficulty to the banks of the river, where they found
that portion of the army which had been sent forward encamped and
awaiting their arrival.
Cesar stood for some time upon the banks of the stream, musing upon
the greatness of the undertaking in which simply passing across it
would involve him. His officers stood by his side. "We can retreat
_now_" said he, "but once across that river, we must go on."
He paused for some time, conscious of the vast importance of the
decision, though he thought only, doubtless, of its consequences to
himself. Taking the step which was now before him would necessarily
end either in his realizing the loftiest aspirations of his ambition,
or in his utter and irreparable ruin.
There were vast public interests, too, at stake, of which, however,
he probably thought but little. It proved, in the end, that
the history of the whole Roman world, for several centuries, was
depending upon the manner in which the question now in Cesar's mind
should turn.
There was a little bridge across the Rubicon at the point where
Cesar was surveying it. While he was standing there, the story
is, a peasant or shepherd came from the neighboring fields with
a shepherd's pipe--a simple musical instrument made of a reed and
used much by the rustic musicians of those days. The soldiers and
some of the officers gathered around him to hear him play. Among
the rest came some of Cesar's trumpeters, with their trumpets in
their hands. The shepherd took one of these martial instruments
from the hands of its possessor, laying aside his own, and began
to sound a charge--which is a signal for a rapid advance--and to
march at the same time over the bridge. "An omen! a prodigy!" said
Cesar. "Let us march where we are called by such a divine intimation.
_The die is cast._"
So saying, he pressed forward over the bridge, while the officers,
breaking up the encampment, put the columns in motion to follow
him.
It was shown abundantly, on many occasions in the course of Cesar's
life, that he had no faith in omens. There are equally numerous
instances to show that he was always ready to avail himself of the
popular belief in them, to awaken his soldiers' ardor or to allay
their fears. Whether, therefore, in respect to this story of the
shepherd trumpeter it was an incident that really and accidently
occurred, or whether Cesar planned and arranged it himself, with
reference to its effect, or whether, which is, perhaps, after all,
the most probable supposition, the tale was only an embellishment
invented out of something or nothing by the story-tellers of those
days to give additional dramatic interest to the narrative of the
crossing of the Rubicon, it must be left for each reader to decide.
As soon as the bridge was crossed, Cesar called an assembly of his
troops, and, with signs of great excitement and agitation, made an
address to them on the magnitude of the crisis through which they
were passing. He showed them how entirely he was in their power; he
urged them, by the most eloquent appeals, to stand by him, faithful
and true, promising them the most ample rewards when he should have
attained the object at which he aimed. The soldiers responded to
this appeal with promises of the most unwavering fidelity.
The first town on the Roman side of the Rubicon was Ariminum.
Cesar advanced to this town. The authorities opened its gates to
him--very willing, as it appeared, to receive him as their commander.
Cesar's force was yet quite small, as he had been accompanied by
only a single legion in crossing the river. He had, however, sent
orders for the other legions, which had been left in Gaul, to join
him without any delay, though any reinforcement of his troops seemed
hardly necessary, as he found no indications of opposition to his
progress. He gave his soldiers the strictest injunctions to do no
injury to any property, public or private, as they advanced, and
not to assume, in any respect, a hostile attitude toward the people
of the country. The inhabitants, therefore, welcomed him wherever
he came, and all the cities and towns followed the example of
Ariminum, surrendering, in fact, faster than he could take possession
of them.
In the confusion of the debates and votes in the Senate at Rome
before Cesar crossed the Rubicon, one decree had been passed deposing
him from his command of the army and appointing a successor. The
name of the general thus appointed was Domitius. The only real
opposition which Cesar encountered in his progress toward Rome
was from him. Domitius had crossed the Apennines at the head of an
army on his way northward to supersede Cesar in his command, and
had reached the town of Corfinium, which was perhaps one third of
the way between Rome and the Rubicon. Cesar advanced upon him here
and shut him in.
After a brief siege the city was taken, and Domitius and his army
were made prisoners. Everybody gave them up for lost, expecting
that Cesar would wreak terrible vengeance upon them. Instead of
this, he received the troops at once into his own service and let
Domitius go free.
In the meantime, the tidings of Cesar's having passed the Rubicon,
and of the triumphant success which he was meeting with at the
commencement of his march toward Rome, reached the capital, and
added greatly to the prevailing consternation. The reports of the
magnitude of his force and of the rapidity of his progress were
greatly exaggerated. The party of Pompey and the Senate had done
everything to spread among the people the terror of Cesar's name
in order to arouse them to efforts for opposing his designs; and
now, when he had broken through the barriers which had been intended
to restrain him and was advancing toward the city in an unchecked
and triumphant career, they were overwhelmed with dismay. Pompey
began to be terrified at the danger which was impending. The Senate
held meetings without the city--councils of war, as it were, in
which they looked to Pompey in vain for protection from the danger
which he had brought upon them. He had said that he could raise
an army sufficient to cope with Cesar at any time by stamping with
his foot. They told him they thought now that it was high time for
him to stamp.
In fact, Pompey found the current setting everywhere strongly against
him. Some recommended that commissioners should be sent to Cesar
to make proposals for peace. The leading men, however, knowing that
any peace made with him under such circumstances would be their
own ruin, resisted and defeated the proposal. Cato abruptly left
the city and proceeded to Sicily, which had been assigned him as
his province. Others fled in other directions. Pompey himself,
uncertain what to do, and not daring to remain, called upon all
his partisans to join him, and set off at night, suddenly, and with
very little preparation and small supplies, to retreat across the
country toward the shores of the Adriatic Sea. His destination was
Brundusium, the usual port of embarkation for Macedon and Greece.
Caesar was all this time gradually advancing toward Rome. His soldiers
were full of enthusiasm in his cause. As his connection with the
government at home was sundered the moment he crossed the Rubicon,
all supplies of money and of provisions were cut off in that quarter
until he should arrive at the capital and take possession of it.
The soldiers voted, however, that they would serve him without pay.
The officers, too, assembled together and tendered him the aid of
their contributions. He had always observed a very generous policy
in his dealings with them, and he was now greatly gratified at
receiving their requital of it.
The further he advanced, too, the more he found the people of the
country through which he passed disposed to espouse his cause. They
were struck with his generosity in releasing Domitius. It is true
that it was a very sagacious policy that prompted him to release
him. But, then, it was generosity too. In fact, there must be
something of a generous spirit in the soul to enable a man even to
see the policy of generous actions.
Among the letters of Cesar that remain to the present day, there
is one written about this time to one of his friends, in which he
speaks of this subject. "I am glad," says he, "that you approve of
my conduct at Corfinium. I am satisfied that such a course is the
best one for us to pursue, as by so doing we shall gain the good
will of all parties, and thus secure a permanent victory. Most
conquerors have incurred the hatred of mankind by their cruelties,
and have all, in consequence of the enmity they have thus awakened,
been prevented from long enjoying their power. Sylla was an exception;
but his example of successful cruelty I have no disposition to
imitate. I will conquer after a new fashion, and fortify myself in
the possession of the power I acquire by generosity and mercy."
Domitius had the ingratitude, after this release, to take up arms
again, and wage a new war against Cesar. When Cesar heard of it he
said it was all right. "I will act out the principles of my nature,"
said he, "and he may act out his."
Another instance of Cesar's generosity occurred which is even more
remarkable than this. It seems that among the officers of his
army there were some whom he had appointed at the recommendation
of Pompey, at the time when he and Pompey were friends. These men
would, of course, feel under obligations of gratitude to Pompey
as they owed their military rank to his friendly interposition in
their behalf. As soon as the war broke out Cesar gave them all his
free permission to go over to Pompey's side if they chose to do
so.
Csesar acted thus very liberally in all respects. He surpassed
Pompey very much in the spirit of generosity and mercy with which
he entered upon the great contest before them. Pompey ordered every
citizen to join his standard, declaring that he should consider
all neutrals as his enemies. Cesar, on the other hand, gave free
permission to every one to decline, if he chose, taking any part
in the contest, saying that he should consider all who did not act
against him as his friends. In the political contests of our day it
is to be observed that the combatants are much more prone to imitate
the bigotry of Pompey than the generosity of Cesar, condemning, as
they often do, those who choose to stand aloof from electioneering
struggles, more than they do their most determined opponents and
enemies.
When, at length, Cesar arrived at Brundusium, he found that Pompey
had sent a part of his army across the Adriatic into Greece and was
waiting for the transports to return that he might go over himself
with the remainder. In the meantime, he had fortified himself
strongly in the city. Cesar immediately laid siege to the place,
and he commenced some works to block up the mouth of the harbor. He
built piers on each side, extending out as far into the sea as the
depth of the water would allow them to be built. He then constructed
a series of rafts, which he anchored on the deep water, in a line
extending from one pier to the other. He built towers upon these
rafts, and garrisoned them with soldiers, in hopes by this means
to prevent all egress from the fort. He thought that, when this
work was completed, Pompey would be entirely shut in, beyond all
possibility of escape.
The transports, however, returned before the work was completed.
Its progress was, of course, slow, as the constructions were the
scene of a continued conflict; for Pompey sent out rafts and galleys
against them every day, and the workmen had thus to build in the
midst of continual interruptions, sometimes from showers of darts,
arrows, and javelins, sometimes from the conflagrations of fireships,
and sometimes from the terrible concussions of great vessels of
war, impelled with prodigious force against them. The transports
returned, therefore, before the defences were complete, and contrived
to get into the harbor. Pompey immediately formed his plan for
embarking the remainder of his army.
He filled the streets of the city with barricades and pitfalls
excepting two streets which led to the place of embarkation. The
object of these obstructions was to embarrass Cesar's progress
through the city in case he should force an entrance while his
men were getting on board the ships. He then, in order to divert
Cesar's attention from his design, doubled the guards stationed upon
the walls on the evening of his intended embarkation, and ordered
them to make vigorous attacks upon all Cesar's forces outside. Then,
when the darkness came on, he marched his troops through the two
streets which had been left open to the landing-place, and got them
as fast as possible on board the transports. Some of the people of
the town contrived to make known to Cesar's army what was going on,
by means of signals from the walls; the army immediately brought
scaling ladders in great numbers, and, mounting the walls with great
ardor and impetuosity, they drove all before them, and soon broke
open the gates and got possession of the city. But the barricades
and pitfalls, together with the darkness, so embarrassed their
movements that Pompey succeeded in completing his embarkation and
sailing away.
Cesar had no ships in which to follow. He returned to Rome. He met,
of course, with no opposition. He re-established the government
there, organized the Senate anew, and obtained supplies of corn
from the public granaries and of money from the city treasury in
the capital. In going to the Capitoline Hill after this treasure,
he found the officer who had charge of the money stationed there
to defend it. He told Cesar that it was contrary to law for him to
enter. Cesar said that, for men with swords in their hands, there
was no law. The officer still refused to admit him. Cesar then
told him to open the doors or he would kill him on the spot. "And
you must understand," he added, "that it will be easier for me to
do it than it has been to say it." The officer resisted no longer,
and Cesar went in.
After this, Cesar spent some time in vigorous campaigns in Italy,
Spain, Sicily, and Gaul, wherever there was manifested any opposition
to his sway. When this work was accomplished, and all these countries
were completely subjected to his dominion, he began to turn his
thoughts to the plan of pursuing Pompey across the Adriatic Sea.
FEARLESS SAINT GENEVIEVE, PATRON SAINT OF PARIS
By Charlotte M. Yonge
Four hundred years of the Roman dominion had entirely tamed the once
wild and independent Gauls. Everywhere, except in the moorlands of
Brittany, they had become as much like Romans themselves as they
could accomplish; they had Latin names, spoke the Latin tongue, all
their personages of higher rank were enrolled as Roman citizens,
their chief cities were colonies where the laws were administered
by magistrates in the Roman fashion, and the houses, dress, and
amusements were the same as those of Italy. The greater part of
the towns had been converted to Christianity, though some paganism
still lurked in the more remote villages and mountainous districts.
It was upon these civilized Gauls that the terrible attacks came
from the wild nations who poured out of the center and east of
Europe. The Franks came over the Rhine and its dependent rivers,
and made furious attacks upon the peaceful plains, where the Gauls
had long lived in security, and reports were everywhere heard
of villages harried by wild horsemen, with short double-headed
battle-axes, and a horrible short pike covered with iron and with
several large hooks, like a gigantic artificial minnow, and like
it fastened to a long rope, so that the prey which it had grappled
might be pulled up to the owner. Walled cities usually stopped them,
but every farm or villa outside was stripped of its valuables, set
on fire, the cattle driven off, and the more healthy inhabitants
seized for slaves.
It was during this state of things that a girl was born to a wealthy
peasant at the village now called Nanterre, about two miles from
Lutetia, which was already a prosperous city, though not as yet so
entirely the capital as it was destined to become under the name of
Paris. She was christened by an old Gallic name, probably Gwenfrewi,
or White Stream, in Latin Genovefa, but she is best known by the late
French form of Genevieve. When she was about seven years old, two
celebrated bishops passed through the village, Germanus, of Auxerre,
and Lupus, of Troyes, who had been invited to Britain to dispute
the false doctrines of Pelagius. All the inhabitants flocked into
the church to see them, pray with them, and receive their blessing;
and here the sweet childish devotion of Genevieve so struck Germanus,
that he called her to him, talked to her, made her sit beside him
at the feast, gave her his special blessing, and presented her
with a copper medal with a cross engraven upon it. From that time
the little maiden always deemed herself especially consecrated to
the service of Heaven, but she still remained at home, daily keeping
her father's sheep, and spinning their wool as she sat under the
trees watching them, but always with her heart full of prayer.
After this St. Germanus proceeded to Britain, and there encouraged
his converts to meet the heathen Picts at Maes Garmon, in Flintshire,
where the exulting shout of the white-robed catechumens turned to
flight the wild superstitious savages of the north,--and the Hallelujah
victory was gained without a drop of bloodshed. He never lost sight
of Genevieve, the little maid whom he had so early distinguished
for her piety.
After she lost her parents she went to live with her godmother,
and continued the same simple habits, leading a life of sincere
devotion and strict self-denial, constant prayer and much charity
to her poorer neighbors.
In the year 451 the whole of Gaul was in the most dreadful state
of terror at the advance of Attila, the savage chief of the Huns,
who came from the banks of the Danube with a host of savages
of hideous features, scarred and disfigured to render them more
frightful. The old enemies, the Goths and the Franks, seemed like
friends compared with these formidable beings, whose cruelties
were said to be intolerable, and of whom every exaggerated story
was told that could add to the horrors of the miserable people who
lay in their path. Tidings came that this "Scourge of God," as
Attila called himself, had passed the Rhine, destroyed Tongres and
Metz, and was in full march for Paris. The whole country was in the
utmost terror. Every one seized their most valuable possessions,
and would have fled; but Genevieve placed herself on the only bridge
across the Seine, and argued with them, assuring them, in a strain
that was afterwards thought of as prophetic, that, if they would
pray, repent, and defend instead of abandoning their homes, God
would protect them. They were at first almost ready to stone her
for thus withstanding their panic, but just then a priest arrived
from Auxerre, with a present for Genevieve from St. Germanus, and
they were thus reminded of the high estimation in which he held
her; they became ashamed of their violence, and she led them back
to pray and to arm themselves. In a few days they heard that Attila
had paused to besiege Orleans, and that Aetius, the Roman general,
hurrying from Italy, had united his troops with those of the Goths and
Franks, and given Attila so terrible a defeat at Chalons that the
Huns were fairly driven out of Gaul. And here it must be mentioned
that when in the next year, 452, Attila with his murderous host,
came down into Italy, and after horrible devastation of all the
northern provinces, came to the gates of Rome, no one dared to meet
him but one venerable bishop, Leo, the Pope, who, when his flock
were in transports of despair, went forth only accompanied by one
magistrate to meet the invader, and endeavored to turn his wrath
aside. The savage Huns were struck with awe by the fearless majesty
of the unarmed old man. They conducted him safely to Attila, who
listened to him with respect, and promised not to lead his people
into Rome, provided a tribute should be paid to him. He then
retreated, and, to the joy of all Europe, died on his way back to
his native dominions.
But with the Huns the danger and suffering of Europe did not end.
The happy state described in the Prophets as "dwelling safely, with
none to make them afraid," was utterly unknown in Europe throughout
the long break-up of the Roman Empire; and in a few more years
the Franks were overrunning the banks of the Seine, and actually
venturing to lay siege to the Roman walls of Paris itself. The
fortifications were strong enough, but hunger began to do the work
of the besiegers, and the garrison, unwarlike and untrained, began
to despair. But Genevieve's courage and trust never failed; and
finding no warriors willing to run the risk of going beyond the
walls to obtain food for the women and children who were perishing
around them, this brave shepherdess embarked alone in a little
boat, and guiding it down the stream, landed beyond the Frankish
camp, and repairing to the different Gallic cities, she implored them
to send succor to their famished brethren. She obtained complete
success. Probably the Franks had no means of obstructing the passage
of the river, so that a convoy of boats could easily penetrate
into the town: at any rate they looked upon Genevieve as something
sacred and inspired whom they durst not touch; probably as one of
the battle-maids in whom their own myths taught them to believe.
One account indeed says that, instead of going alone to obtain help,
Genevieve placed herself at the head of a forage party, and that
the mere sight of her inspired bearing caused them to be allowed
to enter and return in safety; but the boat version seems the more
probable, since a single boat on the broad river would more easily
elude the enemy than a troop of Gauls pass through their army.
But a city where all the valor resided in one woman could not long
hold out, and in another inroad, when Genevieve was absent, Paris
was actually seized by the Franks. Their leader, Hilperik, was
absolutely afraid of what the mysteriously brave maiden might do
to him, and commanded the gates of the city to be carefully guarded
lest she should enter; but Genevieve learnt that some of the chief
citizens were imprisoned, and that Hilperik intended their death,
and nothing could withhold her from making an effort in their
behalf. The Franks had made up their minds to settle and not to
destroy. They were not burning and slaying indiscriminately, but
while despising the Romans, as they called the Gauls, for their
cowardice, they were in awe of their superior civilization and
knowledge of arts. The country people had free access to the city,
and Genevieve in her homely gown and veil passed by Hilperik's
guards without being suspected of being more than any ordinary
Gaulish village-maid; and thus she fearlessly made her way, even
to the old Roman halls, where the long-haired Hilperik was holding
his wild carousal. Would that we knew more of that interview--one
of the most striking that ever took place!
We can only picture to ourselves the Roman tesselated pavement
bestrewn with wine, bones, and fragments of the barbarous revelry.
There were, untamed Franks, their sun-burnt hair tied up in a knot
at the top of their heads, and falling down like a horse's tail,
their faces close-shaven, except two huge mustaches, and dressed
in tight leather garments, with swords at their wide belts. Some
slept, some feasted, some greased their long locks, some shouted
out their favorite war-songs around the table, which was covered
with the spoils of churches, and at their head sat the wild,
long-haired chieftain, who was a few years later driven away by
his own followers for his excesses,--the whole scene was all that
was abhorrent to a pure, devout, and faithful nature, most full of
terror to a woman. Yet there, in her strength, stood the peasant
maiden, her heart full of trust and pity, her looks full of the power
that is given by fearlessness of them that can kill the body. What
she said we do not know--we only know that the barbarous Hilperik
was overawed; he trembled before the expostulations of the brave
woman, and granted all she asked--the safety of his prisoners, and
mercy to the terrified inhabitants. No wonder that the people of
Paris have ever since looked back to Genevieve as their protectress,
and that in after-ages she has grown to be the patron saint of the
city.
She lived to see the son of Hilperik, Chlodwig, or, as he was more
commonly called, Clovis, marry a Christian wife, Clotilda, and after
a time become a Christian. She saw the foundation of the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, and of the two famous churches of St. Denys and of
St. Martin of Tours, and gave her full share to the first efforts
for bringing the rude and bloodthirsty conquerors to some knowledge
of Christian faith, mercy, and purity. After a life of constant
prayer and charity she died, three months after King Clovis, in
the year 512, the 89th of her age.
[Illustration: HE SHOOK HIS CLENCHED FIST AT THE OBSTRUCTED SEA-STRAIT
_From the drawing by Gertrude Demain Hammond_]
THE BOY VIKING--OLAF II OF NORWAY
By E. S. Brooks
Old Rane, the helmsman, whose fierce mustaches and shaggy shoulder-mantle
made him look like some grim old Northern wolf, held high in air
the great bison-horn filled with foaming mead.
"Skoal to the Viking! Hael was-hael!"[Footnote: "Hail and health
to the Viking!"] rose his exultant shout. From a hundred sturdy
throats the cry re-echoed till the vaulted hall of the Swedemen's
conquered castle rang again.
"Skoal to the Viking! Hael; was-hael!" and in the centre of that
throng of mail-clad men and tossing spears, standing firm and
fearless upon the interlocked and uplifted shields of three stalwart
fighting-men, a stout-limbed lad of scarce thirteen, with flowing
light-brown hair and flushed and eager face, brandished his sword
vigorously in acknowledgment of the jubilant shout that rang once
again through the dark and smoke-stained hall: "Was-hael to the
sea-wolf's son! Skoal to Olaf the King!"
Then above the din and clash of shouting and of steel rose the voice
of Sigvat the saga-man, or song-man of the young viking, singing
loud and sturdily:
"Olaf the King is on his cruise,
His blue steel staining,
Rich booty gaining,
And all men trembling at the news,
Up, war-wolf's brood! our young fir's name
O'ertops the forest trees in fame,
Our stout young Olaf knows no fear.
Though fell the fray,
He's blithe and gay,
And warriors fall beneath his spear.
Who can't defend the wealth they have
Must die or share with the rover brave!"
A fierce and warlike song, boys and girls, to raise in honor of so
young a lad. But those were fierce and warlike days when men were
stirred by the recital of bold and daring deeds--those old, old
days, eight hundred years ago, when Olaf, the boy viking, the pirate
chief of a hundred mail-clad men, stood upon the uplifted shields
of his exultant fighting-men in the grim and smoke-stained hall of
the gray castle of captured Sigtun, oldest of Swedish cities.
Take your atlas and, turning to the map of Sweden, place your
finger on the city of Stockholm. Do you notice that it lies at the
easterly end of a large lake? That is the Maelar, beautiful with
winding channels, pine-covered islands, and rocky shores. It is
peaceful and quiet now, and palace and villa and quaint Northern
farmhouse stand unmolested on its picturesque borders. But channels,
and islands, and rocky shores have echoed and re-echoed with the
war-shouts of many a fierce sea-rover since those far-off days
when Olaf, the boy viking, and his Norwegian ships of war ploughed
through the narrow sea-strait and ravaged the fair shores of the
Maelar with fire and sword.
Stockholm, the "Venice of the North," as it is called, was not then
in existence; and little now remains of old Sigtun save ruined walls.
But travellers may still see the three tall towers of the ancient
town, and the great stone-heap, alongside which young Olaf drew his
ships of war, and over which his pirate crew swarmed into Sigtun
town, and planted the victorious banner of the golden serpent upon
the conquered walls.
For this fair young Olaf came of hardy Norse stock. His father,
Harald Graenske, or "Gray-mantle," one of the tributary kings of
Norway, had fallen a victim to the tortures of the haughty Swedish
queen; and now his son, a boy of scarce thirteen, but a warrior
already by training and from desire, came to avenge his father's
death. His mother, the Queen Aasta, equipped a large dragon-ship or
war-vessel for her adventurous son, and with the lad, as helmsman
and guardian, was sent old Rane, whom men called "the far-travelled,"
because he had sailed westward as far as England and southward to
Norvasund (by which name men then knew the Straits of Gibraltar).
Boys toughened quickly in those stirring days, and this lad,
who, because he was commander of a dragon-ship, was called Olaf
the King--though he had no land to rule--was of viking blood, and
quickly learned the trade of war. Already, among the rocks and
sands of Sodermann, upon the Swedish coast, he had won his first
battle over a superior force of Danish war-vessels.
Other ships of war joined him; the name of Olaf the Brave was
given him by right of daring deeds, and "Skoal to the Viking!" rang
from the sturdy throats of his followers as the little sea-king of
thirteen was lifted in triumph upon the battle-dented shields.
But a swift runner bursts into the gray hall of Sigtun. "To your
ships, O king; to your ships!" he cries. "Olaf, the Swedish king,
men say, is planting a forest of spears along the sea-strait, and,
except ye push out now, ye may not get out at all!"
The nimble young chief sprang from the upraised shields.
"To your ships, vikings, all!" he shouted. "Show your teeth, war-wolves!
Up with the serpent banner, and death to Olaf the Swede!"
Straight across the lake to the sea-strait, near where Stockholm
now stands, the vikings sailed, young Olaf's dragon-ship taking the
lead. But all too late; for, across the narrow strait, the Swedish
king had stretched great chains, and had filled up the channel with
stocks and stones. Olaf and his Norsemen were fairly trapped; the
Swedish spears waved in wild and joyful triumph, and King Olaf,
the Swede, said with grim satisfaction to his lords: "See, jarls
and lendermen, the Fat Boy is caged at last!" For he never spoke
of his stout young Norwegian namesake and rival save as "Olaf
Tjocke"--Olaf the Thick, or Fat.
The boy viking stood by his dragon-headed prow, and shook his
clenched fist at the obstructed sea-strait and the Swedish spears.
"Shall we, then, land, Rane, and fight our way through?" he asked.
"Fight our way through?" said old Rane, who had been in many another
tight place in his years of sea-roving, but none so close as this.
"Why, king, they be a hundred to one!"
"And if they be, what then?" said impetuous Olaf "Better fall as
a viking breaking Swedish spears than die a straw-death [Footnote:
So contemptuously did those fierce old sea-kings regard a peaceful
life that they said of one who died quietly on his bed at home:
"His was but a straw-death."] as Olaf of Sweden's bonder-man. May
we not cut through these chains?"
"As soon think of cutting the solid earth, king," said the helmsman.
"So; and why not, then?" young Olaf exclaimed, struck with
a brilliant idea. "Ho, Sigvat," he said, turning to his saga-man,
"what was that lowland under the cliff where thou didst say the
pagan Upsal king was hanged in his own golden chains by his Finnish
queen?"
"'Tis called the fen of Agnefit, O king," replied the saga-man,
pointing toward where it lay.
"Why, then, my Rane," asked the boy, "may we not cut our way out
through that lowland fen, to the open sea and liberty?"
"'Tis Odin's own device," cried the delighted helmsman, catching at
his young chief's great plan. "Ho, war-wolves all, bite ye your way
through the Swedish fens! Up with the serpent banner, and farewell
to Olaf the Swede!"
It seemed a narrow chance, but it was the only one. Fortune favored
the boy viking. Heavy rains had flooded the lands that slope down
to the Maelar Lake; in the dead of night the Swedish captives and
stout Norse oarsmen were set to work, and before daybreak an open
cut had been made in the lowlands beneath Agnefit, or the "Rock of
King Agne," where, by the town of Sodertelje, the vikings' canal
is still shown to travellers; the waters of the lake came rushing
through the cut, and an open sea-strait awaited young Olaf's fleet.
"Unship the rudder; hoist the sail aloft!" commanded Bane the
helmsman. "Sound war-horns all! Skoal to the Viking; skoal to the
wise young Olaf!"
A strong breeze blew astern; the Norse rowers steered the rudderless
ships with their long oars, and with a mighty rush, through the new
canal and over all the shallows, out into the great Norrstrom, or
North Stream, as the Baltic Sea was called, the fleet passed in
safety while the loud war-horns blew the notes of triumph.
So the boy viking escaped from the trap of his Swedish foes, and,
standing by the "grim, gaping dragon's head" that crested the prow
of his warship, he bade the helmsman steer for Gotland Isle, while
Sigvat, the saga-man, sang with the ring of triumph:
"Down the fiord sweep wind and rain;
Our sails and tackle sway and strain;
Wet to the skin
We're sound within.
Our sea-steed through the foam goes prancing,
While shields and spears and helms are glancing.
From fiord to sea,
Our ships ride free,
And down the wind with swelling sail
We scud before the gathering gale."
What a breezy, rollicking old saga it is! Can't you almost catch
the spray and sea-swell in its dashing measures, boys?
Now, turn to your atlases again and look for the large island of
Gotland off the southeastern coast of Sweden, in the midst of the
Baltic Sea. In the time of Olaf it was a thickly peopled and wealthy
district, and the principal town, Wisby, at the northern end, was
one of the busiest places in all Europe. To this attractive island
the boy viking sailed with all his ships, looking for rich booty,
but the Gotlanders met him with fair words and offered him so great
a "scatt," or tribute, that he agreed not to molest them, and rested
at the island, an unwelcome guest, through all the long winter.
Early in the spring he sailed eastward to the Gulf of Riga and spread
fear and terror along the coast of Finland. And the old saga tells
how the Finlanders "conjured up in the night, by their witchcraft,
a dreadful storm and bad weather; but the king ordered all the
anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to
the outside of the land. So the king's luck prevailed more than
the Finlander's witchcraft."
Then away "through the wild sea" to Denmark sailed the young pirate
king, and here he met a brother viking, one Thorkell the Tall. The
two chiefs struck up a sort of partnership; and coasting southward
along the western shores of Denmark, they won a sea-fight in the
Ringkiobing Fiord, among the "sand hills of Jutland." And so business
continued brisk with this curiously matched pirate firm--a giant
and a boy--until, under the cliffs of Kinlimma, in Friesland,
hasty word came to the boy viking that the English king, Ethelred
the Unready, was calling for the help of all sturdy fighters to
win back his heritage and crown from young King Cnut, or Canute
the Dane, whose father had seized the throne of England. Quick to
respond to an appeal that promised plenty of hard knocks, and the
possibility of unlimited booty, Olaf, the ever ready, hoisted his
blue and crimson sails and steered his war-ships over the sea to
help King Ethelred, the never ready. Up the Thames and straight
for London town he rowed.
"Hail to the serpent banner! Hail to Olaf the Brave!" said
King Ethelred, as the war-horns sounded a welcome; and on the low
shores of the Isle of Dogs, just below the old city, the keels of
the Norse war-ships grounded swiftly, and the boy viking and his
followers leaped ashore. "Thou dost come in right good time with
thy trusty dragon-ships, young king," said King Ethelred; "for the
Danish robbers are full well entrenched in London town and in my
father Edgar's castle."
And then he told Olaf how, "in the great trading place which
is called Southwark," the Danes had raised "a great work and dug
large ditches, and within had builded a bulwark of stone, timber,
and turf, where they had stationed a large army.
"And we would fain have taken this bulwark," added the king, "and
did in sooth bear down upon it with a great assault; but indeed we
could make naught of it."
"And why so?" asked the young viking.
"Because," said King Ethelred, "upon the bridge betwixt the castle
and Southwark have the ravaging Danes raised towers and parapets,
breast high, and thence they did cast down stones and weapons upon
us so that we could not prevail. And now, sea-king, what dost thou
counsel? How may we avenge ourselves of our enemies and win the
town?"
Impetuous as ever, and impatient of obstacles, the young viking
said: "How? why, pull thou down this bridge, king, and then may ye
have free river-way to thy castle."
"Break down great London Bridge, young hero?" cried the amazed king.
"How may that be? Have we a Duke Samson among us to do so great a
feat?"
"Lay me thy ships alongside mine, king, close to this barricaded
bridge," said the valorous boy, "and I will vow to break it down,
or ye may call me caitiff and coward."
"Be it so," said Ethelred, the English king; and all the war-chiefs
echoed: "Be it so!" So Olaf and his trusty Rane made ready the
war-forces for the destruction of the bridge.
Old London Bridge was not what we should now call an imposing
structure, but our ancestors of nine centuries back esteemed it
quite a bridge. The chronicler says that it was "so broad that two
wagons could pass each other upon it," and "under the bridge were
piles driven into the bottom of the river."
So young Olaf and old Rane put their heads together, and decided
to wreck the bridge by a bold viking stroke. And this is how it is
told in the "Heimskringla," or Saga of King Olaf the Saint:
"King Olaf ordered great platforms of floating wood to be tied
together with hazel bands, and for this he took down old houses;
and with these, as a roof, he covered over his ships so widely that
it reached over the ships' sides. Under this screen he set pillars,
so high and stout that there both was room for swinging their
swords, and the roofs were strong enough to withstand the stones
cast down upon them."
"Now, out oars and pull for the bridge," young Olaf commanded; and
the roofed-over war-ships were rowed close up to London Bridge.
And as they came near the bridge, the chronicle says: "There were
cast upon them, by the Danes upon the bridge, so many stones and
missile weapons, such as arrows and spears, that neither helmet nor
shield could hold out against it; and the ships themselves were so
greatly damaged that many retreated out of it."
But the boy viking and his Norsemen were there for a purpose, and
were not to be driven back by stones or spears or arrows. Straight
ahead they rowed, "quite up under the bridge."
"Out cables, all, and lay them around the piles," the young sea-king
shouted; and the half-naked rowers, unshipping their oars, reached
out under the roofs and passed the stout cables twice around the
wooden supports of the bridge. The loose end was made fast at the
stern of each vessel, and then, turning and heading down stream,
King Olaf's twenty stout war-ships waited his word:
"Out oars!" he cried; "pull, war-birds! Pull all, as if ye were
for Norway!"
Forward and backward swayed the stout Norse rowers; tighter and
tighter pulled the cables; fast down upon the straining war-ships
rained the Danish spears and stones; but the wooden piles under
the great bridge were loosened by the steady tug of the cables,
and soon with a sudden spurt the Norse war-ships darted down the
river, while the slackened cables towed astern the captured piles
of London Bridge. A great shout went up from the besiegers, and
"now," says the chronicle, "as the armed troops stood thick upon
the bridge, and there were likewise many heaps of stones and other
weapons upon it, the bridge gave way; and a great part of the men
upon it fell into the river, and all the others fled--some into
the castle, some into Southwark." And before King Ethelred, "the
Unready, "could pull his ships to the attack, young Olaf's fighting-men
had sprung ashore, and, storming the Southwark earthworks, carried
all before them, and the battle of London Bridge was won.
And the young Olaf's saga-man sang triumphantly:
"London Bridge is broken down--
Gold is won and bright renown.
Shields resounding,
War-horns sounding,
Hildar shouting in the din!
Arrows singing,
Mail-coats ringing,
Odin makes our Olaf win!"
And perhaps, who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many
hundred years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have
been the origin of the old song-game dear to so many generations
of children:
"London Bridge is fallen down, fallen down, fallen down--
London Bridge is fallen down, my fair lady!"
So King Ethelred won back his kingdom, and the boy viking was honored
above all others. To him was given the chief command in perilous
expeditions against the Danes, and the whole defence of all the
coast of England. North and south along the coast he sailed with
all his warships, and the Danes and Englishmen long remembered the
dashing but dubious ways of this young sea-rover, who swept the
English coast and claimed his dues from friend and foe alike. For
those were days of insecurity for merchant and trader and farmer,
and no man's wealth or life was safe except as he paid ready tribute
to the fierce Norse allies of King Ethelred. But soon after this,
King Ethelred died, and young Olaf, thirsting for new adventures,
sailed away to the south and fought his way all along the French
coast as far as the mouth of the River Garonne. Many castles
he captured; many rival vikings subdued; much spoil he gathered;
until at last his dragon-ships lay moored under the walls of old
Bordeaux, waiting for fair winds to take him around to the Straits
of Gibraltar, and so on "to the land of Jerusalem."
One day, in the booty-filled "fore-hold" of his dragon-ship, the
young sea-king lay asleep; and suddenly, says the old record, "he
dreamed a wondrous dream."
"Olaf, great stem of kings, attend!" he heard a deep voice call;
and, looking up, the dreamer seemed to see before him "a great and
important man, but of a terrible appearance withal."
"If that thou art Olaf the Brave, as men do call thee," said the
vision, "turn thyself to nobler deeds than vikings' ravaging and
this wandering cruise. Turn back, turn back from thy purposeless
journey to the land of Jerusalem, where neither honor nor fame
awaits thee. Son of King Harald, return thee to thy heritage; for
thou shalt be king over all Norway."
Then the vision vanished and the young rover awoke to find himself
alone, save for the sleeping foot-boy across the cabin door-way.
So he quickly summoned old Rane, the helmsman, and told his dream.
"'Twas for thy awakening, king," said his stout old follower. "'Twas
the great Olaf, thine uncle, Olaf Tryggvesson the king, that didst
call thee. Win Norway, king, for the portent is that thou and thine
shall rule thy fatherland."
And the war-ships' prows were all turned northward again, as the
boy viking, following the promise of his dream, steered homeward
for Norway and a throne.
Now in Norway Earl Eric was dead. For thirteen years he had usurped
the throne that should have been filled by one of the great King
Olaf's line; and, at his death, his handsome young son, Earl Hakon
the Fair, ruled in his father's stead. And when young King Olaf
heard this news, he shouted for joy and cried to Rane:
"Now, home in haste, for Norway shall be either Hakon's heritage
or mine!"
"'Tis a fair match of youth 'gainst youth," said the trusty helmsman;
"and if but fair luck go with thee, Norway shall be thine!"
So from "a place called Furovald," somewhere between the mouths of
Humber and of Tees, on the English coast, King Olaf, with but two
stout war-ships and two hundred and twenty "well-armed and chosen
persons," shook out his purple sails to the North Sea blasts, and
steered straight for Norway.
As if in league against this bold young viking the storm winds came
rushing down from the mountains of Norway and the cold belt of the
Arctic Circle and caught the two war-ships tossing in a raging sea.
The storm burst upon them with terrific force, and the danger of
shipwreck was great. "But," says the old record, "as they had a
chosen company and the king's luck with them all went on well."
"Thou able chief!"
sings the faithful saga-man,
"With thy fearless crew
Thou meetest with skill and courage true
The wild sea's wrath
On thy ocean path.
Though waves mast-high were breaking round,
Thou findest the middle of Norway's ground,
With helm in hand
On Saelo's strand."
Now _Sael_ was Norse for "lucky" and Saelo's Island means the lucky
island.
"I'll be a lucky king for landing thus upon the Lucky Isle," said
rash young Olaf, with the only attempt at a joke we find recorded
of him, as, with a mighty leap, he sprang ashore where the sliding
keel of his war-ship ploughed the shore of Saelo's Isle.
"True, 'tis a good omen, king," said old Rane the helmsman, following
close behind.
But the soil of the "Lucky Isle" was largely clay, moist and
slippery, and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right
foot slipped, and he would have fallen had not he struck his left
foot firmly in the clay and thus saved himself. But to slip at all
was a bad sign in those old, half-pagan, and superstitious times,
and he said, ruefully: "An omen; an omen, Rane! The king falls!"
"Nay,'tis the king's luck," says ready and wise old Rane. "Thou
didst not fall, king. See; thou didst but set fast foot in this
thy native soil of Norway."
"Thou art a rare diviner, Rane," laughed the young king, much
relieved, and then he added solemnly: "It may be so if God doth
will it so."
And now news comes that Earl Hakon, with a single war-ship, is
steering north from Sogne Fiord; and Olaf, pressing on, lays his two
ships on either side of a narrow strait, or channel, in Sandunga
Sound. Here he stripped his ships of all their war-gear, and stretched
a great cable deep in the water, across the narrow strait. Then he
wound the cable-ends around the capstans, ordered all his fighting-men
out of sight, and waited for his rival. Soon Earl Hakon's war-ship,
crowded with rowers and fighting-men, entered the strait. Seeing,
as he supposed, but two harmless merchant-vessels lying on either
side of the channel, the young earl bade his rowers pull between
the two. Suddenly there is a stir on the quiet merchant-vessels.
The capstan bars are manned; the sunken cable is drawn taut. Up
goes the stern of Earl Hakon's entrapped warship; down plunges her
prow into the waves, and the water pours into the doomed boat. A
loud shout is heard; the quiet merchant-vessels swarm with mail-clad
men, and the air is filled with a shower of stones, and spears,
and arrows. The surprise is complete. Tighter draws the cable; over
topples Earl Hakon's vessel, and he and all his men are among the
billows struggling for life. "So," says the record, "King Olaf took
Earl Hakon and all his men whom they could get hold of out of the
water and made them prisoners; but some were killed and some were
drowned."
Into the "fore-hold" of the king's ship the captive earl was led a
prisoner, and there the young rivals for Norway's crown faced each
other. The two lads were of nearly the same age--between sixteen
and seventeen--and young Earl Hakon was considered the handsomest
youth in all Norway. His helmet was gone, his sword was lost, his
ring-steel suit was sadly disarranged, and his long hair, "fine
as silk," was "bound about his head with a gold ornament." Fully
expecting the fate of all captives in those cruel days--instant
death--the young earl nevertheless faced his boy conqueror proudly,
resolved to meet his fate like a man.
"They speak truth who say of the house of Eric that ye be handsome
men," said the king, studying his prisoner's face. "But now, earl,
even though thou be fair to look upon, thy luck hath failed thee
at last."
"Fortune changes," said the young earl. "We both be boys; and thou,
king, art perchance the shrewder youth. Yet, had we looked for such
a trick as thou hast played upon us, we had not thus been tripped
upon thy sunken cables. Better luck next time."
"Next time!" echoed the king; "dost thou not know, earl, that as
thou standest there, a prisoner, there may be no 'next time' for
thee?"
The young captive understood full well the meaning of the words.
"Yes, king," he said; "it must be only as thou mayst determine.
Man can die but once. Speak on; I am ready!" But Olaf said: "What
wilt thou give me, earl, if at this time I do let thee go, whole
and unhurt?"
"'Tis not what I may give, but what thou mayst take, king," the
earl made answer. "I am thy prisoner; what wilt thou take to free
me?"
"Nothing," said the generous young viking, advancing nearer to his
handsome rival. "As thou didst say, we both be boys, and life is
all before us. Earl, I give thee thy life, do thou but take oath
before me to leave this my realm of Norway, to give up thy kingdom,
and never to do battle against me hereafter."
The conquered earl bent his fair young head.
"Thou art a generous chief, King Olaf," he said. "I take my life
as thou dost give it, and all shall be as thou wilt."
So Earl Hakon took the oath, and King Olaf righted his rival's
capsized war-ship, refitted it from his own stores of booty, and
thus the two lads parted; the young earl sailing off to his uncle,
King Canute, in England, and the boy viking hastening eastward to
Vigen, where lived his mother, the Queen Aasta, whom he had not
seen for full five years.
It is harvest-time in the year 1014. Without and within the long,
low house of Sigurd Syr, at Vigen, all is excitement; for word has
come that Olaf the sea-king has returned to his native land, and is
even now on his way to this his mother's house. Gay stuffs decorate
the dull walls of the great-room, clean straw covers the earth
floor, and upon the long, four-cornered tables is spread a mighty
feast of mead and ale and coarse but hearty food, such as the old
Norse heroes drew their strength and muscle from. At the door-way
stands the Queen Aasta with her maidens, while before the entrance,
with thirty "well-clothed men," waits young Olafs stepfather,
wise Sigurd Syr, gorgeous in a jewelled suit, a scarlet cloak, and
a glittering golden helmet. The watchers on the housetops hear a
distant shout, now another and nearer one, and soon, down the highway,
they catch the gleam of steel and the waving of many banners; and
now they can distinguish the stalwart forms of Olaf's chosen hundred
men, their shining coats of ring-mail, their foreign helmets, and
their crossleted shields flashing in the sun. In the very front
rides old Rane, the helmsman, bearing the great white banner blazoned
with the golden serpent, and, behind him, cased in golden armor,
his long brown hair flowing over his sturdy shoulders, rides the
boy viking, Olaf of Norway.
It was a brave home-coming; and as the stout young hero, leaping
from his horse, knelt to receive his mother's welcoming kiss, the
people shouted for joy, the banners waved, the war-horns played their
loudest; and thus, after five years of wandering, the boy comes
back in triumph to the home he left when but a wild and adventurous
little fellow of twelve.
The hero of nine great sea-fights, and of many smaller ones, before
he was seventeen, young Olaf Haraldson was a remarkable boy, even
in the days when all boys aimed to be battle-tried heroes. Toughened
in frame and fibre by his five years of sea-roving, he had become
strong and self-reliant, a man in action though but a boy in years.
"I am come," he said to his mother and his step-father, "to take
the heritage of my forefathers. But not from Danish nor from Swedish
kings will I supplicate that which is mine by right. I intend rather
to seek my patrimony with battle-axe and sword, and I will so lay
hand to the work that one of two things shall happen: Either I
shall bring all this kingdom of Norway under my rule, or I shall
fall here upon my inheritance in the land of my fathers."
These were bold words for a boy of seventeen. But they were not
idle boastings. Before a year had passed, young Olaf's pluck and
courage had won the day, and in harvest-time, in the year 1015,
being then but little more than eighteen years old, he was crowned
King of Norway in the Drontheim, or "Throne-home," of Nidaros, the
royal city, now called on your atlas the city of Drontheim. For
fifteen years King Olaf the Second ruled his realm of Norway.
The old record says that he was "a good and very gentle man"; but
history shows his goodness and gentleness to have been of a rough
and savage kind. The wild and stern experiences of his viking days
lived again even in his attempts to reform and benefit his land.
When he who had himself been a pirate tried to put down piracy, and
he who had been a wild young robber sought to force all Norway to
become Christian, he did these things in so fierce and cruel a way
that at last his subjects rebelled, and King Canute came over with
a great army to wrest the throne from him. On the bloody field of
Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, the stern king fell, says Sigvat, his
saga-man,
"beneath the blows
By his own thoughtless people given."
So King Canute conquered Norway; but after his death, Olaf's son,
Magnus the Good, regained his father's throne. The people, sorrowful
at their rebellion against King Olaf, forgot his stern and cruel
ways, and magnified all his good deeds so mightily that he was at
last declared a saint, and the shrine of Saint Olaf is still one
of the glories of the old cathedral in Drontheim. And, after King
Magnus died, his descendants ruled Norway for nearly four hundred
years; and thus was brought to pass the promise of the dream that,
in the "fore-hold" of the great dragon-ship, under the walls of
old Bordeaux, came so many years before to the daring and sturdy
young Olaf of Norway, the boy viking.
THE BOY-HEROES OF CRECY AND POITIERS
By Treadwell Walden
Almost every one has heard of the famous battles of Crecy and
Poitiers, which were so much alike in all that made them remarkable
that they are generally coupled together,--one always reminding us
of the other. Yet there is one point they had in common which has
not been especially remarked, but which ought to link them memorably
together in the imagination of young people.
These two great battles really took place ten years apart; for one
was fought in 1346 and the other in 1356. The battle-fields also
were wide apart; for Crecy was far in the north of France, near
the coast of the English Channel, and Poitiers away in the south,
deep in the interior, nearly three hundred miles from Crecy. But they
have drawn near to each other in the mind of students of history,
because in both cases the French largely outnumbered the English;
in both cases the English had gone so far into the country that
their retreat seemed to be cut off; in both cases there was a most
surprising and unexpected result, for the French were terribly
defeated; and in both cases this happened because they made the
same mistake: they trusted so much to their overwhelming numbers,
to their courage and their valor, that they forgot to be careful
about anything else, while the English made up for their small
numbers by prudence, discipline, and skill, without which courage
and valor are often of no avail.
It is quite exciting to read the description of these battles, with
their archery fights, the clashing together of furious knights,
the first brave advance and the final running away; but, after a
while, the battles at large seem to fade out in the greater interest
which surrounds the figures of two youngsters,--one hardly more
than fifteen, the other scarcely fourteen,--for one carried off
all the honors of the victory of Crecy, and the other redeemed
from total dishonor the defeat of Poitiers. Let us now take up
the romantic story of the English lad in the former battle, and of
the French lad in the latter.
When, in 1346, Edward III of England had determined upon an invasion
of France, he brought over his army in a fleet of nearly a thousand
sail. He had with him not only the larger portion of his great
nobles, but also his eldest son, Edward Plantagenet, the Prince
of Wales. He had good reasons for taking the boy. The prince was
expected to become the next King of England. His father evidently
thought him able to take a very important part in becoming also
the King of France. If all the accounts of him are true, he was a
remarkable youth; wonderfully strong and courageous, and wonderfully
discreet for his years.
There was only one road to success or fame in those days, and that
was the profession of arms. The ambition of every high-born young
fellow was to become a knight. Knighthood was something that both
king and nobles regarded as higher in some respects than even the
royalty or nobility to which they were born. No one could be admitted
into an order of the great brotherhood of knights, which extended
all over Europe and formed an independent society, unless he had
gone through severe discipline, and had performed some distinguished
deed of valor. Then he could wear the golden spurs; for knighthood
had its earliest origin in the distinction of fighting on horseback,
while ordinary soldiers fought on foot. Although knighthood changed
afterward, the word "chivalry" always expressed it, from _cheval_,
a horse. And in addition to valor, which was the result of physical
strength and courage, the knight was expected to be generous,
courteous, faithful, devout, truthful, high-souled, high-principled.
Hence the epithet, "chivalrous," which, even to-day, is so often
heard applied to men of especially fine spirit. "Honor" was the
great word which included all these qualities then, as it does in
some measure now.
I have only time to give you the standard, and cannot pause to tell
you how well or ill it was lived up to generally. But I would not
have taken this story in hand if chivalry had to be left out of
the account, for it was chivalry that made my two boys the heroes
they were.
As soon as King Edward landed at La Hague, he gave very clear
evidence of the serious work he had cut out for his son, and of
his confidence that the youngster would be equal to it. He publicly
pledged his boy, beforehand, to some great deed, and to a life of
valor and honor. In sight of the whole army, he went through the
form of making him a knight. Young Edward, clad in armor, kneeled
down before him on the wet sand, when the king touched his shoulder
with his sword, saying: "I dub thee knight. Be brave, bold, and
loyal!" You may imagine how proudly then the young fellow seized
lance and sword and shield, and sprang into his saddle at a leap,
and with what high resolve he rode on beside his mailed and gallant
father to deserve the name which that impressive ceremony had given
him.
The army moved rapidly forward and northward toward Calais, conquering
everything on its way, till when in the neighborhood of Crecy, the
intelligence came that the French king, Philip, with an army of
one hundred and twenty thousand men and all the chivalry of France,
had come in between it and the sea. There was no retreat possible.
Edward had but thirty thousand to oppose this great host. They were
four to one. He was in a dangerous spot also; but after a time he
succeeded in getting away to a good position, and there he awaited
the onset. No one will doubt that he was anxious enough, and yet
what did he do? After arranging his troops in battle order, three
battalions deep, he sent young Edward to the very front of the
brilliant group of his finest barons to take the brunt of the terrible
charge that was now to come! It shows of what stern material the
king and the men of that time were made, for all his present love,
all his future hope, lay around that gallant boy. But he knew that
the value of the glory which might be earned was worth all the
risk. Besides, he was as much under chivalrous necessity to send
him, as the lad was under to go. That pledge to knighthood, on the
sea-shore, had not been either lightly taken or lightly given. If
chivalry was not equal to sacrifice, it was equal to nothing. There
was keen wisdom, too, in the act. The king could count all the
more on the enthusiasm, self-devotion and valor of the knights and
men-at-arms, in whose keeping he had placed so precious a charge.
That whole first battalion would be nerved to tenfold effort
because the prince was among them, for every one would be as deeply
concerned as the father in the boy's success.
Edward carried his feeling of devotion to his son's best interests
to such a chivalrous extent that he made it a point of duty to keep
out of the battle altogether.
He was nowhere to be seen. He went into a windmill on a height
nearby, and watched the fight through one of the narrow windows
in its upper story. He would not even put on his helmet. That was
the way the father stood by his son--by showing absolute confidence
in him, and denying himself all the glory that might come from a
great and important battle. And the young fellow was a thousandfold
nerved and strengthened by knowing that his father fully trusted
in him.
I need not give the details of the battle. It is sufficient to know
that the first line of the French chivalry charged with the utmost
fury. Among these was an ally of note, John, King of Bohemia, who
with his barons and knights was not behindhand in the deadly onset;
and yet this king was old and blind! His was chivalry in another
form! He would have his stroke in the battle, and he plunged into
it with his horse tied by its reins to one of his knights on either
side. A plume of three ostrich feathers waved from his helmet,
and the chroniclers say he laid about him well. After the battle,
he and his two companions were found dead, with their horses tied
together.
But although the French were brave they were not wise. For not only
had they brought on the fight with headlong energy before they were
prepared, but they had allowed Edward to place himself so that the
afternoon sun, then near its setting, blazed full in their eyes
and faces. Edward's army fought in the shadow. The terrible English
bowmen sent their deadly cloth-yard arrows so thick and fast into
the dazzled and crowded ranks of fifteen thousand Genoese archers
and the intermingled men-at-arms, that the missiles filled the air
like snow. The Genoese were thrown into confusion, and this spread
throughout the whole French army. The French king, with some of
his dukes, flew foaming over the field in the rear, trying in vain
to get up in time to swell the onset upon the English front.
But the onset had proved bad enough as it was. The knights around
the young prince were frightened for his safety. One of them, Sir
Thomas of Norwich, was sent hack to Edward to ask him to come to
the assistance of the prince.
"Sir Thomas," said the king, "is my son dead or unhorsed, or so
wounded that he cannot help himself?"
"Not so, my lord, thank God; but he is fighting against great odds,
and is like to have need of your help."
"Sir Thomas," replied the king, "return to them who sent you, and
tell them from me not to send for me, whatever chance befall them,
so long as my son is alive, and tell them that I bid them let the
lad win his spurs; for I wish, if God so desire, that the day should
be his, and the honor thereof remain to him and to those to whom
I have given him in charge."
And there he stayed in the windmill till the battle was over. Soon
the cry of victory reached him as the French fled in the darkness,
leaving their dead strewn upon the field. Now the young prince
appeared covered with all the glory that his father had coveted
for him, bearing the ostrich plume which he had taken from the dead
King of Bohemia. The boy rode up with his visor raised,--his face
was as fair as a girl's, and glowed under a crown of golden hair.
He bore his trophy aloft, and when it was placed as a knightly
decoration above the crest of his helmet, he little thought that
the triple tuft was to wave for more than five hundred years, even
to this day, on England's front, for such it does, and that, next
to the crown, there shall be no badge so proudly known as the
three feathers which nod above the coronet of the Prince of Wales.
Edward Albert, son of King George V, now wears it because Edward,
the Prince of Wales, when still in his teens, won it at Crecy. We
will leave him there, and go on ten years.
Philip, the French king, had passed away about six years before,
and John, a wild character for such a trying time, had ascended
the throne. He was always plunging himself into difficulties, and
was often guilty of cruelty; and yet was of such a free, generous
nature, and had so many of the virtues of chivalry in that day,
that he was known as "John the Good." He was the extreme opposite
to the grave, prudent, sagacious Edward III, who was still alive
and well, and King of England.
Some time after the victory of Crecy, Calais had been taken, and then
both nations were glad to arrange a truce. Nine years of this had
gone by, when Edward thought it necessary to make another attempt
on France. As soon as might be, therefore, young Edward, his son,
now twenty-five, came over alone, landing at Bordeaux. He had,
meantime, gained great fame. He was now known as "the Black Prince,"
because he had a fancy for having his armor painted as black as
midnight, in order, they say, to give a greater brightness to his
fresh blond complexion and golden hair. Marshaling his little army
of 12,000 men, he set out into the interior of France. When he had
reached the neighborhood of Poitiers, he was astounded by the news
that King John was both after him and behind him, with a force of
60,000 men--five to one! Here was Crecy over again as to numbers,
but there was one thing made it worse; for, as Edward III not long
before had instituted the famous "Order of the Garter" which is
even now one of the foremost orders of knighthood in Europe, so
John, not to be behindhand, and in order to give a new chivalrous
impulse to his nobles, had just instituted the "Order of the Star."
He made five hundred knights of this new order, every one of whom
had vowed that he would never retreat, and would sooner be slain
than yield to an enemy.
The Black Prince thought it almost impossible to fight his way
through such a desperately determined host. So he offered to restore
all he had just conquered and to make another truce, if he might
pass by unmolested. But John would not consent. He must have Calais
back again, and the prince, with one hundred of his best knights,
into the bargain. "This will never do," thought the prince. "Better
try for another Crecy."
On the morning of September 19,1356, the battle began. John had
with him all four of his sons, Charles, Louis, John and Philip; the
eldest only nineteen, and the youngest fourteen. The three former
were put under good guardianship in different portions of the field;
but why the hair-brained monarch took the youngest boy with him
into the very front and thickest of the fight, it is hard to guess,
unless it was another imitation of Edward, and he had also good
reason to think that the lad was unusually well able to take care
of himself, having been trained at arms and pledged to knighthood.
But young "Sir Philip," as he was called, proved quite equal to
the occasion.
King John himself led the van, moving down through a defile, into
which, after a time, his whole army found themselves crowded.
Meantime, the Prince of Wales had planted his army just where he
would tempt John into that trap and had set his archers in good
position. These men were clad in green, like Robin Hood's men, and
carried bows seven feet long and so thick that few men of modern
days could bend them. A cloth-yard shaft from one of these would fly
with tremendous force. Edward had placed these archers in ambush,
behind green hedges, and crouching in the green of the vineyards.
Just as the French king, with all his new chivalry around him, dashed
down the narrow valley--the white standard of France on one side
of him, his keen-eyed little son on the other--and began to deploy
the whole advance battalion, preliminary to a grand charge--whiz!
whiz! whir! whir! from both sides came the arrows, as thick as hail
and as terrible as javelins, from the hidden archers. The astonished
Frenchmen fell back. That crowded still more those who were yet
wedged in the narrow space behind. Now came the English onset.
Then a panic. Then a rout. Then a general flight. Dukes, barons,
knights of all sorts fled with the rest; also Charles, Louis, John,
the three elder sons of the king. The king was in great danger of
being slain; but he did not move, and Philip stood fighting by his
side. The standard-bearer fell, and the white ensign lay in the
dust. Many a faithful knight was cut down, or swept away a prisoner.
But Philip flinched not.
The assailants--some of whom knew the king, while others were
wondering who he might be--pressed them fiercely on every side,
striking at them, but more anxious to take them captives than
to kill them, for they were worth a heavy ransom. The Englishmen
shouted all together, "Yield you! Yield you, else you die!" Little
Sir Philip had no yield in him, as long as his father held out. He
kept close to him, trying to ward off the blows which were aimed
at him, and warning him in time, as his quick eye caught a near
danger on either hand. Every instant he was heard calling out,
"Father, ware right! Father, ware left!" Suddenly a mounted knight
appeared, who hailed the king in French. It was a French knight,
who was fighting on the English side.
"Sir, sir!" he shouted, "I pray you yield!"
"To whom shall I yield me?" said John, "Where is my cousin, the
Prince of Wales?"
"Sir, yield you to me; I will bring you to him."
"Who are you?" said the king.
"Denis de Morbecque, a knight of Artois; I serve the King of England,
not being able to live in France, for I have lost all I possessed
there."
"I yield me to you," said John, handing him his steel glove.
Then the whole crowd began to drag at him, each exclaiming: "I
took him!" Both the king and the prince were sadly hustled, until
two barons broke through the throng by dint of their horses, and
led the two to the tent of the Prince of Wales, "and made him a
present of the King of France!" says an old chronicler. "The prince
also bowed full low before the king, and received him as a king,
properly and discreetly, as he well knew how to do."
In the evening he entertained him and Philip at supper, "and would
not sit at the king's table for all the king's entreaty, but waited
as a serving man, bending the knee before him, and saying: 'Dear
sir, be pleased not to put on so bad a countenance, because it hath
not pleased God to consent this day to your wishes; for, assuredly,
my lord and father will show you all the honor and friendship he
shall be able, and he will come to terms with you so reasonably
that you shall remain good friends forever.'"
Nor did all this end in words, but it went on for years during all
the captivity of King John and Prince Philip,--first at Bordeaux and
afterward at the then new Windsor Castle, in England, where galas,
tournaments, hawking and hunting, and all sorts of entertainments
were devised for them. When King John was brought from Bordeaux
to England, where King Edward had prepared to meet him in great
state, the French king was mounted on a tall, cream-colored charger,
and young Philip rode by his side in great honor also, while the
Prince of Wales sat on a small black horse, like an humble attendant
on them both. The two royal fathers met midway in that London street,
the houses which lined the way were hung with rich tapestries, the
trades were out in companies of many colors, the people thronged
round the steelclad cavalcades as they came together, and they
filled the air with shouts--but what two figures now most fill
the eye when all that pageant has passed away? Not the father who
stood by his son with such chivalrous faith, nor the father whose
son stood by him with such chivalrous devotion, but the fair youth
who carries that tuft of feathers upon his helmet, with its motto,
"I serve," and the lad whom all have heard of as "Philip the Bold";
the boy-hero of Crecy doing chivalrous honor to the boy-hero of
Poitiers!
THE NOBLE BURGHERS OF CALAIS
By Charlotte M. Yonge
Nowhere does the continent of Europe approach Great Britain so
closely as at the Straits of Dover, and when the English sovereigns
were full of the vain hope of obtaining the crown of France, or
at least of regaining the great possessions that their forefathers
had owned as French nobles, there was no spot so coveted by them
as the fortress of Calais, the possession of which gave an entrance
into France.
Thus it was that when, in 1346, Edward III had beaten Philippe VI
at the battle of Crecy, the first use he made of his victory was to
march upon Calais, and lay siege to it. The walls were exceedingly
strong and solid, mighty defenses of masonry, of huge thickness
and like rocks for solidity, guarded it, and the king knew that it
would be useless to attempt a direct assault. Indeed, during all
the middle ages, the modes of protecting fortifications were far
more efficient than the modes of attacking them. The walls could
be made enormously massive, the towers raised to a great height,
and the defenders so completely sheltered by battlements that they
could not easily be injured, and could take aim from the top of
their turrets, or from their loophole windows. The gates had absolute
little castles of their own, a moat flowed round the walls full of
water, and only capable of being crossed by a drawbridge, behind
which the portcullis, a grating armed beneath with spikes, was
always ready to drop from the archway of the gate and close up the
entrance. The only chance of taking a fortress by direct attack was
to fill up the moat with earth and faggots, and then raise ladders
against the walls; or else to drive engines against the defenses,
battering-rams which struck them with heavy beams, mangonels which
launched stones, sows whose arched wooden backs protected troops
of workmen who tried to undermine the wall, and moving towers
consisting of a succession of stages or shelves, filled with soldiers,
and with a bridge with iron hooks, capable of being launched from
the highest story to the top of the battlements. The besieged could
generally disconcert the battering-ram by hanging beds or mattresses
over the walls to receive the brunt of the blow, the sows could
be crushed with heavy stones, the towers burnt by well directed
flaming missiles, the ladders overthrown, and in general the besiegers
suffered a great deal more damage than they could inflict. Cannon
had indeed just been brought into use at the battle of Crecy, but
they only consisted of iron bars fastened together with hoops,
and were as yet of little use, and thus there seemed to be little
danger to a well guarded city from any enemy outside the walls.
King Edward arrived before the place with all his victorious army
early in August, his good knights and squires arrayed in glittering
steel armor, covered with surcoats richly embroidered with their
heraldic bearings; his stout men-at-arms, each of whom was attended
by three bold followers; and his archers, with their cross-bows to
shoot bolts, and long-bows to shoot arrows of a yard long, so that
it used to be said that each went into battle with three men's lives
under his girdle, namely the three arrows he kept there ready to
his hand. With the king was his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, who
had just won the golden spurs of knighthood so gallantly at Crecy
when only in his seventeenth year, and likewise the famous Hainault
knight, Sir Walter Mauny, and all that was noblest and bravest in
England.
This whole glittering army, at their head the king's great
royal standard bearing the golden lilies of France quartered with
the lions of England, and each troop guided by the square banner,
swallow-tailed pennon or pointed pennoncel of their leader, came
marching to the gates of Calais, above which floated the blue
standard of France with its golden flowers, and with it the banner
of the governor, Sir Jean de Vienne. A herald, in a rich long robe
embroidered with the arms of England, rode up to the gate, a trumpet
sounding before him, and called upon Sir Jean de Vienne to give up
the place to Edward, King of England, and of France, as he claimed
to be. Sir Jean made answer that he held the town for Philippe,
King of France, and that he would defend it to the last; the herald
rode back again and the English began the siege of the city.
At first they only encamped, and the people of Calais must have
seen the whole plain covered with the white canvas tents, marshalled
round the ensigns of the leaders, and here and there a more gorgeous
one displaying the colors of the owner. Still there was no attack
upon the walls. The warriors were to be seen walking about in the
leathern suits they wore under their armor; or if a party was to
be seen with their coats of mail on, helmet on head, and lance in
hand, it was not against Calais that they came; they rode out into
the country, and by and by might be seen driving-back before them
herds of cattle and flocks of sheep or pigs that they had seized
and taken away from the poor peasants; and at night the sky would
show red lights where farms and homesteads had been set on fire.
After a time, in front of the tents, the English were to be seen
hard at work with beams and boards, setting up huts for themselves,
and thatching them over with straw or broom.
These wooden houses were all ranged in regular streets, and there
was a market-place in the midst, whither every Saturday came farmers
and butchers to sell corn and meat, and hay for the horses; and
the English merchants and Flemish weavers would come by sea and by
land to bring cloth, bread, weapons, and everything that could be
needed to be sold in this warlike market.
The governor, Sir Jean de Vienne, began to perceive that the king
did not mean to waste his men by making vain attacks on the strong
walls of Calais, but to shut up the entrance by land, and watch
the coast by sea so as to prevent any provisions from being taken
in, and so to starve him into surrendering. Sir Jean de Vienne,
however, hoped that before he should be entirely reduced by famine,
the King of France would be able to get together another army and
come to his relief, and at any rate he was determined to do his
duty, and hold out for his master to the last. But as food was
already beginning to grow scarce, he was obliged to turn out such
persons as could not fight and had no stores of their own, and so
one Wednesday morning he caused all the poor to be brought together,
men, women, and children, and sent them all out of the town, to
the number of 1,700. It was probably the truest mercy, for he had
no food to give them, and they could only have starved miserably
within the town, or have hindered him from saving it for his
sovereign; but to them it was dreadful to be driven out of house
and home, straight down upon the enemy, and they went along weeping
and wailing, till the English soldiers met them and asked why they
had come out. They answered that they had been put out because they
had nothing to eat, and their sorrowful famished looks gained pity
for them. King Edward sent orders that not only should they go
safely through his camp, but that they should all rest, and have
the first hearty dinner that they had eaten for many a day, and he
sent every one a small sum of money before they left the camp, so
that many of them went on their way praying aloud for the enemy
who had been so kind to them.
A great deal happened whilst King Edward kept watch in his wooden
town and the citizens of Calais guarded their walls. England was
invaded by King David II of Scotland, with a great army, arid the
good Queen Philippa, who was left to govern at home in the name of
her little son Lionel, assembled all the forces that were left at
home, and sent them to meet him. And one autumn day, a ship crossed
the Straits of Dover, and a messenger brought King Edward letters
from his queen to say that the Scots army had been entirely defeated
at Nevil's Cross, near Durham, and that their king was a prisoner,
but that he had been taken by a squire named John Copeland, who
would not give him up to her.
King Edward Sent letters to John Copeland to come to him at Calais,
and when the squire had made his journey, the king took him by the
hand saying, "Ha! welcome, my squire, who by his valor has captured
our adversary the King of Scotland."
Copeland, falling on one knee, replied, "If God, out of His great
kindness, has given me the King of Scotland, no one ought to be
jealous of it, for God can, when He pleases, send His grace to a
poor squire as well as to a great lord. Sir, do not take it amiss
if I did not surrender him to the orders of my lady queen, for I
hold my lands of you, and my oath is to you, not to her."
The king was not displeased with his squire's sturdiness, but made
him a knight, gave him a pension of 500_l._. a year, and desired him
to surrender his prisoner to the queen, as his own representative.
This was accordingly done, and King David was lodged in the Tower
of London. Soon after, three days before All Saints' Day, there
was a large and gay fleet to be seen crossing from the white cliffs
of Dover, and the king, his son, and his knights rode down to the
landing-place to welcome plump, fair-haired Queen Philippa, and all
her train of ladies, who had come in great numbers to visit their
husbands, fathers, or brothers in the wooden town. Then there was
a great court, and numerous feasts and dances, and the knights and
squires were constantly striving who could do the bravest deed of
prowess to please the ladies. The King of France had placed numerous
knights and men-at-arms in the neighboring towns and castles, and
there were constant fights whenever the English went out foraging,
and many bold deeds that were much admired were done. The great
point was to keep provisions out of the town, and there was much
fighting between the French who tried to bring in supplies, and the
English who intercepted them. Very little was brought in by land,
and Sir Jean de Vienne and his garrison would have been quite starved
but for two sailors of Abbeville, named Marant and Mestriel, who
knew the coast thoroughly, and often, in the dark autumn evenings,
would guide in a whole fleet of little boats, loaded with bread and
meat for the starving men within the city. They were often chased
by King Edward's vessels, and were sometimes very nearly taken,
but they always managed to escape, and thus they still enabled the
garrison to hold out.
So all the winter passed, Christmas was kept with brilliant feasting
and high merriment by the king and his queen in their wooden palace
outside, and with lean cheeks and scanty fare by the besieged
within. Lent was strictly observed perforce by the besieged, and
Easter brought a betrothal in the English camp; a very unwilling
one on the part of the bridegroom, the young Count of Flanders, who
loved the French much better than the English, and had only been
tormented into giving his consent by his unruly vassals because
they depended on the wool of English sheep for their cloth works.
So, though King Edward's daughter Isabel was a beautiful fair-haired
girl of fifteen, the young count would scarcely look at her; and
in the last week before the marriage-day, while her robes and her
jewels were being prepared, and her father and mother were arranging
the presents they should make to all their court on the wedding-day,
the bridegroom, when out hawking, gave his attendants the slip,
and galloped off to Paris, where he was welcomed by King Philippe.
This made Edward very wrathful, and more than ever determined to
take Calais. About Whitsuntide he completed a great wooden castle
upon the seashore, and placed in it numerous warlike engines, with
forty men-at-arms and 200 archers, who kept such a watch upon the
harbor that not even the two Abbeville sailors could enter it,
without having their boats crushed and sunk by the great stones
that the mangonels launched upon them. The townspeople began to feel
what hunger really was, but their spirits were kept up by the hope
that their king was at last collecting an army for their rescue.
And Philippe did collect all his forces, a great and noble army,
and came one night to the hill of Sangate, just behind the English
army, the knights' armor glancing and their pennons flying in the
moonlight, so as to be a beautiful sight to the hungry garrison who
could see the white tents pitched upon the hillside. Still there
were but two roads by which the French could reach their friends
in the town--one along the seacoast, the other by a marshy road
higher up the country, and there was but one bridge by which the
river could be crossed. The English king's fleet could prevent any
troops from passing along the coast road, the Earl of Derby guarded
the bridge, and there was a great tower, strongly fortified, close
upon Calais. There were a few skirmishes, but the French king,
finding it difficult to force his way to relieve the town, sent
a party of knights with a challenge to King Edward to come out of
his camp and do battle upon a fair field.
To this Edward made answer, that he had been nearly a year before
Calais, and had spent large sums of money on the siege, and that he
had nearly become master of the place, so that he had no intention
of coming out only to gratify his adversary, who must try some
other road if he could not make his way in by that before him.
Three days were spent in parleys, and then, without the slightest
effort to rescue the brave, patient men within the town, away went
King Philippe of France, with all his men, and the garrison saw the
host that had crowded the hill of Sangate melt away like a summer
cloud.
August had come again, and they had suffered privation for a whole
year for the sake of the king who deserted them at their utmost
need. They were in so grievous a state of hunger and distress that
the hardiest could endure no more, for ever since Whitsuntide no
fresh provisions had reached them. The governor, therefore, went
to the battlements and made signs that he wished to hold a parley,
and the king appointed Lord Basset and Sir Walter Mauny to meet
him, and appoint the terms of surrender.
The governor owned that the garrison was reduced to the greatest
extremity of distress, and requested that the king would be contented
with obtaining the city and fortress, leaving the soldiers and
inhabitants to depart in peace.
But Sir Walter Mauny was forced to make answer that the king, his
lord, was so much enraged at the delay and expense that Calais
had cost him, that he would only consent to receive the whole on
unconditional terms, leaving him free to slay, or to ransom, or
make prisoners whomsoever he pleased, and he was known to consider
that there was a heavy reckoning to pay, both for the trouble the
siege had cost him and the damage the Calesians had previously done
to his ships.
The brave answer was: "These conditions are too hard for us. We are
but a small number of knights and squires, who have loyally served
our lord and master as you would have done, and have suffered much
ill and disquiet, but we will endure far more than any man has
done in such a post, before we consent that the smallest boy in the
town shall fare worse than ourselves. I therefore entreat you, for
pity's sake, to return to the king and beg him to have compassion,
for I have such an opinion of his gallantry that I think he will
alter his mind."
The king's mind seemed, however, sternly made up; and all that Sir
Walter Mauny and the barons of the council could obtain from him
was that he would pardon the garrison and townsmen on condition
that six of the chief citizens should present themselves to him,
coming forth with bare feet and heads, with halters round their
necks, carrying the keys of the town, and becoming absolutely his
own to punish for their obstinacy as he should think fit.
On hearing this reply, Sir Jean de Vienne begged Sir Walter Mauny
to wait till he could consult the citizens, and, repairing to the
market-place, he caused a great bell to be rung, at sound of which
all the inhabitants came together in the town-hall. When he told
them of these hard terms he could not refrain from weeping bitterly,
and wailing and lamentation arose all round him. Should all starve
together, or sacrifice their best and most honored after all
suffering in common so long?
Then a voice was heard; it was that of the richest burgher in the
town, Eustache de St. Pierre. "Messieurs, high and low," he said,
"it would be a sad pity to suffer so many people to die through hunger,
if it could be prevented; and to hinder it would be meritorious in
the eyes of our Saviour. I have such faith and trust in finding
grace before God, if I die to save my townsmen, that I name myself
as first of the six."
As the burgher ceased, his fellow-townsmen wept aloud, and many,
amid tears and groans, threw themselves at his feet in a transport
of grief and gratitude. Another citizen, very rich and respected,
rose up and said, "I will be second to my comrade, Eustache."
His name was Jean Daire. After him, Jacques Wissant, another very
rich man, offered himself as companion to these, who were both his
cousins; and his brother Pierre would not be left behind: and two
more, unnamed, made up this gallant band of men willing to offer
their lives for the rescue of their fellow-townsmen.
Sir Jean de Vienne mounted a little horse--for he had been wounded,
and was still lame--and came to the gate with them, followed by
all the people of the town, weeping and wailing, yet, for their own
sakes and their children's, not daring to prevent the sacrifice.
The gates were opened, the governor and the six passed out, and
the gates were again shut behind them. Sir Jean then rode up to
Sir Walter Mauny, and told him how these burghers had voluntarily
offered themselves, begging him to do all in his power to save
them; and Sir Walter promised with his whole heart to plead their
cause. De Vienne then went back into the town, full of heaviness
and anxiety; and the six citizens were led by Sir Walter to
the presence of the king, in his full court. They all knelt down,
and the foremost said: "Most gallant king, you see before you six
burghers of Calais, who have all been capital merchants, and who
bring you the keys of the castle and town. We yield ourselves to
your absolute will and pleasure, in order to save the remainder
of the inhabitants of Calais, who have suffered much distress and
misery. Condescend, therefore, out of your nobleness of mind, to
have pity on us."
Strong emotion was excited among all the barons and knights who
stood round, as they saw the resigned countenances, pale and thin
with patiently-endured hunger, of these venerable men, offering
themselves in the cause of their fellow-townsmen. Many tears of
pity were shed; but the king still showed himself implacable, and
commanded that they should he led away, and their heads stricken
off. Sir Walter Mauny interceded for them with all his might, even
telling the king that such an execution would tarnish his honor,
and that reprisals would be made on his own garrisons; and all
the nobles joined in entreating pardon for the citizens, but still
without effect; and the headsman had been actually sent for, when
Queen Philippa, her eyes streaming with tears, threw herself on
her knees amongst the captives, and said, "Ah, gentle sir, since
I have crossed the sea with much danger to see you, I have never
asked you one favor; now I beg as a boon to myself, for the sake
of the Son of the Blessed Mary, and for your love to me, that you
will be merciful to these men!"
For some time the king looked at her in silence; then he exclaimed:
"Dame, dame, would that you had been anywhere than here! You have
entreated in such a manner that I cannot refuse you; I therefore
give these men to you, to do as you please with."
Joyfully did Queen Philippa conduct the six citizens to her own
apartments, where she made them welcome, sent them new garments,
entertained them with a plentiful dinner, and dismissed them each
with a gift of six nobles. After this, Sir Walter Mauny entered the
city, and took possession of it; retaining Sir Jean de Vienne and
the other knights and squires till they should ransom themselves, and
sending out the old French inhabitants; for the king was resolved
to people the city entirely with English, in order to gain a
thoroughly strong hold of this first step in France.
The king and queen took up their abode in the city; and the houses
of Jean Daire were, it appears, granted to the queen--perhaps,
because she considered the man himself as her charge, and wished to
secure them for him--and her little daughter Margaret was, shortly
after, born in one of his houses. Eustache de St. Pierre was taken
into high favor, and was placed in charge of the new citizens whom
the king placed in the city.
Indeed, as this story is told by no chronicler but Froissart, some
have doubted of it, and thought the violent resentment thus imputed
to Edward III inconsistent with his general character; but it is
evident that the men of Calais had given him strong provocation by
attacks on his shipping--piracies which are not easily forgiven--and
that he considered that he had a right to make an example of them.
It is not unlikely that he might, after all, have intended to forgive
them, and have given the queen the grace of obtaining their pardon,
so as to excuse himself from the fulfillment of some over-hasty
threat. But, however this may have been, nothing can lessen the
glory of the six grave and patient men who went forth, by their own
free will to meet what might be a cruel and disgraceful death, in
order to obtain the safety of their fellow-townsmen.
THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC, THE MAID WHO SAVED FRANCE
Anonymous
Over five hundred years ago, the children of Domremy, a little
village on the border of France, used to dance and sing beneath a
beautiful beech tree. They called it "The Fairy Tree." Among these
children was one named Jeanne, the daughter of an honest farmer,
Jacques d'Arc. Jeanne sang more than she danced, and though she
carried garlands like the other boys and girls, and hung them on the
boughs of the Fairies' Tree, she liked better to take the flowers
into the parish church and lay them on the altars of St. Margaret
and St. Catherine.
She was brought up by her parents (as she told the judges at her
trial) to be industrious, to sew and spin. She did not fear to
match herself at spinning and sewing, she said, against any woman
in Rouen. When very young, she sometimes went to the fields to watch
the cattle. As she grew older, she worked in the house; she did not
any longer watch sheep and cattle. But the times were dangerous, and
when there was an alarm of soldiers or robbers in the neighborhood,
she sometimes helped to drive the flock into a fortified island or
peninsula, for which her father was responsible, in the river near
her home. She learned her creed, she said, from her mother. Twenty
years after her death, her neighbors, who remembered her, described
her as she was when a child. Jean Morin said that she was a good
industrious girl, but that she would often be praying in church
when her father and mother did not know it. Jean Waterin, when he
was a boy, had seen Joan in the fields, "and when they were all
playing together, she would go apart and pray to God, as he thought,
and he and the others used to laugh at her. When she heard the
church bell ring, she would kneel down in the fields." All those
who had seen Joan told the same tale: she was always kind, simple,
industrious, pious and yet merry and fond of playing with the
others.
In Joan's childhood France was under a mad king, Charles VI, and
was torn to pieces by two factions, the party of Burgundy and the
party of Armagnac. The English took advantage of these disputes,
and overran the land. The two parties of Burgundy and Armagnac
divided town from town and village from village. It was as in the
days of the Douglas Wars in Scotland, when the very children took
sides for Queen Mary and King James, and fought each other in the
streets. Domremy was for the Armagnacs--that is, against the English
and for the Dauphin, the son of the mad Charles VI. But at Maxey,
a village near Domremy, the people were all for Burgundy and the
English. The boys of Domremy would go out and fight the Maxey boys
with fists and sticks and stones. Joan did not remember having
taken part in those battles, but she had often seen her brothers
and the Domremy boys come home all bruised and bleeding.
When Joan was between twelve and thirteen (1424), so she swore,
_a Voice came to her from God for her guidance_, but when first it
came, she was in great fear. And it came, that Voice, about noonday,
in the summer season, she being in her father's garden. Joan had
not fasted the day before that, but was fasting when the Voice
came. The Voices at first only told her to be a good girl, and go
to church. The Voice later told her of the great sorrow there was
in France, and that one day she must go into France and help the
country. She had visions with the Voices; visions first of St.
Michael, and then of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. "I saw them
with my bodily eyes, as I see you," she said to her judges," and
when they departed from me I wept, and well I wished that they had
taken me with them."
What are we to think about these visions and these Voices which
were with Joan to her death?
In 1428 only a very few small towns in the east still held out for
the Dauphin, and these were surrounded on every side by enemies.
Meanwhile the Voices came more frequently, urging Joan to go into
France and help her country. She asked how she, a girl, who could
not ride or use sword and lance, could be of any help? At the same
time she was encouraged by one of the vague old prophecies which
were common in France. A legend ran that France was to be saved
by a Maiden from the Oak Wood, and there was an Oak Wood (_le bois
chenu_) near Domremy. Some such prophecy had an influence on Joan,
and probably helped people to believe in her. The Voices often
commanded her to go to Vaucouleurs, a neighboring town which was
loyal, and there meet Robert de Baudricourt, who was captain of the
French garrison. Now, Robert de Baudricourt was a gallant soldier,
but a plain practical man, very careful of his own interest, and
cunning enough to hold his own among his many enemies, English,
Burgundian, and Lorrainers.
Joan had a cousin who was married to one Durand Lassois, at Burey
en Vaux, a village near Vaucouleurs. This cousin invited Joan
to visit her for a week. At the end of that time she spoke to her
cousin's husband. There was an old saying, as we saw, that France
would be rescued by a Maid, and she, as she told Lassois, was that
Maid. Lassois listened, and, whatever he may have thought of her
chances, he led her to Robert de Baudricourt.
Joan came, in her simple red dress, and walked straight up to the
captain. She told him that the Dauphin must keep quiet, and risk
no battle, for, before the middle of Lent next year (1423), God
would send him help. She added that the kingdom belonged, not to
the Dauphin, but to her Master, who willed that the Dauphin should
be crowned, and she herself would lead him to Reims, to be anointed
with the holy oil.
"And who is your Master?" said Robert.
"The King of Heaven!"
Robert, very naturally, thought that Joan was crazed, and shrugged
his shoulders. He bluntly told Lassois to box her ears and take her
back to her father. So she had to go home; but here new troubles
awaited her. The enemy came down on Domremy and burned it; Joan and
her family fled to Neufchateau, where they stayed for a few days.
When Joan looked from her father's garden to the church, she saw
nothing but a heap of smoking ruins. These things only made her
feel more deeply the sorrows of her country. The time was drawing
near when she had prophesied that the Dauphin was to receive help
from heaven--namely, in the Lent of 1429. On that year the season
was held more than commonly sacred, for Good Friday and the
Annunciation fell on the same day. So, early in January, 1429, Joan
turned her back on Domremy, which she was never to see again. Her
cousin Lassois came and asked leave for Joan to visit him again;
so she said good-by to her father and mother, and to her friends.
She went to her cousin's house at Burey, and there she stayed for
six weeks, hearing bad news of the siege of Orleans by the English.
A squire named Jean de Nouillompont met Joan one day.
"Well, my lass," said he, "is our king to be driven from France,
and are we all to become English?"
"I have come here," said Joan, "to bid Robert de Baudricourt lead
me to the king, but he will not listen to me. And yet to the king
I must go, even if I walk my legs down to the knees; for none in all
the world--king, nor duke, nor the King of Scotland's daughter--can
save France, but myself only. Certainly, I would rather stay and
spin with my poor mother, for to fight is not my calling; but I
must go and I must fight, for so my Lord will have it."
"And who is your Lord?" said Jean de Nouillompont.
"He is God," said the Maiden.
On February 12, the story goes, she went to Robert de Baudricourt.
"You delay too long," she said. "On this very day, at Orleans, the
gentle Dauphin has lost a battle."
Now the people of Vaucouleurs brought clothes for Joan to wear on
her journey to the Dauphin. They were such clothes as men wear--doublet,
hose, surcoat, boots, and spurs--and Robert de Baudricourt gave
Joan a sword. Her reason was that she would have to be living alone
among men-at-arms for a ten days' journey and she thought it was
more modest to wear armor like the rest. Also, her favorite saint,
St. Margaret, had done this once when in danger. Besides, in all
the romances of chivalry, we find fair maidens fighting in arms
like men, or travelling dressed as pages.
On February 23, 1429, the gate of the little castle of Vaucouleurs,
"the Gate of France," which is still standing, was thrown open. Seven
travellers rode out, among them two squires, Jean de Nouillompont
and Bertrand de Poulengy, with their attendants, and Joan the Maid.
"Go, and let what will come of it come!" said Robert de Baudricourt.
He did not expect much to come of it. It was a long journey--they
were eleven days on the road--and a dangerous. But Joan laughed
at danger. "God will clear my path to the king, for to this end I
was born." Often they rode by night, stopping at monasteries when
they could, Sometimes they slept out under the sky. Though she was
young and beautiful, these two gentlemen never dreamed of paying
their court to her and making love, as they do in romances, for
they regarded her "as if she had been an angel." They were in awe
of her, they said long afterward, and all the knights who had seen
her said the same.
From Fierbois, Joan made some clerk write to the king that she was
coming to help him, and that she would know him among all his men.
Probably it was here that she wrote to beg her parents pardon, and
they forgave her, she says. Meanwhile, news reached the people then
besieged in Orleans that a marvellous Maiden was riding to their
rescue. On March 6, Joan arrived in Chinon where for two or three
days the king's advisers would not let him see her. At last they
yielded, and she went straight up to him, and when he denied that
he was the king, she told him that she knew well who he was.
"There is the king," said Charles, pointing to a richly dressed
noble.
"No, fair sire. You are he!"
Still, it was not easy to believe. Joan stayed at Chinon in the
house of a noble lady. The young Duc d'Alencon was on her side from
the first.
Great people came to see her and question her, but when she was
alone, she wept and prayed.
Joan was weary of being asked questions. One day she went to Charles
and said, "Gentle Dauphin, why do you delay to believe me? I tell
you that God has taken pity on you and your people, at the prayer
of St. Louis and St. Charlemagne. And I will tell you by your
leave, something which will show you that you should believe me."
Then she told him secretly something which, as he said, none could
know but God and himself.
But the king to whom Joan brought this wonderful message, the
king whom she loved so loyally, and for whom she died, spoiled all
her plans. He, with his political advisers, prevented her from
driving the English quite out of France. These favorites were lazy,
comfortable, cowardly, disbelieving; in their hearts they hated the
Maid, who put them to so much trouble. Charles, to tell the truth,
never really believed in her; he never quite trusted her; he never
led a charge by her side; and in the end, he shamefully deserted
her, and left the Maid to her doom.
Weeks had passed, and Joan had never yet seen a blow struck in war.
She used to exercise herself in horsemanship, and knightly sports
of tilting, and it is wonderful that a peasant-girl became, at once,
one of the best riders among the chivalry of France. The young Duc
d'Alencon and his wife were her friends from the first, when the
politicians and advisers were against her. It was now determined
that Joan should be taken to Poitiers, and examined before all the
learned men, bishops, doctors, and higher clergy who still were on
the side of France. There was good reason for this delay. It was
plain to all, friends and foes, that the wonderful Maid was not like
other men and women, with her Voices, her visions, her prophecies,
and her powers. All agreed that she had some strange help given
to her; but who gave it? This aid must come, people thought then,
either from heaven or hell--either from God and his saints, or
from the devil and his angels. Now, if any doubt could be thrown
on the source whence Joan's aid came, the English might argue (as
of course they did) that she was a witch and a heretic. If she was
a heretic and a witch, then her king was involved in her wickedness,
and so he might be legally shut out from his kingdom. It was
necessary, therefore, that Joan should be examined by learned men.
They must find out whether she had always been good, and a true
believer, and whether her Voices always agreed in everything with
the teachings of the Church. Otherwise her angels must be devils
in disguise. During three long weeks the learned men asked her
questions. They said it was wonderful how wisely this girl, who
"did not know A from B," replied to their puzzling inquiries. She
told the story of her visions, of the command laid upon her to
rescue Orleans.
At last, after examining witnesses from Domremy, and the Queen of
Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was intrusted, the clergy
found nothing in her but "goodness, humility, frank maidenhood,
piety, honesty and simplicity." As for her wearing a man's dress,
the Archbishop of Embrim said to the king, "It is more becoming
to do these things in man's clothes, since they have to be done
amongst men."
The king therefore made up his mind at last. Jean and Pierre,
Joan's brothers, were to ride with her to Orleans; her old friends,
her first friends, Jean de Nouillompont and Bertrand de Poulengy,
had never left her. She was given a squire, a page, and a chaplain.
The king gave Joan armor and horses, and offered her a sword. But
her Voices told her that, behind the altar of St. Catherine de
Fierbois, where she heard mass on her way to Chinori, there was
an old sword, with five crosses on the blade, buried in the earth.
That sword she was to wear. A man whom Joan did not know, and had
never seen, was sent from Tours, and found the sword in the place
which she described. The sword was cleaned of rust, and the king
gave her two sheaths, one of velvet, one of cloth of gold, but
Joan had a leather sheath made for use in war. She also commanded
a banner to be made, with the Lilies of France on a white field.
When once it was settled that she was to lead an army to relieve
Orleans, she showed her faith by writing a letter addressed to the
King of England, Bedford, the Regent, and the English generals at
Orleans. If they did not yield to the Maid and the king, she will
come on them to their sorrow. "Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays
and entreats you not to work your own destruction!"
We may imagine how the English laughed and swore when they received
this letter. They threw the heralds of the Maid into prison,
and threatened to burn them as heretics. From the very first, the
English promised to burn Joan as a witch and a heretic.
At last the men-at-arms who were to accompany Joan were ready.
She was armed in white armor, but unhelmeted, a little axe in her
hand, riding a great black charger. She turned to the church, and
said, in her girlish voice, "You priests and churchmen, make prayers
and processions to God." Then she cried, "Forward, Forward!" and
on she rode at their head, a page carrying her banner. And so Joan
went to war.
She led, she says, ten or twelve thousand soldiers. This army
was to defend a great convoy of provisions of which the people of
Orleans stood in sore need. The people were not starving, but food
came in slowly, and in small quantities. The French general-in-chief
was the famous Dunois. On the English side was the brave Talbot,
who fought under arms for sixty years, and died fighting when he
was over eighty.
Looking _down_ the river Loire, Orleans lies on your right hand. It
had strong walls, towers on the wall, and a bridge of many arches
crossing to the left side of the river. At the further end of this
bridge were a fort and rampart called Les Tourelles, and this fort
had already been taken by the English, so that no French army could
cross the bridge to help Orleans. The rampart and the fort of Les
Tourelles were guarded by another strong work called Les Augustins.
All round the outside of the town, on the right bank, the English
had built strong redoubts, which they called _bastilles_, but on
the east, above the town, and on the Orleans bank of the Loire,
the English had only one bastille, St. Loup. Now, as Joan's army
mustered at Blois, south of Orleans, further down the river, she
might march on the _left_ side of the river, cross it by boats
above Orleans, and enter the town where the English were weakest
and had only one fort, St. Loup. Or she might march up the _right_
bank, and attack the English where they were strongest and had
many bastilles. The Voices bade the Maid act on the boldest plan,
and enter Orleans, where the English were strongest, on the right
bank of the river. The English would not move, said the Voices.
She was certain that they would not even sally out against her.
But Dunois in Orleans, and the generals with the Maid, thought this
plan very perilous. They, therefore, deceived her, caused her to
think that Orleans was on the _left_ bank of the Loire, and led
her thither. When she arrived, she saw that they had not played
her fair, that the river lay between her and the town, and the
strongest force of the enemy.
This girl of seventeen saw that, if a large convoy of provisions
was to be thrown into a besieged town, the worst way was to try
to ferry the supplies across a river under the enemy's fire. But
Dunois and the other generals had brought her to this pass, and
the Maid was sore ill-pleased. The wind was blowing in her teeth;
boats could not cross with the troops and provisions. There she sat
her horse and chafed till Dunois came out and crossed the Loire to
meet her. This is what he says about Joan and her conduct:
"I did not think, and the other generals did not think, that the
men-at-arms with the Maid were a strong enough force to bring the
provisions into the town. Above all, it was difficult to get boats
and ferry over the supplies, for both wind and stream were dead
against us. Then Joan spoke to me thus:
"'Are you the general?'
"'That am I, and glad of your coming.'
"'Is it you who gave counsel that I should come hither by that bank
of the stream, and not go straight where Talbot and the English
are?'
"'I myself, and others wiser than I, gave that advice, and we think
it the better way and the surer.'
"'In God's name, the counsel of our God is wiser and surer than
yours. You thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves,
for I bring you a better rescue than ever shall come to soldier or
city--that is, the help of the King of Heaven, * * *'
"Then instantly, and as it were in one moment, the wind changed that
had been dead against us, and had hindered the boats from carrying
the provisions into Orleans, and the sails filled."
Dunois now wished Joan to cross by boat and enter the town, but
her army could not cross, so the army returned to Blois, to cross
by the bridge there, and come upon the Orleans bank, as Joan had
intended from the first. Then Joan crossed in the boat, holding in
her hand the lily standard. She and La Hire and Dunois rode into
Orleans, where the people crowded round her, blessing her, and
trying to kiss her hand. So they led her with great joy to the
Regnart Gate, and the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the
Duke of Orleans, and there was she gladly received.
Next day, without leave from Joan, La Hire led a sally against the
English, fought bravely, but failed, and Joan wished once more to
bid the English go in peace. The English, of course, did not obey
her summons, and it is said that they answered with wicked words
which made her weep. For she wept readily, and blushed when she was
moved. In her anger she went to a rampart, and, crying aloud, bade
the English begone; but they repeated their insults, and threatened
yet again to burn her. Next day, Dunois went off to bring the
troops from Blois, and Joan rode round and inspected the English
position. They made no attempt to take her. On May 4 the army
returned from Blois. Joan rode out to meet them, priests marched
in procession, singing hymns, but the English never stirred. They
were expecting fresh troops under Fastolf. For some reason, probably
because they did not wish her to run risk, they did not tell Joan
when the next fight began. She had just lain down to sleep when
she leaped up with the noise, wakening her squire. "My Voices tell
me," she said, "that I must go against the English, but whether to
their forts or against Fastolf I know not."
In a moment she was in the street, the page handed to her the lily
flag from the upper window. Followed by her squire, D'Aulon, she
galloped to the Burgundy Gate. They met wounded men. "Never do I
see French blood but my hair stands up on my head," said Joan. She
rode out of the gate to the English fort of St. Loup, which the
Orleans men were attacking. Joan leaped into the fosse, under fire,
holding her banner, and cheering on her men. St. Loup was taken by
the French, in spite of a gallant defence.
The French generals now conceived a plan to make a feint, or
a sham attack, on the English forts where they were strongest, on
the Orleans side of the river. The English on the left side would
cross to help their countrymen, and then the French would take the
forts beyond the bridge. Thus they would have a free path across
the river, and would easily get supplies, and tire out the English.
They only told Joan of the first part of their plan, but she saw
that they were deceiving her. When the plan was explained, she
agreed to it; her one wish was to strike swiftly and strongly.
The French attacked the English fort of Les Augustins, beyond the
river, but suddenly they fled to their bridge of boats, while the
English sallied out, yelling their insults at Joan. She turned,
gathered a few men, and charged. The English ran before her like
sheep; she planted her banner again in the ditch. The French hurried
back to her; a great Englishman, who guarded the breach, was shot;
two French knights leaped in, the others followed, and the English
took refuge in the redoubt of Les Tourelles, their strong fort at
the bridge-head.
The Maid returned to Orleans, and, though it was a Friday, and
she always fasted on Fridays, she was so weary that she ate some
supper. A bit of bread, her page reports, was all that she usually
ate. Now the generals sent to Joan and said that enough had been
done. They had food, and could wait for another army from the king.
"You have been with your council," she said, "I have been with mine.
The wisdom of God is greater than yours. Rise early to-morrow, do
better than your best, keep close by me; for to-morrow have I much
to do, and more than ever yet I did, and to-morrow shall my blood
flow from a wound above my breast." Joan had already said at Chinon
that she would be wounded at Orleans.
The generals did not wish to attack the bridge-tower, but Joan paid
them no attention. They were glad enough to follow, lest she took
the fort without them. About half-past six in the morning the
fight began. The French and Scottish leaped into the fosse, they
set ladders against the walls, they reached the battlements, and
were struck down by English swords and axes. Cannon-balls and great
stones and arrows rained on them. "Fight on!" cried the Maid; "the
place is ours." At one o'clock she set a ladder against the wall
with her own hands, but was deeply wounded by an arrow, which
pierced clean through between neck and shoulder. Joan wept, but
seizing the arrow with her own hands she dragged it out. "Yet,"
says Dunois, "she did not withdraw from the battle, nor took any
medicine for the wound; and the onslaught lasted from morning till
eight at night, so that there was no hope of victory. I desired that
the army should go back to the town, but the Maid came to me and
bade me wait a little longer. Next she mounted her horse and rode
into a vineyard, and there prayed for the space of seven minutes
or eight. Then she returned, took her banner, and stood on the
brink of the fosse. The English trembled when they saw her, but our
men returned to the charge and met with no resistance. The English
fled or were slain, and we returned gladly into Orleans." The people
of Orleans had a great share in this victory. Seeing the English
hard pressed, they laid long beams across the broken arches of the
bridge, and charged by this perilous way. The triumph was even more
that of the citizens than of the army.
Next day the English drew up their men in line of battle. The French
went out to meet them, and would have begun the attack. Joan said
that God would not have them fight.
"If the English attack, we shall defeat them; we are to let them
go in peace if they will."
Mass was then said before the French army.
When the rite was done, Joan asked: "Do they face us, or have they
turned their backs?"
It was the English backs that the French saw, that day: Talbot's
men were in full retreat on Meun.
From that hour, May 8 is kept a holiday at Orleans in honor of Joan
the Maiden. Never was there such a deliverance. In a week the Maid
had driven a strong army, full of courage and well led, out of
forts like Les Tourelles. The Due d'Alencon visited it, and said
that with a few men-at-arms he would have felt certain of holding
it for a week against any strength, however great. But Joan not only
gave the French her spirit: her extraordinary courage in leading
a new charge after so terrible a wound, "six inches deep," says
D'Alencon, made the English think that they were fighting a force
not of this world.
HOW JOAN THE MAID TOOK LARGESS FROM THE ENGLISH
Anonymous
The Maid had shown her sign, as she promised; she had rescued
Orleans. Her next desire was to lead Charles to Reims, through
a country occupied by the English, and to have him anointed there
with the holy oil. Till this was done she could only regard him as
Dauphin--king, indeed, by blood, but not by consecration.
[Illustration: FIGHT ON CRIED THE MAID THE PLACE IS OURS _From the
painting by William Rainey_]
After all that Joan had accomplished, the king and his advisers
might have believed in her. She went to the castle of Loches, where
Charles was; he received her kindly, but still he did not seem eager
to go to Reims. It was a dangerous adventure, for which he and his
favorites had no taste. It seems that more learned men were asked
to give their opinion. Was it safe and wise to obey the Maid?
Councils were now held at Tours, and time was wasted as usual. As
usual, Joan was impatient. With Dunois, she went to see Charles at
the castle of Loches. Some nobles and clergy were with him; Joan
entered, knelt, and embraced his knees. "Noble Dauphin," she said,
"do not hold so many councils, and such weary ones, but come to
Reims and receive the crown."
Harcourt asked her if her Voices, or "counsel" (as she called it),
gave this advice. She blushed and said: "I know what you mean, and
will tell you gladly." The king asked her if she wished to speak
before so many people. Yes, she would speak. When they doubted her,
she prayed, "and then she heard a Voice saying to her:
"'_Fille de Dieu, va, va, je serai a ton aide, val!_'" [Footnote:
"Daughter of God, go on, go on, I will help thee; go!]
"And when she heard this Voice she was glad indeed, and wished
that she could always be as she was then; and as she spoke," says
Dunois, "she rejoiced strangely, lifting her eyes to heaven." And
she repeated: "I will last for only one year, or little more; use
me while you may."
Joan stirred the favorites and courtiers at last. They would go
to Reims, but could they leave behind them English garrisons in
Jargeau, where Suffolk commanded; in Meun, where Talbot was, and in
other strong places? Already, without Joan, the French had attacked
Jargeau, after the rescue of Orleans, and had failed. Joan agreed
to assail Jargeau. Her army was led by the "fair duke," D'Alencon.
Let us tell what followed in the words of the Duc d'Alencon:
"We were about six hundred lances, who wished to go against the
town of Jargeau, then held by the English. That night we slept in
a wood, and next day came Dunois and some other captains. When we
were all met we were about twelve hundred lances; and now arose
a dispute among the captains, some thinking that we should attack
the city, others not so, for they said that the English were very
strong, and had many men. Seeing this difference, Jeanne bade us
have no fear of any numbers, nor doubt about attacking the English,
because God was guiding us. She herself would rather be herding
sheep than fighting, if she were not certain that God was with us.
Thereon we rode to Jargeau, meaning to occupy the outlying houses,
and there pass the night; but the English knew of our approach,
and drove in our skirmishers. Seeing this, Jeanne took her banner
and went to the front, bidding our men be of good heart. And they
did so much that they held the suburbs of Jargeau that night.
* * * Next morning we got ready our artillery, and brought guns up
against the town. After some days a council was held, and I, with
others, was ill content with La Hire, who was said to have parleyed
with Lord Suffolk. La Hire was sent for, and came. Then it was
decided to storm the town, and the heralds cried, 'To the attack!'
and Jeanne said to me, 'Forward, gentle duke.' I thought it was
too early, but she said, 'Doubt not; the hour is come when God
pleases.' As the onslaught was given, Jeanne bade me leave the
place where I stood, 'or yonder gun' pointing to one on the walls,
'will slay you.' Then I withdrew, and a little later De Lude was
slain in that very place. And I feared greatly, considering the
prophecy of the Maid. Then we both went together to the onslaught;
and Suffolk cried for a parley, but no man marked him, and we
pressed on. Jeanne was climbing a ladder, banner in hand, when her
flag was struck by a stone, and she also was struck on her head, but
her light helmet saved her. She leaped up again, crying, 'Friends,
friends; on, on! Our Lord has condemned the English. They are
ours; be of good heart.' In that moment Jargeau was taken, and the
English fled to the bridges, we following, and more than eleven
hundred of them were slain."
Once Joan saw a man-at-arms strike down a prisoner. She leaped from
her horse, and laid the wounded Englishman's head on her breast,
consoling him, and bade a priest come and hear his confession. From
Jargeau the Maid rode back to Orleans, where the people could not
look on her enough, and made great festival.
The garrison of the English in Beaugency did not know whether to
hold out or to yield. Fastolf said that the English had lost heart,
and that Beaugency should be left to its fate, while the rest held
out in strong places and waited for re-enforcements, but Talbot
was for fighting. The English then rode to Meun, and cannonaded
the bridge-fort, which was held by the French. They hoped to take
the bridge, cross it, march to Beaugency, and relieve the besieged
there. But that very night Beaugency surrendered to the Maid! She
then bade her army march on the English, who were retreating to
Paris. But how was the Maid to find the English? "Ride forward,"
she cried, "and you shall have a sure guide." They had a guide,
and a strange one.
The English were marching toward Paris, near Pathay, when their
skirmishers came in with the news that the French were following.
Talbot lined the hedges with five hundred archers of his best, and
sent a galloper to bring thither the rest of his army. On came the
French, not seeing the English in ambush. In a few minutes they
would have been shot down and choked the pass with dying men and
horses. But now was the moment for the strange guide.
A stag was driven from cover by the French, and ran blindly among
the ambushed English bowmen. Not knowing that the French were
so near, and being archers from Robin Hood's country, who loved a
deer, they raised a shout, and probably many an arrow flew at the
stag. The French scouts heard the cry, saw the English and hurried
back with the news. "Forward!" cried the Maid; "if they were hung
to the clouds, we have them. Today the gentle king will gain such
a victory as never yet did he win."
The French dashed into the pass before Talbot had secured it.
Fastolf galloped up, but the English thought that he was in flight;
the captain of the advanced guard turned his horse about and made
off. Talbot was taken, Fastolf fled, "making more sorrow than ever
yet did man." The French won a great victory. They needed their
spurs, as the Maid had told them that they would, to follow their
flying foes. The English lost some 3,000 men. In the evening,
Talbot, as a prisoner, was presented to the Duc d'Alencon.
At last, with difficulty, Charles was brought to visit Reims and
consent to be crowned like his ancestors.
Seeing that he was never likely to move, Joan left the town where
he was and went off into the country. This retreat brought Charles
to his senses. The towns which he passed by yielded to him; Joan
went and summoned each. "Now she was with the king in the centre,
now with the rear guard, now with the van." The town of Troyes,
where there was an English garrison, did not wish to yield. There
was a council in the king's army; they said they could not take
the place.
"In two days it shall be yours, by force or by good-will," said
the Maid. "Six days will do," said the chancellor, "if you are sure
you speak truth."
Joan made ready for an attack. She was calling "Forward!" when the
town surrendered. Reims, after some doubts, yielded also, on July
16, and all the people welcomed the king. On July 17 the king was
crowned and anointed with the holy oil by that very Archbishop
of Reims who always opposed Joan. The Twelve Peers of France were
not all present--some were on the English side--but Joan stood by
Charles, her banner in her hand.
When the ceremony was ended, and the Dauphin Charles was a crowned
and anointed king, the Maid knelt weeping at his feet. "Gentle
king," she said, "now is accomplished the will of God, who desired
that you should come to Reims to be consecrated, and to prove
that you are the true king and the kingdom is yours." Then all the
knights wept for joy.
The king bade Joan choose her reward. Already horses, rich armor,
jewelled daggers, had been given to her. These, adding to the beauty
and glory of her aspect, had made men follow her more gladly, and
for that she valued them. She made gifts to noble ladies, and gave
much to the poor. She only wanted money to wage the war with, not
for herself. Her family was made noble; on their shield, between
two lilies, a sword upholds the crown. Her father was at Reims, and
saw her in her glory. What reward, then, was Joan to choose? She
chose nothing for herself, but that her native village of Domremy
should be free from taxes. This news her father carried home from
the splendid scene at Reims.
As they went from Reims after the coronation, Dunois and the archbishop
were riding by her rein. The people cheered and shouted with joy.
"They are a good people," said Joan. "Never saw I any more joyous
at the coming of their king. Ah, would that I might be so happy
when I end my days as to be buried here!" Said the archbishop:
"Jeanne, in what place do you hope to die?" Then she said: "Where
it pleases God; for I know not that hour, nor that place, more
than ye do. But would to God, my Maker, that now I might depart,
and lay down my arms, and help my father and mother, and keep
their sheep with my brothers and my sisters, who would rejoice to
see me!"
What was to be done after the crowning of the king? Bedford,
the regent for the child Henry VI, expected to see Joan under the
walls of Paris. He was waiting for the troops which the Cardinal
of Winchester had collected in England. Bedford induced Winchester
to bring his men to France, but they had not arrived. The Duke of
Burgundy, the head of the great French party which opposed Charles,
had been invited by the Maid to Reims. Again she wrote to him:
"Make a firm, good peace with the King of France," she said; "forgive
each other with kind hearts"; "I pray and implore you, with joined
hands, fight not against France."
The Duke of Burgundy, far from listening to Joan's prayer, left
Paris and went to raise men for the English. Meanwhile, Charles
was going from town to town, and all received him gladly. But Joan
soon began to see that instead of marching west from Reims to Paris,
the army was being led southwest toward the Loire. There the king
would be safe among his dear castles, where he could live indoors,
and take his ease. Thus Bedford was able to throw 5,000 men of
Winchester's into Paris, and even dared to come out and hunt for
the French king. The French should have struck at Paris at once, as
Joan desired. The delays were excused because the Duke of Burgundy
had promised to surrender Paris in a fortnight. But this he did
merely to gain time. Joan knew this, and said there would be no
peace but at the lance-point.
The French and English armies kept watching each other, and there
were skirmishes near Senlis. On August 15, the Maid and d'Alencon
hoped for a battle. But the English had fortified their position
in the night. Come out they would not, so Joan rode up to their
fortification, standard in hand, struck the palisade and challenged
them to sally forth. She even offered to let them march out and
draw themselves up in line of battle. The Maid stayed on the field
all night and next day made a retreat, hoping to draw the English
out of their fort. But they were too wary and went back to Paris.
Now the fortnight was over, after which the Duke of Burgundy was
to surrender Paris, but he did nothing of the kind. The Maid was
weary of words. She called the Duc d'Alencon and said: "My fair
duke, array your men, for, by my staff, I would fain see Paris
more closely than I have seen it yet." On August 23, the Maid and
d'Alencon left the king at Compiegne and rode to St. Denis, where
were the tombs of the kings of France. "And when the king heard
that they were at St. Denis, he came, very sore against his will,
as far as Senlis, and it seems that his advisers were contrary to
the will of the Maid, of the Duc d'Alencon, and of their company."
The king was afraid to go near Paris, but Bedford was afraid to
stay in the town. He went to Rouen, the strongest English hold in
Normandy, leaving the Burgundian army and 2,000 English in Paris.
Every day, the Maid and d'Alencon rode from St. Denis to the gates
of Paris, to observe the best places for an attack. And still
Charles dallied and delayed, still the main army did not come up.
Thus the delay of the king gave the English time to make Paris
almost impregnable and to frighten the people who, had Charles
marched straight from Reims, would have yielded as Reims did.
D'Alencon kept going to Senlis urging Charles to come up with the
main army. He went on September 1--the king promised to start next
day. D'Alencon returned to the Maid, the king still loitered. At
last d'Alencon brought him to St. Denis on September 7, and there
was a skirmish that day.
In the book of Perceval de Cagny, who was with his lord, the Duc
d'Alencon, he says: "The assault was long and fierce, and it was
marvel to hear the noise of the cannons and culverins from the
walls, and to see the clouds of arrows. Few of those in the fosse
with the Maid were struck, though many others on horse and foot
were wounded with arrows and stone cannon-balls, but by God's grace
and the Maid's good fortune, there was none of them but could return
to camp unhelped. The assault lasted from noon till dusk--say eight
in the evening. After sunset, the Maid was struck by a crossbow
bolt in the thigh; and, after she was hurt, she cried but the louder
that all should attack, and that the place was taken. But as night
had now fallen and she was wounded, and the men-at-arms were weary
with the long attack, De Gaucourt and others came and found her,
and, against her will, brought her forth from the fosse. And so
ended that onslaught. But right sad she was to leave and said,
'By my baton, the place would have been taken.' They put her on
horseback, and led her to her quarters, and all the rest of the
king's company who that day had come from St. Denis."
"Next day," says Cagny, "in spite of her wound, she was first in
the field. She went to d'Alencon and bade him sound the trumpet
for the charge. D'Alencon and the other captains were of the same
mind as the Maid, and Montmorency with sixty gentlemen and many
lances came in, though he had been on the English side before. So
they began to march on Paris, but the king sent messengers, and
compelled the Maid and the captains to return to St. Denis. Right
sorry were they, yet they must obey the king. When she saw that
they would go, she dedicated her armor, and hung it up before the
statue of Our Lady at St. Denis, and so right sadly went away in
company with the king. And thus were broken the will of the Maid
and the army of the king."
The courtiers had triumphed. They had thwarted the Maid, they had
made her promise to take Paris of no avail. They had destroyed the
confidence of men in the banner that had never gone back.
The king now went from one pleasant tower on the Loire to another,
taking the Maid with him. Meanwhile, the English took and plundered
some of the cities which had yielded to Charles, and they carried
off the Maid's armor from the chapel in St. Denis. Her Voices had
bidden her stay at St. Denis, but this she was not permitted to
do, and now she must hear daily how the loyal towns that she had
won were plundered by the English, and all her work seemed wasted.
The Duc d'Alencon offered to lead an army against the English in
Normandy, if the Maid might march with him, for the people had not
wholly lost faith, but the courtiers and the Archbishop of Reims,
who managed the king and the war, would not consent, nor would they
allow the Maid and the duke to even see each other.
Joan wanted to return to Paris, but the council sent her to take
La Charite and Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier from the English. This town
she attacked first. Her squire, a gentleman named d'Aulon, was with
her, and described what he saw. "When they had besieged the place
for some time, an assault was commanded, but for the great strength
of the forts and the numbers of the enemy the French were forced
to give way. At that hour I who speak was wounded by an arrow in
the heel, and could not stand or walk without crutches. But I saw
the Maid holding her ground with a handful of men, and, fearing ill
might come of it, I mounted a horse and rode to her, asking what
she was doing there alone, and why she did not retreat like the
others. She took the _salade_ from her head, and answered that
she was not alone, but had in her company fifty thousand of her
people; and that go she would not till she had taken that town,
"But, whatever she said, I saw that she had with her but four men
or five, as others also saw, wherefore I bade her retreat. Then she
commanded me to have fagots brought, and planks to bridge fosses.
And as she spoke to me, she cried in a loud voice, 'All of you, bring
fagots to fill the fosse.' And this was done, whereat I greatly
marvelled, and instantly that town was taken by assault with no
great resistance. And all that the Maid did seemed to me rather
deeds divine than natural, and it was impossible that so young
a maid should do such deeds without the will and guidance of Our
Lord."
DEATH OF JOAN THE MAID
Anonymous
From there the Maid rode to attack La Charite. But, though the
towns helped her as well as they might with money and food, her
force was too small and was too ill provided with everything, for
the king did not send supplies. She abandoned the siege and departed
in great displeasure. The court now moved from place to place,
with Joan following in its train; for three weeks she stayed with
a lady who describes her as very devout and constantly in church.
Thinking her already a saint, people brought her things to touch.
"Touch them yourselves," she said; "your touch is as good as mine."
Winter was over and spring came on, but still the king did nothing.
The Maid could be idle no longer. Without a word to the king,
she rode to Lagny, "for there they had fought bravely against the
English." These men were Scots, under Sir Hugh Kennedy. In mid-April
she was at Melun. There "she heard her Voices almost every day,
and many a time they told her that she would presently be taken
prisoner." Her year was over. She prayed that she might die as soon
as she was taken, without the long sorrow of imprisonment. Then her
Voices told her to bear graciously whatever befell her, for so it
must be. But they told her not the hour of her captivity. "If she
had known the hour she would not then have gone to war. And often
she prayed them to tell her of that hour, but they did not answer."
These words are Joan's. She spoke them to her judges at Rouen.
The name of Joan was now such a terror to the English that men
deserted rather than face her in arms. At this time the truce with
Burgundy ended, and the duke openly set out to besiege the strong
town of Compiegne, held by De Flavy for France. Burgundy had
invested Compiegne, when Joan, with four hundred men, rode into
the town secretly at dawn. That day Joan led a sally against the
Burgundians. Her Voices told her nothing, good or bad, she says.
The Burgundians were encamped at Margny and at Clairoix, the English
at Venette, villages on a plain near the walls. Joan crossed the
bridge on a gray charger, in a surcoat of crimson silk, rode through
the redoubt beyond the bridge, and attacked the Burgundians. De
Flavy in the town was to prevent the English from attacking her in
the rear. He had boats on the river to secure Joan's retreat, if
necessary.
Joan swept through Margny driving the Burgundians before her; the
garrison of Clairoix came to their help; the battle was doubtful.
Meanwhile the English came up; they could not have reached
the Burgundians, to aid them, but some of the Maid's men, seeing
the English standards, fled. The English followed them under the
walls of Compiegne; the gate of the redoubt was closed to prevent
the English from entering with the runaways. Like Hector under
Troy, the Maid was shut out from the town which she came to save.
Joan was with her own foremost line when the rear fled. They told
her of her danger; she heeded not. Her men seized her bridle and
turned her horse's head about. The English held the entrance from
the causeway; Joan and a few men were driven into a corner of the
outer wall. A rush was made at Joan. "Yield! yield to me!" each
man cried.
"I have given my faith to Another," she said, "and I will keep my
oath."
Her enemies confess that on this day Joan did great feats of arms,
covering the rear of her force when they had to fly. Some French
historians hold that the gates were closed, by treason, that the
Maid might be taken.
The Maid, as a prisoner, was led to Margny, where the Burgundian
and English captains rejoiced over her. They had her at last, the
girl who had driven them from fort and field. Not a French lance
was raised to rescue her; not a sou did the king send to ransom
her.
Within two days of her capture, the Vicar-General of the Inquisition
in France claimed her as a heretic and a witch. The English knights
let the doctors of the University of Paris judge and burn the girl
whom they seldom dared to face in war. She was the enemy of the
English, and the English believed in witchcraft. Joan was now kept
in a high tower and was allowed to walk on the leads. She knew
she was sold to England, she had heard that the people of Compiegne
were to be massacred. She would rather die than fall into English
hands, but she hoped to escape and relieve Compiegne. She therefore
prayed for counsel to her Saints; might she leap from the top of
the tower? Would they not bear her up in their hands? St. Catherine
bade her not to leap; God would help her and the people of Compiegne.
Then, for the first time, as far as we know, the Maid wilfully
disobeyed her Voices. She leaped from the tower. They found her,
not wounded, not a limb broken, but stunned. She knew not what
had happened; they told her she had leaped down For three days she
could not eat, "yet was she comforted by St. Catherine, who bade
her confess and seek pardon of God, and told her that, without
fail, they of Compiegne should be relieved before Martinmas." This
prophecy was fulfilled. Joan was more troubled about Compiegne than
about her own coming doom.
She was now locked up in an iron cage at Rouen. The person who
conducted the trial was her deadly enemy, the Bishop of Beauvais,
Cauchon, whom she and her men had turned out of his bishopric.
Next, Joan was kept in strong irons day and night, always guarded
by five English soldiers. Weakened by long captivity and ill usage,
she, an untaught girl, was questioned repeatedly for three months
by the most cunning and learned doctors of law of the Paris
University. Often many spoke at once, to perplex her mind. But
Joan always showed a wisdom which confounded them, and which is at
least as extraordinary as her skill in war. She would never swear
an oath to answer _all_ their questions. About herself, and all
matters bearing on her own conduct, she would answer. About the
king, and the secrets of the king, she would not answer. If they
forced her to reply about these things, she frankly said, she would
not tell them the truth. The whole object of the trial was to prove
that she dealt with powers of evil, and that her king had been
crowned and aided by the devil. Her examiners, therefore, attacked
her day by day, in public and in her dungeon, with questions about
these visions which she held sacred and could only speak of with
a blush among her friends. She maintained that she certainly did
see and hear her Saints, and that they came to her by the will of
God. This was called blasphemy and witchcraft.
Most was made of her refusal to wear woman's dress. For this she
seems to have had two reasons: first, that to give up her old dress
would have been to acknowledge that her mission was ended; next,
for reasons of modesty, she being alone in prison among ruffianly
men. She would wear woman's dress if they would let her take the
Holy Communion, but this they refused. To these points she was
constant: she would not deny her visions; she would not say one word
against her king, "the noblest Christian in the world" she called
him, who had deserted her. She would not wear woman's dress in
prison. They took her to the torture-chamber, and threatened her
with torture. Finally, they put her up in public, opposite a pile
of wood ready for burning, where she was solemnly preached to for
the last time. All through her trial, her Voices bade her answer
boldly, in three months she would give her last answer, in three
months "she would be free with great victory, and come into the
Kingdom of Paradise."
At last, in fear of the fire and the stake before her, and on promise
of being taken to a kindlier prison among women, and released from
chains, she promised to renounce her visions, and submit to Cauchon
and her other enemies. Some little note on paper she now signed
with a cross, and repeated a short form of words. By some trick
this signature was changed for a long document, in which she was
made to confess all her visions false.
Cauchon had triumphed. The blame of heresy and witchcraft was cast
on Joan, and on her king as an accomplice. But the English were
not satisfied; they made an uproar, they threatened Cauchon, for
Joan's life was to be spared. She was to be in prison all her days,
on bread and water, but while she lived they dared scarcely stir
against the French. They were soon satisfied.
Joan's prison was not changed. There soon came news that she had
put on man's dress again. The judges went to her. She told them
(they say) that she put on this dress of her own free will. In
confession, later, she told her priest that she had been refused
any other dress, and had been brutally treated both by the soldiers
and by an English lord.
In any case, the promises made to her had been broken. The judge
asked her if her Voices had been with her again.
"Yes."
"What did they say?"
"God told me by the Voices of the great sorrow of my treason, when
I abjured to save my life."
"Do you believe the Voices came from St. Margaret and St. Catherine?"
"Yes, and that they are from God."
She added that she had never meant to deny this, had not understood
that she had denied it.
All was over now; she was a "relapsed heretic."
Enough. They burned Joan the Maid. She did not suffer long. Her
eyes were fixed on a cross which a priest, Martin l'Advenu, held
up before her. She maintained, he says, to her dying moment, the
truth of her Voices. With a great cry of JESUS! she gave up her
life. Even the English wept, even a secretary of the English king
said that they had burned a Saint.
Twenty years after her death Charles VII, in his own interest,
induced the Pope to try the case of Joan over again. They collected
the evidence of most of the living people who had known her, the
Domremy peasants, from Dunois, d'Alencon, d'Aulon, from Isambart
and l'Advenu, they learned how nobly she died, and how she never
made one complaint, but forgave all her enemies freely. All these
old Latin documents were collected, edited, and printed, in 1849,
by Monsieur Jules Quicherat, a long and noble labor.
HOW CATHERINE DOUGLAS TRIED TO SAVE KING JAMES OF SCOTLAND
By Charlotte M. Yonge
It was bedtime, and the old vaulted chambers of the Dominican monastery
at Perth echoed with sounds that would seem incongruous in such a
home of austerity, but that the disturbed state of Scotland rendered
it the habit of her kings to attach their palaces to convents, that
they themselves might benefit by the "peace of the Church," which
was in general accorded to all sacred spots.
Thus it was that Christmas and Carnival time of 1435-6 had been
spent by the court in the cloisters of Perth, and the dance, the
song, and the tourney had strangely contrasted with the grave and
self-denying habits to which the Dominicans were devoted in their
neighboring cells. The festive season was nearly at an end, for
it was the 20th of February, but the evening had been more than
usually gay, and had been spent in games at chess, tables, or
backgammon, reading romances of chivalry, harping and singing. King
James himself, brave and handsome, and in the prime of life, was
the blithest of the whole joyous party. He was the most accomplished
man in his dominions; for though he had been basely kept a prisoner
at Windsor throughout his boyhood by Henry IV of England, an
education had been bestowed on him far above what he would have
otherwise obtained; and he was naturally a man of great ability,
refinement, and strength of character. Not only was he a perfect
knight on horseback, but in wrestling and running, throwing
the hammer, and "putting the stane," he had scarcely a rival, and
he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry,
composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel,
able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen,
the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy
in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking
on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are
still preserved. They had now been eleven years married, and their
court was one bright spot of civilization, refinement, and grace,
amid the savagery of Scotland. And now, after the pleasant social
evening, the queen, with her long fair hair unbound, was sitting
under the hands of her tirewomen, who were preparing her for the
night's rest; and the king, in his furred nightgown, was standing
before the bright fire on the hearth of the wide chimney, laughing
and talking with the attendant ladies.
Yet dark hints had already been whispered, which might have cast
a shadow over that careless mirth. Always fierce and vindictive,
the Scots had been growing more and more lawless and savage ever
since the disputed succession of Bruce and Balliol had unsettled all
royal authority, and led to one perpetual war with the English. The
twenty years of James's captivity had been the worst of all--almost
every noble was a robber chief, Scottish borderer preyed upon
English borderer, Highlander upon Lowlander, knight upon traveler,
every one who had armor upon him who had not; each clan was at deadly
feud with its neighbor; blood was shed like water from end to end
of the miserable land, and the higher the birth of the offender
the greater the impunity he claimed.
Indeed, James himself had been brought next to the throne by one of
the most savage and horrible murders ever perpetrated--that of his
elder brother, David, by his own uncle; and he himself had probably
been only saved from sharing the like fate by being sent out of the
kingdom. His earnest words on his return to take the rule of this
unhappy realm were these: "Let God but grant me life, and there
shall not be a spot in my realm where the key shall not keep the
castle, and the bracken bush the cow, though I should lead the life
of a dog to accomplish it."
This great purpose had been before James through the eleven years
of his reign, and he had worked it out resolutely. The lawless
nobles would not brook his ruling hand, and strong and bitter was
the hatred that had arisen against him. In many of his transactions
he was far from blameless: he was sometimes tempted to craft,
sometimes to tyranny; but his object was always a high and kingly
one, though he was led by the horrible wickedness of the men he
had to deal with more than once to forget that evil is not to be
overcome with evil, but with good. In the main, it was his high
and uncompromising resolution to enforce the laws upon high and low
alike that led to the nobles' conspiracies against him; though, if
he had always been true to his purpose of swerving neither to the
right nor to the left, he might have avoided the last fatal offense
that armed the murderer against his life.
The chief misdoers in the long period of anarchy had been his uncles
and cousins; nor was it till after his eldest uncle's death that
his return home had been possible. With a strong hand had he avenged
upon the princes and their followers the many miseries they had
inflicted upon his people; and in carrying out these measures he
had seized upon the great earldom of Strathern, which had descended
to one of their party in right of his wife, declaring that it could
not be inherited by a female. In this he appears to have acted
unjustly, from the strong desire to avail himself by any pretext
of an opportunity of breaking the overweening power of the great
turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the loss, he created the new
earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise Graham, the son of the
dispossessed earl. But the proud and vindictive Grahams were not
thus to be pacified. Sir Robert Graham, the uncle of the young
earl, drew off into the Highlands, and there formed a conspiracy
among other discontented men who hated the resolute government that
repressed their violence. Men of princely blood joined in the plot,
and 300 Highland catherans were ready to accompany the expedition
that promised the delights of war and plunder.
Even when the hard-worked king was setting forth to enjoy his holiday
at Perth, the traitors had fixed upon that spot as the place of
his doom; but the scheme was known to so many, that it could not
be kept entirely secret, and warnings began to gather round the
king. When, on his way to Perth, he was about to cross the Firth of
Forth, the wild figure of a Highland woman appeared at his bridle
rein, and solemnly warned him "that, if he crossed that water, he
would never return alive." He was struck by the apparition, and
bade one of his knights to inquire of her what she meant; but the
knight must have been a dullard or a traitor, for he told the king
that the woman was either mad or drunk, and no notice was taken of
her warning.
There was likewise a saying abroad in Scotland, that the new year,
1436, should see the death of a king; and this same carnival night,
James, while playing at chess with a young friend, whom he was wont
to call the king of love, laughingly observed that "it must be you
or I, since there are but two kings in Scotland--therefore, look
well to yourself."
Little did the blithe monarch guess that at that moment one of the
conspirators, touched by a moment's misgiving, was hovering round,
seeking in vain for an opportunity of giving him warning; that even
then his chamberlain and kinsman, Sir Robert Stewart, was enabling
the traitors to place boards across the moat for their passage,
and to remove the bolts and bars of all the doors in their way.
And the Highland woman was at the door, earnestly entreating to
see the king if but for one moment! The message was even brought
to him, but alas! he bade her wait till the morrow, and she turned
away, declaring that she should never more see his face!
And now, as before said, the feast was over, and the king stood,
gayly chatting with his wife and her ladies, when the clang of arms
was heard, and the glare of torches in the court below flashed on
the windows. The ladies flew to secure the doors. Alas! the bolts
and bars were gone! Too late the warnings returned upon the king's
mind, and he knew it was he alone who was sought. He tried to
escape by the windows, but here the bars were but too firm. Then
he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in the floor, by which he
let himself down into the vault below, just as the murderers came
rushing along the passage, slaying on their way a page named Walter
Straiton.
There was no bar to the door. Yes, there was. Catherine Douglas,
worthy of her name, worthy of the cognizance of the bleeding heart,
thrust her arm through the empty staples to gain for her sovereign
a few moments more for escape and safety! But though true as steel,
the brave arm was not as strong. It was quickly broken. She was
thrust fainting aside, and the ruffians rushed in. Queen Joan stood
in the midst of the room, with her hair streaming round her, and
her mantle thrown hastily on. Some of the wretches even struck and
wounded her, but Graham called them off, and bade them search for
the king. They sought him in vain in every corner of the women's
apartments, and dispersed through the other rooms in search of
their prey. The ladies began to hope that the citizens and nobles
in the town were coming to their help, and that the king might
have escaped through an opening that led from the vault into the
tennis-court. Presently, however, the king called to them to draw
him up again, for he had not been able to get out of the vault,
having a few days before caused the hole to be bricked up, because
his tennis-balls used to fly into it and be lost. In trying to
draw him up by the sheets, Elizabeth Douglas, another of the ladies,
was actually pulled down into the vault; the noise was heard by
the assassins, who were still watching outside, and they returned.
There is no need to tell of the foul and cruel slaughter that
ensued, nor of the barbarous vengeance that visited it. Our tale
is of golden, not of brazen deeds; and if we have turned our eyes
for a moment to the Bloody Carnival of Perth, it is for the sake of
the king, who was too upright for his bloodthirsty subjects, and,
above all, for that of the noble-hearted lady whose frail arm was
the guardian of her sovereign's life in the extremity of peril.
THE BRAVE QUEEN OF HUNGARY
By Charlotte M. Yonge
Of all the possessions of the old kingdom of Hungary, none was more
valued than what was called the Crown of St. Stephen, so called from
one which had, in the year 1000, been presented by Pope Sylvester
II to Stephen, the second Christian Duke, and first King of Hungary.
A crown and a cross were given to him for his coronation, which
took place in the Church of the Holy Virgin, at Alba Regale, also
called in German Weissenburg, where thenceforth the kings of Hungary
were anointed to begin their troubled reigns, and at the close of
them were laid to rest beneath the pavement, where most of them
might have used the same epitaph as the old Italian leader: "He rests
here, who never rested before." For it was a wild realm, bordered
on all sides by foes, with Poland, Bohemia, and Austria, ever
casting greedy eyes upon it, and afterwards with the Turk upon the
southern border, while the Magyars, or Hungarian nobles, themselves
were a fierce and untamable race, bold and generous, but brooking
little control, claiming a voice in choosing their own sovereign,
and to resist him, even by force of arms, if he broke the laws. No
prince had a right to their allegiance unless he had been crowned
with St. Stephen's crown; but if he had once worn that sacred
circle, he thenceforth was held as the only lawful monarch, unless
he should flagrantly violate the Constitution. In 1076, another
crown had been given by the Greek emperor to Geysa, King of Hungary,
and the sacred crown combined the two. It had the two arches of
the Roman crown, and the gold circlet of the Constantinopolitan;
and the difference of workmanship was evident.
In the year 1439 died King Albert, who had been appointed King of
Hungary in right of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. He left a little
daughter only four years old, and as the Magyars had never been
governed by a female hand, they proposed to send and offer their
crown, and the hand of their young widowed queen, to Wladislas, the
King of Poland. But Elizabeth had hopes of another child, and in
case it should be a son, she had no mind to give away its rights
to its father's throne. How, then, was she to help herself among
the proud and determined nobles of her court? One thing was certain,
that if once the Polish King were crowned with St. Stephen's crown,
it would be his own fault if he were not King of Hungary as long
as he lived; but if the crown were not to be found, of course he
could not receive it, and the fealty of the nobles would not be
pledged to him.
The most trustworthy person she had about her was Helen Kottenner,
the lady who had the charge of her little daughter, Princess
Elizabeth, and to her she confided her desire that the crown might
be secured, so as to prevent the Polish party from getting access
to it. Helen herself has written down the history of these strange
events, and of her own struggles of mind at the risk she ran, and
the doubt whether good would come of the intrigue; and there can
be no doubt that, whether the queen's conduct were praiseworthy or
not, Helen dared a great peril for the sake purely of loyalty and
fidelity. "The queen's commands," she says, "sorely troubled me;
for it was a dangerous venture for me and my little children, and
I turned it over in my mind what I should do, for I had no one to
take counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did it not, and
evil arose therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the world.
So I consented to risk my life on this difficult undertaking; but
desired to have some one to help me." This was permitted; but the
first person to whom the Lady of Kottenner confided her intention,
a Croat, lost his color from alarm, looked like one half dead, and
went at once in search of his horse. The next thing that was heard
of him was that he had had a bad fall from his horse, and had been
obliged to return to Croatia, and the queen remained much alarmed
at her plans being known to one so faint-hearted. However, a more
courageous confidant was afterwards found in a Hungarian gentleman,
whose name has become illegible in Helen's old manuscript.
The crown was in the vaults of the strong castle of Plintenburg,
also called Vissegrad, which stands upon a bend of the Danube,
about twelve miles from the twin cities of Buda and Pesth. It was
in a case, within a chest, sealed with many seals, and since the
king's death, it had been brought up by the nobles, who closely
guarded both it and the queen, into her apartments, and there
examined and replaced it in the chest. The next night, one of the
queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being aware of it, and
before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner of the
chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion that
lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be
taken down again into the vault, and had fastened the doors with
many locks and with seals. The castle had further been put into
the charge of Ladislas von Gara, the queen's cousin, and Ban, or
hereditary commander, of the border troops, and he had given it
over to a Burggraf, or seneschal, who had placed his bed in the
chamber where was the door leading to the vaults.
The queen removed to Komorn, a castle higher up the Danube, in
charge of her faithful cousin, Count Ulric of Eily, taking with
her her little daughter Elizabeth, Helen Kottenner, and two other
ladies. This was the first stage on the journey to Presburg, where
the nobles had wished to lodge the queen, and from thence she sent
back Helen to bring the rest of the maids of honor and her goods
to join her at Komorn. It was early spring, and snow was still on
the ground, and the Lady of Kottenner and her faithful nameless
assistant travelled in a sledge; but two Hungarian noblemen went
with them, and they had to be most careful in concealing their
arrangements. Helen had with her the queen's signet, and keys; and
her friend had a file in each shoe, and keys under his black velvet
dress.
On arriving in the evening, they found that the Burggraf had fallen
ill, and could not sleep in the chamber leading to the vault, because
it belonged to the ladies' chambers, and that he had therefore
put a cloth over the padlock of the door and sealed it. There was
a stove in the room, and the maidens began to pack up their clothes
there, an operation that lasted till eight o'clock; while Helen's
friend stood there, talking and jesting with them, trying all the
while to hide the files, and contriving to say to Helen: "Take care
that we have a light." So she begged the old housekeeper to give
her plenty of wax tapers, as she had many prayers to say. At last
every one was gone to bed, and there only remained in the room
with Helen, an old woman, whom she had brought with her, who knew
no German, and was fast asleep. Then the accomplice came back through
the chapel, which opened into this same hall. He had on his black
velvet gown and felt shoes, and was followed by a servant, who,
Helen says, was bound to him by oath, and had the same Christian
name as himself, this being evidently an additional bond of fidelity.
Helen, who had received from the queen all the keys of this outer
room, let them in, and, after the Burggraf's cloth and seal had been
removed, they unlocked the padlock and the other two locks of the
outer door of the vault, and the two men descended into it. There
were several other doors, whose chains required to be filed through,
and their seals and locks broken, and to the ears of the waiting
Helen the noise appeared fatally loud. She says: "I devoutly prayed
to God and the Holy Virgin, that they would support and help me;
yet I was in greater anxiety for my soul than for my life, and I
prayed to God that He would be merciful to my soul, and rather let
me die at once there, than that anything should happen against His
will, or that should bring misfortune on my country and people."
She fancied she heard a noise of armed men at the chapel door, but
finding nothing there, believed that it was a spirit, and returning
to her prayers, vowed, poor lady, to make a pilgrimage to St. Maria
Zell, in Styria, if the Holy Virgin's intercessions obtained their
success, and till the pilgrimage could be made, "to forego every
Saturday night my feather bed!" After another false alarm at a
supposed noise at the maidens' door, she ventured into the vault
to see how her companions were getting on, when she found they
had filed away all the locks, except that of the case containing
the crown, and this they were obliged to burn, in spite of their
apprehension that the smell and smoke might be observed. They then
shut up the chest, replaced the padlocks and chains with those
they had brought for the purpose, and renewed the seals with the
queen's signet, which, bearing the royal arms, would baffle detection
that the seals had been tampered with. They then took the crown
into the chapel, where they found a red velvet cushion, so large
that by taking out some of the stuffing a hiding-place was made in
which the crown was deposited, and the cushion sewn up over it.
By this time day was dawning, the maidens were dressing, and it was
the hour for setting off for Komorn. The old woman who had waited
on them came to the Lady of Kottenner to have her wages paid, and
be dismissed to Buda. While she was waiting, she began to remark
on a strange thing lying by the stove, which, to the Lady Helen's
great dismay, she perceived to be a bit of the case in which the
crown was kept. She tried to prevent the old woman from noticing
it, pushed it into the hottest part of the stove, and, by way of
further precaution, took the old woman away with her, on the plea
of asking the queen to make her a bedeswoman at Vienna, and this
was granted to her.
When all was ready, the gentleman desired his servant to take the
cushion and put it into the sledge designed for himself and the
Lady of Kottenner. The man took it on his shoulders, hiding it
under an old ox-hide, with the tail hanging down, to the laughter
of all beholders. Helen further records the trying to get some
breakfast in the market-place and finding nothing but herrings,
also the going to mass, and the care she took not to sit upon the
holy crown, though she had to sit on its cushion in the sledge.
They dined at an inn, but took care to keep the cushion in sight,
and then in the dusk crossed the Danube on the ice, which was
becoming very thin, and half-way across it broke under the maidens'
carriage, so that Helen expected to be lost in the Danube, crown
and all. However, though many packages were lost under the ice,
her sledge got safe over, as well as all the ladies, some of whom
she took into her conveyance, and all safely arrived at the castle
of Komorn late in the evening.
The very hour of their arrival a babe was born to the queen and
to her exceeding joy it was a son. Count von Eily, hearing "that
a king and friend was born to him," had bonfires lighted, and
a torchlight procession on the ice that same night, and early in
the morning came the Archbishop of Gran to christen the child. The
queen wished her faithful Helen to be godmother, but Helen refused
in favor of some lady whose family it was probably needful to
propitiate. She took off the little princess Elizabeth's mourning
for her father and dressed her in red and gold, all the maidens
appeared in gay apparel, and there was great rejoicing and
thanksgiving when the babe was christened Ladislas, after a sainted
king of Hungary.
[Illustration: THEN HE OFFERED A FERVENT PRAYER OF THANKS]
The peril was, however, far from ended; for many of the Magyars
had no notion of accepting an infant for their king, and by Easter,
the King of Poland was advancing upon Buda to claim the realm to
which he had been invited. No one had discovered the abstraction
of the crown, and Elizabeth's object was to take her child to
Weissenburg, and there have him crowned, so as to disconcert the
Polish party. She had sent to Buda for cloth of gold to make him a
coronation dress, but it did not come in time, and Helen therefore
shut herself into the chapel at Komorn, and, with doors fast
bolted, cut up a rich and beautiful vestment of his grandfather's,
the Emperor Sigismund, of red and gold, with silver spots, and
made it into a tiny coronation robe, with surplice and humeral (or
shoulder-piece), the stole and banner, the gloves and shoes. The
queen was much alarmed by a report that the Polish party meant to
stop her on her way to Weissenburg; and if the baggage should be
seized and searched, the discovery of the crown might have fatal
consequences. Helen, on this, observed that the king was more
important than the crown, and that the best way would be to keep
them together; so she wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it
under the mattress of his cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his
pap upon the top, so, said the queen, he might take care of his
crown himself.
On Tuesday before Whitsunday the party set out, escorted by Count
Ulric, and several other knights and nobles. After crossing the
Danube in a large boat, the queen and her little girl were placed
in a carriage, or more probably a litter, the other ladies rode,
and the cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men;
but this the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy
name, resented so much, that he began to scream so loud that she
was forced to dismount and carry him in her arms, along a road
rendered swampy by much rain.
They found all the villages deserted by the peasants, who had fled
into the woods, and as most of their lords were of the other party,
they expected an attack, so the little king was put into the carriage
with his mother and sister, and the ladies formed a circle round it
"that if any one shot at the carriage we might receive the stroke."
When the danger was over the child was taken out again, for he
would be content nowhere but in the arms of either his nurse or
of faithful Helen, who took turns to carry him on foot nearly all
the way, sometimes in a high wind which covered them with dust,
sometimes in great heat, sometimes in rain so heavy that Helen's
fur pelisse, with which she covered his cradle, had to be wrung
out several times. They slept at an inn, round which the gentlemen
lighted a circle of fires, and kept watch all night.
Weissenburg was loyal, five hundred armed gentlemen came out to
meet them, and on Whitsun Eve they entered the city, Helen carrying
her little king in her arms in the midst of a circle of these five
hundred holding their naked swords aloft. On Whitsunday, Helen rose
early, bathed the little fellow, who was twelve weeks old that day,
and dressed him. He was then carried in her arms to the church,
beside his mother. According to the old Hungarian customs the choir
door was closed,--the burghers were within, and would not open
till the new monarch should have taken the great coronation oath
to respect the Hungarian liberties and laws.
This oath was taken by the queen in the name of her son, the doors
were opened, and all the train entered, the little princess being
lifted up to stand by the organ, lest she should be hurt in the
throng. First Helen held her charge up to be confirmed, and then
she had to hold him while he was knighted, with a richly adorned
sword bearing the motto "Indestructible," and by a stout Hungarian
knight called Mikosch Weida, who struck with such a good will that
Helen felt the blow on her arm, and the queen cried out to him not
to hurt the child.
The Archbishop of Gran anointed the little creature, dressed him
in the red and gold robe, and put on his head the holy crown, and
the people admired to see how straight he held up his neck under
it; indeed, they admired the loudness and strength of his cries,
when, as the good lady records, "the noble king had little pleasure
in his coronation, for he wept aloud." She had to hold him up for
the rest of the service, while Count Ulric of Eily held the crown
over his head, and afterwards to seat him in a chair in St. Peter's
Church, and then he was carried home in his cradle, with the count
holding the crown over his head, and the other regalia borne before
him.
And thus Ladislas became King of Hungary at twelve weeks old, and
was then carried off by his mother into Austria for safety. Whether
this secret robbery of the crown, and coronation by stealth,
was wise or just on the mother's part is a question not easy of
answer--though of course she deemed it her duty to do her utmost
for her child's rights. Of Helen Kottenner's deep fidelity and
conscientious feeling there can be no doubt, and her having acted
with her eyes fully open to the risk she ran, her trust in Heaven
overcoming her fears and terrors, rendered her truly a heroine.
The crown has had many other adventures, and afterwards was kept in
an apartment of its own in the castle of Ofen, with an antechamber
guarded by two grenadiers. The door was of iron, with three locks,
and the crown itself was contained in an iron chest with five
seals. All this, however, did not prevent it from being taken away
and lost in the Revolution of 1849.
A STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FOR LITTLE CHILDREN
By Elizabeth Harrison
Once upon a time, far across the great ocean there lived a little
boy named Christopher. The city in which he lived was called Genoa.
It was on the coast of the great sea, and from the time that little
Christopher could first remember he had seen boats come and go
across the water. I doubt not that he had little boats of his own
which he tried to sail, or paddle about on the small pools near
his home.
Soon after he was old enough to read books, which in those days
were very scarce and very much valued, he got hold of an account
of the wonderful travels of a man named Marco Polo. Over and over
again little Christopher read the marvelous stories told by this
old traveler, of the strange cities which he had seen and of the
dark-colored people whom he had met; of the queer houses; of the
wild and beautiful animals he had encountered; of the jewels and
perfumes and flowers which he had come across.
All day long the thoughts of little Christopher were busy with this
strange far-away land which Marco Polo described. All night long
he dreamed of the marvelous sights to be seen on those distant
shores. Many a time he went down to the water's edge to watch the
queer ships as they slowly disappeared in the dim distance, where
the sea and sky seemed to meet. He listened eagerly to everything
about the sea and the voyages of adventure, or of trade which were
told by the sailors near.
When he was fourteen years old he went to sea with an uncle, who
was commander of one of the vessels that came and went from the
port of Genoa. For a number of years he thus lived on a vessel,
learning everything that he could about the sea. At one time the
ship on which he was sailing had a desperate fight with another
ship; both took fire and were burned to the water's edge. Christopher
Columbus, for that was his full name, only escaped, as did the
other sailors, by jumping into the sea and swimming to the shore.
Still this did not cure him of his love for the ocean life.
We find after a time that he left Italy, his native country, and
went to live in Portugal, a land near the great sea, whose people
were far more venturesome than had been those of Genoa. Here he
married a beautiful maiden, whose father had collected a rich store
of maps and charts, which showed what was then supposed to be the
shape of the earth and told of strange and wonderful voyages which
brave sailors had from time to time dared to make out into the
then unknown sea. Most people in those days thought it was certain
death to any one who ventured very far out on the ocean.
There were all sorts of queer and absurd ideas afloat as to the
shape of the earth. Some people thought it was round like a pancake
and that the waters which surrounded the land gradually changed
into mist and vapor and that he who ventured out into these vapors
fell through the mist and clouds down into--they knew not where.
Others believed that there were huge monsters living in the distant
waters ready to swallow any sailor who was foolish enough to venture
near them.
But Christopher Columbus had grown to be a very wise and thoughtful
man, and from all he could learn from the maps of his father-in-law
and the books which he read, and from the long talks which he had
with some other learned men, he grew more and more certain that the
world was round like an orange, and that by sailing westward from
the coast of Portugal one could gradually go round the world and
find at last the wonderful land of _Cathay_, the strange country
which lay far beyond the sea, the accounts of which had so thrilled
him as a boy.
We, of course, know that he was right in his belief concerning the
shape of the earth, but people in those days laughed him to scorn
when he spoke of making a voyage out on the vast and fearful ocean.
In vain he talked and reasoned and argued, and drew maps to explain
matters. The more he proved to his own satisfaction that this must
be the shape of the world, the more other people shook their heads
and called him crazy.
He remembered in his readings of the book of Marco Polo's travels
that the people whom Polo had met were heathen who knew little about
the God who had made the world, and nothing at all about His Son,
Christ Jesus, and as Christopher Columbus loved very dearly the
Christian religion, his mind became filled with a longing to carry
it across the great seas to this far-away country. The more he
thought about it the more he wanted to go, until his whole life
was filled with the one thought of how to get hold of some ships
to prove that the earth was round, and that these far-away heathens
could be reached.
Through some influential friends he obtained admission to the court
of the King of Portugal. Eagerly he told the rich monarch of the
great enterprise which filled his heart. It was of little or no
use, the king was busy with other affairs, and only listened to
the words of Columbus as one might listen to the wind. Year after
year passed by, Columbus' wife had died, and their one little son,
Diego, had grown to be quite a boy. Finally Columbus decided he
would leave Portugal and would go over to Spain, a rich country
near by, and see if the Spanish monarchs would not give him boats
in which to make his longed-for voyage.
The Spanish king was named Ferdinand, and the Spanish queen was a
beautiful woman named Isabella. When Columbus told them of his belief
that the world was round, and of his desire to help the heathen who
lived in this far-off country, they listened attentively to him,
for both King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were very earnest people
and very desirous that all the world should become Christians;
but their ministers and officers of state persuaded them that the
whole thing was a foolish dream of an enthusiastic, visionary man;
and again Columbus was disappointed in his hope of getting help.
Still he did not give up in despair. _The thought was too great for
that_. He sent his brother over to England to see if the English
king would not listen to him and give the necessary help, but again
he was doomed to disappointment. Only here and there could he find
any one who believed that it was possible for him to sail round
the earth and reach the land on the other side. Long years passed
by. Columbus grew pale and thin with waiting and hoping, with
planning arid longing.
Sometimes as he walked along the streets of the Spanish capital
people would point their fingers at him and say: "There goes
the crazy old man who thinks the world is round." Again and again
Columbus tried to persuade the Spanish king and queen that if they
would aid him, his discoveries would bring great honor and riches
to their kingdom, and that they would also become the benefactors
of the world by helping to spread the knowledge of Christ and His
religion. Nobody believed in his theory. Nobody was interested in
his plan. He grew poorer and poorer.
At last he turned his back on the great Spanish court, and in silent
despair he took his little son by the hand and walked a long way to
a small seaport called Palos, where there was a queer old convent
in which strangers were often entertained by the kind monks who
lived in it. Weary and footsore he reached the gate of the convent.
Knocking upon it he asked the porter, who answered the summons,
if he would give little Diego a bit of bread and a drink of water.
While the two tired travelers were resting, as the little boy ate
his dry crust of bread, the prior of the convent, a man of thought
and learning, whose name was Juan Perez, came by and at once saw that
these two were no common beggars. He invited them in and questioned
Columbus closely about his past life. He listened quietly and
thoughtfully to Columbus and his plan of crossing the ocean and
converting the heathen to Christianity.
Juan Perez had at one time been a very intimate friend of Queen
Isabella; in fact, the priest to whom she told all her sorrows and
troubles. He was a quiet man and talked but little. After a long
conference with Columbus, in which he was convinced that Columbus
was right, he borrowed a mule and getting on his back rode for many
miles across the open country to the palace in which the queen was
then staying. I do not know how he convinced her of the truth of
Columbus' plan, when all the ministers and courtiers and statesmen
about her considered it the absurdly foolish and silly dream of an
old man; but, somehow, he did it.
He then returned on his mule to the old convent at Palos, and
told Columbus to go back once more to the court of Spain and again
petition the queen to give him money with which to make his voyage
of discovery. The state treasurer said the queen had no money to
spare, but this noble-hearted woman, who now, for the first time,
realized that it was a grand and glorious thing Columbus wished to
do, said she would give her crown jewels for money with which to
start Columbus on his dangerous journey across the great ocean.
This meant much in those days, as queens were scarcely considered
dignified or respectable if they did not wear crowns of gold inlaid
with bright jewels on all public occasions, but Queen Isabella
cared far more to send the gospel of Christ over to the heathen
than how she might look, or what other people might say about her.
The jewels were pawned and the money was given to Columbus. With
a glad heart he hastened back to the little town of Palos where he
had left his young son with the kind priest Juan Perez.
But now a new difficulty arose. Enough sailors could not be found
who would venture their lives by going out on this unknown voyage
with a crazy old man such as Columbus was thought to be. At last
the convicts from the prisons were given liberty by the queen on
condition that they would go with the sailors and Columbus. So, you
see, it was not altogether a very nice crew, still it was the best
he could get, and Columbus' heart was so filled with the great work
that he was willing to undertake the voyage no matter how great
or how, many the difficulties might be. The ships were filled with
food and other provisions for a long, long voyage.
Nobody knew how long it would be before the land on the other side
could be reached, and many people thought there was no possible
hope of its ever being found.
Early one summer morning, even before the sun had risen, Columbus
bade farewell to the few friends who had gathered at the little
seaport of Palos to say good-bye to him. The ships spread their
sails and started on the great untried voyage. There were three
boats, none of which we would think, nowadays, was large enough
or strong enough to dare venture out of sight and help of land and
run the risk of encountering the storms of mid-ocean.
The names of the boats were the _Santa Maria_, which was the one
that Columbus himself commanded, and two smaller boats, one named
the _Pinta_ and the other the _Nina_.
Strange, indeed, must the sailors have felt, as hour after hour
they drifted out into the great unknown waters, which no man ever
ventured into before. Soon all land faded from their sight, and
on, and on, and on they went, not knowing where or how the voyage
would end. Columbus alone was filled with hope, feeling quite sure
that in time he would reach the never before visited shores of a
New World, and would thus be the means of bringing the Christian
religion to these poor, ignorant people. On and on they sailed,
day after day--far beyond the utmost point which sailors had ever
before reached.
Many of the men were filled with a strange dread and begged and
pleaded to return home. Still on and on they went, each day taking
them further and further from all they had ever known or loved
before. Day after day passed, and week after week until two months
had elapsed.
The provisions which they had brought with them were getting scarce,
and the men now dreaded starvation. They grew angry with Columbus,
and threatened to take his life if he did not command the ships
to be turned back toward Spain, but his patience did not give out,
nor was his faith one whit the less. He cheered the hearts of the
men as best he could, often telling them droll, funny stories to
distract their thoughts from the terrible dread which now filled
all minds.
He promised a rich reward to the first man who should discover
land ahead. This somewhat renewed their courage, and day and night
watches were set and the western horizon before them was scanned
at all hours. Time and again they thought they saw land ahead,
only to find they had mistaken a cloud upon the horizon for the
longed-for shore. Flocks of birds flying westward began to be seen.
This gave some ground for hope. For surely the birds must be flying
toward some land where they could find food, and trees in which to
build their nests. Still fear was great in the hearts of all, and
Columbus knew that he could not keep the men much longer in suspense,
and that if land did not appear soon they would compel him to turn
around and retrace his steps whether he wished to or not.
Then he thought of all the benighted heathen who had never heard of
God's message of love to man through Christ, and he prayed almost
incessantly that courage might be given him to go on. Hour after
hour he looked across the blue water, day and night, longing for
the sight of land. In fact, he watched so incessantly that his
eyesight became injured and he could scarcely see at all.
At last one night as he sat upon the deck of the ship he was quite
sure that a faint light glimmered for a few moments in the distant
darkness ahead. Where there is a light there must be land, he
thought. Still he was not sure, as his eyesight had become so dim.
So he called one of the more faithful sailors to him and asked him
what he saw. The sailor exclaimed:
"A light, a light!"
Another sailor was called, but by this time the light had disappeared
and the sailor saw nothing, and Columbus' hopes again sank. Still
he felt they must be nearing land. About two o'clock that night
the commander of one of the other boats started the cry:
"Land! land ahead!"
You can well imagine how the shout was taken up, and how the sailors,
one and all, rushed to the edge of their ships, leaning far over,
no doubt, and straining their eyes for the almost unhoped-for sight.
Early the next morning some one of the sailors picked up a branch
of a strange tree, lodged in the midst of which was a tiny bird's
nest. This was sure evidence that they were indeed near land; for
branches of trees do not grow in water,
Little by little the land came in sight. First it looked like a dim
ghost of a shore, but gradually it grew distinct and clear. About
noon the next day the keel of Columbus' boat grounded upon the sand
of the newly discovered country. No white man had ever before set
eyes upon it. No ship had ever before touched this coast.
At last after a long life of working and studying, of hoping
and planning, of trying and failing, and trying yet again, he had
realized his dream.
The great mystery of the ocean was revealed, and Columbus had
achieved a glory which would last as long as the world lasted. _He
had given a new world to mankind!_ He had reached the far distant
country across the ocean, which scarcely any of his countrymen had
even believed to have any existence. He now _knew_ that the whole
round world could in time have the Christian religion.
He sprang upon the shore, and dropping on his knees he first stooped
and kissed the ground, and then he offered a fervent prayer of
thanks to God.
A learned attorney who had come with him across the water next
planted the flag of Spain upon the unknown land, and claimed the
newly discovered country in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella of Spain.
Wonderful, wonderful indeed were the things which Columbus and the
sailors now saw! Strange naked men and women of a copper, or bronze
color, strange new birds with gorgeous tails that glittered like
gems such as they had never seen before; beautiful and unknown
fruits and flowers met their gaze on every side.
The savages were kind and gentle and brought them food and water.
They had little else to offer as they had no houses, nor streets,
nor carriages, nor cars, nor conveniences of any kind. Do you know,
my dear children, that this strange, wild savage country which
Columbus had traveled so far and so long to discover was _our
country, America?_
But it was not long after Columbus had gone back to Europe and told
the people there of the wonderful things which he had seen in this
far, far away land that ship-loads of white people, who were educated
and who had been taught to love God and to keep His commandments,
came over and settled in this wild, new country. They plowed the
land and planted seed; they built houses for themselves, their
wives, and little ones, and in time they made school-houses for
the children, and churches in which to worship God. Long and hard
was the struggle which these first white men had to make in this
strange, new country.
Year after year more and more white men came. These new settlers
prospered, and new towns were built, and roads were made from one
town to another, and stores and manufactories began to be seen.
At last the little handful of people had grown so strong that they
established a government of their own, which welcomed all newcomers,
providing they were law-abiding citizens. The poor and oppressed,
the persecuted and discouraged in other lands came to this new shore,
where they found wealth if they were willing to work for it.
Here they need no longer fear the persecutions from which they had
suffered. Here they gained new hope and became honored and respected
citizens.
Little by little the small country grew into a great nation, the
greatest on earth, because it is the freest, and each citizen in
it has his rights respected. But for the courage and determination
and self-sacrifice of Columbus this great new world might have
remained for hundreds of years unknown to men.
Four hundred years afterwards the children of the children's children
of these early settlers, had a grand celebration in honor of the
brave old man, Christopher Columbus, whom the people of his day
called crazy, and all the nations of the earth were invited to
bring their most beautiful, their richest and rarest products to
this celebration, in order that not we of America alone, but _the
whole world might celebrate the wisdom and the courage of the great
Columbus, "the finder of America."_
In the rejoicing and in the celebration the nations did not forget the
good Queen Isabella, who was willing to give up her most precious
jewels in order that she might help Columbus in his voyage of
discovery.
A SEA-FIGHT IN THE TIME OF QUEEN BESS
By Charles Kingsley
When the sun leaped up the next morning, and the tropic night
flashed suddenly into the tropic day, Amyas was pacing the deck,
with dishevelled hair and torn clothes, his eyes red with rage
and weeping, his heart full--how can I describe it? Picture it
to yourselves, picture it to yourselves, you who have ever lost a
brother; and you who have not, thank God that you know nothing of
his agony. Full of impossible projects, he strode and staggered
up and down, as the ship thrashed close-hauled through the rolling
seas. He would go back and burn the villa. He would take Guayra,
and have the life of every man in it in return for his brother's.
"We can do it, lads!" he shouted. "If Drake took Nombre de Dios,
we can take La Guayra." And every voice shouted, "Yes."
"We will have it, Amyas, and have Frank too, yet," cried Cary; but
Amyas shook his head. He knew, and knew not why he knew, that all
the ports in New Spain would never restore to him that one beloved
face.
"Yes, he shall be well avenged. And look there! There is the first
crop of our vengeance." And he pointed toward the shore, where
between them and the now distant peaks of the Silla three sails
appeared, not five miles to windward.
"There are the Spanish bloodhounds on our heels, the same ships
which we saw yesterday off Guayra. Back, lads, and welcome them,
if they were a dozen."
There was a murmur of applause from all around; and if any young
heart sank for a moment at the prospect of fighting three ships
at once, it was awed into silence by the cheer which rose from all
the older men, and by Salvation Yeo's stentorian voice:
"If there were a dozen, the Lord is with us, who has said, 'One of
you shall chase a thousand.' Clear away, lads, and see the glory
of the Lord this day."
"Amen!" cried Gary; and the ship was kept still closer to the wind.
Amyas had revived at the sight of battle. He no longer felt his
wounds, or his great sorrow; even Frank's last angel's look grew
dimmer every moment as he bustled about the deck; and ere a quarter
of an hour had passed, his voice cried firmly and cheerfully as of
old:
"Now, my masters, let us serve God, and then to breakfast, and
after that clear for action."
Jack Brimblecombe read the daily prayers, and the prayers before a
fight at sea, and his honest voice trembled as, in the Prayer for
all Conditions of Men (in spite of Amyas' despair), he added, "and
especially for our dear brother Mr. Francis Leigh, perhaps captive
among the idolaters;" and so they rose.
"Now, then," said Amyas, "to breakfast. A Frenchman fights best
fasting, a Dutchman drunk, an Englishman full, and a Spaniard when
the devil is in him, and that's always."
"And good beef and the good cause are a match for the devil," said
Cary. "Come down, captain; you must eat too."
Amyas shook his head, took the tiller from the steersman, and bade
him go below and fill himself. Will Cary went down, and returned
in five minutes, with a plate of bread and beef, and a great jack
of ale, coaxed them down Amyas' throat, as a nurse does with a
child, and then scuttled below again with tears hopping down his
face.
Amyas stood still steering. His face was grown seven years older
in the last night. A terrible set calm was on him. Woe to the man
who came across him that day!
"There are three of them, you see, my masters," said he, as the crew
came on deck again. "A big ship forward, and two galleys astern of
her. The big ship may keep; she is a race ship, and if we can but
recover the wind of her, we will see whether our height is not
a match for her length. We must give her the slip, and take the
galleys first."
"I thank the Lord," said Yeo, "who has given so wise a heart to
so young a general; a very David and Daniel, saving his presence,
lads; and if any dare not follow him, let him be as the men of
Meroz and Succoth. Amen! Silas Stavely, smite me that boy over the
head, the young monkey; why is he not down at the powder-room door?"
And Yeo went about his gunnery, as one who knew how to do it, and
had the most terrible mind to do it thoroughly, and the most terrible
faith that it was God's work.
So all fell to; and though there was comparatively little to
be done, the ship having been kept as far as could be in fighting
order all night, yet there was "clearing the decks, lacing the
nettings, making of bulwarks, fitting of waist-cloths, arming of
tops, tallowing of pikes, slinging of yards, doubling of sheets
and tacks," enough to satisfy even the pedantical soul of Richard
Hawkins himself.
Amyas took charge of the poop, Gary of the forecastle, and Yeo, as
gunner, of the main deck, while Drew, as master, settled himself
in the waist; and all was ready, and more than ready, before the
great ship was within two miles of them.
And now, while the mastiffs of England and the bloodhounds of Spain
are nearing and nearing over the rolling surges, thirsting for each
other's blood, let us spend a few minutes at least in looking at
them both, and considering the causes which in those days enabled
the English to face and conquer armaments immensely superior in
size and number of ships, and to boast that in the whole Spanish
war but one queen's ship, the _Revenge_, and (if I recollect right)
but one private man-of-war, Sir Richard Hawkins' _Dainty_, had ever
struck their colors to the enemy.
What was it which enabled Sir Richard Grenvil's _Revenge_, in his
last fearful fight off the Azores, to endure, for twelve hours
before she struck, the attack of eight Spanish armadas, of which
two (three times her own burden) sank at her side; and after all
her masts were gone, and she had been boarded three times without
success, to defy to the last the whole fleet of fifty-four sail,
which lay around, her, waiting for her to sink, "like dogs around
the dying forest king?"
What was it that enabled young Richard Hawkins' _Dainty_, though
half her guns were useless through the carelessness or treachery
of the gunner, to maintain for three days a running fight with two
Spaniards of equal size with her, double weight of metal, and ten
times the number of men?
What enabled Sir George Gary's illustrious ship, the _Content_,
to fight single-handed, from seven in the morning till eleven at
night, with four great armadas and two galleys, though her heaviest
gun was but one nine-pounder, and for many hours she had but thirteen
men fit for service?
What enabled, in the very year of which I write, those two valiant
Turkey merchantmen of London, the _Merchant Royal_ and the _Tobie_,
with their three small consorts, to cripple, off Pantellaria in the
Mediterranean, the whole fleet of Spanish galleys sent to intercept
them, and return triumphant through the Straits of Gibraltar?
And lastly, what in the fight of 1588, whereof more hereafter,
enabled the English fleet to capture, destroy, and scatter that
Great Armada, with the loss (but not the capture) of one pinnace,
and one gentleman of note?
There were more causes than one: the first seems to have lain in
the build of the English ships; the second in their superior gunnery
and weight of metal; the third (without which the first would have
been useless) in the hearts of the English men.
The English ship was much shorter than the Spanish; and this (with
the rig of those days) gave them an ease in manoeuvring, which
utterly confounded their Spanish foes. "The English ships in the
fight of 1588," says Camden, "charged the enemy with marvellous
agility, and having discharged their broadsides, flew forth presently
into the deep, and levelled their shot directly, without missing,
at those great ships of the Spaniards, which were altogether heavy
and unwieldy." Moreover, the Spanish fashion, in the West Indies
at least, though not in the ships of the Great Armada, was, for
the sake of carrying merchandise, to build their men-of-war flush
decked, or as it was called "race" (razes), which left those on
deck exposed and open; while the English fashion was to heighten
the ship as much as possible at stem and stern, both by the sweep
of her lines, and also by stockades ("close fights and cage-works")
on the poop and forecastle, thus giving to the men a shelter, which
was further increased by strong bulkheads ("co-bridgeheads") across
the main-deck below, dividing the ship thus into a number of separate
forts, fitted with swivels ("bases, fowlers and murderers") and
loopholed for musketry and arrows.
But the great source of superiority was, after all, in the men
themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious
and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything,
from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows;
and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was
not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice
from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider
sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel
of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest
nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest
also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and
self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work,
was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. In
one word, he was a free man.
The English officers, too, as now, lived on terms of sympathy with
their men unknown to the Spaniards, who raised between the commander
and the commanded absurd barriers of rank and blood, which forbade
to his pride any labor but that of fighting. The English officers,
on the other hand, brought up to the same athletic sports, the
same martial exercise, as their men, were not ashamed to care for
them, to win their friendship, even on emergency to consult their
judgment; and used their rank, not to differ from their men,
but to outvie them; not merely to command and be obeyed, but like
Homer's heroes, or the old Norse vikings, to lead and be followed.
Drake touched the true mainspring of English success when he once
(in his voyage round the world) indignantly rebuked some coxcomb
gentleman-adventurers with, "I should like to see the gentleman that
will refuse to set his hand to a rope. I must have the gentlemen
to hale and draw with the mariners." But those were days in which
her Majesty's service was as little overridden by absurd rules of
seniority as by that etiquette which is at once the counterfeit and
the ruin of true discipline. Under Elizabeth and her ministers, a
brave and a shrewd man was certain of promotion, let his rank or
his age be what they might; the true honor of knighthood covered
once and for all any lowliness of birth; and the merchant service
(in which all the best sea-captains, even those of noble blood,
were more or less engaged) was then a nursery, not only for seamen,
but for warriors, in days when Spanish and Portuguese traders
(whenever they had a chance) got rid of English competition by
salvoes of cannon-shot.
Hence, as I have said, that strong fellow-feeling between officers
and men; and hence mutinies (as Sir Richard Hawkins tells us) were
all but unknown in the English ships, while in the Spanish they broke
out on every slight occasion. For the Spaniards, by some suicidal
pedantry, had allowed their navy to be crippled by the same
despotism, etiquette, and official routine by which the whole nation
was gradually frozen to death in the course of the next century
or two; forgetting that, fifty years before, Cortez, Pizarro, and
the early conquistadores of America had achieved their miraculous
triumphs on the exactly opposite methods; by that very fellow-feeling
between commander and commanded by which the English were now
conquering them in their turn.
Their navy was organized on a plan complete enough; but on one
which was, as the event proved, utterly fatal to their prowess
and unanimity, and which made even their courage and honor useless
against the assaults of free men. "They do, in their armadas at sea,
divide themselves into three bodies; to wit, soldiers, mariners, and
gunners. The soldiers and officers watch and ward as if on shore;
and this is the only duty they undergo, except cleaning their
arms, wherein they are not over curious. The gunners are exempted
from all labor and care, except about the artillery; and these are
either Almaines, Flemings, or strangers; for the Spaniards are but
indifferently practiced in this art. The mariners are but as slaves
to the rest, to moil and to toil day and night; and those but few
and bad, and not suffered to sleep or harbor under the decks. For
in fair or foul weather, in storms, sun, or rain, they must pass
void of covert or succor."
This is the account of one who was long prisoner on board their
ships; let it explain itself, while I return to my tale. For the
great ship is now within two musket-shots of the _Rose_, with the
golden flag of Spain floating at her poop; and her trumpets are
shouting defiance up the breeze, from a dozen brazen throats, which
two or three answer lustily from the _Rose_, from whose poop flies
the flag of England, and from her fore the arms of Leigh and Cary
side by side, and over them the ship and bridge of the good town
of Bideford. And then Amyas calls:
"Now, silence trumpets, waits, play up! 'Fortune my foe!' and God
and the Queen be with us!"
Whereon (laugh not, reader, for it was a fashion of those musical
as well as valiant days) up rose that noble old favorite of good
Queen Bess, from cornet and sackbut, fife and drum; while Parson
Jack, who had taken his stand with the musicians on the poop, worked
away lustily at his violin.
"Well played, Jack; thy elbow flies like a lamb's tail," said Amyas,
forcing a jest.
"It shall fly to a better fiddle-bow presently, sir, if I have the
luck--"
"Steady, helm!" said Amyas. "What is he after now?"
The Spaniard, who had been coming upon them right down the wind
under a press of sail, took in his light canvas.
"He don't know what to make of our waiting for him so bold," said
the helmsman.
"He does, though, and means to fight us," cried another. "See, he
is hauling up the foot of his mainsail; but he wants to keep the
wind of us."
"Let him try, then," quoth Amyas. "Keep her closer still. Let no
one fire till we are about. Man the starboard guns; to starboard,
and wait, all small-arm men. Pass the order down to the gunner,
and bid all fire high, and take the rigging."
Bang went one of the Spaniard's bow guns, and the shot went wide.
Then another and another, while the men fidgeted about, looking at
the priming of their muskets, and loosened arrows in the sheaf.
"Lie down, men, and sing a psalm. When I want you, I'll call you.
Closer still, if you can, helmsman, and we will try a short ship
against a long one. We can sail two points nearer the wind than
he."
As Amyas had calculated, the Spaniard would gladly enough have stood
across the _Rose's_ bows, but knowing the English readiness, dare
not for fear of being raked; so her only plan, if she did not
intend to shoot past her foe down to leeward, was to put her head
close to the wind, and wait for her on the same tack.
Amyas laughed to himself. "Hold on yet awhile. More ways of killing
a cat than choking her with cream. Drew, there, are your men ready?"
"Ay, ay, sir!" and on they went, closing fast with the Spaniard,
till within a pistol-shot.
"Ready about!" and about she went like an eel, and ran upon
the opposite tack right under the Spaniard's stern. The Spaniard,
astounded at the quickness of the manoeuvre, hesitated a moment,
and then tried to get about also, as his only chance; but it was
too late, and while his lumbering length was still hanging in the
wind's eye, Amyas' bowsprit had all but scraped his quarter, and
the _Rose_ passed slowly across his stern at ten yards' distance.
"Now, then!" roared Amyas. "Fire, and with a will! Have at
her--archers, have at her, muskets all!" and in an instant a storm
of bar and chainshot, round and canister, swept the proud Don
from stem to stern, while through the white cloud of smoke the
musket-balls, and the still deadlier clothyard arrows, whistled
and rushed upon their venomous errand. Down went the steersman,
and every soul who manned the poop. Down went the mizzen topmast,
in went the stern windows and quarter galleries; and as the smoke
cleared away, the gorgeous painting of the Madre Dolorosa, with
her heart full of seven swords, which, in a gilded frame, bedizened
the Spanish stern, was shivered in splinters; while, most glorious
of all, the golden flag of Spain, which the last moment flaunted
above their heads, hung trailing in the water. The ship, her tiller
shot away, and her helmsman killed, staggered helplessly a moment,
and then fell up into the wind.
"Well done, men of Devon!" shouted Amyas, as cheers rent the welkin.
"She has struck!" cried some, as the deafening hurrahs died away.
"Not a bit," said Amyas. "Hold on, helmsman, and leave her to patch
her tackle while we settle the galleys."
On they shot merrily, and long ere the armada could get herself
to rights again, were two good miles to windward, with the galleys
sweeping down fast upon them.
And two venomous-looking craft they were, as they shot through the
short chopping sea upon some forty oars apiece, stretching their
long sword-fish snouts over the water, as if snuffing for their prey.
Behind this long snout, a strong square forecastle was crammed with
soldiers, and the muzzles of cannon grinned out through port-holes,
not only in the sides of the forecastle, but forward in the line
of the galley's course, thus enabling her to keep up a continual
fire on a ship right ahead.
The long low waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or
six to each oar, and down the centre, between the two banks, the
English could see the slave-drivers walking up and down a long
gangway, whip in hand. A raised quarter-deck at the stern held
more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and
their gun-barrels; as they neared, the English could hear plainly
the cracks of the whips, and the yells as of wild beasts which
answered them; the roll and rattle of oars, and the loud "Ha!" of
the slaves which accompanied every stroke, and the oaths and curses
of the drivers; while a sickening musky smell, as of a pack of
kennelled hounds, came down the wind from off those dens of misery.
No wonder if many a young heart shuddered as it faced, for the first
time, the horrible reality of those floating hells, the cruelties
whereof had rung so often in the English ears, from the stories
of their own countrymen, who had passed them, fought them, and now
and then passed years of misery on board of them. Who knew but what
there might be English among those sun-browned, half-naked masses
of panting wretches?
"Must we fire upon the slaves?" asked more than one, as the thought
crossed him.
Amyas sighed.
"Spare them all you can, in God's name; but if they try to run us
down, rake them we must, and God forgive us."
The two galleys came on abreast of each other, some forty yards
apart. To out-manoeuvre their oars as he had done the ship's sails,
Amyas knew was impossible. To run from them, was to be caught
between them and the ship.
He made up his mind, as usual, to the desperate game.
"Lay her head upon the wind, helmsman, and we will wait for them."
They were now within musket-shot, and opened fire from their
bow-guns; but, owing to the chopping sea, their aim was wild. Amyas,
as usual, withheld his fire.
The men stood at quarters with compressed lips, not knowing what
was to come next. Amyas, towering motionless on the quarter-deck,
gave orders calmly and decisively. The men saw that he trusted
himself, and trusted him accordingly.
The Spaniards, seeing him wait for them, gave a shout of joy--was
the Englishman mad? And the two galleys converged rapidly, intending
to strike him full, one on each bow.
They were within forty yards--another minute, and the shock would
come.
The Englishman's helm went up, his yards creaked round, and gathering
way he plunged upon the larboard galley.
"A dozen gold nobles to him who brings down the steersman!" shouted
Carey, who had his cue.
And a flight of arrows from the forecastle rattled upon the galley's
quarter-deck.
Hit or not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the
coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid
all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then
loud crack on crack, as the _Rose_ sawed slowly through the bank
of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps
upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing
round, to strike him in his new position, Amyas' whole broadside,
great and small, had been poured into her at pistol-shot, answered
by a yell which rent their ears and hearts.
"Spare the slaves! Fire at the soldiers!" cried Amyas; but the
work was too hot for much discrimination, for the larboard galley,
crippled but not undaunted, swung round across his stern, and hooked
herself venomously on to him.
It was a move more brave than wise; for it prevented the other
galley from returning to the attack without exposing herself a
second time to the English broadside; and a desperate attempt of
the Spaniards to board at once through the stern ports, and up the
quarter, was met with such a demurrer of shot and steel that they
found themselves in three minutes again upon the galley's poop,
accompanied, to their intense disgust, by Amyas Leigh and twenty
English swords.
Five minutes' hard cutting, hand to hand, and the poop was clear.
The soldiers in the forecastle had been able to give them no assistance,
open as they lay to the arrows and musketry from the _Rose's_ lofty
stern. Amyas rushed along the central gangway, shouting in Spanish,
"Freedom to the slaves! death to the masters!" clambered into the
forecastle, followed close by his swarm of wasps, and set them so
good an example how to use their stings, that in three minutes more
there was not a Spaniard on board who was not dead or dying.
"Let the slaves free!" shouted he. "Throw us a hammer down, men.
Hark! there's an English voice!" There is indeed. From amid the
wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in
broadest Devon to the master, who is looking over the side:
"Oh, Robert Drew! Robert Drew! Come down and take me out of hell!"
"Who be you, in the name of the Lord?"
"Don't you mind William Prust, that Captain Hawkins left behind in
the Honduras, years and years agone? There's nine of us aboard, if
your shot hasn't put 'em out of their misery. Come down--if you've
a Christian heart, come down!"
Utterly forgetful of all discipline, Drew leaps down, hammer in
hand, and the two old comrades rush into each other's arms.
Why make a long story of what took but five minutes to do? The nine
men (luckily none of them wounded) are freed, and helped on board,
to be hugged and kissed by all comrades and young kinsmen; while
the remaining slaves, furnished with a couple of hammers, are told
to free themselves and help the English. The wretches answered by
a shout; and Amyas, once more safe on board again, dashes after
the other galley, which has been hovering out of reach of his guns;
but there is no need to trouble himself about her; sickened with
what she has got, she is struggling right up wind, leaning over to
one side, and seemingly ready to sink.
"Are there any English on board of her?" asked Amyas, loth to lose
the chance of freeing a countryman.
"Never a one, sir, thank God."
So they set to work to repair damages; while the liberated slaves,
having shifted some of the galley's oars, pull away after their
comrade; and that with such a will, that in ten minutes they have
caught her up, and careless of the Spaniard's fire, boarded her en
masse, with yells as of a thousand wolves. There will be fearful
vengeance taken on those tyrants, unless they play the man this
day.
And in the meanwhile half the crew are clothing, feeding, questioning,
caressing those nine poor fellows thus snatched from living death;
and Yeo, hearing the news, has rushed up on deck to welcome his
old comrades, and:
"Is Michael Heard, my cousin, here among you?"
Yes, Michael Heard is there, white-headed rather from misery than
age; and the embracings and questionings begin afresh.
"Where is my wife, Salvation Yeo?"
"With the Lord."
"Amen!" says the old man, with a short shudder.
"I thought so much; and my two boys?"
"With the Lord."
The old man catches Yeo by the arm.
"How, then?" It is Yeo's turn to shudder now.
"Killed in Panama, fighting the Spaniards; sailing with Mr. Oxenham;
and 'twas I led 'em into it. May God and you forgive me!"
"They couldn't die better, Cousin Yeo. Where's my girl Grace?"
"Dead."
The old man covers his face with his hands for a while. "Well, I've
been alone with the Lord these fifteen years, so I must not whine
at being alone a while longer--it won't be long."
"Put this coat on your back, uncle," says some one.
"No; no coats for me. You'd better go to your work, lads, or the
big one will have the wind of you yet."
"So she will," said Amyas, who has overheard; but so great is the
curiosity on all hands, that he has some trouble in getting the
men to quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting
among themselves the new-comers, each to tell his sad and strange
story. How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put
them ashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them;
how, instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons
fed and clothed them, and allotted them as servants to various
gentlemen about Mexico, where they throve, turned their hands
(like true sailors) to all manner of trades, and made much money,
and some of them were married, even to women of wealth; so that
all went well, until the fatal year 1574, when, "much against the
minds of many of the Spaniards themselves, that cruel and bloody
Inquisition was established for the first time in the Indies"; and
how, from that moment, their lives were one long tragedy.
The history even of their party was not likely to improve the good
feeling of the crew toward the Spanish ship which was two miles
to leeward of them, and which must be fought with, or fled from,
before a quarter of an hour was past. So, kneeling down upon the
deck, as many a brave crew in those days did in like case, they
"gave God thanks devoutly for the favor they had found"; and then
with one accord, at Jack's leading, sang one and all the ninety-fourth
Psalm:
"O, Lord, Thou dost revenge all wrong,
Vengeance belongs to Thee," etc.
And then again to quarters; for half the day's work, or more than
half, still remained to be done; and hardly were the decks cleared
afresh, and the damage repaired as best it could be, when she came
ranging up to leeward, as closehauled as she could. She was, as
I said, a long flush-decked ship of full five hundred tons, more
than double the size, in fact, of the _Rose_, though not so lofty
in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no, shame to
them, as she began firing away merrily,, determined, as all well
knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil.
"Never mind, my merry masters," said Amyas, "she has quantity and
we quality."
"That's true," said one, "for one honest man is worth two rogues."
"And one of our guns, three of theirs," said another. "So when
you will, captain, and have at her."
"Let her come abreast of us, and don't burn powder. We have the
wind, and can do what we like with her. Serve the men out a horn
of ale all round, steward, and all take your time."
So they waited for five minutes more, and then set to work quietly,
after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad
before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to
crackle and fly.
Amyas, having, as he had said, the wind, and being able to go nearer
it than the Spaniard, kept his place at easy point-blank range for
his two eighteen-pounder guns, which Yeo and his mate worked with
terrible effect.
"We are lacking her through and through every shot," said he.
"Leave the small ordnance alone yet awhile, and we shall sink her
without them."
"Whing, whing," went the Spaniard's shot like so many humming-tops,
through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructed
ports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who
was to windward, unless close alongside.
"Blow, jolly breeze," cried one, "and lay the Don over all thou
canst. What's the matter aloft there?"
Alas! a crack, a flap, a rattle; and blank dismay! An unlucky shot
had cut the foremast in two, and all forward was a mass of dangling
wreck.
"Forward, and cut away the wreck!" said Amyas, unmoved. "Small-arm
men, be ready. He will be aboard of us in five minutes!"
It was too true. The _Rose_, unmanageable from the loss of her
head-sail, lay at the mercy of the Spaniard; and the archers and
musketeers had hardly time to range themselves to leeward, when
the _Madre Dolorosa's_ chains were grinding against the _Rose's_,
and grapples tossed on board from stem to stern.
"Don't cut them loose!" roared Amyas. "Let them stay and see the
fun! Now, dogs of Devon, show your teeth, and hurrah for God and
the Queen!"
And then began a fight most fierce and fell; the Spaniards,
according to their fashion, attempted to board, the English, amid
fierce shouts of "God and the Queen!" "God and St. George for
England!" sweeping them back by showers of arrows and musket balls,
thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades from the tops;
while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and
chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle,
made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot
through and through each other.
So they roared and flashed, fast clenched to each other under a
cloud of smoke beneath the cloudless tropic sky; while all around,
the dolphins gamboled, and the flying-fish shot on from swell to
swell, and the rainbow-hued jellies opened and shut their cups of
living crystal to the sun, as merrily as if nothing had happened.
So it raged for an hour or more, till all arms were weary, and
all tongues clove to the mouth. Sick men scrambled up on deck and
fought with the strength of madness; and tiny powder-boys, handing
up cartridges from the hold, laughed and cheered as the shots ran
past their ears; and old Salvation Yeo, a text upon his lips, and
a fury in his heart as of Joshua or Elijah in old time, worked on,
calm and grim, but with the energy of a boy at play. And now and
then an opening in the smoke showed the Spanish captain, in his
suit of black steel armor, standing cool and proud, guiding and
pointing, careless of the iron hail, but too lofty a gentleman to
soil his glove with aught but a knightly sword-hilt; while Amyas
and Will, after the fashion of the English gentlemen, had stripped
themselves nearly as bare as their own sailors, and were cheering,
thrusting, hewing, and hauling, here, there, and everywhere, like
any common mariner, and filling them with a spirit of self-respect,
fellow-feeling, and personal daring, which the discipline of the
Spaniards, more perfect mechanically, but cold and tyrannous, and
crushing spiritually, never could bestow. The black-plumed senor
was obeyed; but the golden locked Amyas was followed; and would
have been followed to the end of the world.
The Spaniards, ere five minutes had passed, poured into the _Rose's_
waist, but only to their destruction. Between the poop and forecastle
(as was then in fashion) the upper deck beams were left open and
unplanked, with the exception of a narrow gangway on either side;
and off that fatal ledge the boarders, thrust on by those behind,
fell headlong between the beams to the maindeck below to be slaughtered
helpless in that pit of destruction, by the double fire from the
bulkheads fore and aft; while the few who kept their footing on
the gangway, after vain attempts to force the stockades on poop
and forecastle, leaped overboard again amid a shower of shot and
arrows. The fire of the English was as steady as it was quick; and
though three-fourths of the crew had never smelled powder before,
they proved well the truth of the old chronicler's saying (since
proved again more gloriously than ever at Alma, Balaklava, and
Inkermann), that "the English never fight better than in their
first battle."
Thrice the Spaniards clambered on board; and thrice surged back
before that deadly hail. The deck on both sides were very shambles;
and Jack Brimblecombe, who had fought as long as his conscience
would allow him, found enough to do in carrying poor wretches to
the surgeon. At last there was a lull in that wild storm. No shot
was heard from the Spaniard's upper-deck.
Amyas leaped into the mizzen rigging, and looked through the
smoke. Dead men he could descry through the blinding veil, rolled
in heaps, laid flat; dead men and dying; but no man upon his feet.
The last volley had swept the deck clear; one by one had dropped
below to escape that fiery shower: and alone at the helm, grinding
his teeth with rage, his mustachios curling up to his very eyes,
stood the Spanish captain.
Now was the moment for a counter-stroke. Amyas shouted for the
boarders, and in two minutes more he was over the side, and clutching
at the Spaniard's mizzen rigging.
What was this? The distance between him and the enemy's side was
widening. Was she sheering off? Yes--and rising too, growing bodily
higher every moment, as if by magic. Amyas looked up in astonishment
and saw what it was. The Spaniard was keeling fast over to leeward
away from him. Her masts were all sloping forward, swifter and
swifter--the end was come then!
"Back! in God's name back, men! She is sinking by the head!"
And with much ado some were dragged back, some leaped back--all
but old Michael Heard.
With hair and beard floating in the wind, the bronzed naked figure,
like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up
the mizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet in hand.
"Come back, Michael! Leap while you may!" shouted a dozen voices.
Michael turned:
"And what should I come back for, then, to go home where no one
knoweth me? I'll die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the
reason why!" and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the
huge ship rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing
all her long black bulk almost down to the keel, and one of her
lower-deck guns, as if in defiance, exploded upright into the air,
hurling the ball to the very heavens.
In an instant it was answered from the _Rose_ by a column of
smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of
the defenceless Spaniard.
"Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!"
"Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the maindeck. "He's like
a madman down here."
"Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my
own brother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men. Don't you see how
she drags us over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her."
They cut away, and the _Rose_, released from the strain, shook her
feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men
held their breath.
Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as
if in noble shame, for one last struggle with her doom. Her bows
were deep in the water, but her afterdeck still dry. Righted: but
only for a moment, long enough to let her crew come pouring wildly
up on deck, with cries and prayers, and rush aft to the poop, where,
under the flag of Spain, stood the tall captain, his left hand on
the standard-staff, his sword pointed in his right.
"Back, men!" they heard him cry, "and die like valiant mariners."
Some of them ran to the bulwarks, and shouted "Mercy! We surrender!"
and the English broke into a cheer and called to them to run her
alongside.
"Silence!" shouted Amyas. "I take no surrender from mutineers.
Senor," cried he to the captain, springing into the rigging and
taking off his hat, "for the love of God and these men, strike!
and surrender _ss buena querra_."
The Spaniard lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered,
"Impossible, senor. No _querra_ is good which stains my honor."
"God have mercy on you, then!"
"Amen!" said the Spaniard, crossing himself.
She gave one awful lunge forward, and dived under the coming swell,
hurling her crew into the eddies. Nothing but the point of her poop
remained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap-a-pie
in his glistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while
over him the flag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted
its gold aloft and upward in the glare of the tropic noon.
"He shall not carry that flag with him! I will have it yet, if I die
for it!" said Will Gary, and rushed to the side to leap overboard,
but Amyas stopped him.
"Let him die as he has lived, with honor." A wild figure sprang out
of the mass of sailors who struggled and shrieked amid the foam,
and rushed upward at the Spaniard. It was Michael Heard. The Don,
who stood above him, plunged his sword into the old man's body:
but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless: down went the blade through
headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward, bleeding,
but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck into the
surge. Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, and
the standard-staff was hewn through. Old Michael collected all
his strength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ship, and then
stood erect one moment and shouted, "God save Queen Bess!" and the
English answered with a "Hurrah!" which rent the welkin.
Another moment and the gulf had swallowed his victim, and the
poop, and him; and nothing remained of the _Madre Dolorosa_ but a
few floating spars and struggling wretches, while a great awe fell
upon all men, and a solemn silence, broken only by the cry
"Of some strong swimmer in his agony."
And then, suddenly collecting themselves, as men awakened from a
dream, half-a-dozen desperate gallants, reckless of sharks and eddies,
leaped overboard, swam toward the flag, and towed it alongside in
triumph.
A BRAVE SCOTTISH CHIEF
Anonymous
This is the story of the life of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun,
in the province of Galloway, Scotland. Earlstoun is a bonny place,
sitting above the waterside of the river Ken. The gray tower stands
ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and
dear to the hearts of those who had dwelt in it, when they were
in foreign lands or hiding out on the wild wide moors. It was the
time when Charles II wished to compel the most part of the people
of Scotland to change their religion and worship as he bade them.
Some obeyed the king; but most hated the new order of things, and
cleaved in their hearts to their old ways and to their old ministers,
who had been put out of their churches and homes at the coming
of the king. Many even set themselves to resist the king in open
battle rather than obey him in the matter of their consciences. It
was only in this that they were rebellious, for many of them had
been active in bringing him again to the throne.
Among those who thus went out to fight were William Gordon and his
son Alexander. William Gordon was a grave, courteous, and venerable
man, and his estate was one of the best in all Galloway. Like
nearly all the lairds in the south and west, he was strongly of the
Presbyterian party, and resolved to give up life and lands rather
than his principles. Now, the king was doubtless ill-advised, and
his councillors did not take the kindly or the wise way with the
people at this time; for a host of wild Highlanders had been turned
into the land, who plundered in cotter's and laird's hall without
much distinction between those that stood for the Covenants and
those that held for the king. So in the year 1679 Galloway was
very hot and angry, and many were ready to fight the king's forces
wherever they could be met with.
So, hearing news of a revolt in the west, William Gordon rode away,
with many good riders at his back, to take his place in the ranks
of the rebels. His son Alexander, whose story we are to tell, was
there before him. The Covenanting army had gained one success in
Drumclog, which gave them some hope, but at Bothwell Bridge their
forces were utterly broken, largely through their own quarrels, by
the Duke of Monmouth and the disciplined troops of the government.
Alexander Gordon had to flee from the field of Bothwell. He came
home to Earlstoun alone, for his father had been met about six miles
from the battle-field by a troop of horse, and as he refused to
surrender, he was slain there and buried in the parish of Glassford.
Immediately after Bothwell, Alexander Gordon was compelled to go into
hiding with a price upon his head. Unlike his father, he was very
ready-witted, free with his tongue, even boisterous upon occasion,
and of very great bodily strength. These qualities stood him in
good stead during the long period of his wandering and when lying
in concealment among the hills.
The day after Bothwell, he was passing through the town of Hamilton,
when he was recognized by an old retainer of the family.
"Save us, Maister Alexander," said the man, who rememhered the
ancient kindnesses of his family, "do you not know that it is death
for you to be found here?"
So saying he made his young master dismount, and carried away
all his horseman's gear and his arms, which he hid in a heap of
field-manure behind the house. Then he took Earlstoun to his own
house, and put upon him a long dress of his wife's. Hardly had
he been clean-shaven and arrayed in a clean white cap, when the
troopers came clattering into the town. They had heard that he and
some others of the prominent rebels had passed that way; and they
went from door to door, knocking and asking, "Saw ye anything of
Sandy Gordon of Earlstoun?"
So going from house to house they came to the door of the ancient
Gordon retainer, and Earlstoun had hardly time to run to the corner
and begin to rock the cradle with his foot before the soldiers
came to ask the same question there. But they passed on without
suspicion, only saying one to the other as they went out, "My
certes, Billy, but yon was a sturdy hizzie!"
After that there was nothing but the heather and the mountain cave
for Alexander Gordon for many a day. He had wealth of adventures,
travelling by night, hiding and sleeping by day. Sometimes he would
venture to the house of one who sympathized with the Covenanters,
only to find that the troopers were already in possession. Sometimes,
in utter weariness, he slept so long that when he awoke he would
find a party searching for him quite close at hand; then there was
nothing for it but to lie close like a hare in a covert till the
danger passed by.
Once when he came to his own house of Earlstoun he was only an
hour or two there before the soldiers arrived to search for him.
His wife had hardly time to stow him in a secret recess behind the
ceiling of a room over the kitchen, in which place he abode several
days, having his meals passed to him from above, and breathing
through a crevice in the wall.
After this misadventure he was sometimes in Galloway and sometimes
in Holland for three or four years. He might even have remained in
the Low Countries, but his services were so necessary to his party
in Scotland that he was repeatedly summoned to come over into
Galloway and the west to take up the work of organizing resistance
to the government.
During most of the time the tower of Earlstoun was a barracks
of the soldiers, and it was only by watching his opportunity that
Alexander Gordon could come home to see his wife, and put his hand
upon his bairns' heads as they lay a-row in their cots. Yet come
he sometimes did, especially when the soldiers of the garrison
were away on duty in the more distant parts of Galloway. Then the
wanderer would steal indoors in the gloaming, soft-footed, like
a thief, into his own house, and sit talking with his wife and an
old retainer or two who were fit to be trusted with the secret. Yet
while he sat there, one was ever on the watch, and at the slightest
signs of king's men in the neighborhood Alexander Gordon rushed
out and ran to the great oak tree, which you may see to this day
standing in sadly diminished glory in front of the great house of
Earlstoun.
Now it stands alone, all the trees of the forest having been cut
away from around it during the subsequent poverty which fell upon
the family. A rope ladder lay snugly concealed among the ivy that
clad the trunk of the tree. Up this Alexander Gordon climbed. When
he arrived at the top he pulled the ladder after him, and found
himself upon an ingeniously constructed platform built with a
shelter over it from the rain, high among the branchy tops of the
great oak. His faithful wife, Jean Hamilton, could make signals to
him out of one of the top windows of Earlstoun whether it was safe
for him to approach the house, or whether he had better remain hidden
among the leaves. If you go now to look for the tree, it is indeed
plain and easy to be seen. But though now so shorn and lonely, there
is no doubt that two hundred years ago it stood undistinguished
among a thousand others that thronged the woodland about the tower
of Earlstoun.
Often, in order to give Alexander Gordon a false sense of security,
the garrison would be withdrawn for a week or two, and then in the
middle of some mirky night or early in the morning twilight the
house would be surrounded and the whole place ransacked in search
of its absent master.
On one occasion, the man who came running along the narrow river
path from Dalry had hardly time to arouse Gordon before the dragoons
were heard clattering down through the wood from the high-road.
There was no time to gain the great oak in safety, where he had so
often hid in time of need. All Alexander Gordon could do was to put
on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood
in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant.
When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house,
they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout
for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his
back" if he did not work to a better tune.
The commander ordered him to drop his axe, and to point out the
different rooms and hiding-places about the castle. Alexander Gordon
did so with an air of indifference, as if hunting Whigs were much
the same to him as cleaving firewood. He did his duty with a stupid
unconcern which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon
as they allowed him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the
same stolidity and rustic boorishness that had marked his conduct.
Some of the officers came up to him and questioned him as to his
master's hiding-place in the woods. But as to this he gave them no
satisfaction.
"My master," he said, "has no hiding-place that I know of. I always
find him here when I have occasion to seek for him, and that is
all I care about. But I am sure that if he thought you were seeking
him he would immediately show you, for that is ever his custom."
This was one of the answers with a double meaning that were so much
in the fashion of the time and so characteristic of the people.
On leaving, the commander of the troop said, "Ye are a stupid kindly
nowt, man. See that ye get no harm in such a rebel service."
Sometimes, however, searching waxed so hot and close that Gordon
had to withdraw himself altogether out of Galloway and seek quieter
parts of the country. On one occasion he was speeding up the Water
of Ae when he found himself so weary that he was compelled to lie
down under a bush of heather and rest before proceeding on his
journey. It so chanced that a noted king's man, Dalyell of Glene,
was riding homeward over the moor. His horse started back in
astonishment, having nearly stumbled over the body of a sleeping
man. It was Alexander Gordon. Hearing the horse's feet, he leaped
up, and Dalyell called upon him to surrender. But that was no word
to say to a Gordon of Earlstoun. Gordon instantly drew his sword,
and, though unmounted, his lightness of foot on the heather and
moss more than counterbalanced the advantages of the horseman, and
the king's man found himself matched at all points; for the Laird
of Earlstoun was in his day a famous swordsman.
Soon the Covenanter's sword seemed to wrap itself about Dalyell's
blade and sent it twirling high in the air. In a little while he
found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he
had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted
it to him, making him promise by his honor as a gentleman that
whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle (church meeting)
he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular
manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to
weigh against a man's life, and Dalyell agreed.
Now, the cavalier was an exceedingly honorable man and valued his
spoken word. So on the occasion of a great conventicle at Mitchelslacks,
in the parish of Closeburn, he permitted a great field meeting to
disperse, drawing off his party in another direction, because the
signal streaming from a staff told him the man who had spared his
life was among the company of worshippers.
After this, the white signal was frequently used in the neighborhood
over which Dalyell's jurisdiction extended, and to the great credit
of the cavalier it is recorded that on no single occasion did
he violate his plighted word, though he is said to have remarked
bitterly that the Whig with whom he fought must have been the
devil, "forever going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and
down in it."
But Alexander Gordon was too great a man in the affairs of the
Praying Societies to escape altogether. He continually went and
came from Holland, and some of the letters that he wrote from that
country are still in existence. At last, in 1683, having received
many letters and valuable papers for delivery to people in refuge
in Holland, he went secretly to Newcastle, and agreed with the
master of a ship for his voyage to the Low Countries. But just
as the vessel was setting out from the mouth of the Tyne, it was
accidentally stopped. Some watchers for fugitives came on board,
and Earlstoun and his companion were challenged. Earlstoun,
fearing the taking of his papers, threw the box that contained them
overboard; but it floated, and was taken along with himself.
Then began a long series of misfortunes for Alexander Gordon. He was
five times tried, twice threatened with torture--which he escaped,
in the judgment hall itself, by such an exhibition of his great
strength as terrified his judges. He simulated madness, foamed
at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack
the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of
Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of
air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to
Blackness Castle, where he remained close in hold till the revolution.
Not till June 5, 1689, were his prison doors thrown open, but even
then Alexander Gordon would not go till he had obtained signed
documents from the governor and officials of his prison to the
effect that he had never altered any of his opinions in order to
gain privilege or release.
Alexander Gordon returned to Earlstoun, and lived there quietly
far into the next century, taking his share in local and county
business with Grierson of Lag and others who had hunted him
for years-which is a strange thing to think on, but one also very
characteristic of those times.
On account of his great strength and the power of his voice, he
was called "the Bull of Earlstoun," and it is said that when he
was rebuking his servants the bellowing of the Bull could plainly
be heard in Dalry, which is two miles away across hill and stream.
THE ADVENTURE OF GRIZEL COCHRANE
By Arthur Quiller-Couch
At Edinburgh, almost under the shadow of the spire of St. Giles's,
in the pavement between that old cathedral church and the County
Hall, the passer-by will mark the figure of a heart let into the
causeway, and know that he is standing on the "Heart of Midlothian,"
[Footnote: The title of one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.] the
site of the old Tolbooth. That gloomy pile vanished in the autumn
of 1817; as Mr. Stevenson says, "the walls are now down in the
dust; there is no more _squalor carceris_ for merry debtors, no
more cage for the old acknowledged prison-breaker; but the sun and
the wind play freely over the foundations of the gaol;" this place,
"old in story and name-father to a noble book." The author of that
same "noble book" possessed himself of some memorials of the keep
he had rendered so famous, securing the stones of the gateway, and
the door with its ponderous fastenings to decorate the entrance of
his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. And this is all that is left.
But in the summer and autumn of 1685 the Tolbooth held prisoners
enough, notwithstanding the many gloomy processions that were from
time to time walking to the axe and halter in the Grassmarket; and
in a narrow cell, late one August evening, two persons were sitting
of whom this story shall treat. These two were Sir John Cochrane,
of Ochiltree, and his daughter Grizel--here on the saddest of
errands, to visit her father in prison and help in his preparations
for death.
For Sir John, a stout Whig, had been one of the leaders of Argyle's
insurrection; had been beaten with his troops by Lord Ross at
Muirdykes; had disbanded his handful of men, and fled for hiding to
the house of his uncle, Mr. Gavin Cochrane, of Craigmuir; had been
informed against by his uncle's wife, seized, taken to Edinburgh;
had been paraded, bound and bareheaded, through the streets by
the common executioner; and then on the 3d of July flung into the
Tolbooth to await his trial for high treason. And now the trial,
too, was over, and Sir John was condemned to die.
As he now sat, with bowed head, on the bench of his cell, it was not
the stroke of death that terrified him--for Sir John was a brave
man--but the parting with his children, who would through his
rashness be left both orphaned and penniless (for the crown would
seize his goods), and chiefly the parting with his daughter, who
had been his one comfort in the dark days of waiting for the king's
warrant of execution to arrive.
Between his apprehension and his trial no friend or kinsman had been
allowed to visit him; but now that his death was assured, greater
license had been granted. But, anxious to deprive his enemies of a
chance to accuse his sons, he had sent them his earnest entreaties
and commands that they should abstain from using this permission
until the night before his execution. They had obeyed; but obedience
of this sort did not satisfy the conscience of his daughter Grizel.
On the very night of his condemnation he heard the key turn in his
door; thinking it could only be the gaoler, he scarcely lifted his
eyes. But the next moment a pair of soft arms were flung round his
neck, and his daughter was weeping on his breast. From that day she
had continued to visit him; and now as she sat beside him, staring
at the light already fading in the narrow pane, both father and
daughter knew that it was almost the last time.
Presently she spoke--
"And this message--tell me truly, have you any hope from it?"
It was an appeal made by Sir John's father, the Earl of Dundonald,
to Father Peters, the king's confessor, who often dictated to him,
as was well known, on matters of state. But in the short time left,
would there be time to press this appeal, and exert that influence
in London which alone could stay the death-warrant?
"There is no hope in that quarter," said Sir John.
Grizel knew that he spoke only what was her own conviction, and
her despair.
"Argyle is dead these three days," pursued her father, "and with
him men of less consequence than I. Are they likely to spare me--a
head of the rising? Would they spare any man now, in the heat of
their revenge?"
"Father," said Grizel suddenly, "could you spare me from your side
for a few days?"
Sir John looked up. He knew by her manner that she had formed some
plan in her mind; he knew, too, from her heart, that nothing but
chance of winning his safety could take her from him now, of all
times.
"My child," he said, "you are going to attempt something."
She nodded, with a brighter face than she had worn for many days.
"And what you would attempt," he went on, "is an impossibility."
"Nothing is impossible to a true heart," she said.
"And who will help you?"
"No one." She was standing before him now, and in the twilight he
could see her eyes lit up with hope, her figure upright, and as if
full of a man's strength.
"My girl, you will run into danger--into blame. They will not
spare you, and--do you know the characters of those men whom you
would have to sue?"
She bent and kissed him.
"I am a Cochrane, my father."
Early next morning, before the world was up, Grizel Cochrane was
mounted on horseback and riding towards the border. She had dressed
herself--this girl of eighteen--as a young serving-woman, and when
she drew rein at a wayside cottage for food and drink, professed
herself journeying on a borrowed horse to visit her mother's house
across the Tweed.
By noon Edinburgh was some leagues behind, but she pressed on
through that day and most of the following night.
On the second day after leaving Edinburgh she crossed the Tweed,
and came in safety to the home of an old nurse, on the English
side, four miles beyond the town of Berwick.
"Gude sakes!" cried the old woman, who was standing at her cottage
door and was rather astonished to find the horsewoman draw rein,
leap to the ground, and plant a kiss on either cheek--"Gude sakes!
if it isna Miss Grizel!"
"Quickly, into the house!" commanded her young mistress; "I have
somewhat to tell that will not wait an hour."
She knew the old nurse was to be trusted, and therefore told her
story and her secret. "Even now," she said at the end of her story,
"the postman is riding from London with the warrant in his bag. I
must stop him and make him give it up to me, or my father's head
is the penalty.
"But what use to talk o' this, when the postman is a stout rider,
and armed to boot? How is a mere girl, saving your presence, to do
this at all?"
"Look here."
Grizel unrolled a bundle which she had brought on her saddle-crutch
from Edinburgh; it held a horseman's cloak and a brace of pistols.
"Now," said she, "where are the clothes of Donald, my foster-brother?
He was a slight lad in times syne, and little doubt they'll fit
me."
For this was indeed the brave girl's plan:--In those times
the mail from London took eight days on its journey to Edinburgh;
by possessing herself of the warrant for her father's death and
detaining it, she could count on the delay of sixteen or seventeen
days at least before application could be made for a second, and
that signed and sent to the Scotch capital. By this delay, time
enough would be won for her friends in London to use all their
influence to quash the sentence.
It was a mad scheme; but, as she had said, nothing is impossible
to a true heart. She had possessed herself, too, of the minutest
information with regard to the places where the postmen rested on
their journey. One of these places, she knew, was a small inn kept
by a widow on the outskirts of the little town of Belford. There
the man who received the bag at Durham was accustomed to arrive at
about six in the morning, and take a few hours' sleep before going
on with his journey. And at Belford, Grizel Cochrane had determined
to meet him.
Taking leave of her faithful nurse, she rode southwards again, and,
timing her pace, drew up before the inn at Belford just an hour
after the postman had come in from the south and disposed himself
to sleep.
The mistress of the inn had no ostler, so Grizel stabled her horse
with her own hands, and striding into the inn-parlor, demanded food
and drink.
"Sit ye down, then," answered the old woman, "at the end of yon table,
for the best I have to give you is there already. And be pleased,
my bonny man, to make as little noise as may be; for there's one
asleep in that bed that I like ill to disturb."
She pointed to the victuals on the board, which were indeed the
remains of the sleeping man's meal. Grizel sat down before them,
considered to herself while she played with a mouthful or two, and
then asked--
"Can I have a drink of water?"
"'Deed," answered the hostess, "and are ye a water-drinker? 'Tis
but an ill-custom for a change-house."
"Why, that I know; and so, when I put up at an inn, 'tis my custom
always to pay for it the price of stronger drink, which I cannot
take."
"Indeed--well, that's fairly spoken; and, come to think of it,
'tis but just." The landlady brought a jug of water and set it on
the board.
"Is the well where you got this water near at hand?" said Grizel,
pouring out a glass and sipping at it; "for if 'tis no trouble to
fetch some fresh for me, I will tell you this is rather over-warm
and flat. Your trouble shall be considered in the dawing," added
she.
"'Tis a good step off," answered the dame; "but I cannot refuse to
fetch for so civil, discreet a lad--and a well-favored one, besides.
So bide ye here, and I'll be as quick as I maun. But for any sake
take care and don't meddle with the man's pistols there, for they
are loaded, the both; and every time I set eyes on them they scare
me out of my senses, almost."
She took up a pitcher and went out to draw the water. No sooner
was Grizel left alone than, starting up, she waited for a moment,
listening to the footsteps as they died away in the distance, and
then crept swiftly across the floor to the place where the postman
lay asleep. He lay in one of those close wooden bedsteads, like
cupboards, which were then common in the houses of the poor, and
to this day may be seen in many a house in Brittany. The door of it
was left half-open to give the sleeper air, and from this aperture
the noise of his snoring issued in a way that shook the house.
Nevertheless, it seemed to the girl that he must be awakened by
the creaking of the floor under her light footfall. With heart in
mouth she stole up to the bedstead, and gently pulling the door
still wider ajar, peeped in, in the hope of seeing the mail-bag
and being able to pounce upon it.
She saw it, indeed; but to her dismay, it lay beneath the shaggy
head of its guardian--a giant in size. The postman used his charge
as a pillow, and had flung himself so heavily across it as to
give not the faintest hope that any one could pull it away without
disturbing its keeper from his nap. Nothing could be done now. In
those few bitter moments, during which she stood helplessly looking
from the bag which contained the fatal warrant to the unconscious
face of the man before her, Grizel made up her mind to another
plan.
She turned to the table, caught up the postman's holsters, and
pulled out the pistols of which the old woman had professed herself
in such terror. Quickly drawing and secreting the charges, she
returned them to their cases, with many an anxious look over her
shoulder towards the bedstead, and took her seat again at the foot
of the table.
Hardly had she done so when she heard the old woman returning
with the pitcher. Grizel took a draught, for her throat felt like
a lime-kiln, and having settled her bill, much to the landlady's
satisfaction, by paying for the water the price of a pot of beer,
prepared to set off. She carelessly asked and ascertained how much
longer the other guest was likely to sleep.
"By the noise he makes he intends sleeping till Doomsday," she
said, laughing.
"Ay, poor man! his is a hard life," said the hostess; "and little
more than half an hour more before he must be on the highway again."
Grizel laughed once more, and, mounting her horse, set off at a
trot along the road southward, as if continuing her journey in that
direction.
Hardly had she got beyond the town, however, when turning the
horse's head she galloped back, making a circuit around Belford and
striking into the high road again between that place and Berwick.
Having gained it, she walked the horse gently on, awaiting the
coming up of the postman.
Though all her mind was now set on the enterprise before her, she
could not help a shiver of terror as she thought on the chance of
her tampering with the pistols being discovered, and their loading
replaced. But she had chosen her course, and now she must go through
with it. She was a woman, after all; and it cannot be wondered
that her heart began to beat quickly as her ear caught the sound
of hoofs on the road behind her, and, turning, she saw the man on
whose face she had been gazing not an hour before, trotting briskly
towards her--the mail-bags (there were two--one containing the
letters direct from London, the other those taken up at the different
post-offices on the road) strapped one on each side of his saddle
in front, close to the holsters.
At the last moment her nerve came back, and as he drew near she
saluted him civilly and with perfect calmness, put her horse into
the same pace with his, and rode on for some way in his company.
The postman was a burly, thick-set man, with a good-humored face.
You may be sure that Miss Cochrane inspected it anxiously enough,
and was relieved to find that it did not contain any vast amount
of hardy courage.
The man was well enough inclined for conversation, too, and as
they rode had a heap of chat, which it seemed a pity to interrupt.
At length, however, when they were about half-way between Belford
and Berwick, Grizel judged now or never was the time. Pulling her
horse's rein gently so as to bring her close to her company, she
said in a low but perfectly determined voice--
"Friend, I have taken a fancy for those mail-bags of yours, and I
must have them: therefore take my advice, and deliver them up quietly,
for I am provided for all hazards. I am mounted, as you see, on
a fleet horse; I carry fire-arms; and, moreover, I am allied with
those who are stronger, though not bolder, than I. You see that
wood, yonder?" she continued, pointing to one about a mile off,
with an accent and air meant to corroborate her bold words. "Then
take my advice: give me up your bags, and speed back the road you
came for the present, nor dare to approach that wood for at least
two or three hours to come."
The postman, whose eyes had been growing rounder and rounder during
this speech from the stripling beside him, pulled up and looked at
her in dumb amazement for some moments.
"If," said he, as soon as he found his tongue, "you mean, young
master, to make yourself merry at my expense, you are heartily
welcome. I can see a joke, I trust, as well as another man; so
have your laugh out, and don't think I'm one to take offence at
the words of a foolish boy. But if," and here he whipped a pistol
from his holster and turned the muzzle on her face--"if y'are mad
enough to think seriously of such a business, then I am ready for
you."
They had come to a stand now, in the middle of the road; and Grizel
felt an ugly sinking at the heart as she looked at the mouth of the
pistol, now not a yard from her cheek. Nevertheless she answered,
very quietly and cooly--
"If you have a doubt, dismiss it; I am quite in earnest."
The postman, with his hand on the trigger, hesitated.
"Methinks my lad, you seem of an age when robbing a garden or an
old woman's fruit-stall would befit you better, if so be you must
turn thief, than taking his Majesty's mails upon his highway from
a stout and grown man. So be thankful, then, you have met with one
who will not shed blood if he can help it, and go your way before
I am provoked to fire."
"Sir," said Grizel, "you are a worthy man; nor am I fonder of
bloodshed than you; but if you will not be persuaded, what shall
I do? For I have said--and it is truth--that mail I must and will
have. Choose, then;" and with this she pulled out a pistol from
under her cloak, and, cocking it, presented it in his face.
"Nay, then, your blood be on your own head," cried the postman,
and raising his pistol again he pulled the trigger; it flashed in
the pan. Dashing the weapon to the ground, he pulled out the other
in a moment, and aiming it in Grizel's face, fired--with the same
result. In a furious passion he flung down this pistol, too, sprang
from his horse, and dashed forward to seize her. She dug her spurs
into her horse's flank and just eluded his grasp. Meanwhile the
postman's horse, frightened at the noise and the struggle, had moved
forward a pace or two. The girl saw her opportunity, and seized it
in the same instant. Another dig with the spurs, and her own horse
was level with the other; leaning forward she caught at the bridle,
and calling to the pair, in an instant was galloping off along the
highway, leaving the postman helplessly staring.
She had gone about a hundred yards with her prize, when she pulled
up to look back. Her discomfited antagonist was still standing
in the middle of the road, apparently stupefied with amazement at
the unlooked-for turn which affairs had taken. Shouting to him
to remember her advice about the wood, she put both the horses to
their speed, and on looking back once more was gratified to find
that the postman, impressed with the truth of her mysterious threat,
had turned and was making the best of his way back to Belford.
On gaining the wood to which she had pointed, Grizel tied the
postman's horse to a tree, at a safe distance from the road, and
set about unfastening the straps of the mail-bags. With a sharp
penknife she ripped them open, and searched for the government
despatches among their contents. To find these was not difficult, owing
to their address to the council in Edinburgh, and of the imposing
weight of their seals. Here she discovered, not only the warrant
for her father's death, but also many other sentences inflicting
punishment in varying degrees on the unhappy men who had been
taken in the late rising. Time was pressing; she could not stop to
examine the warrants, but, quickly tearing them in small pieces,
placed them carefully in her bosom.
This done, and having arranged all the private papers as far
as possible as she had found them, Grizel mounted her horse again
and rode off. The postman's horse and the mail-bags, she imagined,
would soon be found, from the hints which she had given to the man
about the wood--and this afterwards proved to be the case. She now
set her horse at a gallop again, and did not spare whip or spur
until she reached the cottage of her nurse, where her first care
was to burn, not only the warrant for her father's death, but the
remainder of the sentences on his fellow-prisoners. Having satisfied
herself that all trace of the obnoxious papers was now consumed,
she put on again her female garments, and was once more the gentle
and unassuming Miss Grizel Cochrane.
It was high time, however, to be making her way northwards again;
accordingly she left her pistols and cloak to be concealed by
the nurse, and again set forward on her journey. By avoiding the
highroad, resting only at the most sequestered cottages--and then
but for an hour or so--and riding all the while as hard as she
might, she reached Edinburgh in safety early next morning.
It remains only to say that the time thus won by this devoted girl
was enough to gain the end for which she strove; and Father Peters
plied the ear of King James so importunately that at length the
order was signed for Sir John Cochrane's pardon.
The state of public affairs rendered it prudent for many years that
this action of Grizel Cochrane's should be kept secret; but after
the Revolution, when men could speak more freely, her heroism was
known and applauded. She lived to marry Mr. Ker, of Morriston, in
Berwickshire, and doubtless was as good a wife as she had proved
herself a daughter.
THE SUNKEN TREASURE
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Picture to yourselves a handsome, old-fashioned room, with a large,
open cupboard at one end, in which is displayed a magnificent gold
cup, with some other splendid articles of gold and silver plate. In
another part of the room, opposite to a tall looking-glass, stands
our beloved chair, newly polished, and adorned with a gorgeous
cushion of crimson velvet, tufted with gold.
In the chair sits a man of strong and sturdy frame, whose face has
been roughened by northern tempests and blackened by the burning
sun of the West Indies. He wears an immense periwig, flowing down
over his shoulders. His coat has a wide embroidery of golden foliage;
and his waistcoat, likewise, is all flowered over and bedizened
with gold. His red, rough hands, which have done many a good day's
work with the hammer and adze, are half covered by the delicate lace
ruffles at his wrists. On a table lies his silver-hilted sword;
and in the corner of the room stands his gold-headed cane, made of
a beautifully polished West India wood Somewhat such an aspect as
this did Phips present when he sat in Grandfather's chair after
the king had appointed him Governor of Massachusetts.
But Sir William Phips had not always worn a gold-embroidered coat,
nor always sat so much at his ease as he did in Grandfather's chair.
He was a poor man's son, and was born in the province of Maine,
where in his boyhood he used to tend sheep upon the hills. Until he
had grown to be a man, he did not even know how to read and write.
Tired of tending sheep, he apprenticed himself to a ship-carpenter,
and spent about four years in hewing the crooked limbs of oak trees
into knees for vessels.
In 1673, when he was twenty-two years old, he came to Boston, and
soon afterwards was married to a widow lady, who had property enough
to set him up in business. It was not long before he lost all the
money that he had acquired by his marriage, and became a poor man
again. Still, he was not discouraged. He often told his wife that
he should be very rich, and would build a "fair brick house" in
the Green Lane of Boston.
Several years passed away; and Phips had not yet gained the riches
which he promised to himself. During this time he had begun to
follow the sea for a living. In the year 1684 he happened to hear
of a Spanish ship which had been cast away near Porto de la Plata.
She had now lain for fifty years beneath the waves. This old ship
had been laden with immense wealth; and nobody had thought of the
possibility of recovering any part of it from the deep sea which
was rolling and tossing it about. But though it was now an old
story, Phips resolved that the sunken treasure should again be
brought to light.
He went to London and obtained admittance to King James. He told
the king of the vast wealth that was lying at the bottom of the
sea. King James listened with attention, and thought this a fine
opportunity to fill his treasury with Spanish gold. He appointed
William Phips to be captain of a vessel, called the _Rose Algier_,
carrying eighteen guns and ninety-five men. So now he was Captain
Phips of the English navy.
The captain sailed from England and cruised for two years in the
West Indies, trying to find the wrecked Spanish ship. But the sea
is so wide and deep that it is no easy matter to discover the exact
spot where a sunken vessel lies. The prospect of success seemed very
small, and most people thought that Phips was as far from having
money enough to build a "fair brick house" as he was while he tended
sheep.
The seamen became discouraged, and gave up all hope of making their
fortunes by discovering the Spanish wreck. They wanted Phips to
turn pirate. There was a much better prospect of growing rich by
plundering vessels which still sailed in the sea than by seeking
for a ship that had lain beneath the waves full half a century.
They broke out in open mutiny, but were finally mastered by Phips,
and compelled to obey his orders. It would have been dangerous to
continue much longer at sea with such a crew of mutinous sailors;
and the ship was unseaworthy. So Phips judged it best to return to
England.
Before leaving the West Indies, he met with an old Spaniard who
remembered the wreck of the Spanish ship, and gave him directions
how to find the very spot. It was on a reef of rocks, a few leagues
from Porto de la Plata.
On his arrival in England Phips solicited the king to let him have
another vessel and send him back again to the West Indies. But King
James refused to have anything more to do with the affair. Phips
might never have been able to renew the search if the Duke of
Albemarle and some other noblemen had not lent their assistance.
They fitted out a ship, and he sailed from England, and arrived
safely at La Plata, where he took an adze and assisted his men to
build a large boat.
The boat was intended for going closer to the rocks than a large
vessel could safely venture. When it was finished, the captain
sent several men in it to examine the spot where the Spanish ship
was said to have been wrecked. They were accompanied by some Indians,
who were skilful divers, and could go down a great way into the
depths of the sea.
The boat's crew proceeded to the reef of rocks, and gazed down into
the transparent water. Nothing could they see more valuable than a
curious sea shrub growing beneath the water, in a crevice of the.
reef of rocks. It flaunted to and fro with the swell and reflux
of the waves, and looked as bright and beautiful as if its leaves
were gold.
"We won't go back empty-handed," cried an English sailor; and then
he spoke to one of the, Indian divers. "Dive down and bring me that
pretty sea shrub there. That's the only treasure we shall find!"
Down plunged the diver, and soon rose dripping from the water,
holding the sea shrub in his hand. But he had learned some news
at the bottom of the sea. "There are some ship's guns," said he,
the moment he had drawn breath, "some great cannon, among the rocks,
near where the shrub was growing."
No sooner had he spoken than the English sailors knew that they
had found the spot where the Spanish galleon had been wrecked, so
many years before. The other Indian divers plunged over the boat's
side and swam headlong down, groping among the rocks and sunken
cannon. In a few moments one of them rose above the water with a
heavy lump of silver in his arms. That single lump was worth more
than a thousand dollars. The sailors took it into the boat, and
then rowed back is speedily as they could, being in haste to inform
Captain Phips of their good luck.
But, confidently as the captain had hoped to find the Spanish wreck,
yet, now that it was really found, the news seemed too good to be
true. He could not believe it till the sailors showed him the lump
of silver. "Thanks be to God!" then cries Phips. "We shall every
man of us make our fortunes!"
Hereupon the captain and all the crew set to work, with iron rakes
and great hooks and lines, fishing for gold and silver at the bottom
of the sea. Up came the treasures in abundance. Now they beheld a
table of solid silver, once the property of an old Spanish grandee.
Now they found an altar vessel, which had been destined as a gift
to some Catholic church. Now they drew up a golden cup, fit for
the King of Spain to drink his wine out of. Now their rakes were
loaded with masses of silver bullion. There were also precious
stones among the treasure, glittering and sparkling, so that it is
a wonder how their radiance could have been concealed.
After a day or two they discovered another part of the wreck where
they found a great many bags of silver dollars. But nobody could
have guessed that these were money-bags. By remaining so long in
the salt-water they had become covered over with a crust which had
the appearance of stone, so that it was necessary to break them
in pieces with hammers and axes. When this was done, a stream of
silver dollars gushed out upon the deck of the vessel.
The whole value of the recovered treasure, plate, bullion, precious
stones, and all, was estimated at more than two millions of dollars.
It was dangerous even to look at such a vast amount of wealth. A
captain, who had assisted Phips in the enterprise, lost his reason
at the sight of it. He died two years afterward, still raving about
the treasures that lie at the bottom of the sea.
Phips and his men continued to fish up plate, bullion, and dollars,
as plentifully as ever, till their provisions grew short. Then,
as they could not feed upon gold and silver any more than old King
Midas could, they found it necessary to go in search of food. Phips
returned to England, arriving there in 1687, and was received with
great joy by the Albemarles and other English lords who had fitted
out the vessel. Well they might rejoice; for they took the greater
part of the treasures to themselves.
The captain's share, however, was enough to make him comfortable
for the rest of his days. It also enabled him to fulfil his promise
to his wife, by building a "fair brick house" in the Green Lane of
Boston. The Duke of Albemarle sent Mrs. Phips a magnificent gold
cup, worth at least five thousand dollars. Before Captain Phips
left London, King James made him a knight; so that, instead of
the obscure ship-carpenter who had formerly dwelt among them, the
inhabitants of Boston welcomed him on his return as the rich and
famous Sir William Phips.
THE LOST EXILES OF TEXAS
By Arthur Gilman
If we could have stood upon the shores of Matagorda Bay with the
Indians on a certain day over two hundred years ago we might have
been witness to a strange sight. Before us would have been spread
out the waters of a broad and sheltered harbor opening towards the
sea through a narrow passage which was obstructed by sandbars and
an island. One's eyes could not reach to the end of the bay, which
is fifty miles long; nor could they see land beyond the sea-passage,
for that opens into the broad Gulf of Mexico. Let us take our stand
on the shore and see what we can see.
There appear to us, as if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen
accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth
of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore. It is
a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he
says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating.
He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like
Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of the great patriarch, they
seemed to be few of them worth saving.
As we look, the men begin to gather together the pieces of
drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They
are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his
lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he
exclaims with evident joy, in his native French _"Voila les vaisseaux!"_
or words to that effect, for he has descried two ships entering
the bay from the Gulf. The ships slowly keep their way towards
the inland coast, and from one of them there lands a man evidently
higher in authority than any we have seen. His air is calm,
dignified, forceful, persistent. He announces to those about him
that they are at one of the mouths of the great Mississippi, or,
as he well calls it _"La riviere fu-neste,"_ the fatal river. "Here
shall we land all our men," he adds, "and here shall our vessels
be placed in safe harbor."
In vain does the commander of one of the little ships protest that
the water of the bay is too shallow and that the currents are too
powerful; the strong man has given his order, and it must be obeyed.
The channel was duly marked out, and on the twentieth of February,
one of the ships, the _Aimable,_ weighed anchor and began to enter
the bay. The commander was on the shore, anxiously watching to see
the result, when, suddenly, some of his men who had been cutting
down a tree to make a canoe, rushed up and exclaimed, with terror
in their faces, "The Indians have attacked us and one of our number
is even now a captive in their hands." There was nothing to be done
but go in pursuit of the savages.
It did not take long to arm a few men, and off they started with
their leader in the direction that the Indians had taken. The
savages were overtaken and a parley ensued. The leader's thoughts
were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the
shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the _Aimable_, and
to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal
water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground."
Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did
not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the
village whither the captive had been taken. Just as they entered
its precincts and looked upon its inhabitants, clustered in groups
among the dome-shaped huts, the loud boom of a cannon burst upon
their ears. The savages were smitten with terror, and the commander
felt his heart beat quickly as he looked again towards the water
and saw the _Aimable_ furling its sails, a sure token to him that
she had indeed struck the rock and would be lost, with all the
stores intended for use when her passengers should be landed.
Undaunted by the prospect, or even by the dark picture that his
imagination conjured up, he pressed onward among the miserable
savages, until his man had been recovered. Then he returned, and
found his vessel on her side, a forlorn spectacle. Now the wind
rose, and the sea beat upon the helpless hulk. It rocked backwards
and forwards on its uneasy bed; its treasures of boxes and bales
and casks were strewn over the waters; the greedy Indians made haste
to seize what they could; and as night approached the hurriedly
organized patrol of soldiers had all that they could do to face
the deepening storm and protect their goods from the treacherous
natives, as the less treacherous waves cast them upon the sands of
the shore.
Who were these men, thus unceremoniously thrust upon the shores of
the New World? How did it happen that they were found at a point
that no European had before seen? Perhaps it is not necessary to
ask how they happened to mistake the entrance to Matagorda Bay for
one of the broad mouths of the Mississippi. They were Frenchmen.
So much their speech has told us. The leader was Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de La Salle, a man whom the historian Bancroft says that he
had no superior among his countrymen for force of will and vast
conceptions; for various knowledge, and quick adaptation of his
genius to untried circumstances; for sublime magnanimity that resigned
itself to the will of Heaven and yet triumphed over affliction by
energy of purpose and unfaltering hope.
In early life he had renounced his inheritance and devoted himself
to the service of the Church, but he soon left the order of Jesuits
which he had entered, because, as Mr. Parkman surmises, he did not
relish being all his life the moved and not the mover; because he
could not give up his individuality and remain one of the great
body, all of whom were compelled to march in a track pointed out to
them by a superior. It is pleasant to know that he left the order
with good feelings on both sides.
In 1667, we find the young man already entered upon the career of
adventure in which the rest of his life was to be spent. He had
sailed to Canada, the place of attraction for ambitious French
youth, and there he remained several years, making the familiar
acquaintance of the Indians and learning their language, while he
was dreaming, like many others, of the passage to China through
the rivers that came down from the westward. He had looked, too,
in his vivid imagination over the vast plains of the great West,
and had become filled with brilliant visions of an empire that he
hoped some day to see established there for France. We have already
learned how France took possession of the region, at this very
period.
In such state of mind, La Salle sailed back to France in the
autumn of 1674. He was well received and the next year returned,
ennobled, and more than ever determined to push his grand scheme
for the acquisition of the great West. His was no plan to indulge
in theatrical spectacles, but to take actual possession. Year
after year we see him steadily pursuing his single plan. He thinks
nothing of crossing the Atlantic, of pushing his course through
the trackless woods, or of paddling his frail canoe over the wild
waters of the broad lakes. Indians did not daunt him by their
cruelty, nor wild beasts affright him by their numbers and ferocity.
Onward, ever onward, He pressed.
In the year 1680, we find him taking possession by actual occupation,
of the region now comprising the State of Illinois. It was the
first time that civilization had asserted itself there. La Salle
built a fort, and, in memory of the trials of the way, called it
_Crevecoeur_, which signified Broken-heart; but it did not testify
to any broken courage on his part;--rather it was a monument to
the obstacles that his persistence had surmounted.
Two years later, we find his canoe, which seems to our eyes now the
emblem of an aggressive civilization, flitting along the Illinois
River, entering the muddy Mississippi, and floating down its thousand
miles to the Gulf. This is not the whole picture, however. We see
the party start from the Chicago River, in the cold weather of
December. The rivers are frozen. Canoes must be dragged over their
snowy and icy surfaces, and baggage can be transported in no way
but upon rough sledges. Can you not see the slow procession of
fifty persons dragging themselves along day after day through the
region inhabited but by savages and wild beasts, suffering from cold
and hunger, and all held to their duty by the persevering leader
who had brought them there?
There are twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen Indian braves, belonging
to those terrible Abenakis and Mohegans whose "midnight yells had,"
as Mr. Parkman says, "startled the border hamlets of New England;
who had danced around Puritan scalps, and whom Puritan imaginations
painted as incarnate fiends." There were besides, ten squaws
and three children. A motley collection and one not calculated to
inspire confidence nor hope for the success of any undertaking. It
was not until they had passed the point where the river broadens
into Lake Peoria that they found water in which they could float
their canoes. Then they continued on, until early in February they
found themselves on the banks of the Mississippi. It was filled
with ice, and no canoe could navigate it.
After a delay of a few days, they found the river free, and again
took up their course southwards. A day more brought them to the
confluence of the muddy Missouri, which some of my readers have
probably seen, where a mighty stream coming down from distant
mountains, enters another not so mighty as itself, and plowing
its way across its current, burrows under the soil on the opposite
shore. This did not detain the voyagers, though they encamped there
over night, and then pursued their course towards the unknown. A
few days showed them the mouth of the Ohio, but still they pressed
onward. It was near the end of February, the temperature was growing
perceptibly warmer as they approached the South.
At a certain point they encamped and sent out their hunters for
game. One did not return at night, and a horror seized the others,
as they thought that he had been overtaken and killed by hostile
Indians. Day after day the woods were scoured in the hope of finding
the missing companion, but it seemed vain. A fort was erected for
the protection of the party on a high bluff, and named for the
lost hunter, Prudhomme. At last they met some Chickasaw Indians,
and messages of amity were exchanged through them with the people
of their village, not far distant. Soon afterwards Prudhomme was
discovered, half-dead from exposure, for he had lost his way while
hunting.
Thus the expedition progressed for many days, until at last the little
canoes found themselves thrust out through the turbid channels of
the delta, into the clear salt waters of the Gulf of Mexico. They
had stopped on the way after leaving Fort Prudhomme, at several
Indian towns, had been well treated by the natives, and they had
seen the mouths of the Arkansas and the Red rivers.
The whole valley of the Fatal River had been laid bare to them, and
now La Salle thought the time had come to take formal possession
for his sovereign.
Near the mouth of the river, the party came together on the ninth
of April, 1682, and a ceremony took place that was very similar to
the one at the Sault Ste. Marie, a few days less than eleven years
before, by which France had taken possession of the Northwest. It
did not rival that in the magnificence with which it was conducted,
though the ceremonial was, perhaps, a little more elaborated, but
it seemed to have a better basis of fact, for La Salle had actually
passed through the heart of the region which he now claimed. A
column was erected, of course, and a tablet of lead was buried near
it, such as those that had been placed in the ground at various
other places by Frenchmen, bearing testimony to the fact that Louis
the Great claimed to rule the land.
It was nearly the end of November of the following year, when La
Salle reached Quebec, after having retraced his route by long and
tedious stages up the rivers that he had followed down to the Gulf.
Then he returned to France to tell the story of his travels, and
began to use his influence to induce the government to send out
an expedition to take controlling possession of the Mississippi
region. He argued with all his powers, saying that by fortifying
the river, the French might control the continent. It was really
a grand and brilliant proposition, and the king and his minister
gave more than was demanded. Four vessels were prepared, instead
of the two that La Salle asked for. The expedition comprised a
hundred soldiers, thirty volunteers, many mechanics and laborers,
several families and a few girls, who looked forward to certain
marriage in the new land.
On the twenty-fourth of July, La Salle set sail from Roehelle,
with four hundred men in his four vessels, leaving an affectionate
and comforting letter as his last farewell to his mother at Rouen.
We have already seen how he was thrown upon the shores of the
New World. There, on the sands of Matagorda Bay, with nothing to
eat but oysters and a sort of porridge made of the flour that had
been saved, the homesick party of downcast men and sorrowing women
encamped until their leader could tell them what to do. They did
not even know where they were. They were intending to conquer the
Spaniards, but they knew nothing of their whereabouts. They were
attacked by Indians, and finally, some three weeks after the wreck,
the commander of the ships sailed away for France leaving La Salle
and his forlorn company behind!
A site was soon chosen on the river now called Lavaca (a corruption
of _La Vache_, the cow, a name given it because buffaloes had been
seen there), and a fort was built called St. Louis. La Salle had
scarcely finished this establishment, when he determined to search
for the Mississippi River, for he had by that time concluded from
explorations that he had not found it. On the last day of October,
he started, and towards the end of March, the party returned, tattered
and worn, almost ready to die; but though the strong body of the
leader had given away, his stronger spirit was still unbroken, and
he soon determined to set out to find the Illinois region where
he left a colony formerly, and where he felt sure he could obtain
relief. There was no chance for them to return directly to France
since their vessels were all gone, and this seemed their only hope.
A party of twenty was formed to undertake the perilous enterprise,
and on the twenty-second of April, 1686, they took their way from
the fort, bearing on their persons the contributions that their
fellows who were to remain had been able to bring together for
their comfort.
The party experienced a variety of hardships, quarrelled among
themselves, and finally, on the morning of the eighteenth of March,
1687, one of them shot and killed the brave leader. The remainder
kept on, finally reached Canada and were taken to their native
land. To the colonists at Fort St. Louis, no ground of hope ever
appeared, though they felt that the people of France must have an
interest in them, and so they kept a look-out over the water for a
ship coming to their relief. It never came, alas, and no one knows
to this day what became of the Lost Exiles of Texas!
THE BOY CONQUEROR--CHARLES XII OF SWEDEN
By E. S. Brooks
In an old, old palace on the rocky height of the _Slottsbacke_,
or Palace Hill, in the northern quarter of the beautiful city of
Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, there lived, just two hundred
years ago, a bright young prince. His father was a stern and daring
warrior-king--a man who had been a fighter from his earliest boyhood;
who at fourteen had been present in four pitched battles with the
Danes, and who, while yet scarce twelve years old, had charged
the Danish line at the head of his guards and shot down the stout
Danish colonel, who could not resist the spry young warrior. His
mother was a sweet-faced Danish princess, a loving and gentle lady,
who scarce ever heard a kind word from her stern-faced husband,
and whose whole life was bound up in her precious little prince.
And this little Carolus, Karl, or Charles, dearly loved his tender
mother. From her he learned lessons of truth and nobleness that
even through all his stormy and wandering life never forsook him.
Often while he had swung gently to and fro in his quaint, carved,
and uncomfortable-looking cradle, had she crooned above him the
old saga-songs that told of valor and dauntless courage and all the
stern virtues that made up the heroes of those same old saga-songs.
Many a time she had trotted the little fellow on her knee to the
music of the ancient nursery rhyme that has a place in all lands
and languages, from the steppes of Siberia to the homes of New York
and San Francisco:
"Ride along, ride a cock-horse,
His mane is dapple-gray;
Ride along, ride a cock-horse,
Little boy, ride away.
Where shall the little boy ride to?
To the king's court to woo"--
and so forth, and so forth, and so forth--in different phrases but
with the same idea, as many and many a girl and boy can remember.
And she had told him over and over again the saga-stories and fairy
tales that every Scandinavian boy and girl, from prince to peasant,
knows so well--of Frithiof and Ingeborg, and the good King Rene;
and about the Stone Giant and his wife Guru; and about the dwarfs,
and trolls, and nixies, and beautiful mermaids and stromkarls. And
she told him also many a story of brave and daring deeds, of noble
and knightly lives, and how his ancestors, from the great Gustavus,
and, before, from the still greater Gustavus Vasa, had been kings
of Sweden, and had made the name of that Northern land a power in
all the courts of Europe.
Little Prince Charles was as brave as he was gentle and jolly, and
as hardy as he was brave. At five years old he killed his first
fox; at seven he could manage his horse like a young centaur; and
at twelve he had his first successful bear hunt. He was as obstinate
as he was hardy; he steadily refused to learn Latin or French--the
languages of the court--until he heard that the kings of Denmark
and Poland understood them, and then he speedily mastered them.
His lady-mother's death, when he was scarce twelve years old, was
a great sadness, and nearly caused his own death, but, recovering
his health, he accompanied his father on hunting parties and military
expeditions, and daily grew stronger and hardier than ever.
In April, 1697, when the prince was not yet fifteen, King Charles
XI, his stern-faced father, suddenly died, and the boy king succeeded
to the throne as absolute lord of "Sweden and Finland, of Livonia,
Carelia, Ingria, Wismar, Wibourg, the islands of Rugen and Oesel,
of Pomerania, and the duchies of Bremen and Verdun"--one of the finest
possessions to which a young king ever succeeded, and representing
what is now Sweden, Western Russia, and a large part of Northern
Germany.
A certain amount of restraint is best for us all. As the just
restraints of the law are best for men and women, so the proper
restraints of home are best for boys and girls. A lad from whom
all restraining influences are suddenly withdrawn--who can have
his own way unmolested--stands in the greatest danger of wrecking
his life. The temptations of power have been the cause of very
much of the world's sadness and misery. And this temptation came
to this boy King of Sweden called in his fifteenth year to supreme
sway over a large realm of loyal subjects. Freed from the severity
of his stern father's discipline, he found himself responsible to
no one--absolutely his own master. And he did what too many of
us, I fear, would have done in his position--he determined to have
a jolly good time, come what might; and he had it--in his way.
He and his brother-in-law, the wild young Duke of Holstein, turned
the town upside down. They snapped cherry-pits at the king's
gray-bearded councillors, and smashed in the windows of the staid
and scandalized burghers of Stockholm. They played ball with the
table dishes, and broke all the benches in the palace chapel. They
coursed hares through the council-chambers of the Parliament House,
and ran furious races until they had ruined several fine horses.
They beheaded sheep in the palace till the floors ran with blood,
and then pelted the passers-by with sheep's heads. They spent the
money in the royal treasury like water, and played so many heedless
and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly was
known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum
young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes,
was Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.
But at last, even the people--serfs of this boy autocrat though they
were--began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen
preached from the text "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is
a child," the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good
mother and recalled the glories of his ancestors, saw how foolish
and dangerous was all this reckless sport, turned over a new leaf,
became thoughtful and care-taking, and began his career of conquest
with the best victory of all--the conquest of himself!
But though he curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful
"skylarking," he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his
ancestors--those rough old vikings who "despised mail and helmet
and went into battle unharnessed"--to become altogether gentle in
manners or occupation. He hated his fair skin, and sought in every
way to tan and roughen it, and to harden himself by exposure and
neglect of personal comfort. Many a night was passed by the boy on
the bare floor, and for three nights in the cold Swedish December
he slept in the hay-loft of the palace stables, without undressing
and with but scanty covering.
So he grew to be a lad of seventeen, sturdy, strong, and hardy, and
at the date of our story, in the year of 1699, the greater part of
his time was given up to military exercises and field sports, with
but little attention to debates in council or to the cares of state.
Among his chief enjoyments were the sham fights on land and water.
Many a hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men
who made up his guards and crews, and who would be divided into
two or more opposing parties, as the plan of battle required. This
was rough and dangerous sport, and was attended often with really
serious results. But the participants were stout and sturdy Northern
lads, used to hardships and trained to physical endurance. They
thought no more of these encounters than do the boys of to-day of
the crush of football and the hard hitting of the baseball field,
and blows were given and taken with equal good nature and unconcern.
One raw day in the early fall of 1699, sturdy young Arvid Horn,
a stout, blue-eyed Stockholm boy, stripped to the waist, and with
a gleam of fun in his eyes, stood upright in his little boat as
it bobbed on the crest of the choppy Maelar waves. He hailed the
king's yacht.
"Holo; in the boat there! Stand for your lives!" he shouted, and
levelled his long squirt-gun full at the helmsman.
Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the
helmsman's face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore
he dropped the tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling
loudly for help.
Help came speedily, and as the crew of the king's yacht manned the
rail and levelled at their single assailant the squirt-guns, which
were the principal weapons of warfare used in these "make-believe"
naval engagements, the fun grew fast and furious; but none had so
sure an aim or so strong an arm to send an unerring and staggering
stream as young Arvid Horn. One by one he drove them back while
as his boat drifted still nearer the yacht he made ready to spring
to the force-chains and board his prize. But even before he could
steady himself for the jump, another tall and fair-haired Stockholm
lad, darting out from the high cabin, rallied the defeated crew
and bade them man the pumps at once.
A clumsy-looking fire-engine stood amidship, and the crew leaped
to its pumps as directed, while the newcomer, catching up a line
of hose, sprang to the rail and sent a powerful stream of water
straight against the solitary rover.
"Repel boarders!" he cried, laughingly, and the sudden stream from
the fire-engine's nozzle sent young Arvid Horn staggering back into
his boat.
But he rallied quickly, and with well-charged squirt-gun attacked
the new defender of the yacht. The big nozzle, however, was more
than a match for the lesser squirt-gun, and the small boat speedily
began to fill under the constant deluge of water from the engine.
"Yield thee, yield thee, Arvid Horn; yield thee to our unconquerable
nozzle," came the summons from the yacht; "yield thee, or I will
drown you out like a rat in a cheese-press!"
"Arvid Horn yields to no one," the plucky boy in the boat made answer,
and with a parting shot and a laughing "_Farval!_" he leaped from
the sinking boat into the dancing Maelar water. Striking boldly out,
he swam twice round the boat in sheer bravado, defying the enemy;
now ducking to escape the pursuing stream, or now, while floating
on his back, sending a return shot with telling force against the
men at the pump--for he still clung to his trusty squirt-gun.
The fair-faced lad in the yacht looked at the swimmer in evident
admiration,
"Is it, then, hard to swim, Arvid Horn?" he inquired.
"Not if one is fearless," called back the floating boy.
"How; fearless?" exclaimed the lad on the yacht, hastily. "Do you
perhaps think that I am afraid?"
"I said not so," replied young Arvid, coolly sending a full charge
from his squirt-gun straight up in the air.
"No; but you mean it--good faith, you mean it, then," said the lad,
and flinging off wig, cocked hat, and long coat only, without an
instant's hesitation he, too, leaped into the Maelar Lake.
There is nothing so cooling to courage or reckless enthusiasm as
cold water-if one cannot swim. The boy plunged and floundered,
and weighty with his boots and his clothing, soon sank from sight.
As he came spluttering to the surface again, "Help, help, Arvid,"
he called despairingly; "I am drowning!"
Arvid, who had swum away from his friend, thinking that he would
follow after, heard the cry and caught a still louder one from the
yacht: "The king, the king is sinking!"
A few strokes brought him near to the over-confident diver, and
clutching him by his shirt-collar, he kept the lad's head above
water until, after a long and laborious swim, he brought his kingly
burden safe to land--for the fair-haired and reckless young knight
of the nozzle was none other than his gracious majesty, Charles
the Twelfth of Sweden.
"Truly it is one thing to be brave and another to be skilful,"
said the king, as he stood soaked and dripping on the shore. "But
for you, friend Arvid, I had almost gone."
"You are very wet, sire, and may take cold," said Arvid; "let us
hasten at once to yonder house for warmth and dry clothes."
"Not so, Arvid; I do not fear the water--on land," said the king.
"I am no such milksop as to need to dry off before a kitchen fire.
See, this is the better way"; and catching up a stout hazel-stick,
he bade Arvid stand on his guard. Nothing loath, Arvid Horn accepted
the kingly challenge, and picking up a similar hazel-stick, he
rapped King Charles' weapon smartly, and the two boys went at each
other "hammer and tongs" in a lively bout at "single-stick."
They were soon thoroughly warmed up by this vigorous exercise,
and forgot their recent bath and the king's danger. It was a drawn
battle, however, and, as they paused for breath, King Charles said:
"Trust that to drive away cold and ague, Arvid. Faith,'tis a rare
good sport."
"Could it be done on horseback, think you?" queried Arvid, always
on the lookout for sensation.
"And why not? 'Tis well thought," said the king. "Let us straight
to the palace yard and try it for ourselves."
But ere they reached the palace the idea had developed into still
greater proportions.
The king's guards were summoned, and divided into two parties.
Their horses were unsaddled, and, riding "bareback" and armed with
nothing but hazel-sticks, the two forces were pitted against each
other in a great cavalry duel of "single-stick."
King Charles commanded one side, and young Arvid Horn the other. At
it they went, now one side and now the other having the advantage,
the two leaders fighting with especial vigor.
Arvid pressed the king closely, and both lads were full of the
excitement of the fray when Charles, careless of his aim and with
his customary recklessness, brought his hazel-stick with a terrible
thwack upon poor Arvid's face. Now Arvid Horn had a boil on his
cheek, and if any of my boy readers know what a tender piece of
property a boil is, they will know that King Charles's hazel-stick
was not a welcome poultice.
With a cry of pain Arvid fell fainting from his horse, and the
cavalry battle at "single-stick" came to a sudden stop. But the
heat and the pain brought on so fierce a fever that the lad was
soon as near to death's door as his friend King Charles had been
in the sea fight of the squirt-guns.
The king was deeply concerned during young Arvid's illness, and
when the lad at last recovered he made him a present of two thousand
thalers, laughingly promising to repeat the prescription whenever
Arvid was again wounded at "single-stick." He was greatly pleased
to have his friend with him once more, and, when Arvid was strong
enough to join in his vigorous sports again, one of the first
things he proposed was a great bear-hunt up among the snow-filled
forests that skirted the Maelar Lake.
A day's ride from Stockholm, the hunting-lodge of the kings of
Sweden lay upon the heavily drifted hill-slopes just beyond the
lake shore, and through the forests and marshes two hundred years
ago the big brown bear of Northern Europe, the noble elk, the now
almost extinct auroch, or bison, and the great gray wolf roamed in
fierce and savage strength, affording exciting and dangerous sport
for daring hunters.
And among these hunters none excelled young Charles of Sweden.
Reckless in the face of danger, and brave as he was reckless, he
was ever on the alert for any novelty in the manner of hunting that
should make the sport even more dangerous and exciting. So young
Arvid Horn was not surprised when the king said to him:
"I have a new way for hunting the bear, Arvid, and a rarely good
one, too."
"Of that I'll be bound, sire," young Arvid responded; "but-how may
it be?"
"You shall know anon," King Charles replied; "but this much will I
say: I do hold it but a coward's part to fight the poor brute with
firearms. Give the fellow a chance for his life, say I, and a fair
fight in open field--and then let the best man win."
Here was a new idea. Not hunt the bear with musket, carbine, or
wheel-lock? What then--did King Charles reckon to have a wrestling
bout or a turn at "single-stick" with the _Jarl_ Bruin? So wondered
Arvid Horn, but he said nothing, waiting the king's own pleasure,
as became a shrewd young courtier.
And soon enough he learned the boy-hunter's new manner of bear-hunting,
when, on the very day of their arrival at the Maelar lodge, they
tracked a big brown bear beneath the great pines and spruces of the
almost boundless forest, armed only with strong wooden pitchforks.
Arvid was not at all anxious for this fighting at close quarters,
but when he saw King Charles boldly advance upon the growling bear,
when he saw the great brute rise on his hind legs and threaten to
hug Sweden's monarch to death, he would have sprung forward to aid
his king. But a huntsman near at hand held him back.
"Wait," said the man; "let the 'little father' play his part."
And even as he spoke Arvid saw the king walk deliberately up to the
towering bear, and, with a quick thrust of his long-handled fork,
catch the brute's neck between the pointed wooden prongs, and with
a mighty shove force the bear backward in the snow.
Then, answering his cry of "Holo, all!" the huntsmen sprang to
his side, flung a stout net over the struggling bear, and held it
thus, a floundering prisoner, while the intrepid king coolly cut
its throat with his sharp hunting-knife.
Arvid learned to do this, too, in time, but it required some extra
courage even for his steady young head and hand.
One day, when each of the lads had thus transfixed and killed his
bear, and as, in high spirits, they were returning to the hunting-lodge,
a courserman dashed hurriedly across their path, recognized the
king, and reining in his horse, dismounted hastily, saluted, and
handed the king a packet.
"From the council, sire," he said.
Up to this day the young king had taken but little interest in the
affairs of state, save as he directed the review or drill, leaving
the matters of treaty and of state policy to his trusted councillors.
He received the courserman's despatch with evident unconcern, and
read it carelessly. But his face changed as he read it a second
time; first clouding darkly, and then lighting up with the gleam
of a new determination and purpose.
"What says Count Piper?" he exclaimed half aloud; "Holstein laid
waste by Denmark, Gottorp Castle taken, and the duke a fugitive?
And my council dares to temper and negotiate? _Ack; so!_ Arvid
Horn, we must be in Stockholm ere night-fall."
"But, sire, how can you?" exclaimed Arvid. "The roads are heavy
with snow, and no horse could stand the strain or hope to make the
city ere morning."
"No horse!" cried King Charles; "then three shall do it. Hasten; bid
Hord the equerry harness the triple team to the strongest sledge,
and be you ready to ride with me in a half hour's time. For we
shall be in Stockholm by nightfall."
And ere the half hour was up they were off. Careless of roadway,
straight for Stockholm they headed, the triple team of plunging
Ukraine horses, driven abreast by the old equerry Hord, dashing down
the slopes and across the Maelar ice, narrowly escaping collision,
overturn, and death. With many a plunge and many a ducking, straight
on they rode, and ere the Stockholm clocks had struck the hour of
six the city gates were passed, and the spent and foaming steeds
dashed panting into the great yard of the Parliament House.
The council was still in session, and the grave old councillors
started to their feet in amazement at this sudden apparition of
the boy king, soiled and bespattered from head to foot, standing
there in their midst.
"Gentlemen," he said, with earnestness and determination in his
voice, "your despatch tells me of unfriendly acts on the part of the
King of Denmark against our brother and ally of Holstein-Gottorp.
I am resolved never to begin an unjust war, but never to finish an
unjust one save with the destruction of mine enemies. My resolution
is fixed. I will march and attack the first one who shall declare
war; and when I shall have conquered him, I hope to strike terror
into the rest."
These were ringing and, seemingly, reckless words for a boy of
seventeen, and we do not wonder that, as the record states, "the
old councillors, astonished at this declaration, looked at one
another without daring to answer." The speech seemed all the more
reckless when they considered, as we may here, the coalition against
which the boy king spoke so confidently.
At that time--in the year 1699--the three neighbors of this young
Swedish monarch were three kings of powerful northern nations--Frederick
the Fourth, King of Denmark; Augustus, called the Strong, King of
Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Peter, afterward known as the
Great, Czar of Russia. Tempted by the large possessions of young
King Charles, and thinking to take advantage of his youth, his
inexperience, and his presumed indifference, these three monarchs
concocted a fine scheme by which Sweden was to be overrun, conquered,
and divided among the three members of this new copartnership
of kings--from each of whom, or from their predecessors, this boy
king's ancestors had wrested many a fair domain and wealthy city.
But these three kings--as has many and many another plotter in
history before and since--reckoned without their host. They did not
know the mettle that was in this grandnephew of the great Gustavus.
Once aroused to action, he was ready to move before even his would-be
conquerors, in those slow-going days, imagined he had thought of
resistance. Money and men were raised, the alliance of England and
Holland was secretly obtained, a council of defence was appointed
to govern Sweden during the absence of the king, and on April 23,
1700, two months before his eighteenth birthday, King Charles bade
his grandmother and his sisters good-by and left Stockholm forever.
Even as he left, the news came that another member in this firm of
hostile kings, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, had invaded Sweden's
tributary province of Livonia on the Gulf of Finland. Not to be
drawn aside from his first object--the punishment of Denmark--Charles
simply said, "We will make King Augustus go back the way he came,"
and hurried on to join his army in southern Sweden.
By August 3, 1700, King Charles had grown tired of waiting for his
reserves and new recruits, and so, with scarce six thousand men,
he sailed away from Malmo--clear down at the most southerly point
of Sweden--across the Sound, and steered for the Danish coast not
twenty-five miles away.
Young Arvid Horn, still the king's fast friend, and now one of
his aids, following his leader, leaped into the first of the small
barges or row-boats that were to take the troops from the frigates
to the Danish shore. His young general and king, impatient at the
slowness of the clumsy barges, while yet three hundred yards from
shore, stood upright in the stern, drew his sword, and exclaimed:
"I am wearied with this pace. All you who are for Denmark follow
me!" And then, sword in hand, he sprang over into the sea.
Arvid Horn quickly followed his royal friend. The next moment
generals and ministers, ambassadors and belaced officials, with
the troops that filled the boats, were wading waist-deep through
the shallow water of the Sound, struggling toward the Danish shore,
and fully as enthusiastic as their hasty young leader and king.
The Danish musket-balls fell thick around them as the Danish troops
sought from their trenches to repel the invaders.
"What strange whizzing noise is this in the air?" asked the young
king, now for the first time in action.
"'Tis the noise of the musket-balls they fire upon you," was the
reply.
"_Ack_, say you so," said Charles: "good, good; from this time
forward that shall he my music."
In the face of this "music" the shore was gained, the trenches were
carried by fierce assault and King Charles's first battle was won.
Two days later, Copenhagen submitted to its young conqueror, and
King Frederick of Denmark hastened to the defence of his capital,
only to find it in the possession of the enemy, and to sign a
humiliating treaty of peace.
The boy conqueror's first campaign was over, and, as his biographer
says, he had "at the age of eighteen begun and finished a war
in less than six weeks." Accepting nothing for himself from this
conquest, he spared the land from which his dearly remembered mother
had come from the horrors of war and pillage which in those days
were not only allowable but expected.
King Augustus of Poland, seeing the short work made of his ally
the King of Denmark, by this boy king, whom they had all regarded
with so much contempt, deemed discretion to be the better part of
valor and, as the lad had prophesied, withdrew from Livonia, "going
back by the way he came." Then the young conqueror, flushed with his
successes, turned his army against his third and greatest enemy,
Czar Peter, of Russia, who, with over eighty thousand men, was
besieging the Swedish town of Narva.
A quaint old German-looking town, situated a few miles from the
shores of the Gulf of Finland, in what is now the Baltic provinces
of Russia, and near to the site of the czar's later capital of St.
Petersburg, the stout-walled town of Narva was the chief defence of
Sweden on its eastern borders, and a stronghold which the Russian
monarch especially coveted for his own. Young Arvid Horn's uncle,
the Count Horn, was in command of the Swedish forces in the town,
which, with a thousand men, he held for the young king, his master,
against all the host of the Czar Peter.
The boy who had conquered Denmark in less than six weeks, and forced
a humiliating peace from Poland, was not the lad to consider for
a moment the question of risk or of outnumbering forces. In the
middle of November, when all that cold Northern land is locked in
ice and snow, he flung out the eagle-flag of Sweden to the Baltic
blasts, and crossed to the instant relief of Narva, with an army of
barely twenty thousand men. Landing at Pernau with but a portion
of his troops, he pushed straight on, and with scarce eight thousand
men hurried forward to meet the enemy. With a courage as daring
as his valor was headlong, he surprised and routed first one and
then another advance detachment of the Russian force, and soon
twenty-five thousand demoralized and defeated men were retreating
before him into the Russian camp. In less than two days all the
Russian outposts were carried, and on the noon of the thirtieth of
November, 1700, the boy from Sweden appeared with his eight thousand
victory-flushed though wearied troops before the fortified camp
of his enemy, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered instant
battle.
"Sire," said one of his chief officers, the General Stenbock, "do
you comprehend the greatness of our danger? The Muscovites outnumber
us ten to one."
"What, then!" said the intrepid young king, "do you imagine that
with my eight thousand brave Swedes I shall not be able to march
over the bodies of eighty thousand Muscovites?" And then at the
signal of two fusees and the watchword, "With the help of God," he
ordered his cannon to open on the Russian trenches, and through a
furious snow-storm charged straight upon the enemy.
Again valor and enthusiasm triumphed. The Russian line broke before
the impetuosity of the Swedes, and, as one chronicler says, "ran
about like a herd of cattle"; the bridge across the river broke under
the weight of fugitives, panic followed, and when night fell, the
great Russian army of eighty thousand men surrendered as prisoners
of war to a boy of eighteen with but eight thousand tired soldiers
at his back.
So the boy conqueror entered upon his career of victory. Space does
not permit to detail his battles and his conquests. How he placed
a new king on the throne of Poland, kept Denmark in submission,
held the hosts of Russia at bay, humbled Austria, and made his
name, ere yet he was twenty, at once a wonder and a terror in all
the courts of Europe. How, at last, his ambition getting the better
of his discretion, he thought to be a modern Alexander, to make
Europe Protestant, subdue Rome, and carry his conquering eagles into
Egypt and Turkey and Persia. How, by unwise measures and foolhardy
endeavors, he lost all the fruits of his hundred victories and
his nine years of conquest in the terrible defeat by the Russians
at Pultowa, which sent him an exile into Turkey, kept him there a
prisoner of state for over five years; and how, finally, when once
again at the head of Swedish troops, instead of defending his own
home-land of Sweden, he invaded Norway in the depth of winter, and
was killed, when but thirty-six, by a cannon-shot from the enemy's
batteries at Frederickshall on December 11, 1718.
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden was one of the most remarkable of the
world's historic boys. Elevated to a throne founded on despotic
power and victorious memories, at an age when most lads regard
themselves as the especial salt of the earth, he found himself launched
at once into a war with three powerful nations, only to become in
turn the conqueror of each. A singularly good boy, so far as the
customary temptations of power and high station are concerned--temperate,
simple, and virtuous in tastes, dress, and habits--he was, as one
of his biographers has remarked, "the only one among kings who had
lived without a single frailty."
But this valorous boy, who had first bridled his own spirit, and
then conquered the Northern world, "reared," as has been said,
"under a father cold and stern, defectively educated, taught from
childhood to value nothing but military glory," could not withstand
the temptation of success. An ambition to be somebody and to do
something is always a laudable one in boy or girl, until it supplants
and overgrows the sweet, true, and manly boy and girl nature, and
makes us regardless of the comfort or the welfare of others. A
desire to excel the great conquerors of old, joined to an obstinacy
as strong as his courage, caused young Charles of Sweden to miss
the golden opportunity, and instead of seeking to rule his own
country wisely, sent him abroad a homeless wanderer on a career of
conquest, as romantic as it was, first, glorious, and at the last
disastrous.
In the northern quarter of the beautiful city of Stockholm, surrounded
by palaces and gardens, theatres, statues, and fountains, stands
Molin's striking statue of the boy conqueror, Charles the Twelfth
of Sweden. Guarded at the base by captured mortars, the outstretched
hand and unsheathed sword seem to tell of conquests to be won and
victories to be achieved. But to the boy and girl of this age of
peace and good-fellowship, when wars are averted rather than sought,
and wise statesmanship looks rather to the healing than to the
opening of the world's wounds, one cannot but feel how much grander,
nobler, and more helpful would have been the life of this young
"Lion of the North," as his Turkish captors called him, had it been
devoted to deeds of gentleness and charity rather than of blood
and sorrow, and how much more enduring might have been his fame and
his memory if he had been the lover and helper of his uncultivated
and civilization-needing people, rather than the valorous, ambitious,
headstrong, and obstinate boy conqueror of two centuries ago.
THE TRUE STORY OF A KIDNAPPED BOY AS TOLD BY HIMSELF
By Peter Williamson
I was born in Hirulay, in the county of Aberdeen, Scotland.
My parents, though not rich, were respectable, and so long as I
was under their care all went well with me. Unhappily, I was sent
to stay with an aunt at Aberdeen, where, at eight years old, when
playing on the quay, I was noticed as a strong, active little fellow
by two men belonging to a vessel in the harbor. Now, this vessel
was in the employ of certain merchants of Aberdeen, who used her
for the villanous purpose of kidnapping--that is, stealing young
children from their parents and selling them as slaves in the
plantations abroad.
These impious monsters, marking me out for their prey, tempted me
on board the ship, which I had no sooner entered than they led me
between the decks to some other boys whom they had kidnapped in
like manner. Not understanding what a fate was in store for me, I
passed the time in childish amusement with the other lads in the
steerage, for we were never allowed to go on deck while the vessel
stayed in the harbor, which it did till they had imprisoned as many
luckless boys as they needed.
Then the ship set sail for America. I cannot remember much of the
voyage, being a mere child at the time, but I shall never forget
what happened when it was nearly ended. We had reached the American
coast, when a hard gale of wind sprang up from the southeast, and
about midnight the ship struck on a sandbank off Cape May, near
Delaware. To the terror of all on board, it was soon almost full
of water. The boat was then hoisted out, and the captain and his
fellow-villains, the crew, got into it, leaving me and my deluded
companions, as they supposed, to perish. The cries, shrieks, and
tears of a throng of children had no effect on these merciless
wretches.
But happily for us the wind abated, and the ship being on a sandbank,
which did not give way to let her deeper, we lay here till morning,
when the captain, unwilling to lose all his cargo, sent some of
the crew in a boat to the ship's side to bring us ashore. A sort
of camp was made, and here we stayed till we were taken in by a
vessel bound to Philadelphia.
At Philadelphia, people soon came to buy us. We were sold for (pounds)16
apiece. I never knew what became of my unhappy companions, but I
was sold for seven years to one of my countrymen, Hugh Wilson, who
in his youth had suffered the same fate as myself in being kidnapped
from his home.
Happy was my lot in falling into his power, for he was a humane,
worthy man. Having no children of his own, and pitying my sad
condition, he took great care of me till I was fit for business,
and at twelve years old set me about little things till I could
manage harder work. Meanwhile, seeing my fellow-servants often
reading and writing, I felt a strong desire to learn, and told my
master that I should be glad to serve a year longer than the bond
obliged me if he would let me go to school. To this he readily
agreed, and I went every winter for five years, also learning as
much as I could from my fellow-servants.
With this good master I stayed till I was seventeen years old, when
he died, leaving me a sum of money, about (pounds)120 sterling, his best
horse, and all his wearing apparel.
I now maintained myself by working about the country, for any one
who would employ me, for nearly seven years, when I determined to
settle down. I applied to the daughter of a prosperous planter,
and found my suit was acceptable both to her and her father, so
we married. My father-in-law, wishing to establish us comfortably,
gave me a tract of land which lay, unhappily for me, as it has since
proved, on the frontiers of Pennsylvania. It contained about two
hundred acres, with a good house and barn.
I was now happy in my home, with a good wife; but my peace did not
last long, for about 1754 the Indians in the French interest, who
had formerly been very troublesome in our province, began to renew
their old practices. Even many of the Indians whom we supposed to
be in the English interest joined the plundering bands; it was no
wonder, for the French did their utmost to win them over, promising
to pay (pounds)15 for every scalp of an Englishman!
Hardly a day passed but some unhappy family fell a victim to French
bribery and savage cruelty. As for me, though now in comfortable
circumstances, with an affectionate and amiable wife, it was not
long before I suddenly became the most pitiable of mankind. I can
never bear to think of the last time I saw my dear wife, on the
fatal 2d of October, 1754. That day she had left home to visit
some of her relations, and, no one being in the house but myself,
I stayed up later than usual, expecting her return. How great was
my terror when, at eleven o'clock at night, I heard the dismal
warwhoop of the savages, and, flying to the window, saw a band of
them outside, about twelve in number.
They made several attempts to get in, and I asked them what they
wanted. They paid no attention, but went on beating at the door,
trying to get it open. Then, having my gun loaded in my hand, I
threatened them with death if they would not go away. But one of
them, who could speak a little English, called out in return that
if I did not come out they would burn me alive in the house. They
told me further--what I had already found out--that they were no
friends to the English, but that if I would surrender myself prisoner
they would not kill me.
My horror was beyond all words. I could not depend on the promises of
such creatures, but I must either accept their offer or be burned
alive. Accordingly, I went out of my house with my gun in my hand,
not knowing what I did or that I still held it. Immediately, like
so many tigers, they rushed on me and disarmed me. Having me now
completely in their power, the merciless villains bound me to a
tree near the door, and then went into the house and plundered what
they could. Numbers of things which they were unable to carry away
were set fire to with the house and consumed before my eyes. Then
they set fire to my barn, stable, and outhouses, where I had about
two hundred bushels of wheat, and cows, sheep, and horses. My
agony as I watched all this havoc it is impossible to describe.
When the terrible business was over, one of the monsters came to
me, a tomahawk in his hand, threatening me with a cruel death if I
would not consent to go with them. I was forced to agree, promising
to do all that was in my power for them, and trusting to Providence
to deliver me out of their hands. On this they untied me, and gave
me a great load to carry on my back, under which I travelled all
that night with them, full of the most terrible fear lest my unhappy
wife should likewise have fallen into their clutches. At daybreak
my master ordered me to lay down my load, tying my hands round a
tree with a small cord. They then kindled a fire near the tree to
which I was bound, which redoubled my agony, for I thought they
were going to sacrifice me there.
When the fire was made, they danced round me after their manner, with
all kinds of antics, whooping and crying out in the most horrible
fashion. Then they took the burning coals and sticks, flaming
with fire at the ends, and held them near my face, head, hands and
feet, with fiendish delight, at the same time threatening to burn
me entirely if I called out or made the least noise. So, tortured
as I was, I could make no sign of distress but shedding silent
tears, which, when they saw, they took fresh coals, and held them
near my eyes, telling me my face was wet, and they would dry it
for me. I have often wondered how I endured these tortures; but at
last they were satisfied, and sat down round the fire and roasted
the meat which they had brought from my dwelling!
When they had prepared it, they offered some to me, and though
it may be imagined that I had not much heart to eat, I was forced
to seem pleased, lest if I refused it they should again begin to
torture me. What I could not eat I contrived to get between the bark
and the tree--my foes having unbound my hands till they supposed I
had eaten all they gave me. But then they bound me as before, and
so I continued all day.
When the sun was set they put out the fire, and covered the ashes
with leaves, as is their custom, that the white people may find no
signs of their having been there.
Travelling thence, by the river, for about six miles, I being loaded
heavily, we reached a spot near the Blue Hills, where the savages
hid their plunder under logs of wood. Thence, shocking to relate,
they went to a neighboring house, that of Jacob Snider, his wife,
five children, and a young man, a servant. They soon forced their
way into the unhappy man's dwelling, slew the whole family, and
set fire to the house.
The servant's life was spared for a time, since they thought he
might be of use to them, and forthwith loaded him with plunder. But
he could not bear the cruel treatment that we suffered; and though
I tried to console him with a hope of deliverance, he continued to
sob and moan. One of the savages, seeing this, instantly came up,
struck him to the ground, and slew him.
The family of John Adams next suffered. All were here put to death
except Adams himself, a good old man, whom they loaded with plunder,
and day after day continued to treat with the most shocking cruelty,
painting him all over with various colors, plucking the white hairs
from his beard, and telling him he was a fool for living so long,
and many other tortures which he bore with wonderful composure,
praying to God.
One night after he had been tortured, when he and I were sitting
together, pitying each other's misfortunes, another party of Indians
arrived, bringing twenty scalps and three prisoners, who gave us
terrible accounts of what tragedies had passed in their parts, on
which I cannot bear to dwell.
These three prisoners contrived to escape, but unhappily, not
knowing the country, they were recaptured and brought back. They
were then all put to death, with terrible tortures.
A great snow now falling, the savages began to be afraid that the
white people would follow their tracks upon it and find out their
skulking retreats, and this caused them to make their way to their
winter quarters, about two hundred miles further from any plantations
or English inhabitants. There, after a long and tedious journey,
in which I was almost starved, I arrived with this villainous
crew. The place where we had to stay, in their tongue, was called
Alamingo, and there I found a number of wigwams full of Indian women
and children. Dancing, singing, and shooting were their general
amusements, and they told what successes they had had in their
expeditions, in which I found myself part of their theme. The
severity of the cold increasing, they stripped me of my own clothes
and gave me what they usually wear themselves--a blanket, a piece
of coarse cloth, and a pair of shoes made of deerskin.
The better sort of Indians have shirts of the finest linen they can
get, and with these some wear ruffles, but they never put them on
till they have painted them different colors, and do not take them
off to wash, but wear them till they fall into pieces. They are
very proud, and delight in trinkets, such as silver plates round
their wrists and necks, with several strings of _wampum_, which is
made of cotton, interwoven with pebbles, cockle-shells, etc. From
their ears and noses they have rings and beads, which hang dangling
an inch or two.
The hair of their heads is managed in different ways: some pluck
out and destroy all except a lock hanging from the crown of the
head, which they interweave with wampum and feathers. But the women
wear it very long, twisted down their backs, with beads, feathers,
and wampum, and on their heads they carry little coronets of brass
or copper.
No people have a greater love of liberty or affection for their
relations, yet they are the most revengeful race on earth, and
inhumanly cruel. They generally avoid open fighting in war, yet
they are brave when taken, enduring death or torture with wonderful
courage. Nor would they at any time commit such outrages as they
do if they were not tempted by drink and money by those who call
themselves civilized.
At Alamingo I was kept nearly two months, till the snow was off
the ground--a long time to be among such creatures! I was too far
from any plantations or white people to try to escape; besides,
the bitter cold made my limbs quite benumbed. But I contrived to
defend myself more or less against the weather by building a little
wigwam with the bark of the trees, covering it with earth, which
made it resemble a cave, and keeping a good fire always near the
door.
Seeing me outwardly submissive, the savages sometimes gave me a
little meat, but my chief food was Indian corn.
Having liberty to go about was, indeed, more than I expected; but
they knew well it was impossible for me to escape.
At length they prepared for another expedition against the planters
and white people, but before they set out they were joined by many
other Indians from Fort Duquesne, well stored with powder and ball
that they had received from the French.
As soon as the snow was quite gone, so that no trace of their
footsteps could be found, they set out on their journey toward
Pennsylvania, to the number of nearly a hundred and fifty. Their
wives and children were left behind in the wigwams. My duty was
to carry whatever they intrusted to me; but they never gave me a
gun. For several days we were almost famished for want of proper
provisions: I had nothing but a few stalks of Indian corn, which I
was glad to eat dry, and the Indians themselves did not fare much
better.
When we again reached the Blue Hills, a council of war was held,
and we agreed to divide into companies of about twenty men each,
after which every captain marched with his party where he thought
proper. I still belonged to my old masters, but was left behind on
the mountains with ten Indians, to stay till the rest returned, as
they did not think it safe to carry me nearer to the plantations.
Here being left, I began to meditate on my escape, for I knew the
country round very well, having often hunted there. The third day
after the great body of the Indians quitted us, my keepers visited
the mountains in search of game, leaving me bound in such a way
that I could not get free.
When they returned at night they unbound me, and we all sat down
to supper together, feasting on two polecats which they had killed.
Then, being greatly tired with their day's excursion, they lay down
to rest as usual.
Seeing them apparently fast asleep, I tried different ways of
finding out whether it was a pretence to see what I should do. But
after making a noise and walking about, sometimes touching them
with my feet, I found that they really slept. My heart exulted at
the hope of freedom, but it sank again when I thought how easily I
might be recaptured. I resolved, if possible, to get one of their
guns, and if discovered to die in self-defence rather than be
taken; and I tried several times to take one from under their heads,
where they always secure them. But in vain; I could not have done
so without rousing them.
So, trusting myself to the Divine protection, I set out defenceless.
Such was my terror, however, that at first I halted every four or
five yards, looking fearfully toward the spot where I had left the
Indians, lest they should wake and miss me. But when I was about
two hundred yards off I mended my pace and made all the haste I
could to the foot of the mountains.
Suddenly I was struck with the greatest terror and dismay, hearing
behind me the fearful cries and bowlings of the savages, far worse
than the roaring of lions or the shrieking of hyenas; and I knew
that they had missed me. The more my dread increased, the faster I
hurried, scarce knowing where I trod, sometimes falling and bruising
myself, cutting my feet against the stones, yet, faint and maimed
as I was, rushing on through the woods. I fled till daybreak, then
crept into a hollow tree, where I lay concealed, thanking God for
so far having favored my escape. I had nothing to eat but a little
corn.
But my repose did not last long, for in a few hours I heard the
voices of the savages near the tree in which I was hid threatening
me with what they would do if they caught me, which I already guessed
too well. However, at last they left the spot where I heard them,
and I stayed in my shelter the rest of that day without any fresh
alarms.
At night I ventured out again, trembling at every bush I passed, and
thinking each twig that touched me a savage. The next day I concealed
myself in the same manner, and at night travelled forward, keeping
off the main road, used by the Indians, as much as possible, which
made my journey far longer, and more painful than I can express.
But how shall I describe my terror when, on the fourth night,
a party of Indians lying round a small fire which I had not seen,
hearing the rustling I made among the leaves, started from the
ground, seizing their arms, and ran out into the wood? I did not
know, in my agony of fear, whether to stand still or rush on. I
expected nothing but a terrible death; but at that very moment a
troop of swine made toward the place where the savages were. They,
seeing the hogs, guessed that their alarm had been caused by them,
and returned merrily to their fire and lay down to sleep again.
As soon as this happened, I pursued my way more cautiously and
silently, but in a cold perspiration of terror at the peril I had
just escaped. Bruised, cut, and shaken, I still held on my path
till break of day, when I lay down under a huge log, and slept
undisturbed till noon. Then, getting up, I climbed a great hill,
and, scanning the country round, I saw, to my unspeakable joy, some
habitations of white people, about ten miles distant.
My pleasure was somewhat damped by not being able to get among
them that night. But they were too far off; therefore, when evening
fell, I again commended myself to Heaven, and lay down, utterly
exhausted. In the morning, as soon as I woke, I made toward the
nearest of the cleared lands which I had seen the day before; and
that afternoon I reached the house of John Bull, an old acquaintance.
I knocked at the door, and his wife, who opened it, seeing me in
such a frightful condition, flew from me like lightning, screaming,
into the house.
This alarmed the whole family, who immediately seized their arms,
and I was soon greeted by the master with his gun in his hand. But
when I made myself known--for at first he took me for an Indian--he
and all his family welcomed me with great joy at finding me alive;
since they had been told I was murdered by the savages some months
ago.
No longer able to bear up, I fainted and fell to the ground. When
they had recovered me, seeing my weak and famished state, they gave
me some food, but let me at first partake of it very sparingly.
Then for two days and nights they made me welcome, and did their
utmost to bring back my strength, with the kindest hospitality.
Finding myself once more able to ride, I borrowed a horse and some
clothes of these good people, and set out for my father-in-law's
house in Chester County, about a hundred and forty miles away. I
reached it on January 4,1755; but none of the family could believe
their eyes when they saw me, having lost all hope on hearing that
I had fallen a prey to the Indians.
They received me with great joy; but when I asked for my dear wife,
I found she had been dead two months, and this fatal news greatly
lessened the delight I felt at my deliverance.
THE PRISONER WHO WOULD NOT STAY IN PRISON
ANONYMOUS
Few people out of his own country would have heard of Baron Trenck
had it not been for the wonderful skill and cunning with which he
managed to cut through the stone walls and iron bars of all his many
cages. He was born at Konigsberg in Prussia in 1726, and entered
the body-guard of Frederic II in 1742, when he was about sixteen.
Trenck was a young man of good family, rich, well educated,
and, according to his own account, fond of amusement. He confesses
to having shirked his duties more than once for the sake of
some pleasure, even after the War of the Austrian Succession had
broken out (September, 1744), and Frederic, strict though he was,
had forgiven him. It is plain from this that the king must have
considered that Trenck had been guilty of some deadly treachery
toward him when in after years he declined to pardon him for crimes
which after all the young man had never committed.
Trenck's first confinement was in 1746, when he was thrown into
the Castle of Glatz, on a charge of corresponding with his cousin
and namesake, who was in the service of the Empress Maria Theresa,
and of being an Austrian spy. At first he was kindly treated
and allowed to walk freely about the fortifications, and he took
advantage of the liberty given him to arrange a plan of escape
with one of his fellow-prisoners. The plot was, however, betrayed
by the other man, and a heavy punishment fell on Trenck. By the
king's orders, he was promptly deprived of all his privileges and
placed in a cell in one of the towers, which overlooked the ramparts
lying ninety feet below, on the side nearest the town. This added
a fresh difficulty to his chances of escape, as, in passing from
the castle to the town, he was certain to be seen by many people.
But no obstacles mattered to Trenck. He had money, and money could
do a great deal. So he began by bribing one of the officials about
the prison, and the official in his turn bribed a soapboiler, who
lived not far from the castle gates, and promised to conceal Trenck
somewhere in his house. Still, liberty must have seemed a long way
off, for Trenck had only one little knife with which to cut through
anything. By dint of incessant and hard work, he managed to saw
through three thick steel bars, but even so, there were eight others
left to do. His friend the official then procured him a file, but
he was obliged to use it with great care, lest the scraping sound
should be heard by his guards. Perhaps they wilfully closed their
ears, for many of them were sorry for Trenck; but, at all events,
the eleven bars were at last sawn through, and all that remained
was to make a rope ladder. This he did by tearing his leather
portmanteau into strips and plaiting them into a rope, and as this
was not long enough, he added his sheets. The night was dark and
rainy, which favored him, and he reached the bottom of the rampart
in safety. Unluckily, he met here with an obstacle on which he had
never counted. There was a large drain, opening into one of the
trenches, which Trenck had neither seen nor heard of, and into
this he fell. In spite of his struggles, he was held fast, and
his strength being at last exhausted, he was forced to call the
sentinel, and at midday, having been left in the drain for hours
to make sport for the town, he was carried back to his cell.
Henceforth he was still more strictly watched than before, though,
curiously enough, his money never seems to have been taken from
him, and at this time he had about eighty louis left, which he
always kept hidden. Eight days after his last attempt, Fouquet,
the commandant of Glatz, who hated Trenck and all his family, sent
a deputation consisting of the adjutant, an officer, and a certain
Major Doo to speak to the unfortunate man and exhort him to patience
and submission. Trenck entered into conversation with them for the
purpose of throwing them off their guard, when suddenly he snatched
away Doo's sword, rushed from his cell, knocked down the sentinel
and lieutenant who were standing outside, and striking right and
left at the soldiers who came flying to bar his progress, he dashed
down the stairs and leaped from the ramparts. Though the height
was great he fell into the fosse without injury, still grasping
his sword. He scrambled quickly to his feet and jumped easily over
the second rampart, which was much lower than the first, and then
began to breathe freely, as he thought he was safe from being
overtaken by the soldiers, who would have to come a long way round.
At this moment, however, he saw a sentinel making for him, a short
distance off, and he rushed for the palisades which divided the
fortifications from the open country, from which the mountains and
Bohemia were easily reached. In the act of scaling them, his foot
was caught tight between the bars, and he was trapped till the
sentinel came up, and after a sharp fight got him back to prison.
For some time poor Trenck was in a sad condition. In his struggle
with the sentinel he had been wounded, while his right foot had
got crushed in the palisades. Besides this, he was watched far more
strictly than before, for an officer and two men remained always
in his cell, and two sentinels were stationed outside. The reason
of these precautions, of course, was to prevent his gaining over
his guards singly, either by pity or bribery. His courage sank to
its lowest ebb, as he was told on all sides that his imprisonment
was for life, whereas long after he discovered the real truth, that
the king's intention had been to keep him under arrest for a year
only, and if he had had a little more patience, three weeks would
have found him free. His repeated attempts to escape naturally
angered Frederic, while on the other hand the king knew nothing
of the fact which excused Trenck's impatience--namely, the belief
carefully instilled in him by all around him that he was doomed to
perpetual confinement.
It is impossible to describe in detail all the plans made by Trenck
to regain his freedom; first because they were endless, and secondly
because several were nipped in the bud. Still, the unfortunate man
felt that as long as his money was not taken from him his case was
not hopeless, for the officers in command were generally poor and
in debt, and were always sent to garrison work as a punishment. After
one wild effort to liberate _all_ the prisoners in the fortress,
which was naturally discovered and frustrated, Trenck made friends
with an officer named Schell, lately arrived at Glatz, who promised not
only his aid but his company in the new enterprise. As more money
would be needed than Trenck had in his possession, he contrived
to apply to his rich relations outside the prison, and by some
means--what we are not told--they managed to convey a large sum to
him. Suspicion, however, got about that Trenck was on too familiar
a footing with the officers, and orders were given that his door
should always be kept locked. This occasioned further delay, as
false keys had secretly to be made before anything else could be
done.
Their flight was unexpectedly hastened by Schell accidentally learning
that he was in danger of arrest. One night they crept unobserved
through the arsenal and over the inner palisade, but on reaching
the rampart they came face to face with two of the officers, and
again a leap into the fosse was the only way of escape. Luckily, the
wall at this point was not high, and Trenck arrived at the bottom
without injury; but Schell was not so happy, and hurt his foot so
badly that he called on his friend to kill him, and to make the
best of his way alone. Trenck, however, declined to abandon him,
and having dragged him over the outer palisade, took him on his
back, and made for the frontier. Before they had gone five hundred
yards, they heard the boom of the alarm guns from the fortress,
while clearer still were the sounds of pursuit. As they knew that
they would naturally be sought on the side toward Bohemia, they
changed their course and pushed on to the river Neiss, at this
season partly covered with ice. Trenck swam over slowly with his
friend on his back, and found a boat on the other side. By means
of this boat they evaded their enemies, and reached the mountains
after some hours, very hungry, and almost frozen to death.
Here a new terror awaited them. Some peasants with whom they took
refuge recognized Schell, and for a moment the fugitives gave
themselves up for lost. But the peasants took pity on the two
wretched objects, fed them and gave them shelter, till they could
make up their minds what was best to be done. To their unspeakable
dismay, they found that they were, after all, only seven miles from
Glatz, and that in the neighboring town of Wunschelburg a hundred
soldiers were quartered, with orders to capture all deserters from
the fortress. This time, however, fortune favored the luckless
Trenck, and though he and Schell were both in uniform, they rode
unobserved through the village while the rest of the people were at
church, and, skirting Wunschelburg, crossed the Bohemian frontier
in the course of the day.
Then follows a period of comparative calm in Trenck's history. He
travelled freely about Poland, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Denmark
and Holland, and even ventured occasionally across the border into
Prussia. Twelve years seem to have passed by in this manner, till,
in 1758, his mother died, and Trenck asked leave of the council
of war to go up to Dantzic to see his family and to arrange his
affairs. Curiously enough, it appears never to have occurred to
him that he was a deserter, and as such liable to be arrested at
any moment. And this was what actually happened. By order of the
king, Trenck was taken first to Berlin, where he was deprived of
his money and some valuable rings, and then removed to Magdeburg,
of which place Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was the governor.
Here his quarters were worse than he had ever known them. His
cell was only six feet by ten, and the window was high, with bars
without as well as within. The wall was seven feet thick, and beyond
it was a palisade, which rendered it impossible for the sentinels
to approach the window. On the other side the prisoner was shut
in by three doors, and his food (which was not only bad, but very
scanty) was passed to him through an opening.
One thing only was in his favor. His cell was only entered once
a week, so he could pursue any work to further his escape without
much danger of being discovered. Notwithstanding the high window,
the thick wall, and the palisade--notwithstanding, too, his want
of money--he soon managed to open negotiations with the sentinels,
and found, to his great joy, that the next cell was empty. If he
could only contrive to burrow his way into that, he would be able
to watch his opportunity to steal through the open door; once
free, he could either swim the Elbe and cross into Saxony, which
lay about six miles distant, or else float down the river in a boat
till he was out of danger.
Small as the cell was, it contained a sort of cupboard, fixed
into the floor by irons, and on these Trenck began to work. After
frightful labor, he at last extracted the heavy nails which fastened
the staples to the floor, and breaking off the heads (which he put
back to avoid detection), he kept the rest to fashion for his own
purposes. By this means he made instruments to raise the bricks.
On this side also the wall was seven feet thick, and formed of bricks
and stones. Trenck numbered them as he went on with the greatest
care, so that the cell might present its usual appearance before
the Wednesday visit of his guards. To hide the joins, he scraped
off some of the mortar, which he smeared over the place.
As may be supposed, all this took a very long time. He had nothing
to work with but the tools he himself had made, which, of course,
were very rough. But one day a friendly sentinel gave him a little
iron rod and a small knife with a wooden handle. These were treasures
indeed! And with their help he worked away for six months at his
hole, as in some places the mortar had become so hard that it had
to be pounded like a stone.
During this time he enlisted the compassion of some of the other
sentinels, who not only described to him the lay of the country
which he would have to traverse if he ever succeeded in getting
out of prison, but interested in his behalf a Jewess named Esther
Heymann, whose own father had been for two years a prisoner in
Magdeburg. In this manner Trenck became the possessor of a file,
a knife, and some writing paper, as the friendly Jewess had agreed
to convey letters to some influential people, both at Vienna and
Berlin, and also to his sister. But this step led to the ruin,
not only of Trenck, but of several persons concerned, for they were
betrayed by an imperial secretary of embassy called Weingarten, who
was tempted by a bill for 20,000 florins. Many of those guilty of
abetting Trenck in this fresh effort to escape were put to death,
while his sister was ordered to build a new prison for him in the
Fort de l'Etoile, and he himself was destined to pass nine more
years in chains.
In spite of his fetters, Trenck was able in some miraculous way
to get on with his hole, but his long labor was rendered useless
by the circumstance that his new prison was finished sooner than
he expected, and he was removed into it hastily, being only able
to conceal his knife. He was now chained even more heavily than
before, his two feet being attached to a heavy ring fixed in the
wall, another ring being fastened round his body. From this ring
was suspended a chain with a thick iron bar, two feet long at the
bottom, and to this his hands were fastened. An iron collar was
afterward added to his instruments of torture.
Besides torments of body, nothing was wanting which could work on
his mind. His prison was built between the trenches of the principal
rampart, and was of course very dark. It was likewise very damp,
and, to crown all, the name of "Trenck" had been printed in red
bricks on the wall, above a tomb whose place was indicated by a
death's-head.
Here again, he tells us, he excited the pity of his guards, who
gave him a bed and coverlet, and as much bread as he chose to eat;
and, wonderful as it may seem, his health did not suffer from all
these horrors. As soon as he got a little accustomed to his cramped
position, he began to use the knife he had left, and to cut through
his chains. He next burst the iron band, and after a long time
severed his leg fetters, but in such a way that he could put them
on again and no one be any the wiser. Nothing is more common in
the history of prisoners than this exploit, and nothing is more
astonishing, yet we meet with the fact again and again in their memoirs
and biographies. Trenck at any rate appears to have accomplished
the feat without much difficulty, though he found it very hard,
to get his hand back into his handcuffs. After he had disposed of
his bonds, he began to saw at the doors leading to the gallery.
These were four in number, and all of wood, but when he arrived at
the fourth, his knife broke in two, and the courage that had upheld
him for so many years gave away. He opened his veins and lay down
to die, when in his despair he heard the voice of Gefhardt, the
friendly sentinel from the other prison. Hearing of Trenck's sad
plight, he scaled the palisade, and, we are told expressly, bound
up his wounds, though we are _not_ told how he managed to enter
the cell. Be that as it may, the next day, when the guards came
to open the door, they found Trenck ready to meet them, armed with
a brick in one hand, and a knife, doubtless obtained from Gefhardt,
in the other. The first man that approached him, he stretched
wounded at his feet, and thinking it dangerous to irritate further
a desperate man, they made a compromise with him. The governor took
off his chains for a time, and gave him strong soup and fresh linen.
Then, after a while, new doors were put to his cell, the inner door
being lined with plates of iron, and he himself was fastened with
stronger chains than those he had burst through.
For all this the watch must have been very lax, as Gefhardt soon
contrived to open communication with him again, and letters were
passed through the window (to which the prisoner had made a false
and movable frame) and forwarded to Trenck's rich friends. His
appeal was always answered promptly and amply. More valuable than
money were two files, also procured from Gefhardt, and by their
means the new chains were speedily cut through, though, as before,
without any apparent break. Having freed his limbs, he began to
saw through the floor of his cell, which was of wood. Underneath,
instead of hard rock, there was sand, which Trenck scooped out with
his hands. This earth was passed through the window to Gefhardt,
who removed it when he was on guard, and gave his friend pistols,
a bayonet, and knives to assist him when he had finally made his
escape.
All seemed going smoothly. The foundations of the prison were only
four feet deep, and Trenck's tunnel had reached a considerable
distance when everything was again spoiled. A letter written by
Trenck to Vienna fell into the hands of the governor, owing to some
stupidity on the part of Gefhardt's wife, who had been intrusted
to deliver it. The letter does not seem to have contained any
special disclosure of his plan of escape, as the governor, who
was still Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, could find nothing wrong in
Trenck's cell except the false window-frame. The cut chains, though
examined, somehow escaped detection, from which we gather either
that the officials were very careless, or the carpenter very stupid.
Perhaps both may have been the case, for as the Seven Years' War
(against Austria) was at this time raging, sentinels and officers
were frequently changed, and prison discipline insensibly relaxed.
Had this not been so, Trenck could never have been able to labor
unseen, but as it was, he was merely deprived of his bed, as a
punishment for tampering with the window.
As soon as he had recovered from his fright and an illness which
followed, he returned to his digging.
It was necessary for him to bore under the subterranean gallery of
the principal rampart, which was a distance of thirty-seven feet,
and to get outside the foundation of the rampart. Beyond that was
a door leading to the second rampart. Trenck was forced to work
almost naked, for fear of raising the suspicions of the officials
by his dirty clothes, but in spite of all his precautions and the
wilful blindness of his guards, who as usual were on his side, all
was at length discovered. His hole was filled up, and a year's work
lost.
The next torture invented for him was worse than any that had gone
before. He was visited and awakened every quarter of an hour, in
order that he might not set to work in the night. This lasted for
four years, during part of which time Trenck employed himself in
writing verses and making drawings on his tin cups, after the manner
of all prisoners, and in writing books with his blood, as ink was
forbidden. We are again left in ignorance as to how he got paper.
He also began to scoop out another hole, but was discovered afresh,
though nothing particular seems to have been done to him, partly
owing to the kindness of the new governor, who soon afterward died.
It had been arranged by his friends that for the space of one year
horses should be ready for him at a certain place on the first and
fifteenth of every month. Inspired by this thought, he turned to
his burrowing with renewed vigor, and worked away at every moment
when he thought he could do so unseen. One day, however, when he
had reached some distance, he dislodged a large stone which blocked
up the opening toward his cell. His terror was frightful. Not only
was the air suffocating, and the darkness dreadful, but he knew
that if any of the guards were unexpectedly to come into his cell,
the opening must be discovered, and all his toil again lost. For
eight hours he stayed in the tunnel paralyzed by fear. Then he
roused himself, and by dint of superhuman struggles managed to open
a passage on one side of the stone, and to reach his cell, which
for once appeared to him as a haven of rest.
Soon after this the war ended with the Peace of Paris (1763), and
Trenck's hopes of release seemed likely to be realized. He procured
money from his friends, and bribed the Austrian ambassador in Berlin
to open negotiations on his behalf, and while these were impending
he rested from his labors for three whole months. Suddenly he was
possessed by an idea which was little less than madness. He bribed
a major to ask for a visit from Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, again
Governor of Magdeburg, offering to disclose his passage, and to
reveal all his plans of escape, on condition that the duke would
promise to plead for him with the king. This message never reached
the duke himself, but some officers arrived ostensibly sent by him,
but in reality tools of the major's. They listened to all he had
to say, and saw all he had to show, then broke their word, filled
up the passage, and redoubled the chains and the watch.
Notwithstanding this terrible blow, Trenck's trials were drawing
to an end. Whether Frederic's heart was softened by his brilliant
victories, or whether Trenck's influential friends succeeded in
making themselves heard, we do not know, but six months later he
was set free, on condition that he never tried to revenge himself
on any one, and that he never again should cross the frontiers of
Saxony or Prussia.
A WHITE BOY AMONG THE INDIANS, AS TOLD BY HIMSELF
By John Tanner
The earliest event of my life which I distinctly remember (says
John Tanner) is the death of my mother. This happened when I was
two years old, and many of the attending circumstances made so deep
an impression that they are still fresh in my memory. I cannot
recollect the name of the settlement at which we lived, but I
have since learned it was on the Kentucky River, at a considerable
distance from the Ohio.
My father, whose name was John Tanner, was an emigrant from Virginia,
and had been a clergyman.
When about to start one morning to a village at some distance, he
gave, as it appeared, a strict charge to my sisters, Agatha and
Lucy, to send me to school; but this they neglected to do until
afternoon, and then, as the weather was rainy and unpleasant, I
insisted on remaining at home. When my father returned at night,
and found that I had been at home all day, he sent me for a parcel
of small canes, and flogged me much more severely than I could
suppose the offence merited. I was displeased with my sisters for
attributing all the blame to me, when they had neglected even to
tell me to go to school in the forenoon. From that time, my father's
house was less like home to me, and I often thought and said, "I
wish I could go and live among the Indians."
One day we went from Cincinnati to the mouth of the Big Miami,
opposite which we were to settle. Here was some cleared land, and
one or two log cabins, but they had been deserted on account of
the Indians. My father rebuilt the cabins, and inclosed them with
a strong picket. It was early in the spring when we arrived at
the mouth of the Big Miami, and we were soon engaged in preparing
a field to plant corn. I think it was not more than ten days after
our arrival, when my father told us in the morning, that, from
the actions of the horses, he perceived there were Indians lurking
about in the woods, and he said to me, "John, you must not go out
of the house to-day." After giving strict charge to my stepmother
to let none of the little children go out, he went to the field,
with the negroes, and my elder brother, to sow corn.
Three little children, besides myself, were left in the house
with my stepmother. To prevent me from going out, my stepmother
required me to take care of the little child, then not more than
a few months old; but as I soon became impatient of confinement
I began to pinch my little brother, to make him cry. My mother,
perceiving his uneasiness, told me to take him in my arms and walk
about the house; I did so, but continued to pinch him. My mother
at length took him from me to nurse him. I patched my opportunity
and escaped into the yard; thence through a small door in the large
gate of the wall into the open field. There was a walnut-tree at
some distance from the house, and near the side of the field where
I had been in the habit of finding some of last year's nuts. To gain
this tree without being seen by my father and those in the field,
I had to use some precaution. I remember perfectly well having seen
my father as I skulked toward the tree; he stood in the middle of
the field, with his gun in his hand, to watch for Indians, while
the others were sowing corn. As I came near the tree, I thought
to myself, "I wish I could see these Indians. "I had partly filled
with nuts a straw hat which I wore, when I heard a crackling noise
behind me; I looked round, and saw the Indians; almost at the same
instant, I was seized by both hands, and dragged off between two.
One of them took my straw hat, emptied the nuts on the ground,
and put it on my head. The Indians who seized me were an old and a
young one; these, as I learned subsequently, were Manito-o-geezhik,
and his son Kish-kau-ko.
After I saw myself firmly seized by both wrists by the two Indians,
I was not conscious of anything that passed for a considerable
time. I must have fainted, as I did not cry out, and I can remember
nothing that happened to me until they threw me over a large log,
which must have been at a considerable distance from the house. The
old man I did not now see; I was, dragged along between Kish-kau-ko
and a very short thick man. I had probably made some resistance,
or done something to irritate this latter, for he took me a little
to one side, and drawing his tomahawk, motioned to me to look up.
This I plainly understood, from the expression of his face, and
his manner, to be a direction for me to look up for the last time,
as he was about to kill me. I did as he directed, but Kish-kau-ko
caught his hand as the tomahawk was descending, and prevented him
from burying it in my brains. Loud talking ensued between the two.
Kish-kau-ko presently raised a yell: the old man and four others
answered it by a similar yell, and came running up. I have since
understood that Kish-kau-ko complained to his father that the short
man had made an attempt to kill his little brother, as he called
me. The old chief, after reproving the short man, took me by one
hand, and Kish-kau-ko took me by the other and thus they dragged
me between them, the man who threatened to kill me, and who was
now an object of terror to me, being kept at some distance. I could
perceive, as I retarded them somewhat in their retreat, that they
were apprehensive of being overtaken; some of them were always at
some distance from us.
It was about one mile from my father's house to the place where
they threw me into a hickory-bark canoe, which was concealed under
the bushes, on the bank of the river. Into this they all seven jumped,
and immediately crossed the Ohio, landing at the mouth of the Big
Miami, and on the south side of that river. Here they abandoned
their canoe, and stuck their paddles in the ground, so that they
could be seen from the river. At a little distance in the woods
they had some blankets and provisions concealed; they offered me
some dry venison and bear's grease, but I could not eat. My father's
house was plainly to be seen from the place where we stood; they
pointed at it, looked at me, and laughed, but I have never known
what they said.
After they had eaten a little, they began to ascend the Miami,
dragging me along as before.
It must have been early in the spring when we arrived at Sau-ge-nong,
for I can remember that at this time the leaves were small, and
the Indians were about planting their corn. They managed to make
me assist at their labors, partly by signs, and partly by the few
words of English old Manito-o-geezhik could speak. After planting,
they all left the village, and went out to hunt and dry meat. When
they came to their hunting-grounds, they chose a place where many
deer resorted, and here they began to build a long screen like a
fence; this they made of green boughs and small trees. When they
had built a part of it, they showed me how to remove the leaves and
dry brush from that side of it to which the Indians were to come
to shoot the deer. In this labor I was sometimes assisted by the
squaws and children, but at other times I was left alone. It now
began to be warm weather, and it happened one day that, having been
left alone, as I was tired and thirsty, I fell asleep. I cannot
tell how long I slept, but when I began to awake, I thought I heard
someone crying a great way off. Then I tried to raise up my head,
but could not. Being now more awake, I saw my Indian mother and
sister standing by me, and perceived that my face and head were
wet. The old woman and her daughter were crying bitterly, but it
was some time before I perceived that my head was badly cut and
bruised. It appears that, after I had fallen asleep, Manito-o-geezhik,
passing that way, had perceived me, had tomahawked me, and thrown
me in the bushes; and that when he came to his camp he had said to
his wife, "Old woman, the boy I brought you is good for nothing; I
have killed him; you will find him in such a place." The old woman
and her daughter having found me, discovered still some signs of
life, and had stood over me a long time, crying, and pouring cold
water on my head, when I waked. In a few days I recovered in some
measure from this hurt, and was again set to work at the screen,
but I was more careful not to fall asleep; I endeavored to assist
them at their labors, and to comply in all instances with their
directions, but I was notwithstanding treated with great harshness,
particularly by the old man and his two sons She-mung and Kwo-tash-e.
While we remained at the hunting camp, one of them put a bridle in
my hand, and pointing in a certain direction motioned me to go. I
went accordingly, supposing he wished me to bring a horse: I went
and caught the first I could find, and in this way I learned to
discharge such services as they required of me.
I had been about two years at Sau-ge-nong, when a great council was
called by the British agents at Mackinac. This council was attended
by the Sioux, the Winnebagoes, the Menomonees, and many remote
tribes, as well as by the Ojibbeways, Ottawwaws, etc. When old
Manito-o-geezhik returned from this council, I soon learned that
he had met there his kinswoman, Net-no-kwa, who, notwithstanding
her sex, was then regarded as principal chief of the Ottawwaws.
This woman had lost her son, of about my age, by death; and, having
heard of me, she wished to purchase me to supply his place. My old
Indian mother, the Otter woman, when she heard of this, protested
vehemently against it. I heard her say, "My son has been dead once,
and has been restored to me; I cannot lose him again." But these
remonstrances had little influence when Net-no-kwa arrived with
plenty of presents. She brought to the lodge first blankets, tobacco,
and other articles of great value. She was perfectly acquainted
with the dispositions of those with whom she had to negotiate.
Objections were made to the exchange until a few more presents
completed the bargain, and I was transferred to Net-no-kwa. This
woman, who was then advanced in years, was of a more pleasing
aspect than my former mother. She took me by the hand, after she
had completed the negotiation with my former possessors, and led
me to her own lodge, which stood near. Here I soon found I was to
be treated more indulgently than I had been. She gave me plenty
of food, put good clothes upon me, and told me to go and play with
her own sons. We remained but a short time at Sau-ge-nong. She
would not stop with me at Mackinac, which we passed in the night,
but ran along to Point St. Ignace, where she hired some Indians
to take care of me, while she returned to Mackinac by herself, or
with one or two of her young men. After finishing her business at
Mackinac, she returned, and, continuing on our journey, we arrived
in a few days at Shab-a-wy-wy-a-gun.
The husband of Net-no-kwa was an Ojibbeway of Red River, called
Taw-ga-we-ninne, the hunter. He was always indulgent and kind to
me, treating me like an equal, rather than as a dependent. When
speaking to me, he always called me his son. Indeed, he himself was
but of secondary importance in the family, as everything belonged
to Net-no-kwa. and she had the direction in all affairs of any
moment. She imposed on me, for the first year, some tasks. She
made me cut wood, bring home game, bring water, and perform other
services not commonly required of boys of my age; but she treated
me invariably with so much kindness that I was far more happy and
content than I had been in the family of Manito-o-geezhik. She
sometimes whipped me, as she did her own children: but I was not
so severely and frequently beaten as I had been before.
Early in the spring, Net-no-kwa and her husband, with their family,
started to go to Mackinac. They left me, as they had done before,
at Point St. Ignace, as they would not run the risk of losing me
by suffering me to be seen at Mackinac. On our return, after we had
gone twenty-five or thirty miles from Point St. Ignace, we were
detained by contrary winds at a place called Me-nau-ko-king, a
point running out into the lake. Here we encamped with some other
Indians, and a party of traders. Pigeons were very numerous in the
woods, and the boys of my age, and the traders, were busy shooting
them. I had never killed any game, and, indeed, had never in my
life discharged a gun. My mother had purchased at Mackinac a keg
of powder, which, as they thought it a little damp, was here spread
out to dry. Taw-ga-we-ninne had a large horseman's pistol; and,
finding myself somewhat emboldened by his indulgent manner toward
me, I requested permission to go and try to kill some pigeons with
the pistol. My request was seconded by Net-no-kwa, who said, "It
is time for our son to begin to learn to be a hunter." Accordingly,
my father, as I called Taw-ga-we-ninne, loaded the pistol and gave
it to me, saying, "Go, my son, and if you kill anything with this,
you shall immediately have a gun and learn to hunt." Since I have
been a man, I have been placed in difficult stations; but my anxiety
for success was never greater than in this, my first essay as a
hunter. I had not gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons,
and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my
pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in
contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the
pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a
humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air.
I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, and
the pigeon under the tree on which he had been sitting. My face
was much bruised, and covered with blood. I ran home, carrying
my pigeon in triumph. My face was speedily bound up; my pistol
exchanged for a fowling-piece; I was accoutred with a powder-horn,
and furnished with shot, and allowed to go out after birds. One of
the young Indians went with me, to observe my manner of shooting.
I killed three more pigeons in the course of the afternoon, and did
not discharge my gun once without killing. Henceforth I began to
be treated with more consideration, and was allowed to hunt often,
that I might become expert.
Game began to be scarce, and we all suffered from hunger. The
chief man of our band was called As-sin-ne-boi-nainse (the Little
Assinneboin), and he now proposed to us all to move, as the country
where we were was exhausted. The day on which we were to commence
our removal was fixed upon, but before it arrived our necessities
became extreme. The evening before the day on which we intended to
move my mother talked much of all our misfortunes and losses, as
well as of the urgent distress under which we were then laboring.
At the usual hour I went to sleep, as did all the younger part of
the family; but I was wakened again by the loud praying and singing
of the old woman, who continued her devotions through a great part
of the night. Very early on the following morning she called us all
to get up, and put on our moccasins, and be ready to move. She then
called Wa-me-gon-a-biew to her, and said to him in rather a low
voice: "My son, last night I sung and prayed to the Great Spirit,
and when I slept there come to me one like a man, and said to me,
'Net-no-kwa, to-morrow you shall eat a bear. There is, at a distance
from the path you are to travel to-morrow, and in such a direction'
(which she described to him), 'a small round meadow, with something
like a path leading from it; in that path there is a bear.' Now,
my son, I wish you to go to that place, without mentioning to any
one what I have said, and you will certainly find the bear, as I
have described to you." But the young man, who was not particularly
dutiful, or apt to regard what his mother said, going out of the
lodge, spoke sneeringly to the other Indians of the dream. "The
old woman," said he, "tells me we are to eat a bear to-day; but I
do not know who is to kill it." The old woman, hearing him, called
him in, and reproved him; but she could not prevail upon him to go
to hunt.
I had my gun with me, and I continued to think of the conversation
I had heard between my mother and Wa-me-gon-a-biew respecting her
dream. At length I resolved to go in search of the place she had
spoken of, and without mentioning to any one my design, I loaded
my gun as for a bear, and set off on our back track. I soon met
a woman belonging to one of the brothers of Taw-ga-we-ninne, and
of course my aunt. This woman had shown little friendship for us,
considering us as a burden upon her husband, who sometimes gave
something for our support; she had also often ridiculed me. She
asked me immediately what I was doing on the path, and whether
I expected to kill Indians, that I came there with my gun. I made
her no answer; and thinking I must be not far from the place where
my mother had told Wa-me-gon-a-biew to leave the path, I turned off,
continuing carefully to regard all the directions she had given.
At length I found what appeared at some former time to have been
a pond. It was a small, round, open place in the woods, now grown
up with grass and small bushes. This I thought must be the meadow
my mother had spoken of; and examining around it, I came to an open
space in the bushes, where, it is probable, a small brook ran from
the meadow; but the snow was now so deep that I could see nothing
of it. My mother had mentioned that, when she saw the bear in her
dream, she had, at the same time, seen a smoke rising from the
ground. I was confident this was the place she had indicated, and
I watched long, expecting to see the smoke; but, wearied at length
with waiting, I walked a few paces into the open place, resembling
a path, when I unexpectedly fell up to my middle in the snow, I
extricated myself without difficulty, and walked on; but, remembering
that I had heard the Indians speak of killing bears in their holes,
it occurred to me that it might be a bear's hole into which I had
fallen and, looking down into it, I saw the head of a bear lying
close to the bottom of the hole. I placed the muzzle of my gun
nearly between his eyes and discharged it. As soon as the smoke
cleared away, I took a piece of stick and thrust it into the eyes
and into the wound in the head of the bear, and, being satisfied
that he was dead, I endeavored to lift him out of the hole; but
being unable to do this, I returned home, following the track I
had made in coming out. As I came near the camp, where the squaws
had by this time set up the lodges, I met the same woman I had
seen in going out, and she immediately began again to ridicule me.
"Have you killed a bear, that you come back so soon, and walk so
fast?" I thought to myself, "How does she know that I have killed
a bear?" But I passed by her without saying anything, and went into
my mother's lodge. After a few minutes, the old woman said, "My
son, look in that kettle, and you will find a mouthful of beaver
meat, which a man gave me since you left us in the morning. You
must leave half of it for Wa-me-gon-a-biew, who has not yet returned
from hunting, and has eaten nothing to-day. "I accordingly ate the
beaver meat, and when I had finished it, observing an opportunity
when she stood by herself, I stepped up to her, and whispered in her
ear, "My mother, I have killed a bear." "What do you say, my son?"
said she. "I have killed a bear." "Are you sure you have killed
him?" "Yes." "Is he quite dead?" "Yes." She watched my face for
a moment, and then caught me in her arms, hugging and kissing me
with great earnestness, and for a long time. I then told her what
my aunt had said to me, both going and returning, and this being
told to her husband when he returned, he not only reproved her for
it, but gave her a severe flogging. The bear was sent for, and,
as being the first I had killed, was cooked all together, and the
hunters of the whole band invited to feast with us, according to
the custom of the Indians. The same day one of the Crees killed a
bear and a moose, and gave a large share of the meat to my mother.
One winter I hunted for a trader called by the Indians Aneeb, which
means an elm tree. As the winter advanced, and the weather became
more and more cold, I found it difficult to procure as much game
as I had been in the habit of supplying, and as was wanted by the
trader. Early one morning, about mid-winter, I started an elk.
I pursued until night, and had almost overtaken him; but hope and
strength failed me at the same time. What clothing I had on me,
notwithstanding the extreme coldness of the weather, was drenched
with sweat. It was not long after I turned toward home that I
felt it stiffening about me. My leggings were of cloth, and were
torn in pieces in running through the bush. I was conscious I was
somewhat frozen before I arrived at the place where I had left our
lodge standing in the morning, and it was now midnight. I knew it
had been the old woman's intention to move, and I knew where she
would go; but I had not been informed she would go on that day. As
I followed on their path, I soon ceased to suffer from cold, and
felt that sleepy sensation which I knew preceded the last stage of
weakness in such as die of cold. I redoubled my efforts, but with
an entire consciousness of the danger of my situation; it was with
no small difficulty that I could prevent myself from lying down.
At length I lost all consciousness for some time, how long I cannot
tell, and, awaking as from a dream, I found I had been walking round
and round in a small circle not more than twenty or twenty-five
yards over. After the return of my senses, I looked about to try
to discover my path, as I had missed it; but, while I was looking,
I discovered a light at a distance, by which I directed my course.
Once more, before I reached the lodge, I lost my senses; but I did
not fall down; if I had, I should never have gotten up again; but
I ran round and round in a circle as before. When I at last came
into the lodge, I immediately fell down, but I did not lose myself
as before. I can remember seeing the thick and sparkling coat of
frost on the inside of the pukkwi lodge, and hearing my mother say
that she had kept a large fire in expectation of my arrival; and
that she had not thought I should have been so long gone in the
morning, but that I should have known long before night of her
having moved. It was a month before I was able to go out again, my
face, hands, and legs having been much frozen.
After many dangerous and disagreeable experiences, John Tanner,
when almost an old man, came back to the whites to tell his history,
which, as he could not write, was taken down at his dictation |
