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THE GREAT EVENTS
BY
FAMOUS HISTORIANS
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE
MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
_With a staff of specialists_
_VOLUME X_
The National Alumni
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
By THE NATIONAL ALUMNI
CONTENTS
VOLUME X
PAGE
_An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii
CHARLES F. HORNE
_England Loses Her Last French Territory (A.D. 1558)
Battle of St. Quentin_, 1
CHARLES KNIGHT
_Reign of Elizabeth (A.D. 1558-1603)_, 8
HENRY R. CLEVELAND
_John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers (A.D. 1558)_, 21
P. HUME BROWN
THOMAS CARLYLE
_Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution (A.D. 1561-1587)_, 51
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
_Founding of St. Augustine (A.D. 1565)
Massacre of the Huguenots in America_, 70
GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS
_Revolt of the Netherlands against Spain
Rise of the Gueux or Beggars (A.D. 1566)_, 81
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER
_Lepanto: Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power
(A.D. 1571)_, 100
SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL
_Massacre of St. Bartholomew (A.D. 1572)_, 119
HENRY WHITE
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
JNO. RUDD
_Heroic Age of the Netherlands (A.D. 1573)
Siege of Leyden_, 145
THOMAS HENRY DYER
_Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher (A.D. 1576)_, 156
GEORGE BEST
_Building of the First Theatre in England (A.D. 1576)_ 163
KARL MANTZIUS
_Cossack Conquest of Siberia (A.D. 1581)_, 181
NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN
_First Colony of England Beyond Seas (A.D. 1583)_, 198
MOSES HARVEY
_Assassination of William of Orange (A.D. 1584)
Division of the Netherlands_, 202
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
_Naming of Virginia: First Description of the Indians
The Lost Colony (A.D. 1584)_, 211
ARTHUR BARLOW
R. R. HOWISON
_Drake Captures Cartagena
He "Singes the King of Spain's Beard" at Cadiz
(A.D. 1586-1587)_, 230
JULIAN CORBETT
_Defeat of the Spanish Armada (A.D. 1588)_, 251
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY
_Henry of Navarre Accepts Catholicism
He is Acknowledged King of France (A.D. 1593)_, 276
MAXIMILIEN DE BETHUNE, DUC DE SULLY
_Culmination of Dramatic Literature in Hamlet (A.D. 1601)_, 287
JAMES O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS
_Downfall of Irish Liberty
"Flight of the Earls" (A.D. 1603)_, 299
JUSTIN M'CARTHY
_The Gunpowder Plot (A.D. 1605)_, 310
SAMUEL R. GARDINER
_Cervantes' Don Quixote Reforms Literature (A.D. 1605)_, 325
HENRY EDWARD WATTS
_Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia (A.D. 1606)_, 340
LOUIS BECKE
WALTER JEFFERY
_Settlement of Virginia (A.D. 1607)
Charter under which America was Colonized_, 350
R. R. HOWISON
_Founding of Quebec (A.D. 1608)
Champlain Establishes French Power in Canada_, 366
H. H. MILES
_Universal Chronology (A.D. 1558-1608)_, 387
JOHN RUDD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME X
PAGE
_Murder of the favorite, Rizzio, at the feet of Mary
Stuart, by her husband and associate conspirators
(page 56)_, Frontispiece
Painting by Eug. Siberdt.
_Catharine de' Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues
from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew_, 142
Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan.
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES
OF THE GREAT EVENTS
(AGE OF ELIZABETH AND PHILIP II)
CHARLES F. HORNE
Philip II succeeded his father Charles V on the throne of Spain. The
vast extent of his domains, the absoluteness of his authority, and,
above all, the enormous wealth that poured into his coffers from the
Spanish conquests in America, made him the most powerful monarch of his
time, the central figure of the age. It was largely because of Philip's
personal character that the great religious struggle of the Reformation
entered upon a new phase, became far more sinister, more black and
deadly, extended over all Europe, and bathed the civilized world in
blood. England stood forth as the centre of opposition against Philip,
and under the unwilling leadership of Elizabeth entered on its epic
period of heroism, was stimulated to that remarkable outburst of energy
and intellect and power which we call the Elizabethan age.
Philip, with a tenacity of purpose from which no fortune good or bad
could lure him for a moment, pursued two objects throughout his reign
(1555-1598), the reestablishment of Catholicism over all Europe, and the
extension so far as might be of his own personal authority. If we
consider his personal ambition, we must count his reign a failure; for
at his death his country had already fallen from its foremost rank in
Europe and started on that process of decay which in later centuries has
become so marked. If, however, we look to Philip's religious purpose, it
is undeniable that during his reign Catholicism revived. Philip II, the
Jesuits, the Council of Trent--these three were the powers by means of
which the Roman Church beat back its foes, saved itself from what for a
time had seemed a threatened extinction, and so far reestablished its
power that for over a century it appeared not improbable that Philip's
purpose of reuniting Europe might be accomplished.
Before the beginning of this reactionary wave, the North had become
wholly Protestant. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the people
of Germany were of the new faith; half the population of France had
adopted it; even in Italy protest and disbelief were widespread and
active. Only in Spain did the Inquisition with firmest cruelty trample
down each vestige of revolt.
SPAIN AND GREAT BRITAIN
The Inquisition was established in Italy, which, as we have seen, was
really a Spanish possession. It was introduced into the Netherlands by
Charles V (1550), but remained feebly merciful there until Philip, to
whom we must at least give the credit of having been a sincere fanatic,
insisted on its rigorous enforcement. Over England also Philip sought to
extend his hand. There the eagerly Protestant Edward VI had died in
1553, and his Catholic sister Mary succeeded to the throne. Philip was
wedded to her in 1554, even before he became King of Spain, and both he
and she did their utmost to restore the kingdom to the Roman faith. So
many Protestants were burned at the stake that England remembers the
queen as "bloody Mary"; and so recklessly did she antagonize the spirit
of her people that even her husband counselled her to a caution which
she despised. He had no love for his cold, pale, embittered English
wife, except as an instrument in his policy; and when he found that it
was impossible for him, as her husband, to become King of England, he
practically abandoned her, and returned to Spain.
When his father's abdication gave him power in 1555, Philip's first
active movement was against France. He sought to avenge his father's
loss of Metz, and persuaded his English wife to join him in war against
young Henry II. With his splendid Spanish troops Philip won a great
victory at St. Quentin.[1] "Has he yet taken Paris?" cried his father
eagerly when the news reached his secluded monastery. But Philip had
not, he had erred from over-caution and given France time to recover.
Two able generals, the great Protestant leader Coligny, and the dashing
Catholic hero of Metz, Francis of Guise, held the Spaniards in check.
Guise even seized Calais, and so snatched from England her last
territory in France (1558). Its loss filled full the measure of poor
Mary's unpopularity with her subjects and also of her own unhappiness.
She had sacrificed everything for love of a husband who had no love for
her. She died the same year. "They will find 'Calais,'" she said,
"engraven on my heart."[2]
[1] See _Battle of St. Quentin_, page 1.
[2] See _England Loses Her Last French Territory_, page 1.
Her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded to
the throne, and England with a cry of relief threw off the hated Spanish
alliance. She was free again. Free, but in infinite danger. The Catholic
Pope and Catholic Philip, remembering that the divorce under which Henry
VIII married Anne Boleyn had never been admitted by the Church, declared
Elizabeth illegitimate, and pointed to her cousin Mary Stuart of
Scotland as the lawful ruler of England. Mary had been married to the
French prince Francis II, who at this moment succeeded his father Henry
II as king of France. Here was a chance indeed for Spain and France and
Scotland all three to unite against Elizabeth and place a second
Catholic Mary on England's throne. Many Englishmen themselves were still
Catholic, and might easily have been persuaded to approve the change.
That Elizabeth, by her cool and cunning diplomacy, managed to evade the
threatened danger, has ever been held as little short of providential by
the Protestants of the world.[3] In truth, however, each of the powers
which might have assailed Elizabeth, had religious difficulties of its
own to encounter.
[3] See _Reign of Elizabeth_, page 8.
In Scotland there was civil war. The Protestant faith had been slow of
introduction there, but under the leadership of John Knox it had become
at length supreme.[4] The Regent, mother of the young queen, Mary
Stuart, had French troops to aid her against the reformers, but had been
compelled to yield to their demands. When Queen Mary herself returned to
rule Scotland after the death of her French husband, King Francis, she
found her path anything but easy. A sovereign of one faith and a nation
of another had not yet learned to endure each other, and there were
queer doings in Scotland, wild nobles running off with the Queen, wilder
fanatics lecturing at her in her own court, her French favorite
assassinated, a new husband, a Scotch one, sent the same dark road, more
civil war, imprisonments, romantic escapes. It ended in Mary's secret
flight to England. She who had so nearly marched into the land a
conqueror, entered it a fugitive supplicating Elizabeth's protection.
The remainder of her life she passed in an English prison, and eighteen
years later was executed on an only half-proven charge of conspiring
against the rival who had kept her in such dreary durance.[5]
[4] See _John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers_, page 21.
[5] See _Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution_, page 51.
Let us not, however, judge Elizabeth too harshly. In reading only
English history we are apt to do so, to fail in realizing the atmosphere
that surrounded her, the spirit of the age throughout Europe.
Statecraft, which had been grasping under Charles V and false under
Francis I, seemed now to have adopted fully the maxims of Machiavelli,
and pursued its ends by means wholly base, by subtle treacheries, secret
murders and open massacre. The gloomy spirit of Philip II hung like
blackest night over all the world. He hesitated at no crime which should
advance his purposes. Where he might next strike, no man knew, until the
blow had fallen. His dark secrecy and enormous power weighed as a
nightmare upon the imaginations of men. We enter an age of plots.
Elizabeth was unquestionably surrounded by them; and where so many
existed, a thousand more were naturally suspected--leading on all sides
to counterplots. Scotland had seen several assassinations. England
guarded herself desperately against them. France, nearest to Spain's
borders, suffered worst of all. Five times in succession did the chief
leader of the state fall by sudden murder. In some of these crimes
Philip had no part; in others he was plainly implicated.
RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE
The early and unexpected death of Henry II of France (1559) had left the
throne to one after another of his young and feeble sons. The first of
these, Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, ruled only a year. He was
completely under the control of the great Catholic family, the Guises,
who began a vigorous attempt to suppress the Protestants of France, the
Huguenots as they were called. But these Huguenots included many of the
highest and ablest of the French nobility and did not yield easily to
suppression. Francis II died, and the Queen-mother, Catherine de'
Medici, became regent for her second son, Charles IX. At first Catherine
feared the power of the Guises and encouraged the Huguenots; but Philip
of Spain interfered here as everywhere in the Catholic behalf. A civil
war broke out in 1562; and for over a generation France, divided against
herself, became the theatre of repeated conflicts and savage massacres.
She had no thought to give to other lands.
The first of her chiefs to be assassinated was Francis of Guise, the
great Catholic leader and general, shot by a Huguenot. Next the
Catholics attempted the murder of Coligny. They failed at first, and
Catherine de' Medici, who by this time had embraced fully the Catholic
cause, planned the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572). A marriage
was arranged between the highest Huguenot in rank, the young prince
Henry of Navarre, and a royal princess. This was supposed to mark the
amicable ending of all disputes, and the chief Huguenots gathered gladly
to Paris for the ceremony. Suddenly an army of assassins were let loose
on them. Young Henry was spared, but Coligny and more than twenty
thousand Huguenots were slain.[6]
[6] See _Massacre of St. Bartholomew_, page 119.
The massacre spread over all France. The Protestants rallied, stern and
desperate, for defence and for revenge. The civil war was resumed again
and again, with false peaces patched in between. Philip might well
triumph at the utter anarchy into which he had helped to throw the
kingdom which had been his father's rival.
The feeble French king, Charles IX, died, in remorse and madness it is
said, for having permitted the great massacre. Henry III, last of the
sons of Catherine, ascended the throne, and was also guided by the dark
genius of his Italian mother. He found the new Duke of Guise, head of
the Catholic party, far more powerful than he, so caused his
assassination. That roused the Catholics to war on the King; the
Huguenots were also in arms under Henry of Navarre; there were now three
parties to the strife. Queen Catherine died, worn out and despairing.
King Henry was murdered in his turn, and with him perished the direct
line of the royal house. Henry of Navarre was the nearest heir to the
throne.
Of course the Catholics would not consent to be ruled by this champion
of the Huguenots; so again the strife went on. Henry proved himself a
dashing and heroic leader, winning splendid battles. Spanish forces
invaded the country, and he beat them, too. Though Protestant, he was
recognized even by his foes as the national hero. At last he took that
much-debated resolve, than which was never act more statesmanly. He
became a Catholic. His opponents gladly laid down their arms; even
fanatic Paris hailed him with extravagant delight. In 1598 he proclaimed
the Edict of Nantes, granting safety and religious freedom to his former
comrades, the Huguenots. The religious wars of France ended; the wisdom
and power of one man had healed what seemed a hopeless confusion.[7]
[7] See _Henry of Navarre Accepts Catholicism_, page 276.
Under this great monarch, Henry IV, France resumed her former place of
power in Europe. Her chief began planning grim revenge on Spain for all
her injuries. And then he, too, fell by the assassin's knife (1610).
REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS
We have traced the French tumults to the end of the present period; let
us go back to see why, with his chief foe so helpless, Philip II
accomplished no more in extending his own power. It is one of the most
amazing tales in history. Where he had thought himself most secure,
there he failed. The foe which had seemed most helpless, proved his
undoing. He had insisted on the enforcement of the Inquisition in the
Netherlands. It is said that thirty thousand people perished there in
its flames. Yet even with thirty thousand of their bravest gone, the
Protestants refused submission. Gradually the temper of the oppressed
people grew more and more bitter, till in 1566 they flared into open
revolt. "The beggars," they were contemptuously called by the Spaniards,
and they adopted the name as a badge of honor. Penniless, helpless they
might be, yet they would fight.[8]
[8] See _Rise of the Gueux or Beggars_, page 81.
The cruel Alva was sent by Philip to suppress them, and for six years
(1567-1573) his savagery and that of his brutal Spanish soldiers made
the Netherlands a theatre of horror--and of heroism. The revolt in the
southern provinces, now Belgium, was finally put down. The inhabitants
there were mostly Catholics, and their strife was only against the
general despotism and cruelty of Spain. But the North would never yield.
The terrific siege of Leyden, with its accompanying horrors of
starvation and defiance, is world-famed.[9] In 1581 Holland finally
proclaimed its complete independence of Spain.
[9] See _Siege of Leyden_, page 145.
At enormous expense and waste of his American treasure, Philip II
continued to pour troops and troops into the rebellious provinces. Their
leader throughout had been the highest of their nobles, William of
Orange, called "the silent." Philip openly proclaimed an enormous reward
to the man who could reach and assassinate this obstacle in his path;
and at last after repeated attempts the reward was earned (1584).[10] The
fall of William ended all chance of the union of the northern and
southern provinces; he had been the only man all trusted. But Holland
under his son Maurice continued the strife even more bitterly. No
sacrifice was too great for the heroic Dutch. Spain was exhausted at
last; Philip II died a disappointed man. His son, Philip III, in 1609
consented sullenly to a truce--peace he would not call it--and it was
many years before Spain formally acknowledged the independence of her
defiant provinces.
[10] See _Assassination of William of Orange_, page 202.
SUCCESSES OF PHILIP
Philip II had met also an even heavier defeat from Protestant England.
But before speaking of this, let us look to his few successes. In 1580
he added Portugal to his dominions and so, temporarily at least, united
the entire Spanish peninsula as one state. This gave him control over
the vast Portuguese colonial possessions and over the rich trade with
India and the isles beyond. Australia was probably touched more than
once by his ships, though not definitely discovered until 1606.[11]
[11] See _Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia_, page 340.
It was under Philip that in 1564 the Spaniards extended their American
settlements northward and founded St. Augustine, the first town within
the present mainland of the United States. The French had attempted to
plant a colony even earlier. At the first outbreak of their civil wars,
some Huguenots had fled from persecution to the coast of Florida (1562).
The Spaniards regarded this as an encroachment on their territories.
Moreover, the intruders were heretics. They were attacked and massacred.
It was partly to keep further Frenchmen off the coast that St. Augustine
was founded.[12]
[12] See _Founding of St. Augustine_, page 70.
An even more important triumph came to Philip in 1571, when his ships,
united with those of Venice and other states, gained a great naval
victory over the Turks. This battle of Lepanto stands among the
turning-points of history. It marks the checking of the Turkish power
which for over two centuries had been rising steadily against Europe.
Lepanto crushed the naval supremacy which the followers of Mahomet had
more than once asserted over the Mediterranean. For another century and
more they remained formidable on land, but at sea they never recovered
their ascendency.[13]
[13] See _Lepanto: Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power_,
page 100.
At Lepanto as a common soldier, fought Miguel de Cervantes, a Spaniard,
who, toward the close of a roving life, settled down to literature in
his native land, and after Philip's death wrote what was in many ways a
satire upon that monarch's rule in Spain. Cervantes' _Don Quixote_
altered the taste of the whole literary world. Its influence spread from
Spain to France and over all Europe. It was the death-song of ancient
chivalry, the first book since the days of Dante to alter markedly the
literary thought of man.[14]
[14] See _Cervantes'_ Don Quixote _Reforms Literature_, page 325.
Of the world farther eastward during this period we need say little. The
fortunes of Germany, luckily for herself, had been separated from those
of Spain at the abdication of Charles V. The Hapsburg possessions in
Austria had been bequeathed to his brother Ferdinand; and both Ferdinand
and his next successor as emperor of Germany abided by the conditions of
that remarkable religious peace of Augsburg which had allowed every
prince to settle the religion of his own domains. Although themselves
Catholic, the Emperors were not strict in enforcing Catholicism even in
their own Austrian domains. They reserved all their effort for the
struggle against the Turks. Disputes between the leaders of the
differing faiths did of course occur, but none reached an active stage
until a later generation.
Sweden rose greatly in importance. Poland declined. Russia was almost
conquered by one or the other, a prey, like France, to civil wars. Yet
some Cossacks in her service, wandering plunderers really, invaded
Siberia, defeated the few scattered Tartar tribes, and annexed the
entire waste of Northern Asia to the Russian crown. Never again was this
to be a secretly growing, unknown world from which vast hordes might
suddenly burst forth on Europe.[15]
[15] See _Cossack Conquest of Siberia_, page 181.
THE ELIZABETHAN AGE
Turn now to England, emerging at last from the exhaustion of the Wars of
the Roses to assert her place among the great powers of the world.
Philip and Elizabeth, restrained by other anxieties, might maintain a
hollow peace at home: they could not control the rising spirits of the
English nation. English sailors, the most daring in the world,
penetrated all seas. Spanish and Portuguese ships had been almost
everywhere before them. The North was still half a century behind the
South in progress. Yet the difference is worth noting. On the southern
ships a few gallant, aristocratic leaders headed a crowd of trembling
peasants, ever begging to be taken home, sometimes mutinying through
very frenzy of fear. On England's ships each sailor was as stubborn and
dauntless as his chief, differing from him only in the intellect to
command.
Such men as these were little like to accept Spanish claims to all the
wealth of all the new lands of the world. They cruised at will, and
fought the Spaniards successfully wherever found. Frobisher began the
long and dreary search for the "northwest passage," by which the
northern countries of Europe might send ships to round America and reach
Asia as Magellan had done to southward.[16] Gilbert raised his country's
standard over Newfoundland, England's first clearly established
possession beyond seas.[17] The memory of the Cabots' voyages was
revived, and in their name England claimed the North American coast. Sir
Walter Raleigh attempted to plant a colony, and called the new land
Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen.[18]
[16] See _Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher_, page 156.
[17] See _First Colony of England beyond Seas_, page 198.
[18] See _Naming of Virginia: The Lost Colony_, page 211.
To Drake, greatest of all these wild adventurers, was it left to embroil
his country utterly with Spain. He followed Magellan in circumnavigating
the globe, and wherever he went he left a track of plundered Spanish
settlements behind. Elizabeth was in despair; she alternately knighted
him and threatened to hang him as a pirate. The Spaniards, re-reading
his name, called him the Dragon. He was the terror of their seas.
At last the long accumulating quarrel of religious and commercial
motives reached a head. Philip began gathering in all his ports that
vast "Invincible Armada," which was to assert his supremacy on sea as
upon land, to crush England and Protestantism forever. This was the
supreme effort of his life. There was no question as to where the blow
would fall. Elizabeth knew it coming, not to be evaded by any policy or
concessions. Drake knew it coming, and, taking time by the forelock,
sailed boldly into the harbor of Cadiz to "singe the King of Spain's
beard," destroyed all the ships and stores accumulated there.[19] But
Cadiz was only one port among several where preparations were being
hurried forward; there were others the hardy Dragon could not penetrate.
The next year (1588) the "Invincible Armada" sailed for England.
[19] See _Drake Captures Cartagena: He "Singes the King of Spain's
Beard" at Cadiz_, page 230.
The story of its destruction is too well known for repetition. This was
England's proudest achievement. Philip accepted the terrific downfall of
all his scheming and ambitions with a gallant calm. He had truly
believed that Heaven wished him to reassert Catholicism. He accepted the
storms which partly destroyed his fleet as the divine refusal of his
aid. "You could not strive against the will of Heaven," he said kindly
to his defeated admiral.[20]
[20] See _Defeat of the Spanish Armada_, page 251.
In England, the repeated plunderings of Spanish ships, and now this
final victory, flooded the land with wealth and triumph. The internal
improvement, the intellectual advance of the people, were prodigious.
The "Elizabethan Age" is the most famed in English literature. The first
English theatre was built in 1570, a crude and queer affair for cruder,
queerer plays.[21] Yet, in perhaps that very armada year of 1588,
Shakespeare began writing his remarkable plays. In 1601 the drama rose to
its perfection in his _Hamlet_, the flower of English literary genius,
accredited by some as the grandest new creation that ever came from the
hand of man.[22]
[21] See _Building of First Theatre in England_, page 163.
[22] See _Culmination of Dramatic Literature in_ Hamlet, page 287.
Elizabeth died in 1603. Her reign had seen also the final suppression of
the Irish Catholics and their subjugation to the English crown. In the
year of her death came the "Flight of the Earls," the mournful
abandonment of Ireland by the last of the great lords who had fought for
and now despaired of her independence.[23]
[23] See _Downfall of Irish Liberty: "Flight of the Earls_," page
299.
The age of Elizabeth can scarcely, however, be said to cease at her
death. The English people had grown greater than their sovereign, and
upon them the influences of their Spanish victory continued. Shakespeare
is even more the Elizabethan age than Elizabeth, and his writings
continued until 1611. Drake had died in 1596; Raleigh lived till 1618.
Since Elizabeth was childless, she was succeeded on the throne by the
Scotch king James VI (James I of England), son of the Mary Stuart whose
claims had caused such trouble. James, removed from his mother's care,
had been educated by his subjects as a Protestant, so he was welcome to
England. The first step toward uniting the two halves of the island was
made when they thus came under a common sovereign. The same atmosphere
of plot and treachery which had surrounded Elizabeth reached also to her
successor. In 1605 was unearthed the "Gunpowder Plot," a scheme to blow
up James with all his chief ministers and subjects in the House of
Parliament. The date of its discovery is still kept as a national
holiday in England.[24]
[24] See _The Gunpowder Plot_, page 310.
Then in 1607 came the fruition of Raleigh's efforts and those of Drake,
the beginning surely of a new era. Spain being no longer able to oppose,
a new colony was sent out from England to Virginia. It settled at
Jamestown, and began the successful colonization of the United
States.[25] The next year, the French, supported by their great king
Henry IV, made a similar beginning. Quebec was founded by them on the
St. Lawrence.[26] The era of American discovery was over, and that of
American settlement was come.
[25] See _Settlement of Virginia_, page 350.
[26] See _Founding of Quebec_, page 366.
[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XI]
ENGLAND LOSES HER LAST FRENCH TERRITORY
BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN
A.D. 1558
CHARLES KNIGHT
From 1347, when it was taken by Edward III, Calais remained a
stronghold of England until it was retaken for France by the Duke
of Guise (Francois de Lorraine), in 1558. With the surrender of
Calais the English lost their last foothold in French territory.
Weary with the long tumults and wars of his reign, Charles V in
1555 resigned all his crowns to his son, Philip II of Spain, and
his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary. Pope Paul IV,
wishing to subvert the Spanish power, entered into a league
with Henry II of France against Philip. Guise, who had warred
successfully with Charles V, against whom he defended Metz when it
was won for France (1553), now espoused the papal cause. His main
object was to recover Naples to his own family. Thus he became a
leading actor in the events culminating in the capture of Calais.
Throughout the reign of Philip II his chief aim was to restore the
Roman Catholic religion in Protestant countries and to establish a
uniform despotism over his dominions. In 1554 he had married Queen
Mary of England, and after a short sojourn in that country, whose
crown he vainly tried to obtain, and to whose people he was
obnoxious, he returned to the Continent. Soon after "he was called
to a destiny more suited to his proud and ambitious nature than to
be the unequal partaker of sovereign power over a jealous insular
people."
In March, 1557, Philip returned to England. He came, not out of
affection for his wife or of regard for his turbulent insular subjects,
but to stir up the old English hatred of France and to drag the nation
into a war for his personal advantage. The fiery Pope, Paul IV, panted
for the freedom of Italy as it existed in the fifteenth century; he
wanted to accomplish his wishes by an alliance with France; he would
place French princes on the thrones of Milan and Naples. The Spaniards
he pronounced as the spawn of Jews and Moors, the dregs of the earth.
When there was a question of temporal dominion to be fought out, the
Pope did not hesitate to wage war against that faithful son of the
Church, King Philip; nor did King Philip hesitate to send the Duke of
Alva, the exterminator of Protestants, to enter the Roman states and lay
waste the territories of the Pope. Frane and Spain were upon the brank
of open war when Philip arrived in England. He urged a declaration of
war against France. There were grievances in the alleged encouragement
which had been given in Wyat's rebellion, and in the lukewarmness with
which Henry II met Queen Mary's desire that he should afford her the
means of vengeance upon the exiles for religion who took shelter in
France.
The most recent complaint was that France had connived at the equipment
of a force by Thomas Stafford, a refugee, who had invaded England with
thirty-two followers and had surprised Scarborough castle. This
adventurer claimed to be the house and blood of the Duke of Buckingham,
who was beheaded in the times of Henry VIII. The proclamation which he
issued from his castle of Scarborough, which he held only two days, was
addressed to the English hatred of the Spaniards, rather than directed
against the ecclesiastical persecution under which the country was
suffering: "As the duke of Buckingham, our forefathers and predecessors,
have always been defenders of the poor commonalty against the tyranny of
princes, so should you have us at this juncture, most dearly beloved
friends, your protector, governor, and defender against all your
adversaries and enemies; minding earnestly to die rather, presently, and
personally before you in the field, than to suffer you to be overrun so
miserably with strangers, and made most sorrowful slaves and careful
captives to such a naughty nation as Spaniards." Stafford and his band
were soon made prisoners; and he was beheaded on Tower Hill, and three
of his followers hanged, on May 25th. Seizing upon this absurd attempt
as a ground of quarrel, war was declared against France on June 7th; and
Philip quitted the country on July 6th, never to return.
An English force of four thousand infantry, a thousand cavalry, and two
thousand pioneers joined the Spanish army on the Flemish frontier. The
army was partly composed of German mercenaries; the _lanzknechts_ and
_reiters_, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best
paymaster, were the most formidable soldiers of the time. But the Spanish
cavaliers were there, leading their native infantry; and there were the
Burgundian lances. The army was commanded by Emanuel Philibert, Duke of
Savoy, who had aspired to the hand of Elizabeth. Philip earnestly
seconded his suit, but Mary, wisely and kindly, would not put a
constraint upon her sister's inclinations. The wary Princess saw that the
crown would probably be hers at no distant day; and she would not risk
the loss of the people's affection by marrying a foreign Catholic. She
had sensible advisers about her, who seconded her own prudence; and thus
she kept safe amid the manifold dangers by which she was surrounded.
The Duke of Savoy, though young, was an experienced soldier, and he
determined to commence the campaign by investing St. Quentin, a frontier
town of Picardy. The defence of this fortress was undertaken by Coligny,
the Admiral of France, afterward so famous for his mournful death.
Montmorency, the Constable, had the command of the French army. The
garrison was almost reduced to extremity--when Montmorency, on August
10th, arrived with his whole force, and halted on the bank of the Somme.
On the opposite bank lay the Spanish, the English, the Flemish, and the
German host. The arrival of the French was a surprise, and the Duke of
Savoy had to take up a new position. He determined on battle. The issue
was the most unfortunate for France since the fatal day of Agincourt.
The French slain amounted, according to some accounts, to six thousand;
and the prisoners were equally numerous. Among them was the veteran
Montmorency.
On August 10th Philip came to the camp. Bold advisers counselled a march
to Paris. The cautious King was satisfied to press on the siege of St.
Quentin. The defence which Coligny made was such as might have been
expected from his firmness and bravery. The place was taken by storm,
amid horrors which belong to such scenes at all times, but which were
doubled by the rapacity of troops who fought even with each other for the
greatest share of the pillage. After a few trifling successes, the army
of Philip was broken up. The German mercenaries; the _lanzknechts_ and
_reiters_, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best
paymaster, were the most formidable soldiers of the time. But the Spanish
cavaliers were there, leading their native infantry; and there were the
Burgundian lances. The army was commanded by Emanuel Philibert, Duke of
Savoy, who had aspired to the hand of Elizabeth. Philip earnestly
seconded his suit, but Mary, wisely and kindly, would not put a constraint
upon her sister's inclinations. The wary Princess saw that the crown
would probably be hers at no distant day; and she would not risk the
loss of the people's affection by marrying a foreign Catholic. She had
sensible advisers about her, who seconded her own prudence; and thus she
kept safe amid the manifold dangers by which she was surrounded.
The Duke of Savoy, though young, was an experienced soldier, and he
determined to commence the campaign by investing St. Quentin, a frontier
town of Picardy. The defence of this fortress was undertaken by Coligny,
the Admiral of France, afterward so famous for his mournful death.
Montmorency, the Constable, had the command of the French army. The
garrison was almost reduced to extremity--when Montmorency, on August
10th, arrived with his whole force, and halted on the bank of the Somme.
On the opposite bank lay the Spanish, the English, the Flemish, and the
German host. The arrival of the French was a surprise, and the Duke of
Savoy had to take up a new position. He determined on battle. The issue
was the most unfortunate for France since the fatal day of Agincourt.
The French slain amounted, according to some accounts, to six thousand;
and the prisoners were equally numerous. Among them was the veteran
Montmorency.
On August 10th Philip came to the camp. Bold advisers counselled a march
to Paris. The cautious King was satisfied to press on the siege of St.
Quentin. The defence which Coligny made was such as might have been
expected from his firmness and bravery. The place was taken by storm,
amid horrors which belong to such scenes at all times, but which were
doubled by the rapacity of troops who fought even with each other for
the greatest share of the pillage. After a few trifling successes, the
army of Philip was broken up. The English and Germans were indignant at
the insolence of the Spaniards; and the Germans were more indignant that
their pay was not forthcoming. Philip was glad to permit his English
subjects to take their discontents home. They had found out that they
were not fighting the battle of England.
The war between England and France produced hostilities between England
and Scotland. Mary of Guise, the Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland,
was incited by the French king to invade England. The disposition to
hostilities was accompanied by a furious outbreak of the Scottish
borderers. They were driven back. But the desire of the Queen Dowager
that England should be invaded was resisted by the chief nobles, who
declared themselves ready to act on the defensive, but who would not
plunge into war during their sovereign's minority. The alliance of
France and Scotland was, however, completed, in the autumn of 1558, by
the marriage between the Dauphin and the young Queen Mary, which was
solemnized at Paris, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
The Duke of Guise, the uncle of the Queen of Scots, at the beginning of
1558, was at the head of a powerful army to avenge the misfortune of St.
Quentin. The project committed to his execution was a bold and patriotic
one--to drive the English from their last stronghold in France. Calais,
over whose walls a foreign flag had been waving for two centuries, was
to France an opprobrium and to England a trophy. But it was considered
by the English government as an indispensable key to the Continent--a
possession that it would not only be a disgrace to lose, but a national
calamity. The importance of Calais was thus described by Micheli, the
Venetian ambassador, only one year before it finally passed from the
English power:
"Another frontier, besides that of Scotland, and of no less importance
for the security of the kingdom, though it be separated, is that which
the English occupy on the other side of the sea, by means of two
fortresses, Calais and Guines, guarded by them (and justly) with
jealousy, especially Calais, for this is the key and principal entrance
to their dominions, without which the English would have no outlet from
their own, nor access to other countries, at least none so easy, so
short, and so secure; so much so that if they were deprived of it they
would not only be shut out from the Continent, but also from the
commerce and intercourse of the world. They would consequently lose what
is essentially necessary for the existence of a country, and become
dependent upon the will and pleasure of other sovereigns, in availing
themselves of their ports, besides having to encounter a more distant,
more hazardous, and more expensive passage; whereas, by way of Calais,
which is directly opposite to the harbor of Dover, distant only about
thirty miles, they can, at any time, without hinderance, even in spite
of contrary winds, at their pleasure, enter or leave the harbor--such is
the experience and boldness of their sailors--and carry over either
troops or anything else for warfare, offensive and defensive, without
giving rise to jealousy and suspicion; and thus they are enabled, as
Calais is not more than ten miles from Ardres, the frontier of the
French, nor farther from Gravelines, the frontier of the imperialists,
to join either the one or the other, as they please, and to add their
strength to him with whom they are at amity, in prejudice of an enemy.
"For these reasons, therefore, it is not to be wondered at that, besides
the inhabitants of the place, who are esteemed men of most unshaken
fidelity, being the descendants of an English colony settled there
shortly after the first conquest, it should also be guarded by one of
the most trusty barons which the King has, bearing the title of deputy,
with a force of five hundred of the best soldiers, besides a troop of
fifty horsemen. It is considered by everyone as an impregnable fortress,
on account of the inundation with which it may be surrounded, although
there are persons skilled in the art of fortification who doubt that it
would prove so if put to the test. For the same reason Guines is also
reckoned impregnable, situated about three miles more inland, on the
French frontier, and guarded with the same degree of care, though, being
a smaller place, only by a hundred fifty men, under a chief governor.
The same is done with regard to a third place, called Hammes, situated
between the two former, and thought to be of equal importance, the
waters which inundate the country being collected around."
Ninety years later Calais was regarded in a very different light: "Now
it is gone, let it go. It was but a beggarly town, which cost England
ten times yearly more than it was worth in keeping thereof, as by the
accounts in the exchequer doth plainly appear."
The expedition against Calais was undertaken upon a report of the
dilapidated condition of the works and the smallness of its garrison. It
was not "an impregnable fortress," as Micheli says it was considered.
The Duke of Guise commenced his attack on January 2d, when he stormed
and took the castle of Ruysbank, which commanded the approach by water.
On the 3d he carried the castle of Newenham bridge, which commanded the
approach by land. He then commenced a cannonade of the citadel, which
surrendered on the 6th. On the 7th the town capitulated. Lord Wentworth,
the Governor, and fifty others remained as prisoners. The English
inhabitants, about four thousand, were ejected from the home which they
had so long colonized, but without any exercise of cruelty. "The
Frenchmen," say the chroniclers, "entered and possessed the town; and
forthwith all the men, women, and children were commanded to leave their
houses and to go to certain places appointed for them to remain in, till
order might be taken for their sending away.
"The places thus appointed for them to remain in were chiefly four, the
two churches of Our Lady and St. Nicholas, the deputy's house, and the
stable, where they rested a great part of that day and one whole night
and the next day till three o'clock at afternoon, without either meat or
drink. And while they were thus in the churches and those other places
the Duke of Guise, in the name of the French King, in their hearing made
a proclamation charging all and every person that were inhabitants of
the town of Calais, having about them any money, plate, or jewels to the
value of one groat, to bring the same forthwith, and lay it down upon
the high altars of the said churches, upon pain of death; bearing them
in hand also that they should be searched. By reason of which
proclamation there was made a great and sorrowful offertory.
"While they were at this offertory within the churches, the Frenchmen
entered into their houses and rifled the same, where were found
inestimable riches and treasures; but especially of ordnance, armor, and
other munitions. Thus dealt the French with the English in lieu and
recompense of the like usage to the French when the forces of King
Philip prevailed at St. Quentin; where, not content with the honor of
victory, the English in sacking the town sought nothing more than the
satisfying of their greedy vein of covetousness, with an extreme neglect
of all moderation."
Within the marches of Calais the English held the two small fortresses
of Guines and Hammes. Guines was defended with obstinate courage by Lord
Grey, and did not surrender till January 20th. His loss amounted to
eight hundred men. From Hammes the English garrison made their escape by
night.
REIGN OF ELIZABETH
A.D. 1558-1603
HENRY R. CLEVELAND
Elizabeth's reign has been regarded by many writers as the most
glorious period of England's career. There were no great land
battles fought by English troops; but at sea those famous
rovers, half pirates, Drake, Raleigh, and their like, definitely
established that maritime supremacy which has ever since been
their country's proudest boast. Moreover, the intellectual
awakening of England which had taken place in the time of Henry
VII and Henry VIII now bore fruit in a glorious literary outburst,
which has made the Elizabethan Age the envy and despair of more
recent literary periods.
There were clearly marked causes for this brilliant and patriotic
era. The indiscriminate marriages of Henry VIII had thrown more
than a shadow of doubt upon the legitimacy of every one of his
children. On his death he was succeeded, without serious dispute,
by his only son, Edward VI. Edward did not live to manhood, but
during his short reign his guardians pushed the land far in the
direction of Protestantism. Unfortunately they plundered the
common people cruelly and persecuted, though only in two cases to
the point of burning, both Catholics and the more extreme
Protestants.
The early death of Edward left no male heir to the royal house.
For the first time in English history there were none but women to
claim the crown. Moreover, of these at least four had some show of
right. They were Mary, the Catholic daughter of King Henry's first
wife, and Elizabeth, his Protestant daughter by Anne Boleyn. Or,
if both these were to be considered illegitimate, then came their
cousins, Mary Stuart, descended from one of Henry's sisters, and
Lady Jane Grey, from another. The friends of Lady Jane tried to
raise her to the throne, but only succeeded in bringing her to the
scaffold. The Catholic, Mary, was declared the rightful queen and
ruled England for five years, during most of which she kept her
half-sister Elizabeth in prison.
Queen Mary was devoted to her religion. The fires which had burned
in Henry's time were kindled again, but now for the torture of
Protestants, bishops, and men of mark. Mary wedded the Catholic
king and cruel fanatic Philip II of Spain, the most powerful
monarch of Europe; so that only to her death and the reign of the
persecuted Elizabeth could Protestant Englishmen look for relief.
Thus the accession of the learned and coquettish Elizabeth brought
far more than a mere promise of youth and pleasure; it was a
bursting of the fetters of fear.
The age of Elizabeth was preeminently distinguished by the operation of
just principles, of generous sentiments, of elevated objects, and of
profound piety. Elizabeth, it is true, was vindictive, arbitrary, and
cruel. Two prevailing sentiments filled her mind and chiefly influenced
her conduct throughout life. The first of these was the idea of
prerogative. Any assumption of rights, any freedom of debate, any
theological discussion or profession of sentiments which seemed to
infringe on the sacred limits of royalty was sure to be visited with her
severest wrath. She detested the Puritans, from whom she had suffered
nothing, but whose republican spirit appeared to her at war with royalty
in the abstract, far more than the papists, by whom her life had been
made a life of danger and suffering, but who respected forms and
ceremonies, and whose system encouraged reverence for the powers that be
and loyal sentiment toward the person whom they regarded as the lawful
sovereign. Nothing but the earnest entreaties of Cecil and the imminent
danger of a French invasion could induce her to give assistance to the
Scottish Protestants when they were persecuted by the Queen Regent. And
even her hatred of Mary could not prevent her taking sides with that
ill-fated Princess when the "Congregation" claimed the right of trying
their sovereign for alleged crimes, after having deposed and imprisoned
her.
The other sentiment which in no small degree influenced the conduct of
the great Queen was her excessive fondness for admiration as a woman. She
filled her solitary throne with a dignity and a majesty which could not
be surpassed; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of a
character which should have strength and impetuosity enough, even if
marriage could have given the right, to overawe her lion-like spirit and
assume the reins of government in defiance of her will. Certain it is
that no such prince then lived. But while the _queen_ resolutely excluded
all human participation in the lonely eminence on which she stood, the
_woman_ was constantly claiming the tribute of sympathy and admiration.
Her eager desire was to be a heroine, a beauty, the queen of hearts,
cynosure of gallants' eyes; to reign supreme in the court of love and
chivalry; to be the watchword and war-cry of the knight and the theme of
the troubadour.
Here was the source of the unbounded flattery which was lavished upon
her by courtiers, even to the latest years of her life, and which
appears to have at times actually deceived her, in spite of her
extraordinary penetration. To this sentiment are owing nearly all of the
few instances of disaster and disappointment which occurred during her
splendid reign. She preferred to risk the safety of her allies, and the
cause of Protestantism on the Continent, rather than to refuse the
command of her troops to her favorite, who had entreated it. To gratify
another favorite and insure his glory she forgot her habitual economy,
levied an army larger than she had ever supported, except at the time of
the invasion, and sent it to Ireland under the command of a man who was
utterly unfit for the place. And when, beset by enemies, harassed by
defeat, and overwhelmed with shame, the impetuous and noble-hearted
Essex rushed into the presence of majesty as a lover would have sought
his mistress, her woman's heart forgave him all. Had this frame of mind
continued, had not the resumed majesty of the queen condemned what the
woman forgave, the world would have been spared the consummation of
one of the most mournful tragedies in history, and the last days of
Elizabeth might have been serene and happy, instead of being tortured
with anguish and despair.
The former of these sentiments made her an object of dread, the latter
of ridicule; and both conspired to render her tyrannical. But she was
not a tyrant in the full sense of the word. She never acted upon the
nation with that degrading influence which is always the attendant of
selfish, cold-hearted, and perfidious tyranny; she never had the power,
and we doubt if she ever had the wish, to make slaves of her people. She
understood the English character; she comprehended, appreciated, and
admired its nobleness; and she had sagacity enough to see that this very
character constituted her chief glory. A thorough and hearty affection
subsisted between her and her people; an affection Which was increased
and cemented by many circumstances of a nature not to be forgotten. As a
nation, England had been persecuted, distressed, and trampled upon
during the reign of Mary. The party which triumphed in the ascendency of
the Roman Catholic religion was small; the great majority of the people
were not very zealous in favor of one side or the other; they had been
ready to welcome Protestantism under Edward VI, and they were not
disposed to fight against the Church of Rome under Mary. The number of
zealous papists, they who were in favor of the rack and the stake, was
not more than a thirtieth part of the nation. The other twenty-nine
parts, though perhaps nearly equally divided on the question of
religion, condemned alike the bigotry of their melancholy sovereign and
looked on with sorrowful indignation while the bloody Mary, assisted
by a few narrow-minded bigots, was carrying on the infernal work of
persecution. It was a sorrow and a shame to all true Englishmen, whether
Catholic or Protestant; and the hated Philip felt the effects of their
vengeance till the day of his death.
In these times of tribulation there was one who shared in the common
danger, suffering, and humiliation, and who, from the exalted rank
which she occupied, and the station to which she seemed destined, was
peculiarly an object of distrust and alarm to the bigots, who were
exulting in their day of power. The gloom which overhung the whole
country equally surrounded her; the fires of Smithfield and Oxford were
kindled for her terror as for the terror of the people. She had been
made to pass through that sorrowful passage from which few ever returned
alive, the Traitor's Gate in the Tower of London.
Her course was one and the same with that of the entire English nation;
and the only light which shone upon the darkness, the only hope that
cheered the universal despondency, the dependence of all real patriots,
the trust of all friends of truth, and the pride of all free and
honorable men were centred in the prison of Elizabeth.
There is no bond so strong as the bond of common perils and sufferings;
and, when the young Princess ascended the throne, it was amid the
thankful acclamations of a liberated and happy people, who loved her for
the dangers she had shared with them, and for whom she entertained
the interest and affection due to fellow-sufferers. This feeling was
prolonged in an uncommon manner throughout her reign; for it so happened
that there was no danger which threatened the Queen during her whole
life that was not equally formidable to the people. So difficult was
the question of succession that the prudent Burleigh never ventured to
express his mind upon the subject, and carried down to the grave the
secret of his opinion. Any change would have been for the worse; as it
would either have plunged the nation into a civil war or have placed a
Roman Catholic prince on the throne. The dangers which menaced the crown
of Elizabeth were alike formidable to the cause of freedom in England
and of the Protestant religion in Europe. The invasion of England, which
was attempted by the French under the Queen Regent of Scotland, and
afterward the gigantic preparations of Philip, foreboded more than the
ordinary horrors of an offensive warfare. These enemies came with the
stake and the fagot in their hands; they came not merely to invade,
but to convert; not merely to conquer, but to persecute; they were
stimulated not merely by ambition, but by bigotry; they were prepared
not merely to enslave, but to torture. It was therefore not a matter of
indifference to the English nation whether Elizabeth were to be their
queen or whether some other prince should ascend the throne. In her
reign, and hers alone, they saw the hope of peace, freedom, and
prosperity. Never, therefore, were nation and ruler more closely and
firmly knit together.
The sentiment of loyalty, consequently, was never more sincere and
enthusiastic in the hearts of Englishmen than at that period. To the
nation at large the Queen really appeared what the flattery of her
courtiers and poets represented her. She was to them, in truth, the
Gloriana of Fairyland; the magnificent, the undaunted, the proud
descendant of a thousand years of royalty, and the "Imperial Votress."
She was only a tyrant within the precincts of the court. There she
reigned, it is true, with more than oriental despotism; and she seems to
have delighted occasionally in torturing mean spirits by employing them
upon such thankless offices as their hearts revolted from, though they
had not the courage to refuse them. But beyond the immediate circle of
the palace she was the queen and the mother of her people. To the nation
at large, too, she was equally a heroine, a beautiful idol enshrined in
their hearts. Living on "in maiden meditation fancy-free," rejecting
the proposals of every prince, disregarding the remonstrances of her
subjects, where marriage was spoken of, there was something in the very
unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and
excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her
just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery
Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was
to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces,
but not womanly affections--passionless, pure, self-sustained, and
self-dependent"; shining "with a cold lunar light and not the warm glow
of day." This feeling was increased by the spirit of chivalry which
still lingered in English society, and, like the setting sun, poured a
flood of golden light over the court.
The incense, then, that was offered to the Queen by such men as Spenser,
Raleigh, Essex, Shakespeare, and Sidney, the most noble, chivalrous, and
gifted spirits that ever gathered round a throne, is not to be judged of
as the flattery which cringing courtiers pay to a dreaded tyrant; but
rather as the outpouring of a general enthusiasm, the echo of the
stirring voice of chivalry, and the expression of the feelings of a
devoted yet free people.
An age of tyranny is always an age of frivolity, of heartless levity,
of dwarfish objects and pursuits, of dreadful contrasts--laughter amid
mourning, rioting and wantonness amid judgments and executions; dancing
and music at the hour of death. Such was the frivolity of the days of
Nero; such was the mirth of the "death-dance" in the days of Robespierre.
Nothing like this sickly and appalling joy could be seen in the times of
Elizabeth. There were masques and balls and tournaments at the court,
and gay revels as the stately Queen went from castle to castle, and
palace to palace, in her visits to her princely subjects. But such
amusements did not form the chief object or occupation of the court of
Elizabeth. The Queen, and those who had grown up with her, had
passed through too many dangers and witnessed too much suffering to
allow them to become frivolous or very light-hearted. They had lived
among scenes of cruelty, persecution, and death. Their childhood had
witnessed the successive horrors of the reign of Henry VIII, and their
youth had suffered from the bloody fanaticism of Mary. Sorrow and
tribulation had overspread the morning of their life like a cloud.
Miss Aikin, in the beginning of her charming work upon the court of
Queen Elizabeth, has described the gorgeous procession which filed along
the streets of London at the baptism of the infant princess. The same
picture also forms the closing scene of Shakespeare's _Henry VIII_.
As we look upon the gay and splendid train, marching in their robes of
state, beneath silken canopies, and then glance our eye along the map of
history till we trace almost every actor in the pageant to a bloody
grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity
that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them;
there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their
mantles, their vases, their fringes of gold, assume the sable hue of the
grave; and, instead of a baptismal train, it seems like a funeral
procession descending to the tomb.
The mournful scenes which the generation which grew up with Elizabeth
had been compelled to witness, and the terror in which most of the
leading characters in her reign had passed their youth, had undoubtedly
tended to sober their minds and induce them to reflect much upon the
great and solemn duties of life. The character of the age was stamped
with the dignity which hallows tribulation, and with the force and nerve
which the habitual contemplation of danger rarely fails to confer. The
same causes undoubtedly promoted the religious spirit which prevailed.
While bigotry and fanaticism appeared in a small portion of the nation,
it is certain that the age of Elizabeth was marked by the general
diffusion of a spirit of deep devotion. There was enough of chivalry
left to keep alive the fervor which prevailed at an earlier period, and
enough of intelligence to temper this fervor into rational religion. The
feeling of shame at professing faith and devoutness was the growth of a
later day; it was unknown in those times. The gayest courtier that
chanted his love-song in the ear of the high-born maiden, and the
gravest statesman who debated at the table of the privy council, were
alike penetrated with devotional sentiment, and alike ready to offer up
prayers and thanksgiving to the Most High. We are perfectly aware that
the outward signs of piety displayed by a few principal characters are
not a faithful index of the state of religion at any period. It is not
fair to infer, because Elizabeth devoutly commended herself to the care
of the Almighty when forsaken, friendless, an orphan, alone, and
helpless, she was landed at the foot of the Traitor's Stairs in the
Tower of London, or because she returned to the same gloomy fortress
when a triumphant queen, to offer up her praise and gratitude to God for
his marvellous mercies, that she lived in a pious age. Neither are we to
regard it as a sure indication of the prevailing spirit, when Burleigh
solemnly commends his son to the Almighty in his letter of advice; when
the chivalrous Sidney is found composing a prayer, which, for solemnity,
grandeur, and devotion, is scarcely surpassed in the English liturgy;
when the adventurous Raleigh displays an amount of knowledge on sacred
subjects that might be the envy of an Oxford professor of theology, or
when the city of London presents to the young Queen, on the day of her
coronation and in the midst of her glittering pageantry, the Bible, as
the most appropriate and acceptable offering.
These are not certain signs of a religious age; but they would pass for
something at any period, even if they were mere hypocrisy. They would
show that religion was held in such respect and by so numerous a class
somewhere, as to make it worth while for the Queen and her court to
assume at least the outward badges of piety. But they have additional
force when we reflect at the same time that, at the period when they
were manifested, the Reformation was making a gradual but sure progress
in England; that the question of religion occupied every intelligent
mind and affected the interests of every family; that the lives and
fortunes of millions, the fate of kingdoms, and the progress of
intellectual freedom throughout the civilized world were inseparably
connected with the cause of Protestantism.
If bigotry and fanaticism had been prevalent in England, and the
opposing party of Romanist and Reformer nearly equal, there would have
been witnessed in that country during the sixteenth century a succession
of atrocities and horrors compared with which the wars of the white and
red roses were bloodless. If; on the other hand, the great mass of the
nation had been indifferent, with regard not merely to forms, but to
religion itself, we should not have seen the outward show of piety in
the highest ranks; we should not have seen a house of commons
legislating in favor of Edward's liturgy, and a nation turning to
worship in their vernacular tongue. Nothing but a widely diffused spirit
of piety can account for the character of those miracles of literature
which made the days of Elizabeth glorious, and which are stamped with
nothing more strongly than their deep and wise religion.
Moreover, in the age of Elizabeth, England was more distinguished for
patriotism than any nation in civilized Europe. On the Continent the
feeling of nationality was absorbed, and the distinction of language,
laws, and country absolutely lost, in the zeal for religious belief.
Nations, which for centuries had been enemies, were found leagued
against their natural allies; inhabitants of the same state were
divided, and at war with each other; the prophecy was literally
fulfilled that "the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the
father the son, and children shall rise up against their parents, and
shall cause them to be put to death." "The Palatine," says Schiller,
"now forsakes his home to go and fight on the side of his
fellow-believer of France, against the common enemy of their religion.
The subject of the King of France draws his sword against his native
land, which had persecuted him, and goes forth to bleed for the freedom
of Holland. Swiss is now seen armed for battle against Swiss, and German
against German, that they may decide the succession of the French throne
on the banks of the Loire or the Seine. The Dane passes the Eider, the
Swede crosses the Baltic, to burst the fetters which are forged for
Germany."
Nothing of this kind was seen in England. The number of Catholics who
preferred the triumph of their party to the welfare of their country was
too small to be of any consideration. A few fanatics in the college at
Rheims, and a few romantic champions of the unhappy Queen of Scots, were
the only domestic enemies whom Elizabeth had to fear. With a great
majority of the Romanists, the love of country prevailed over all
religious distinctions; and, when the invasion was threatened by Philip,
they united cordially with the Protestants in the defence of their
native land; they enlisted as volunteers in the army and navy; they
equipped vessels at their own charge, armed their tenants and vassals,
encouraged their neighbors and prepared, heart and hand, for a desperate
resistance of the common foe.
The energies of the nation were naturally brought into vigorous action
by the great objects, interests, and enterprises which the times
presented. The effects of the Reformation were felt just enough to
produce a bold and free exercise of thought, without kindling the
passions to fierce excitement. The storm which burst with all its fury
on the Continent, wrapping nations in the flames of civil war,
prostrating, withering, and overwhelming civil institutions, and marking
its path with desolation did but exert a salutary influence in England.
The lightning was seen flashing in the distant horizon, the rolling
thunder could be heard afar off, but the fury of the storm fell at a
distance; the atmosphere was purified and the soil refreshed, and the
rainbow was glittering in the heavens.
Never in the history of England had there been a time when energy and
wisdom were more needed than that period. The nation was compelled, by
irresistible force of circumstances, to stand forth as the champion of
Protestantism. The eyes of all civilized countries were fixed upon her;
some, with imploring looks; some, glaring upon her with jealousy,
fierceness, and settled hatred. Enemies were springing up, with whom
peace was hopeless. A popish princess was heir to the throne of
Scotland, with a powerful ally ready to support her pretensions to the
English crown. On the Continent were allies, whom England was compelled
to support at the risk of a war with the mightiest empire that had risen
since the fall of Rome. And an armament was preparing for the invasion
of Britain, of an extent that seemed to render resistance hopeless, by a
monarch whose resources appeared inexhaustible, while Ireland was in
open rebellion and ready to receive the Spanish fleets into her ports.
From all these difficulties and impending calamities, the nation
gathered a harvest of glory that alone would make her name famous
forever. It is with a feeling of joy and exultation that we trace the
history of England during these years of terror and of triumph. We
behold her extricating herself from embarrassments that seemed endless,
and turning them into the means of safety; encouraging and supporting
her allies without exhausting her own resources, and finally crushing
the vast engines which were put into operation for her destruction.
The blood quickens in our veins, as we read of the wisdom and the
sublime moral courage, of the daring adventure, the romantic enterprise,
the chivalrous bravery, and the brilliant triumphs of that age of great
men. We see Cecil and Wotton negotiating with Scotland so wisely as to
win the confidence and affection of that nation, and to destroy the
influence of France in that country forever; Walsingham, fathoming the
secrets of the French court, or watching in silence, but certainty, the
progress of conspiracies at home, and crushing them on the eve of
maturity; the Queen, with a prudence which seems almost sublime,
rejecting a second time the proffer of the sovereignty of Holland;
Drake, circumnavigating the earth, and returning laden with the spoils
of conquered fleets and provinces; Cavendish, coming up the Thames to
London, with sails of damask and cloth of gold, and his men arrayed in
costly silks; Lancaster, dashing his boats to pieces on the strand of
Pernambuco, that he might leave his men no alternative but death or
victory; Raleigh, plunging into the fire of the Spanish galleots, and
fighting his way through overwhelming numbers, with a courage that
rivalled the incredible tales of chivalry, planting colonies in the
pleasantest vales of the New World, or ascending the Orinoco in search
of the fabled Dorado; Sidney, gallantly returning from battle on his
war-horse, though struggling with the agony of his death-wound, and
giving the cup of cold water to the wounded soldier, with those noble
words which would alone be enough to preserve his memory forever; Essex,
tossing his cap into the sea for very joy when the command is given, in
compliance with his earliest entreaties, for the assault on Cadiz, and
with that failing of memory so becoming to a brave man, forgetting the
cautions of his sovereign, and rushing into the thickest of the fight;
the naval supremacy of England completely established by the defeat of
the Armada, and the great deep itself made a monument of the nation's
glory.
The boast of the age of Elizabeth was the splendid specimens of humanity
which it produced. "There were giants in those days." Individuals seemed
to condense in themselves the attainments of hosts. The accomplishments
and prowess of the men of those times inspire us with something like the
feeling of wonder with which the soldier of the present day handles the
sword of Robert Bruce, or the gigantic armor of Guy of Warwick. When
we read the beautiful verses "addressed to the author of the _Faerie
Queene_," by Raleigh, it is difficult to believe that they were penned by
the same person whose system of tactics was adopted so triumphantly at
the Spanish invasion; who was equally eminent as a general, a seaman, an
explorer, and a historian; and who shone unsurpassed for knightly graces
and accomplishments amid the stars of the court. Such instances were
not rare and prodigious. Raleigh was not the Crichton of his age; if
the compliment belongs to anyone peculiarly, it is Sidney; but as we
read over the list of distinguished persons to whom Spenser addressed
dedicatory stanzas to be "sent with the _Faerie Queene_," we become more
and more at a loss to distinguish the greatest among them; and we could
believe that many ages had been searched for so noble a catalogue.
The principles which formed society were precisely such as were best
calculated for the finest developments of character. The old high,
fervid spirit of chivalry was not lost; there were the same sense of
honor, the same knightly bearing, the same passion for glory, and the
same admiration for courage and prowess that had prevailed in the
earlier days of its sway. But these were tempered by milder and more
attractive virtues and accomplishments; the clerkly learning, which had
held so humble a rank in the days when nobles could scarcely sign their
names, had now risen into far higher estimation. Great warriors were now
no longer ashamed to know how to read and write; on the contrary, the
possession of learning and literature, the delicate arts of poetry and
music, the graces of conversation and manners, were now as requisite to
the full accomplishment of the knight, as his horsemanship, or his skill
in the management of his lance. In a word, the sterner characteristics
of the ancient knight were softened down, in the age of Elizabeth, into
the more perfect and graceful attributes of the gentleman. The perfect
gentleman was more completely exhibited in the days of Elizabeth than at
any time before; for the chivalry and the accomplishments which were
then united in the same individual, had been formerly divided between
the noble and the churchman or the clerk.
Were we called upon to characterize the age in which Spenser lived, by a
single word, we could find none that would better express its combined
attributes, than the word which the poet uses in describing his principal
hero: "In the person of Prince Arthure," says he in his letter to Raleigh,
"I set forth magnificence." The age of Elizabeth was distinguished by
magnificence, in the highest sense of the word, by the most brilliant
display of great qualities of all kinds; and the hero of the _Faerie
Queene_ seems to be the personification of the splendid attributes of the
age. A prevailing sentiment, in the mind of Spenser, was the perfectness
of character to which the gentlemen of his time aspired, and on this
model he fashioned his hero. He observes that "the general end, therefore,
of all the books is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in gentle and
virtuous discipline." And again, "I labor to pourtraict in Arthure,
before he was King, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve
moral virtues." And as we read the gorgeous description of the prince,
when he first meets the forsaken Una, we could fancy that the magnificent
characteristics of the golden age of England had blended together, and
blazed forth in one dazzling form before us.
JOHN KNOX HEADS THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS
A.D. 1559
P. HUME BROWN THOMAS CARLYLE
In the year of Martin Luther's death (1546) Protestant doctrines
were preached in Scotland by George Wishart. This reformer was
burned at St. Andrew's, in the same year (March 12th), at the
instigation of Cardinal Beaton. Two months later the Cardinal
himself, who practically controlled the Scottish government, was
murdered in the castle of St. Andrew's. Beaton's death was "fatal
to the Catholic religion and to the French interest in Scotland."
The interest of France was represented by the Queen Regent, Mary
of Lorraine, also called Mary of Guise, daughter of Claude, Duke
of Guise. She was the widow of James V of Scotland, and mother of
Mary Stuart, now four years old and living in France.
During his brief season of Protestant preaching, Wishart had
deeply impressed a scholar, then forty years of age, who gave up
his calling as teacher, and in 1547 began to preach the reformed
religion at St. Andrew's. This was John Knox.
From this moment dates the birth of the Protestant Reformation in
Scotland. Knox was imprisoned by the French (1547-1549), was
released, and for two years preached at Berwick. For several years
now he lived a life of many vicissitudes, partly in Great Britain and
partly on the Continent, and by his sermons and writings powerfully
influenced the growth of the Protestant faith. While at Geneva, where
he was much influenced by Calvin, in 1558, he published his _First
Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_, a
denouncement which brought him into bitter antagonism with the Queen
Regent and with other Catholic authorities in England and France.
In 1559 the Queen Regent took active steps for repressing the
Congregation, as the whole body of Scotch Protestants were called,
and in the same year Knox returned once more to Scotland, there to
perform a work which made his name perhaps second only to that of
Luther among the personal forces of the Reformation.
The first of the following accounts shows Knox and his followers
in the midst of their warfare against the Regent's repressive
policy. In the second we have one of Carlyle's most fervent
eulogies, for to him Knox is the priestly hero enacting a glorious
part.
P. HUME BROWN
The year 1559 began ominously for the success of the Queen Regent's
policy of suppression. To this point national feeling and religious
conviction had been the driving-forces of the coming revolution. But, as
is the case in all national upheavals, there were likewise economic
forces at work which were none the less potent because they were obscured
behind the dramatic development of sensational events. A remarkable
document, the author of which is unknown, gave striking expression to
this aspect of the Scottish Reformation. It was entitled the _Beggars'
Summons_, and purported to come from "all cities, towns, and villages of
Scotland."
On January 1, 1559, this terrible manifesto, breathing the very spirit of
revolution, was found placarded on the gates of every religious
establishment in Scotland. The _Summons_ begins as follows: "The blind,
crooked, lame, widows, orphans, and all other poor visited by the hand of
God as may not work, to the flocks of all friars within this realm, we
wish restitution of wrongs past, and reformation in times coming, for
salutation." It may be sufficient to quote the concluding passage of this
extraordinary effusion, and it is a passage which should never be out of
mind in any estimate of the forces that were about to effect the great
cataclysm in the national life: "Wherefore, seeing our number is so
great, so indigent, and so heavily oppressed by your false means that
none taketh care of our misery, and that it is better to provide for
these our impotent members which God hath given us, to oppose to you in
plain controversy, than to see you hereafter, as ye have done before,
steal from us our lodging, and ourselves in the mean time to perish and
die for want of the same; we have thought good, therefore, ere we enter
in conflict with you, to warn you in the name of the great God by this
public writing, affixed on your gates where ye now dwell, that ye remove
forth of our said hospitals betwixt this and the feast of Whitsunday
next, so that we, the only lawful proprietors thereof, may enter thereto,
and afterward enjoy the commodities of the Church which ye have heretofore
wrongfully holden from us; certifying that if ye fail, we will at the
said term, in whole number and with the help of God and assistance of his
saints on earth, of whose ready support we doubt not, enter and take
possession of our said patrimony, and eject you utterly forth of the
same. Let him, therefore, that before hath stolen, steal no more; but
rather let him work with his hands, that he may be helpful to the poor."
The inflammatory statements of revolutionaries must be taken for what
they are worth; but there is abundant evidence to prove that the above
indictment of the national Church was not without foundation in fact. It
has been computed that one-half of the wealth of the country was in
possession of the clergy; and we have the testimony of unimpeachable
witnesses to the unworthy uses to which it was put. Hector Boece, John
Major, and Ninian Winzet were all three faithful sons of the Church, and
all three cried aloud at the venality, avarice, and luxurious living of
the higher clergy. "But now, for many years," wrote Major, "we have been
shepherds whose only care it is to find pasture for themselves, men
neglectful of the duties of religion. By open flattery do the worthless
sons of our nobility get the governance of convents _in commendam_, and
they covet these ample revenues, not for the good help that they thence
might render to their brethren, but solely for the high position that
these places offer." To the same effect Ninian Winzet wrote after the
judgment had come. "The special roots of all mischief," he says, "be the
two infernal monsters, pride and avarice, of the which unhappily has
up-sprung the election of unqualified bishops and other pastors in
Scotland."
This spectacle of the national Church, with its disproportionate wealth
and its selfish, incompetent, and often degraded officials, could not
but be a growing offence to the developing intelligence of the nation;
and to quicken this feeling there were minor grievances which were an
ancient ground of complaint on the part of the laity against their
spiritual advisers. On every important event of his life the poor man
was harassed by exactions which Sir David Lyndsay has so keenly touched
in his _Satire of the Three Estates_. Says the Pauper in the interlude:
"Quhair will ye find that law, tell gif ye can,
To tak thine ky, fra ane pure husbandman?
Ane for my father, and for my wyfe ane uther,
And the third cow, he tuke fra Mald my mother."
And Diligence replies:
"It is thair law, all that they have in use,
Tocht it be cow, sow, ganer, gryse, or guse."
If the poor had these grounds of discontent, the rich likewise had
theirs; and they made bitter complaint against the protracted processes
in the consistorial courts, and the frequent appeals to the Roman Curia,
by which both their means and their patience were exhausted.
It was in the face of feelings such as these that, in the spring of
1559, the Queen Regent entered on her new line of policy toward her
refractory subjects. Her first steps were taken with her usual prudence.
A provincial council of the clergy was summoned to meet on March 1st for
the express purpose of dealing with the religious difficulty. It was the
last provincial council of the ancient Church that was to meet in
Scotland; and, if the expression of its good intentions could have
availed, the Church might yet have been saved. All that its worst
enemies had said of its shortcomings was frankly admitted, and admirable
decrees were passed with a view to a speedy and effective reform. But
the hour had passed when the mere reform of life and doctrine would have
sufficed to meet the desires of the new spiritual teachers. As was
speedily to be seen, it was revolution and not reform on which these new
teachers were now bent with an ever-growing confidence that their
triumph was not far off. A double order issued by the Regent toward the
end of March brought her face to face with the consequences of her
changed policy. Unauthorized persons were forbidden to preach, and the
lieges were commanded to observe the festival of Easter after the manner
ordained by the Church. The preachers disregarded both edicts and were
summoned to answer for their disobedience.
It was now seen that the Regent was no longer in the mood for
temporizing; and the Congregation despatched two of their number, the
Earl of Glencairn and Sir Hew Campbell, sheriff of Ayr, to deprecate her
wrath. Their reception must have taught them that times were now changed
since the days when the Regent deemed it necessary to conciliate their
party. "In despite of you and your ministers both," she told the two
deputies, "they shall be banished out of Scotland, albeit they preached
as truly as ever did St. Paul." When they reminded her of her previous
promises, she replied in words that were never forgotten, and which her
grandson, James VI, recalled and laid to heart in his own dealings with
his subjects. "It became not subjects," she said, "to burden their
princes further than it pleaseth them to keep the same." For a time,
however, she consented to stay further action against the preachers.
But, if she were to carry out the task she had undertaken, she must
sooner or later make trial of her strength against what had now become
actual rebellion. In Perth, Dundee, and Montrose the Protestant
preachers, with the approval and countenance of the constituted
authorities, openly proceeded with their work of spreading their new
opinions. At length the Regent took the step which was to be the
beginning of the end of the Catholic Church in Scotland. She summoned
the preachers to appear before her at Stirling on May 10th, and on this
occasion it was recognized by both parties that the moment for decisive
action had come. To be ready for all contingencies, a numerous body of
Protestant gentlemen from Angus and the Mearns, all, it is specially
noted, "without armor," took up their quarters at Perth, where they were
immediately joined by another contingent from Dundee. With this last
body came John Knox, who on May 20th had finally returned to his native
country.
All through their contest with the Regent, the Protestant leaders took
up the position that they were acting in strict accordance with the law
of the land. With the formidable following now at their back, they might
have marched on Stirling and gained a temporary advantage by their show
of strength. What they actually did was to send Erskine of Dun to the
Regent to lay their demands once more before her. As she was not yet in
a position to enforce her will, she again agreed to postpone action
against the preachers. It was the misfortune of her position from the
beginning of the struggle that Mary of Lorraine was driven to
subterfuges which made impossible any permanent understanding with her
discontented subjects; and it was of evil omen for the success of her
policy that she now allowed herself to commit a serious breach of faith.
In the teeth of her promise to Erskine, she proclaimed the preachers as
outlaws when they failed to appear at Stirling on the day appointed for
their trial. The news of the Regent's breach of faith was the immediate
occasion of the first stroke in the Scottish Reformation. The day after
the outlawry John Knox preached a sermon in the parish church of Perth,
his theme being the idolatries of Rome, and the duty of Christian men to
put an end to them. At the close of the sermon, when the majority of the
audience had left the church, a priest proceeded to celebrate mass. A
forward boy made a protesting remark; the priest struck him; the boy
retaliated by throwing a stone which broke an image, and immediately the
church was in an uproar. In a few moments not "a monument of idolatry"
was left in the building. The news of these doings spread through the
town, and the "rascal multitude" took up the work. There had been old
quarrels between the town and the religious orders; and so early as 1543
a violent assault had been made on the Blackfriars' monastery. But on
the present occasion the work done was at once more extensive and more
thorough. The main onslaught was directed toward the monasteries of the
Dominicans and the Franciscans and the Charterhouse Abbey; and within
two days, says Knox, "the walls only did remain of these great
edifications."
There was now no alternative but the sword, and both parties at once
took action accordingly. In support of the French troops which were at
her disposal, the Regent ordered levies from Clydesdale, Stirlingshire,
and the Lothians to meet her at Stirling on May 24th. On their part the
insurgents strengthened the defences of Perth--according to Buchanan,
the only walled town in Scotland--and addressed themselves to their
brethren in Ayrshire for instant succor. As they were now engaged in
what might be construed as rebellion, they took steps to justify
themselves in the eyes of the world. In three manifestoes, probably the
work of Knox, they addressed respectively the Regent, D'Oysel, the
French ambassador, and the whole Scottish nobility. In view of the past
history of Scotland the insurgents could present a case which possessed
sufficient plausibility. It had been the exception for the reign of a
Scottish king to pass without some more or less serious revolt on the
ground of his alleged misgovernment. Even during the reign with which we
are dealing, there had been a fair precedent for the late proceedings of
the Congregation. At the outset of the reign, the Earl of Arran was
giving away the country to England and to heresy; Beaton and the French
party had taken up arms against him, and undone all his actions to which
they objected. But as Mary of Lorraine was now governing the country,
the danger of a French conquest was much more serious than had been the
danger of conquest by England. On the ground that the state was in
peril, therefore, there was ample justification for the action of the
Protestant leaders. With regard to religion, the good of the
commonwealth might easily be urged as a plea for the most drastic
dealing with the national Church. By the admission of its own officials
the Church had become a scandal, alike from the character of the clergy
and its general neglect of its duties as a spiritual body. For at least
a century the scandal had been growing; and good citizens had been
forced to the conclusion that their accredited spiritual guides were
either unable or unwilling to set their house in order.
But the time demanded deeds more than words. With a force of about eight
thousand French and Scots, D'Oysel, the Regent's chief adviser, advanced
to Auchterarder, some twelve miles from Perth. With this formidable
force behind her, the Regent naturally expected that her rebellious
subjects would be disposed to abate their demands. To learn what terms
they would now be willing to accept, she sent to Perth the lord James
Stewart, Lord Sempill, and the Earl of Argyle. They were told that the
town would be surrendered if assurance were given of freedom of worship
and security to the worshippers. As a reply to these demands, the Regent
despatched the lyon king-of-arms to make proclamation that all should
"avoid the toune under pane of treasone." At this moment, however, the
Earl of Glencairn, at the head of a body of two thousand five hundred
Ayrshire Protestants, made his way to within six miles of Perth. Thus
checkmated, the Regent was again driven to a compromise; and on the
conditions that she should quarter no French troops in the town, and
grant perfect freedom of worship, the gates were at length thrown open
to her. Thus closed the first act of the drama of the Scottish
Reformation.
This good understanding was of short duration. Again the action of the
Regent gave rise to an accusation of broken pledges. She kept to the
letter of the late compact, but she evaded its spirit. She did not
quarter French troops in the town, but she occupied it with Scottish
soldiers in French pay, and, in further disregard of her pledges,
treated the Protestants with a harshness which gave rise to bitter
complaint on the part of their leaders. Argyle and the lord James, the
two most prominent of these leaders, had accompanied her into Perth (May
29th), but, indignant at these proceedings, they secretly quitted the
town and at once took action to make good their protests. Summoning the
Protestant gentlemen of Angus and the Mearns to meet them in St.
Andrew's on June 3d, they proceeded to that town, as the best centre of
action after Perth. In St. Andrew's as in Perth it is John Knox who is
again the outstanding figure. Here his preaching was attended by the
same notable results. The monasteries of the Dominicans and the
Franciscans were practically demolished by the mob, and with the
approval of the magistrates every church in the town was stripped of its
ornaments. Meanwhile the Regent had not been idle, and was now at
Falkland with a force led by D'Oysel and Chatelherault. Confident in
their strength, those two leaders marched toward Cupar, with the
intention of dealing with St. Andrew's. But again they discovered that
they had miscalculated the resources of the insurgents. Issuing from St.
Andrew's, with little over a hundred horse, Argyle and the lord James
were speedily reenforced by contingents from Lothian and Fife, which
raised their numbers to above three thousand men. Thus strengthened,
they took up their position on Cupar Muir, and awaited the approach of
the Regent's forces. But in number these forces were now inferior to
those of the enemy; and, as many of the French soldiers were Huguenots
and secretly sympathized with their fellow-believers, the issue of the
battle could not but be doubtful. Again, therefore, there was no
alternative for the Regent but to temporize. It was agreed that there
should be a truce of eight days, that the Regent's forces now in Fife
should be removed from that county, and that, during the armistice, an
attempt should be made to effect some permanent understanding.
The new arrangement proved as hollow as the first. In point of fact, it
was borne in on both parties that the struggle had but begun, and that
the sword only could end it. Already, therefore, both were looking for
external support wherewith to crush their opponents. The very day after
the compact at Cupar, D'Oysel wrote to the French ambassador in London
that only a body of French troops could maintain the Regent's authority.
On their part the Protestant leaders now entered on those negotiations
with England which eventually led to results that gave Scotland
definitely to Protestantism and united the destinies of the two nations.
Meanwhile, however, the Regent and her revolted subjects had to fight
their own battles. The truce effected nothing, and it had no sooner
expired than hostilities recommenced. The first object of the leaders of
the Congregation was to relieve their brethren in Perth, and on June
24th they sat down before that place in such numbers that it immediately
and unconditionally surrendered. Perth, Dundee, and St. Andrew's were
now in their hands; but, having gone thus far, their only hope lay in
giving still further proof of the strength of their cause. It was
reported that the Regent meant to stop their progress southward of
Stirling bridge; but, before she could effect her object, they entered
that town with the consent of the majority of the citizens. By June 29th
they were in possession of the capital, whence Mary of Lorraine had fled
to the castle of Dunbar.
The cause of the Congregation now appeared to be triumphant, but it
contained elements of weakness of which everyone was aware and which
speedily became manifest. The acts of violence which had attended the
revolt were filling the law-abiding citizens with dismay. The
destruction of church property in Perth and St. Andrew's had been
followed by similar excesses elsewhere. Especially disquieting had been
what had occurred at Scone immediately after the surrender of Perth. In
defiance of the protests of Knox, the lord James, and Argyle, the
reformers of Dundee had sacked and burned to the ground the abbey and
palace of that village--an outrage which Knox himself regretted in the
interest of his own cause. It was a further source of weakness to the
Congregation that their actions easily lent themselves to
misconstruction and misrepresentation. The Regent industriously spread
the plausible report both at home and abroad that their religious
professions were a mere pretext, and that their real object was to
overthrow herself and to make the lord James their king. But, above all,
the nature of the host that supported them was such that it invariably
failed them when their need was the greatest. The men who composed it
had to leave their daily business in town and country; and, as they
received no pay and their own affairs demanded their attention, their
military service did not extend beyond a few weeks. The Protestant
leaders had no sooner taken possession of Edinburgh than their following
began to dwindle. During the first week their numbers amounted to over
seven thousand men; by the third week they had diminished to one
thousand five hundred. In these circumstances the Regent had only to
bide her time, and her opportunity must come. On July 23d her troops,
led by D'Oysel and Chatelherault, marched on Leith, which they reached
on the morning of the 24th. As had been anticipated, neither that town
nor the capital itself was in a position to offer any effectual
resistance; and the leaders of the Congregation at once proposed a
conference for the discussion of terms. Accordingly, the Duke and the
Earl of Huntly on the one side, and Argyle, the lord James, and
Glencairn on the other, met on the east slope of the Calton hill and
agreed to the following adjustment: The Congregation were to give up the
coining-irons, of which they had taken possession, and they were to
evacuate Edinburgh within twenty-four hours. The town was to be left
free to choose its own religion; no French troops were to be introduced.
The Protestants were to be allowed complete liberty of worship, but were
to abstain from violence against the old religion, and these
arrangements were to hold till the 10th of the following January. By
this concession of liberty to worship according to their own consciences
the Protestants had apparently attained the main object for which they
had risen, but they well knew that they would enjoy this liberty only so
long as they were strong enough to enforce it. On leaving Edinburgh,
therefore, they proceeded to Stirling, where they came to an agreement
as to their future plan of action. As a necessary precaution for their
immediate security, they entered into a bond of mutual defence and
concerted counsels. Above all, they determined to spare no pains to win
support from England, which, as itself now a Protestant country, could
not look on with indifference while they were engaged in a
life-and-death struggle with France and Rome.
An event that had lately happened gave a new impulse to French action in
Scotland. On July 10th Henry II had been accidentally killed in a
tournament; and Mary Stuart, the niece of the Guises, was now Queen of
France. It was with greater zeal than ever, therefore, that the Guises
sought to direct Scottish affairs according to their own interests. In
the beginning of August the Protestant lords took a decided step: they
sent John Knox to England with instructions that might serve as a basis
of a treaty between England and the Congregation. The instructions were
that if England would assist them against France, the Congregation would
agree to a common league against that country. Knox only went as far as
Berwick; but he brought home a letter containing a reply to the
Protestant overtures from Elizabeth's secretary, Sir William Cecil. The
reply was discouraging; but it contained a practical suggestion, by
which, however, the Protestant leaders were either unwilling or unable
to profit. If it was money they were in need of, Cecil told them, that
need present no difficulty; if they would but do as Henry VIII did with
the monasteries, they would have enough money and to spare. The English
Queen was, in truth, in a position that demanded the wariest going.
Two-thirds of her own subjects were Catholics, and it would be an evil
example to set them if she were to assist rebels in another country.
Moreover, the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, concluded in the previous
April, debarred her from hostile demonstration against France. But the
peril from French ascendency in Scotland could not be ignored, and by
the gradual pressure of events Elizabeth was driven to support a course
which in her heart she abhorred. Shortly after Cecil's communication,
the veteran diplomatist, Sir Ralph Sadler, came down to Scotland with a
commission to effect a secret arrangement with the Protestant leaders,
and brought with him three thousand pounds to distribute to the best of
his wisdom.
What the Guises meant speedily became apparent. About the middle of
August a thousand French soldiers landed at Leith; and, as they were
accompanied by their wives and children, the object of their coming
could not be misunderstood. If the leaders of the Congregation,
therefore, were not to lose all the ground they had lately gained, a
time for vigorous action had again come. As had been previously
concerted, they met at Stirling on September 10th and took counsel as to
their further action. Here they were joined by an ally who, by his rank
and his claims, was of the first importance to their cause. This was the
Earl of Arran, the eldest son of the Duke of Chatelherault, who, a few
months previously, had been forced to flee from France by reason of his
Protestant sympathies. The value of the new confederate was soon
realized. Passing to Hamilton palace, the insurgent leaders there met
the Duke himself, to whom they held out such alluring prospects that he
openly identified himself with their cause. During these transactions at
Hamilton, alarming news came of the doings of the Regent. It was
reported that she was busily engaged in fortifying Leith--a proceeding,
the Congregation maintained, in direct violation of the late treaty.
Disregarding their protest, she steadily proceeded with the work; and,
as she was strengthened by a new contingent of eight hundred French
men-at-arms, her position by the middle of autumn was such as to excite
alarm alike in Scotland and England. Again there was no arbitrament but
by the sword.
On October 16th the insurgent leaders entered Edinburgh with the
intention of laying siege to Leith, where the Regent had taken refuge as
the safest place in the kingdom. One of their earliest steps was the
most audacious they had yet taken. They formally deposed Mary of
Lorraine from the regency, on the ground that she had ruled as a tyrant
and was betraying the country to a foreign enemy. But they soon found
that they had taken a task beyond their strength. Their force amounted
to but eight thousand men, most of whom were "cuntrie fellows" with no
experience in war, and whose service could not extend beyond a few
weeks. To this undisciplined host was opposed a garrison of three
thousand trained soldiers, with the command of the sea and intrenched in
a town fortified after the best military art of the time. Fortune,
moreover, was against the Congregation from the first. A new instalment
of one thousand pounds, secretly sent by Elizabeth, was cleverly seized
by James, Earl of Bothwell, afterward the notorious helpmate of Mary
Stuart. Their arms, also, met with no success. While a detachment of
their troops was in pursuit of Bothwell, the enemy found their
opportunity and made their way even into the streets of Edinburgh; and
on November 25th the reformers sustained so severe a reverse that the
capital was no longer a safe place for them. They had no money to pay
the few mercenaries whom they had hired; the town was tired of them; and
the earl Marischal, who had charge of the castle, held resolutely aloof.
As at the close of their previous rising, the leaders held a council at
Stirling to determine their future policy; before they entered on their
deliberations, Knox was called upon to preach a sermon--Knox, of whom it
was said that he "put more life" into those who heard him "than five
hundred trumpets continually blustering" in their ears. The
deliberations that succeeded took a sufficiently practical shape. Young
Maitland of Lethington, who had lately deserted the Regent for the
Congregation, was despatched to England with offers that might induce
Elizabeth to give direct support to the cause of Protestantism in
Scotland. As to their own future action, the lords made the following
arrangement: Chatelherault, Argyle, Glencairn, and the lords Boyd and
Ochiltry were to make their head-quarters in Glasgow; while Arran, the
lord James, the lords Rothes and Ruthven, and John Knox were to act from
St. Andrew's as their centre. Their counsels at an end, they separated
with the intention of reassembling at Stirling on December 16th. They
had thus tried two falls with the Regent, and in both they had been
worsted: the third trial of strength was to have a different ending.
The Regent was not slow to follow up her advantage. She took possession
of the capital two days after the Congregation had quitted it, and she
tried hard, but in vain, to persuade the earl Marischal to surrender the
castle. The arrival of fresh reenforcements from France at the beginning
of December enabled her to abandon her defensive policy and to take
decisive measures for the suppression of revolt. On Christmas Day, while
the Protestant lords were in council at Stirling, two detachments of her
troops, commanded by D'Oysel, drove them precipitately from the town.
Pursuing his advantage, D'Oysel despatched his troops across Stirling
bridge into Fife, and he himself with another detachment crossed from
Leith, apparently with the object of gaining possession of St. Andrew's.
The task proved a hard one. At every step he was beset by the Scots
under Argyle and the lord James. "The said Earl and Lord James," says
Knox, "for twenty-one days they lay in their clothes; their boots never
came off; they had skirmishing almost every day; yea, some days, from
morn to even." Yet, in the teeth of all obstacles, D'Oysel steadily
forced his way to within six miles of St. Andrew's, where Knox and his
friends had all but abandoned hope. But unexpected deliverance was at
hand. On January 23, 1560, a fleet of strange vessels appeared at the
mouth of the Frith of Forth. As a French fleet had been expected for
some weeks, D'Oysel concluded that his armament had come at last. He was
soon undeceived. Under his eyes the strangers seized two ships bearing
provisions from Leith to his own camp. The strange vessels were an
advanced squadron of a fleet sent by Elizabeth to block the Frith of
Forth against further succors from France. It was now D'Oysel who was in
extremities; and before he found himself safe in Linlithgow he had vivid
experience at once of the rigors of a Scotch winter and of the savage
hate which his countrymen had come to inspire in the nation which for
three centuries had called them friends and allies.
Meanwhile, the mission of Maitland to the English court was about to
lead to one of the most notable compacts in the national history. At
Berwick-on-Tweed, the lord James Stewart, Lord Ruthven, and three other
Scottish commissioners met the Duke of Norfolk and concluded a treaty
(February 27th) which was to insure the eventual triumph of the
Congregation, to make Scotland a Protestant country, and at a later day
a constituent part of a Greater Britain. The treaty was in effect a bond
of mutual defence against France--Elizabeth having reluctantly consented
that an English army should at once enter Scotland and assist the
Congregation in driving the French soldiery out of the country. While
her revolted subjects were thus making strong their hands against her,
fortune was otherwise deserting the cause of the Regent. A great French
armament, which was to have brought over a force sufficient to crush all
opposition, had been driven back by a succession of storms; and she
herself was already stricken with the disease which was soon to carry
her off. In these circumstances there was but one course open to her--to
fall back on the policy of self-defence and patient waiting on events.
After one somewhat wanton expedition against Glasgow and the Hamiltons,
her troops finally (March 29th) retired within the fortifications of
Leith, and she herself at her special request was received into the
castle of Edinburgh.
On April 4th the English and Scottish hosts joined forces at
Prestonpans, and on the 6th they sat down before Leith. The spectacle
was one suggestive of many reflections; English and Scots, immemorial
foes, were fighting side by side against the ancient friend of the one,
the ancient enemy of the other. There could not be a more memorable
illustration of the saying that "events sometimes mount the saddle and
ride men." Even with their united strength the allies had a formidable
task before them. At the outset of the siege the English amounted to
about nine thousand men, the Scots to ten thousand; but before many
weeks had gone, these numbers had dwindled to a half. With this force
the English commander, Lord Gray, had to besiege a town defended by four
thousand trained soldiers and fortified by the most skilful engineers of
the time. Two severe reverses sustained by the allies prove that in
discipline and skill they were no match for the enemy. On April 14th the
French sallied from the town, and, breaking through the English
trenches, slew two hundred men. A combined assault on the town (May 7th)
was brilliantly repulsed--the English and Scots leaving eight hundred
dead and wounded in the trenches. It was not long before all three
parties were sick of the contest. The Guises had their hands full at
home and needed every soldier they had; Elizabeth heartily disliked the
task of assisting rebel subjects and grudged every penny that was spent
in it; and the Congregation had never been in a position to support a
protracted war.
The death of the Regent on June 10th must have quickened the desire of
the Guises for peace; for where she had failed to effect their purposes
no one else was likely to succeed. Alike by her own character and gifts
and by the momentous policy of which she was the agent, Mary of Lorraine
is one of the remarkable figures in Scottish history. It was her
misfortune--a misfortune due to her birth and connections--that she
found herself from the first in direct antagonism to the natural
development of the country of her adoption, and that the circumstances
in which she ruled were such as to bring into prominence the least
worthy traits of the proud race from which she sprang. Yet in personal
appearance, as in courage and magnificence, she was the true sister of
Henry of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, "the Pope and King of
France." Construed to a larger and more charitable sense than that in
which they were written, the words of Knox fitly enough sum up her
career. She was "unhappy--to Scotland--from the first day she entered
into it unto the day she finished her unhappy life."
On June 16th commissioners arrived from England and France with powers
to effect an arrangement between the contending parties. From England
came Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury and York; and from France,
Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Charles de Rochefoucauld, Sieur de
Randan. From the beginning, the French representatives gave it to be
understood that any treaty that might be made was exclusively between
England and France; the Congregation were rebel subjects with whom their
prince could in no wise treat. After many difficulties that more than
once threatened to put an end to further negotiations, a settlement was
at length reached (July 6th). The final arrangement signally proved how
hopeless the Guises were of their immediate prospects in Scotland. Mary
and Francis were to desist from using the arms of England; no Frenchman
was henceforth to hold any important office in Scotland; the
fortifications of Leith were to be demolished; and the French soldiers,
with the exception of one hundred twenty, were at once to be sent home
in their own country. Till the return of Mary the government was to be
intrusted to twelve persons, of whom she was to appoint seven and the
estates five. In the treaty no arrangement was made regarding religion;
but, with the powers now placed at their disposal, there could be little
doubt how the Protestant leaders would interpret the omission. Thus had
Elizabeth and the Congregation gained every point for which they had
striven; and their victory may be said to have determined the future,
not only of Britain, but of Protestantism. So far as Scotland is
concerned, the treaty of Edinburgh marks the central point of her
history.
It now remained to be seen to what uses the Protestant party would put
their victory. The simultaneous departure of the French and English
troops relieved them from all restraint; and four days later the great
deliverance was signalized by a solemn thanksgiving in the Church of St.
Giles. For the effectual spreading of the Protestant doctrine, preachers
were planted in various parts of the country--Knox being appointed to
the principal charge in Edinburgh. But it was the approaching assembly
of the estates to which all men were looking with hopes or fears,
according to their desires and interests. The estates met on August 3d,
but it was not till the 8th that the attendance was complete. It was to
be the most important national assembly in the history of the Scottish
people; and the numbers of the different classes who flocked to it
showed that the momentous nature of the crisis was fully realized.
Specially noteworthy was the crowd of smaller barons from all parts of
the country. So unusual was the appearance of these persons that it had
almost been forgotten that their right to sit as representatives dated
from as far back as the reign of James I. A question raised, as to the
legality of an assembly which met independently of the summons or the
presence of the sovereign, was decisively set aside; and the House
addressed itself to the great issues involved in the late revolution.
The question of religion, as at the root of the whole controversy, took
precedence of every other. The first proceeding showed the national
instinct for the logical conduct of human affairs. The estates
instructed the ministers to draw up a statement of Protestant doctrine,
which might serve at once as a chart for their future guidance and a
justification for their present and their future action. In four days
the task (an easy one for Knox and his brother-ministers) was
accomplished; and under twenty-five heads the estates had before them
what was henceforth to be the creed of the majority of the Scottish
people. Article by article the Confession was read and considered, and,
after a feeble protest by the bishops of St. Andrew's, Dunkeld, and
Dunblane, approved and ratified by an overwhelming majority of the
estates.
The way being thus cleared, the next step was the logical conclusion of
all the past action of the Protestant leaders. In three successive acts,
all passed in one day, it was decreed that the national Church should
cease to exist. The first act abolished the jurisdiction of the Pope;
the second condemned all practices and doctrines contrary to the new
creed; and the third forbade the celebration of mass within the bounds
of Scotland. The penalties attached to the breach of these enactments
were those approved and sanctioned by the example of every country in
Christendom. Confiscation for the first offence, exile for the second,
and death for the third--such were to be the successive punishments for
the saying or hearing of mass.
Thus apparently had Knox and his fellow-workers attained the end of all
their labors; and it is instructive to compare the history of their
struggle with the experiences of other countries where the same
religious conflicts had successively arisen. In Germany the terrible
Peasants' War had been the direct result of Luther's revolt from Rome;
and in England the ecclesiastical revolution had been followed by the
religious atrocities of Henry VIII, by the anarchy under Edward VI, and
by the remorseless fanaticism of Mary Tudor. While the Congregation was
in the midst of its struggles with Mary of Lorraine, Philip II was
dealing with heresy in Spain. How effectually he dealt with it is one of
the notable chapters in the histories of nations. Here it is sufficient
to recall a single fact in illustration of the relative experiences of
Scotland and Spain. In 1559 Philip and his court, amid the applause of a
crowd of above two hundred thousand from all parts of Castile,
sanctioned with their presence the burning at Valladolid of a band of
persons, mostly women, accused of the crime of heresy. In France the
appearance of a new religion had evoked passions, alike among the people
and their rulers, which were to give that country an evil preeminence in
the ferocity of national and individual action. The _chambre ardente_,
the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), the massacre of Amboise (1560), the
thirty years of intermittent civil war (1562-1592)--these were the events
of frightful significance that mark the development of religious conflict
in France. Compared with the tale of blood and confusion that has to be
told of Germany, France, England, and Spain, the history of the
Reformation in Scotland is a record of order and tranquillity.
What is thrust upon us by the narrative of events in Scotland is the
singular moderation alike of the representatives of the old and the new
religion. Heretics had been burned indeed, but the number was
inconsiderable compared with that of similar victims in other countries;
and, even in the day of their triumph, the Scottish Protestants, in
spite of the stern threat of their legislation, were guiltless of a
single execution on the ground of religion. What is still more striking
is, that difference of faith begot no fanatical hate among the mass of
the people. In France and Spain men forgot the ties of blood and country
in the blind fury of religious zeal, but in Scotland we do not find town
arrayed against town and neighbor denouncing neighbor on the ground of a
different faith. That this tolerance was not due to indifference the
religious history of Scotland abundantly proves. It was in the
convulsions attending the change of the national faith that the Scottish
nation first attained to a consciousness of itself, and the
characteristics it then displayed have remained its distinctive
characteristics ever since. It is precisely the combination of a fervid
temper with logical thinking and temperate action that have
distinguished the Scottish people in all the great crises of their
history.
It soon appeared that the Protestant triumph was not so complete as it
might have seemed. Those who saw furthest--and none was more keenly
alive to the fact than Knox--were well aware that many a battle must yet
be fought before the new temple they had built should stand secure
against the assault of open enemies and equivocal friends. The inherent
difficulties of the situation became speedily manifest. Mary and Francis
refused to ratify the late measures--a fact, says Knox, "we little
regarded or do regard." What he did regard, however, was the continued
alliance and support of England; and he was now to learn that, having
attained her own objects, Elizabeth was not disposed to be specially
cordial in her future relations to the Protestants in Scotland. It had
been for some time in the minds of the Protestant leaders that a
marriage between Elizabeth and the Earl of Arran would be an excellent
arrangement for both countries; and in October a commission was actually
sent to make the proposal. The reply of Elizabeth was that "presently
she was not disposed to marry." An important event made this rebuff
additionally unwelcome: on December 5th, Francis II, the husband of Mary
Stuart, unexpectedly died. Had her husband lived, Mary might have
continued to live in France, which had been so long her home, and
Scotland might have been left in large degree to settle its own affairs.
Now the probability was that Mary would return to her own country, and
with all the authority and prestige of a legitimate sovereign renew the
battle that had been lost by her mother. It was, therefore, with gloomy
forebodings that all sincere well-wishers to the Reformed Church in
Scotland saw the close of this year of their apparent triumph.
If there were these apprehensions from enemies, there was likewise a
growing alarm from the attitude of lukewarm and dubious friends. The
sincerity and good faith of all who had taken part in the late
revolution were about to be subjected to the most stringent of tests. By
the enactments of the preceding year the ancient Church had been swept
away; but the work of rearing a new edifice in its place still remained
to be accomplished. With this object the Protestant ministers had been
intrusted with the task of drafting a constitution for a new church
which should take the place of the old. The ministers had discharged
their trust, and the result of their labors was laid before the estates
which met in Edinburgh on January 15, 1561.
The document presented to the estates was the famous _Book of
Discipline_--the most interesting and in many respects the most
important document in the history of Scotland. If any proof were needed
that the revolt against the ancient Church was no ill-considered act of
irresponsible men, we assuredly possess that proof in this extraordinary
book. Though in its primary intention the scheme of its ecclesiastical
polity, it is in fact the draft of a "republic," under which a nation
should live its life on earth and prepare itself for heaven. It not
only prescribes a creed, and supplies a complete system of church
government: it suggests a scheme of national education, it defines the
relation of church and state, it provides for the poor and unable, it
regulates the life of households, it even determines the career of such
as by their natural gifts were especially fitted to be of service to
church or state. As we shall see, the suggestions of the _Book of
Discipline_ were to be but imperfectly realized; yet, by defining the
ideals and moulding the temper and culture of the prevailing majority
of the Scottish people, it has been one of the great formative
influences in the national development.
It was on this memorable document that the estates were now to sit
in judgment. In the case of the Confession of Faith they had been
practically unanimous; but that had been a mere statement of abstract
doctrines which involved no question of worldly interests, and might
be subscribed with a light heart and with any degree of spiritual
conviction. With the _Book of Discipline_ it was very different. The
fundamental question that had to be answered in that book was the
question of the "sustentation" of the new Church. The answer given was
the most natural in the world: the reformed Church had an indisputable
right to the entire inheritance of the Church it had displaced. There
were, however, two formidable difficulties in the way of this claim.
Without manifest injustice the ancient clergy could not be deprived
wholesale of their means of subsistence. The second difficulty was also
formidable. Of late years a considerable amount of Church property had
passed into the hands of the nobles, barons, and gentry. Would these
persons now be willing to lay their possessions at the feet of the
ministers from whom they professed to have received the true Gospel?
The proceedings of the convention left no doubt as to the answer.
As in the preceding August, the assembly was a crowded one, but on
this occasion there was no such unanimous action. "Some approved it,"
says Knox, "and willed the same have been set forth by law. Others,
perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly commodity somewhat to
be impaired thereby, grudged, insomuch that the name of _Book of
Discipline_ became odious unto them. Everything that repugned to their
corrupt affections was termed in their mocking 'devout imaginations.'"
After long and heated debates, no definite conclusion was reached. A
large number of the nobles and barons, however, signed the _Book_ as
being "good and conformable to God's Word in all points"; but they
signed it with a qualification that did them credit. The old clergy
should be allowed to retain their livings on condition of their
maintaining Protestant ministers in their respective districts. The
denunciations of Knox have given an evil name to this convention of the
estates, yet the act of spoliation to which he would have had them put
their hands would have done little credit to a religion whose special
claim was to have reproduced the purity and simplicity of the primitive
gospel.
While the supporters of the Reformation were thus divided among
themselves, the prospect of the Queen's approaching return was further
confounding their counsels. That she must be their open or their secret
foe, they could have no manner of doubt. Her character and opinions had
been formed under the immediate supervision of her uncle, the Cardinal
of Lorraine; and to the French Protestants the Cardinal was already
known as "_le tigre de France_." As a Catholic and as a Queen, her
natural desire must be to undo the work of the late revolution, which
she could only regard as the work of rebels and heretics. "Whenever she
comes," wrote Randolph, the English resident, "I believe there will be
a mad world." Mary might prove to be as able as her mother, and she
would possess many advantages over Mary of Lorraine in any contest with
her subjects. She was the legitimate sovereign of the country; and, now
that the immediate danger from France was removed by the death of her
husband, there was no reason why the national party, as distinguished
alike from Catholic and Protestant, should not return to its natural
allegiance. Moreover, though, with the help of England, Protestantism
had triumphed in the late trial of strength, the great majority in the
country--nobles, barons, and commons--were still on the side of the old
religion.
Even before her return Mary had clearly indicated the policy she
intended to follow. In February she had sent deputies to the estates to
urge the renewal of the ancient league with France--a step which, at
their meeting in May, the estates decisively refused to take, as being
the virtual abandonment of their cause. In view of her imminent return,
Mary's supporters began to bestir themselves in a fashion that boded ill
for the future peace of the country. At Stirling the bishops met in
council to consider their best policy; and we have it from one of their
own number that they were acting in concert with the earls Huntly,
Athol, Crawford, Marischal, Sutherland, Caithness, and Bothwell. As the
result of their counsels, a proposal was sent to Mary which she had the
prudence to reject in her own interest as well as in the interest of her
kingdom. The proposal was that she should land at some point on the
northern coast where the earls would be ready to support her with twenty
thousand men. As a safer course for the immediate future, Mary chose the
advice proffered to her by the party for the present in the ascendant.
Through the lord James Stewart as their deputy, the Protestant leaders
urged upon her the necessity of leaving religion as she would find it,
and of adopting as her advisers the persons now at the head of affairs.
When at length, on August 19, 1561, Mary landed at Leith, it appeared
that at least for the time she was content to take things as she found
them. That she would accept them as definitive, no one, and least of all
John Knox, could so far delude himself as to believe.
THOMAS CARLYLE
In the history of Scotland I can find properly but one epoch: we may
say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation
by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions,
massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution,
little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons,
not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to
divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the
Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a
revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old
ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very
singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting
in abundance, but not braver or fiercer than that of their old
Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors, whose exploits we have not found worth
dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed
in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now, at the
Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs
of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles
itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from
Earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member
of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true man!
But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really
call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it
was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher.
On the whole, cheap at any price--as life is. The people began to
_live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs
soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt,
David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation
acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena;
I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what
of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New
England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a
universal battle and struggle over all these realms; there came out,
after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "_Glorious_
Revolution," a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much else!
Alas, is it not too true, that many men in the van do always like
Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up
with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod, and
gain the honor? How many earnest, rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor
Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry
places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured,
_bemired_--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over
them in official pumps and silk stockings, with universal
three-times-three!
It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three
hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world;
intrinsically for having been, in such a way as it was then possible to
be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he
could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had
not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one
Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt.
He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to
it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared
his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn
in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his
windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of
recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for
Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years
or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details
of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory,
we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies
enveloping the man, into the man himself.
For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation
was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure,
before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a
college education; become a priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed
well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly
intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families;
preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine:
resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do
it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. In
this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the
small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew's
Castle--when one day in their chapel, the preacher, after finishing his
exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That
there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart
and gift in them ought now to speak; which gifts and heart one of their
own number, John Knox the name of him, had: had he not? said the
preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is _his_ duty? The
people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post,
if such a man held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was
obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word; burst
into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that
scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small
faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was
called to be baptized withal. He "burst into tears."
Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies
emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever
might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men.
With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth
alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity.
However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only
_can_ he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither
Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had
been sent as Galley-slaves--some officer or priest, one day, presented
them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous
heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox,
when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is "a _pented
bredd_"--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter
for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung
the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come
of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing
other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would
not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage;
the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the
whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is
alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are
fitter to swim than to be worshipped! This Knox cannot live but by
facts: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He
is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it
is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual
talent, no transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared
with Luther: but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in
_sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, what
equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies
there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the
face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew
Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking
adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that
forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh
minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not
require him to be other.
Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her
own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such
cruelty, such coarseness, fills us with indignation. On reading the
actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant,
I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not
so coarse, these speeches, they seem to me about as fine as the
circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he
came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with
the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a
delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether.
It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of
Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland.
A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field
for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled
underfoot of falsehoods, formulas, and the Devil's Cause, had no method
of making himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said Morton,
"than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional
opposition party in Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their
station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no
one. The hapless Queen; but the still more hapless Country, if _she_
were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among
her other qualities: "Who are you," said she once, "that presume to
school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?" "Madam, a subject born
within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the "subject"
have truth to speak, it is not the "subject's" footing that will fail
him here.
We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of
us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there
is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate
the _un_essential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to
be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no
longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate!
We are here to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not
"tolerate" Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us;
we say to them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to
extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will
not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great
concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.
A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, for teaching the
Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humor! I am not
prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had
what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind,
honest affections dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling
man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those
proud, turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could
maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that
wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same": this of
itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean,
acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone
can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals,
and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue: precisely
the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest
of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no pulling-down of stone edifices; he
wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult
was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he
was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy
of Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is
not Order; it is the general sum total of _Dis_order. Order is
_Truth_--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order
and Falsehood cannot subsist together.
Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him;
which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a
true eye for the ridiculous. His _History_, with its rough earnestness,
is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering
Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take to
hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last
flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for
him everywhere! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is
enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up
over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in
the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to
the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both.
He had his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house
of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far
wrong who think that this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking
fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical,
cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning
man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the
Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight
enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power
of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern
him--"They? what are they?" But the thing which does vitally concern
him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall
be made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence.
This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man! He had a sore fight
of an existence; wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat,
contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as
an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?" they asked him
in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger,
"pointed upward with his finger," and so died. Honor to him! His works
have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the
spirit of it never.
One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence
in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In
other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a
_Theocracy_. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the
essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he
did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or
Government of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all
manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatizing or whatever else
they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and
understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped
once to see such a thing realized; and the Petition, _Thy Kingdom
come_, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy,
worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church's property; when he
expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual
property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses, education,
schools, worship; and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of
the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" This was Knox's scheme of
right and truth; this he zealously endeavored after, to realize it. If
we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may
rejoice that he could not realize it; that it remained, after two
centuries of effort, unrealizable, and is a "devout imagination" still.
But how shall we blame him for struggling to realize it? Theocracy,
Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! All
Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand
wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained
it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests,
Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must
wish? That right and truth, or God's law, reign supreme among men, this
is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, and namable in all
times, a revealed "Will of God") toward which the Reformer will insist
that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers are by
nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy.
MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION
A.D. 1561-1587
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Apart from the peculiar interest of her own life and reign, Mary
Stuart is an important personage as having been the mother of the
first sovereign of the Stuart line in England (James I).
Historical critics take widely differing views of the conduct and
character of the Queen of Scots, both in her individual life and her
relation to public affairs. In the complications then involving the
political and religious organizations of Europe, the play and
counter-play of motives are difficult to follow, and just
discrimination becomes at times almost impossible.
In like manner, the troublous times in which Mary Stuart was called
to act her part rendered her own way intricate and uncertain. A
devotee of the Catholic faith, she was placed upon the throne of
Scotland at the very hour when that country, under the powerful
leadership of John Knox, was fast becoming Protestant. This state of
affairs made her task as ruler in her own realm sufficiently trying.
But her difficulties were increased by the inevitable antagonisms
with her great Protestant rival, Elizabeth of England, and through
the involved relations of Great Britain with Spain and Catholic
Europe generally. These historical puzzles seem always to call for
fresh explanation. No less perplexing are the circumstances into
which this Queen was drawn by her marital relations and other
personal entanglements.
Upon all these matters Swinburne sheds light through the medium of
a sound critical judgment, in a style no less conspicuous for its
fascination than by reason of its illuminative power.
Mary (1542-1587), Queen of Scots, daughter of King James V and his wife
Mary of Lorraine, was born in December, 1542, a few days before the
death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at Solway
Moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of
inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been
directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative
on the occasion was an unpopular favorite appointed general in defiance
of their ill-will. On the 9th of September following, the ceremony of
coronation was duly performed on the infant. A scheme for her betrothal
to Edward, Prince of Wales, was defeated by the grasping greed of his
father, whose obvious ambition to annex the crown of Scotland at once to
that of England aroused instantly the general suspicion and indignation
of Scottish patriotism. In 1548 the Queen of six years old was betrothed
to the dauphin Francis, and set sail for France, where she arrived
August 15th.
The society in which the child was thenceforward reared is known to
readers of Brantome as well as that of Imperial Rome at its worst is
known to readers of Suetonius or Petronius--as well as that of papal
Rome at its worst is known to readers of the diary kept by the domestic
chaplain of Pope Alexander VI. Only in their pages can a parallel be
found to the gay and easy record which reveals, without sign of shame or
suspicion of offence, the daily life of a court compared to which the
court of King Charles II is as the court of Queen Victoria to the
society described by Grammont.
Debauchery of all kinds, murder in all forms, were the daily matter of
excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around
Queen Catherine de' Medici. After ten years' training under the tutelage
of the woman whose main instrument of policy was the corruption of her
own children, the Queen of Scots, aged fifteen years and five months,
was married to the eldest and feeblest of the brood on April 24, 1558.
On November 17th, Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the princes of
Lorraine--Francis the great Duke of Guise, and his brother the
Cardinal--induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to
the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they
asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary
Tudor. Civil strife broke out in Scotland between John Knox and the
Queen Dowager--between the self-styled "Congregation of the Lord" and
the adherents of the Regent, whose French troops repelled the combined
forces of the Scotch and their English allies from the beleaguered walls
of Leith, little more than a month before the death of their mistress in
the castle of Edinburgh, on June 10, 1560.
On August 25th Protestantism was proclaimed and Catholicism suppressed
in Scotland by a convention of states assembled without the assent of
the absent Queen. On December 5th Francis II died; in August, 1561, his
widow left France for Scotland, having been refused a safe-conduct by
Elizabeth on the ground of her own previous refusal to ratify the treaty
made with England by her commissioners in the same month of the
preceding year. She arrived nevertheless in safety at Leith, escorted by
three of her uncles of the house of Lorraine, and bringing in her train
her future biographer, Brantome, and Chastelard, the first of all her
voluntary victims. On August 21st she first met the only man able to
withstand her; and their first passage of arms left, as he has recorded,
upon the mind of John Knox, an ineffaceable impression of her "proud
mind, crafty wit, and indurate heart against God and his truth."
And yet her acts of concession and conciliation were such as no fanatic
on the opposite side could have approved. She assented, not only to the
undisturbed maintenance of the new creed, but even to a scheme for the
endowment of the Protestant ministry out of the confiscated lands of the
Church. Her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, shared the duties of her
chief counsellor with William Maitland of Lethington, the keenest and
most liberal thinker in the country. By the influence of Lord James, in
spite of the earnest opposition of Knox, permission was obtained for her
to hear mass celebrated in her private chapel--a license to which, said
the reformer, he would have preferred the invasion of ten thousand
Frenchmen.
Through all the first troubles of her reign the young Queen steered her
skilful and dauntless way with the tact of a woman and the courage of a
man. An insurrection in the North, headed by the Earl of Huntly under
pretext of rescuing from justice the life which his son had forfeited by
his share in a homicidal brawl, was crushed at a blow by the lord James
against whose life, as well as against his sister's liberty, the
conspiracy of the Gordons had been aimed, and on whom, after the father
had fallen in fight and the son had expiated his double offence on the
scaffold, the leading rebel's earldom of Murray was conferred by the
gratitude of the Queen. Exactly four months after the battle of
Corrichie, and the subsequent execution of a criminal whom she is said
to have "loved entirely," had put an end to the first insurrection
raised against her, Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard, who had returned
to France with the other companions of her arrival, and in November,
1562, had revisited Scotland, expiated with his head the offence of the
misfortune of a second detection at night in her bedchamber.
In the same month, twenty-five years afterward, the execution of his
mistress, according to the verdict of her contemporaries in France,
avenged the blood of a lover who had died without uttering a word to
realize the apprehension which, according to Knox, had before his trial
impelled her to desire her brother "that, as he loved her, he would slay
Chastelard, and let him never speak word." And in the same month, two
years from the date of Chastelard's execution, her first step was
unconsciously taken on the road to Fotheringay, when she gave her heart
at first sight to her kinsman Henry, Lord Darnley, son of Matthew
Stuart, Earl of Lennox, who had suffered an exile of twenty years in
expiation of his intrigues with England, and had married the niece of
King Henry VIII, daughter of his sister Margaret, the widow of James IV,
by her second husband, the Earl of Angus. Queen Elizabeth, with the
almost incredible want of tact or instinctive delicacy which
distinguished and disfigured her vigorous intelligence, had recently
proposed as a suitor to the Queen of Scots her own low-born favorite,
Lord Robert Dudley, the widower if not murderer of Amy Robsart; and she
now protested against the project of marriage between Mary and Darnley.
Mary, who had already married her kinsman in secret at Stirling castle
with Catholic rites celebrated in the apartment of David Rizzio, her
secretary for correspondence with France, assured the English
ambassador, in reply to the protest of his mistress, that the marriage
would not take place for three months, when a dispensation from the Pope
would allow the cousins to be publicly united without offence to the
Church. On July 29, 1565, they were accordingly remarried at Holyrood.
The hapless and worthless bridegroom had already incurred the hatred of
two powerful enemies, the Earls of Morton and Glencairn; but the former
of these took part with the Queen against the forces raised by Murray,
Glencairn, and others, under the nominal leadership of Hamilton, Duke of
Chatelherault, on the double plea of danger to the new religion of the
country, and of the illegal proceeding by which Darnley had been
proclaimed king of Scots without the needful constitutional assent of
the estates of the realm.
Murray was cited to attend to the "raid" or array levied by the King and
Queen, and was duly denounced by public blast of trumpet for his
non-appearance. He entered Edinburgh with his forces, but failed to hold
the town against the guns of the castle, and fell back upon Dumfries
before the advance of the royal army, which was now joined by James
Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, on his return from a three years' outlawed
exile in France. He had been accused in 1562 of a plot to seize the
Queen and put her into the keeping of Earl of Arran, whose pretensions
to her hand ended only when his insanity could no longer be concealed.
Another new adherent was the son of the late Earl of Huntly, to whom the
forfeited honors of his house were restored a few months before the
marriage of his sister to Bothwell. The Queen now appealed to France for
aid; but Castelnau, the French ambassador, replied to her passionate
pleading by sober and earnest advice to make peace with the malcontents.
This counsel was rejected, and in October, 1565, the Queen marched an
army of eighteen thousand men against them from Edinburgh; their forces
dispersed in face of superior numbers, and Murray, on seeking shelter in
England, was received with contumely by Elizabeth, whose half-hearted
help had failed to support his enterprise, and whose intercession for
his return found at first no favor with the Queen of Scots.
But the conduct of the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had
bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and
to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on
to demand the crown matrimonial, which would at least have assured him
the rank and station of independent royalty for life. Rizzio, hitherto
his friend and advocate, induced the Queen to reply by a reasonable
refusal to this hazardous and audacious request. Darnley at once threw
himself into the arms of the party opposed to the policy of the Queen
and her secretary--a policy which at that moment was doubly and trebly
calculated to exasperate the fears of the religious and the pride of the
patriotic. Mary was invited if not induced by the King of Spain to join
his league for the suppression of Protestantism; while the actual or
prospective endowment of Rizzio with Morton's office of chancellor, and
the projected attainder of Murray and his allies, combined to inflame at
once the anger and the apprehension of the Protestant nobles.
According to one account, Darnley privately assured his uncle George
Douglas of his wife's infidelity; he had himself, if he might be
believed, discovered the secretary in the Queen's apartment at midnight,
under circumstances yet more unequivocally compromising than those which
had brought Chastelard to the scaffold. Another version of the pitiful
history represents Douglas as infusing suspicion of Rizzio into the
empty mind of his nephew, and thus winning his consent to a deed already
designed by others.
A bond was drawn in which Darnley pledged himself to support the
confederates who undertook to punish "certain privy persons" offensive
to the state, "especially a stranger Italian called Davie"; another was
subscribed by Darnley and the banished lords, then biding their time in
Newcastle, which engaged him to procure their pardon and restoration,
while pledging them to insure to him the enjoyment of the title he
coveted, with the consequent security of an undisputed succession to the
crown, despite the counter-claims of the house of Hamilton, in case his
wife should die without issue--a result which, intentionally or not, he
and his fellow-conspirators did all that brutality could have suggested
to accelerate and secure.
On March 9th the palace of Holyrood was invested by a troop under the
command of Morton, while Rizzio was dragged by force out of the Queen's
presence and slain without trial in the heat of the moment. The
parliament was discharged by proclamation issued in the name of Darnley
as king; and in the evening of the next day the banished lords, whom it
was to have condemned to outlawry, returned to Edinburgh. On the
following day they were graciously received by the Queen, who undertook
to sign a bond for their security, but delayed the subscription until
the next morning under plea of sickness. During the night she escaped
with Darnley, whom she had already seduced from the party of his
accomplices, and arrived at Dunbar on the third morning after the
slaughter of her favorite. From thence they returned to Edinburgh on
March 28th, guarded by two thousand horsemen under the command of
Bothwell, who had escaped from Holyrood on the night of the murder, to
raise a force on the Queen's behalf with his usual soldierly
promptitude.
The slayers of Rizzio fled to England, and were outlawed; Darnley was
permitted to protest his innocence and denounce his accomplices; after
which he became the scorn of all parties alike, and few men dared or
cared to be seen in his company. On June 19th a son was born to his
wife, and in the face of his previous protestations he was induced to
acknowledge himself the father. But, as Murray and his partisans
returned to favor and influence no longer incompatible with that of
Bothwell and Huntly, he grew desperate enough with terror to dream of
escape to France. This design was at once frustrated by the Queen's
resolution. She summoned him to declare his reasons for it in the
presence of the French ambassador and an assembly of the nobles; she
besought him for God's sake to speak out, and not spare her; and at last
he left her presence with an avowal that he had nothing to allege.
The favor shown to Bothwell had not yet given occasion for scandal,
though his character as an adventurous libertine was as notable as his
reputation for military hardihood; but as the summer advanced, his
insolence increased with his influence at court and the general aversion
of his rivals. He was richly endowed by Mary from the greater and lesser
spoils of the Church; and the three wardenships of the border, united
for the first time in his person, gave the lord high admiral of Scotland
a position of unequalled power. In the gallant discharge of its duties
he was dangerously wounded by a leading outlaw, whom he slew in single
combat; and while yet confined to Hermitage castle he received a visit
of two hours from the Queen, who rode thither from Jedburgh and back
through twenty miles of the wild borderland, where her person was in
perpetual danger from the free-booters whom her father's policy had
striven and had failed to extirpate.
On January 22, 1567, the Queen visited her husband, who was ill at
Glasgow, and proposed to remove him to Craigmillar castle, where he
would have the benefit of medicinal baths; but instead of this resort he
was conveyed on the last day of the month to the lonely and squalid
shelter of the residence which was soon to be made memorable by his
murder. Between the ruins of two sacred buildings, with the town hall to
the south and a suburban hamlet known to ill-fame as the Thieves' Row to
the north of it, a lodging was prepared for the titular King of
Scotland, and fitted up with tapestries taken from the Gordons after the
battle of Corrichie. On the evening of Sunday, February 9th, Mary took
her last leave of the miserable boy who had so often and so mortally
outraged her as consort and as queen. That night the whole city was
shaken out of sleep by an explosion of gunpowder which shattered to
fragments the building in which he should have slept and perished; and
next morning the bodies of Darnley and a page were found strangled in a
garden adjoining it, whither they had apparently escaped over a wall, to
be despatched by the hands of Bothwell's attendant confederates.
Upon the view which may be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three
months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According
to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue
of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such
brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim
to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three
months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the wife
of her husband's murderer. On February 11th she wrote to the Bishop of
Glasgow, her ambassador in France, a brief letter, of simple eloquence,
announcing her providential escape from a design upon her own as well as
her husband's life. A reward of two thousand pounds was offered by
proclamation for discovery of the murderer. Bothwell and others, his
satellites or the Queen's, were instantly placarded by name as the
criminals. Voices were heard by night in the streets of Edinburgh
calling down judgment on the assassins.
Four days after the discovery of the bodies, Darnley was buried in the
chapel of Holyrood with secrecy as remarkable as the solemnity with
which Rizzio had been interred there less than a year before. On the
Sunday following, Mary left Edinburgh for Seton palace, twelve miles
from the capital, where scandal asserted that she passed the time
merrily in shooting-matches, with Bothwell for her partner, against
Lords Seton and Huntly; other accounts represent Huntly and Bothwell
as left at Holyrood in charge of the infant Prince. Gracefully and
respectfully, with statesmanlike yet feminine dexterity, the demands of
Darnley's father for justice on the murderers of his son were accepted
and eluded by his daughter-in-law. Bothwell, with a troop of fifty men,
rode through Edinburgh defiantly denouncing vengeance on his concealed
accusers. As weeks elapsed without action on the part of the royal
widow, while the cry of blood was up throughout the country, raising
echoes from England and abroad, the murmur of accusation began to rise
against her also. Murray, with his sister's ready permission, withdrew
to France.
On April 21st Mary went to visit her child at Stirling, where his
guardian, the Earl of Mar, refused to admit more than two women in her
train. It was well known in Edinburgh that Bothwell had a body of men
ready to intercept her on the way back, and carry her to Dunbar--not,
as was naturally inferred, without good assurance of her consent. On
April 24th, as she approached Edinburgh, Bothwell accordingly met her
at the head of eight hundred spearmen, assured her--as she afterward
averred--that she was in the utmost peril, and escorted her, together
with Huntly, Lethington, and Melville, who were then in attendance, to
Dunbar castle. On May 3d Lady Jane Gordon, who had become Countess of
Bothwell on February 22d of the year preceding, obtained, on the ground
of her husband's infidelities, a separation, which, however, would not
under the old laws of Catholic Scotland have left him free to marry
again.
On the day when the first or Protestant divorce was pronounced, Mary
and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh with every prepared appearance of a
peaceful triumph. Lest her captivity should have been held to invalidate
the late legal proceedings in her name, proclamation was made of
forgiveness accorded by the Queen to her captor in consideration of his
past and future services, and her intention was announced to reward them
by further promotion; and on the same day (May 12th) he was duly created
duke of Orkney and Shetland. The Duke, as a conscientious Protestant,
refused to marry his mistress according to the rites of her Church, and
she, the chosen champion of its cause, agreed to be married to him,
not merely by a Protestant, but by one who before his conversion had
been a Catholic bishop, and therefore should have been more hateful
and contemptible in her eyes than any ordinary heretic, had not
religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or
superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion. This passion or
emotion, according to those who deny her attachment to Bothwell, was
simply terror--the blind and irrational prostration of an abject spirit
before the cruel force of circumstances and the crafty wickedness of
men. Hitherto, according to all evidence, she had shown herself on
all occasions, as on all subsequent occasions she indisputably
showed herself, the most fearless, the most keen-sighted, the most
ready-witted, the most high-gifted and high-spirited of women; gallant
and generous, skilful and practical, never to be cowed by fortune, never
to be cajoled by craft; neither more unselfish in her ends nor more
unscrupulous in her practice than might have been expected from her
training and her creed.
But at the crowning moment of trial there are those who assert their
belief that the woman who on her way to the field of Corrichie had
uttered her wish to be a man, that she might know all the hardship and
all the enjoyment of a soldier's life, riding forth "in jack and
knapskull"--the woman who long afterward was to hold her own for two
days together, without help of counsel, against all the array of English
law and English statesmanship, armed with irrefragable evidence and
supported by the resentment of a nation--showed herself devoid of moral
and physical resolution; too senseless to realize the significance and
too heartless to face the danger of a situation from which the simplest
exercise of reason, principle, or courage must have rescued the most
unsuspicious and inexperienced of honest women who was not helplessly
deficient in self-reliance and self-respect.
The famous correspondence produced next year in evidence against her at
the conference of York may have been, as her partisans affirm, so
craftily garbled and falsified by interpolation, suppression,
perversion, or absolute forgery as to be all but historically worthless.
Its acceptance or its rejection does not in any degree whatever affect,
for better or for worse, the rational estimate of her character. The
problem presented by the simple existence of the facts just summed up
remains in either case absolutely the same.
That the coarse and imperious nature of the hardy and able ruffian who
had now become openly her master should no less openly have shown itself
even in the first moments of their inauspicious union is what any
bystander of common insight must inevitably have foreseen. Tears,
dejection, and passionate expressions of a despair "wishing only for
death," bore fitful and variable witness to her first sense of a heavier
yoke than yet had galled her spirit and her pride. At other times her
affectionate gayety would give evidence as trustworthy of a fearless and
improvident satisfaction. They rode out in state together, and if he
kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it
on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible
care to gratify his ambition by the insertion of a clause in their
contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all
documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to
France a special envoy, the Bishop of Dunblane, with instructions
setting forth at length the unparalleled and hitherto ill-requited
services and merits of Bothwell, and the necessity of compliance at once
with his passion and with the unanimous counsel of the nation--a people
who would endure the rule of no foreign consort, and whom none of their
own countrymen were so competent to control, alike by wisdom and by
valor, as the incomparable subject of her choice.
These personal merits and this political necessity were the only pleas
advanced in a letter to her ambassador in England. But that neither plea
would avail her for a moment in Scotland she had ominous evidence on the
thirteenth day after her marriage, when no response was made to the
usual form of proclamation for a raid or levy of forces under pretext of
a campaign against the rievers of the border. On June 6th Mary and
Bothwell took refuge in Borthwick castle, twelve miles from the capital,
where the fortress was in the keeping of an adherent whom the diplomacy
of Sir James Melville had succeeded in detaching from his allegiance to
Bothwell. The fugitives were pursued and beleaguered by the Earl of
Morton and Lord Hume, who declared their purpose to rescue the Queen
from the thraldom of her husband. He escaped, leaving her free to follow
him or to join the party of her professed deliverers.
But whatever cause she might have since marriage to complain of his
rigorous custody and domineering brutality was insufficient to break the
ties by which he held her. Alone, in the disguise of a page, she slipped
out of the castle at midnight, and rode off to meet him at a tower two
miles distant, whence they fled together to Dunbar. The confederate
lords on entering Edinburgh were welcomed by the citizens, and after
three hours' persuasion Lethington, who had now joined them, prevailed
on the captain of the castle to deliver it also into their hands.
Proclamations were issued in which the crime of Bothwell was denounced,
and the disgrace of the country, the thraldom of the Queen, and the
mortal peril of her infant son were set forth as reasons for summoning
all the lieges of the chief cities of Scotland to rise in arms on three
hours' notice and join the forces assembled against the one common
enemy. News of his approach reached them on the night of June 14th, and
they marched before dawn with twenty-two hundred men to meet him near
Musselburgh. Mary meanwhile had passed from Dunbar to Haddington, and
thence to Seton, where sixteen hundred men rallied to her side. On June
15th, one month from their marriage day, the Queen and Bothwell, at the
head of a force of fairly equal numbers but visibly inferior discipline,
met the army of the confederates at Carberry hill, some six miles from
Edinburgh.
It was agreed that the Queen should yield herself prisoner, and Bothwell
be allowed to retire in safety to Dunbar with the few followers who
remained to him. Mary took leave of her first and last master with
passionate anguish and many parting kisses; but in face of his enemies,
and in hearing of the cries which burst from the ranks demanding her
death by fire as a murderess and harlot, the whole heroic and passionate
spirit of the woman represented by her admirers as a spiritless imbecile
flamed out in responsive threats to have all the men hanged and
crucified in whose power she now stood helpless and alone. She grasped
the hand of Lord Lindsay as he rode beside her, and swore "by this hand"
she would "have his head for this." In Edinburgh she was received by a
yelling mob, which flaunted before her at each turn a banner
representing the corpse of Darnley, with her child beside it, invoking
on his knees the retribution of divine justice.
From the violence of a multitude, in which women of the worst class were
more furious than the men, she was sheltered in the house of the
provost, where she repeatedly showed herself at the window, appealing
aloud with dishevelled hair and dress to the mercy which no man could
look upon her and refuse. At nine in the evening she was removed to
Holyrood, and thence to the port of Leith, where she embarked under
guard, with her attendants, for the island castle of Lochleven. On the
20th a silver casket containing letters and French verses, miscalled
sonnets, in the handwriting of the Queen, was taken from the person of a
servant who had been sent by Bothwell to bring it from Edinburgh to
Dunbar. Even in the existing versions of the letters, translated from
the lost originals and retranslated from this translation of a text
which was probably destroyed in 1603 by order of King James on his
accession to the English throne--even in these possibly disfigured
versions, the fiery pathos of passion, the fierce and piteous
fluctuations of spirit between love and hate, hope and rage and
jealousy, have an eloquence apparently beyond the imitation or invention
of art.
Three days after this discovery Lord Lindsay, Lord Ruthven, and Sir
Robert Melville were despatched to Lochleven, there to obtain the
Queen's signature to an act of abdication in favor of her son, and
another appointing Murray regent during his minority. She submitted, and
a commission of regency was established till the return from France of
Murray, who, on August 15th, arrived at Lochleven with Morton and Athol.
According to his own account the expostulations as to her past conduct
which preceded his admonitions for the future were received with tears,
confessions, and attempts at extenuation or excuse; but when they parted
next day on good terms, she had regained her usual spirits. Nor from
that day forward had they reason to sink again, in spite of the close
keeping in which she was held, with the daughters of the house for
bedfellows. Their mother and the Regent's, her father's former mistress,
was herself not impervious to her prisoner's lifelong power of seduction
and subjugation. Her son George Douglas fell inevitably under the charm.
A rumor transmitted to England went so far as to assert that she had
proposed him to their common half-brother Murray as a fourth husband for
herself; a later tradition represented her as the mother of a child by
him. A third report, at least as improbable as either, asserted that a
daughter of Mary and Bothwell, born about this time, lived to be a nun
in France.
It is certain that the necessary removal of George Douglas from
Lochleven enabled him to devise a method of escape for the prisoner on
March 25, 1568, which was frustrated by detection of her white hands
under the disguise of a laundress. But a younger member of the
household, Willie Douglas, aged eighteen, whose devotion was afterward
remembered and his safety cared for by Mary at a time of utmost risk and
perplexity to herself, succeeded on May 2d in assisting her to escape by
a postern gate to the lake-side, and thence in a boat to the mainland,
where George Douglas, Lord Seton, and others were awaiting her. Thence
they rode to Seton's castle of Niddry, and next day to Hamilton palace,
round which an army of six thousand men was soon assembled, and whither
the new French ambassador to Scotland hastened to pay his duty. The
Queen's abdication was revoked, messengers were despatched to the
English and French courts, and word was sent to Murray at Glasgow that
he must resign the regency, and should be pardoned in common with all
offenders against the Queen. But on the day when Mary arrived at
Hamilton, Murray had summoned to Glasgow the feudatories of the crown,
to take arms against the insurgent enemies of the infant King.
On the 13th of May the battle or skirmish of Langside determined the
result of the campaign in three-quarters of an hour. Kirkaldy of Grange,
who commanded the Regent's cavalry, seized and kept the place of vantage
from the beginning, and at the first sign of wavering on the other side
shattered at a single charge the forces of the Queen with a loss of one
man to three hundred. Mary fled sixty miles from the field of her last
battle before she halted at Sanquhar, and for three days of flight,
according to her own account, had to sleep on the hard ground, live on
oatmeal and sour milk, and fare at night like the owls, in hunger, cold,
and fear.
On the third day from the rout of Langside she crossed the Solway, and
landed at Workington in Cumberland, May 16, 1568. On the 20th Lord
Scrope and Sir Francis Knollys were sent from court to carry messages
and letters of comfort from Elizabeth to Mary at Carlisle. On June 11th
Knollys wrote to Cecil at once the best description and the noblest
panegyric extant of the Queen of Scots--enlarging, with a brave man's
sympathy, on her indifference to form and ceremony, her daring grace and
openness of manner, her frank display of a great desire to be avenged of
her enemies, her readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of
victory, her delight to hear of hardihood and courage, commending by
name all her enemies of approved valor, sparing no cowardice in her
friends, but above all things athirst for victory by any means at any
price, so that for its sake pain and peril seemed pleasant to her, and
wealth and all things, if compared with it, contemptible and vile.
Mary was held a prisoner in England for seventeen years. In 1585 she was
accused of favoring Anthony Babington's plot against the life of
Elizabeth, her captor. Anthony Babington, in his boyhood a ward of
Shrewsbury, resident in the household at Sheffield castle, and thus
subjected to the charm before which so many victims had already fallen,
was now induced to undertake the deliverance of the Queen of Scots by
the murder of the Queen of England. It is maintained by those admirers
of Mary who assume her to have been an almost absolute imbecile, gifted
with the power of imposing herself on the world as a woman of
unsurpassed ability, that, while cognizant of the plot for her
deliverance by English rebels and an invading army of foreign
auxiliaries, she might have been innocently unconscious that this
conspiracy involved the simultaneous assassination of Elizabeth. In the
conduct and detection of her correspondence with Babington, traitor was
played off against traitor, and spies were utilized against assassins,
with as little scruple as could be required or expected in the diplomacy
of the time.
As in the case of the casket letters, it is alleged that forgery was
employed to interpolate sufficient evidence of Mary's complicity in a
design of which it is thought credible that she was kept in ignorance by
the traitors and murderers who had enrolled themselves in her
service--that one who pensioned the actual murderer of Murray and a
would-be murderer of Elizabeth was incapable of approving what her keen
and practised intelligence was too blunt and torpid to anticipate as
inevitable and inseparable from the general design. In August the
conspirators were netted, and Mary was arrested at the gate of Tixall
Park, whither Paulet had taken her under pretence of a hunting-party. At
Tixall she was detained till her papers at Chartley had undergone
thorough research. That she was at length taken in her own toils, even
such a dullard as her admirers depict her could not have failed to
understand; that she was no such dastard as to desire or deserve such
defenders, the whole brief course of her remaining life bore consistent
and irrefragable witness.
Her first thought on her return to Chartley was one of loyal gratitude
and womanly sympathy. She cheered the wife of her English secretary, now
under arrest, with promises to answer for her husband to all accusations
brought against him; took her new-born child from the mother's arms, and
in default of clergy baptized it, to Paulet's Puritanic horror, with her
own hands by her own name.
The next or the twin-born impulse of her indomitable nature was, as
usual in all times of danger, one of passionate and high-spirited
defiance on discovering the seizure of her papers. A fortnight afterward
her keys and her money were confiscated, while she, bedridden and unable
to move her hand, could only ply the terrible weapon of her bitter and
fiery tongue. Her secretaries were examined in London, and one of them
gave evidence that she had first heard of the conspiracy by letter from
Babington, of whose design against the life of Elizabeth she thought it
best to take no notice in her reply, though she did not hold herself
bound to reveal it. On September 25th she was removed to the strong
castle of Fotheringay in Northamptonshire. On October 6th she was
desired by letter from Elizabeth to answer the charges brought against
her before certain of the chief English nobles appointed to sit in
commission on the cause. In spite of her first refusal to submit, she
was induced by the arguments of the vice-chamberlain, Sir Christopher
Hatton, to appear before this tribunal on condition that her protest
should be registered against the legality of its jurisdiction over a
sovereign, the next heir of the English crown.
On October 14 and 15, 1586, the trial was held in the hall of
Fotheringay castle. Alone, "without one counsellor on her side among so
many," Mary conducted the whole of her own defence with courage
incomparable and unsurpassable ability. Pathos and indignation, subtlety
and simplicity, personal appeal and political reasoning, were the
alternate weapons with which she fought against all odds of evidence or
inference, and disputed step by step every inch of debatable ground. She
repeatedly insisted on the production of proof in her own handwriting as
to her complicity with the project of the assassins who had expiated
their crime on the 20th and 21st of the month preceding. When the charge
was shifted to the question of her intrigues with Spain, she took her
stand resolutely on her right to convey whatever right she possessed,
though now no kingdom was left her for disposal, to whomsoever she might
choose.
One single slip she made in the whole course of her defence, but none
could have been more unluckily characteristic and significant. When
Burghley brought against her the unanswerable charge of having at that
moment in her service, and in receipt of an annual pension, the
instigator of a previous attempt on the life of Elizabeth, she had the
unwary audacity to cite in her justification the pensions allowed by
Elizabeth to her adversaries in Scotland, and especially to her son. It
is remarkable that just two months later, in a conversation with her
keepers, she again made use of the same extraordinary argument in reply
to the same inevitable imputation, and would not be brought to admit
that the two cases were other than parallel. But, except for this single
instance of oversight or perversity, her defence was throughout a
masterpiece of indomitable ingenuity, of delicate and steadfast courage,
of womanly dignity and genius. Finally, she demanded, as she had
demanded before, a trial either before the states of the realm lawfully
assembled, or else before the Queen in council.
So closed the second day of the trial; and before the next day's work
could begin, a note of two or three lines hastily written at midnight
informed the commissioners that Elizabeth had suddenly determined to
adjourn the expected judgment and transfer the place of it to the
star-chamber. Here, on October 25th, the commissioners again met; and
one of them alone, Lord Zouch, dissented from the verdict by which Mary
was found guilty of having, since the 1st of June preceding, compassed
and imagined divers matters tending to the destruction of Elizabeth.
This verdict was conveyed to her, about three weeks later, by Lord
Buckhurst and Robert Beale, clerk of the privy council. At the
intimation that her life was an impediment to the security of the
received religion, "she seemed with a certain unwonted alacrity to
triumph, giving God thanks, and rejoicing in her heart that she was held
to be an instrument" for the restoration of her own faith. This note of
exultation as in martyrdom was maintained with unflinching courage to
the last. She wrote to Elizabeth and the Duke of Guise two letters of
almost matchless eloquence and pathos, admirable especially for their
loyal and grateful remembrance of all her faithful servants. Between the
date of these letters and the day of her execution wellnigh three months
of suspense elapsed.
Elizabeth, fearless almost to a fault in face of physical danger,
constant in her confidence even after discovery of her narrow escape
from the poisoned bullets of household conspirators, was cowardly even
to a crime in face of subtler and more complicated peril. She rejected
with resolute dignity the intercession of French envoys for the life of
the Queen Dowager of France; she allowed the sentence of death to be
proclaimed, and welcomed with bonfires and bell-ringing throughout the
length of England; she yielded a respite of twelve days to the pleading
of the French ambassador, and had a charge trumped up against him of
participation in a conspiracy against her life; at length, on February
1, 1587, she signed the death warrant, and then made her secretaries
write word to Paulet of her displeasure that in all this time he should
not of himself have found out some way to shorten the life of his
prisoner, as in duty bound by his oath, and thus relieve her singularly
tender conscience from the guilt of bloodshed.
Paulet, with loyal and regretful indignation, declined the disgrace
proposed to him in a suggestion "to shed blood without law or warrant";
and on February 7th the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent arrived at
Fotheringay with the commission of the council for execution of the
sentence given against his prisoner. Mary received the announcement with
majestic tranquillity, expressing in dignified terms her readiness to
die, her consciousness that she was a martyr for her religion, and her
total ignorance of any conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth. At
night she took a graceful and affectionate leave of her attendants,
distributed among them her money and jewels, wrote out in full the
various legacies to be conveyed by her will, and charged her apothecary
Gorion with her last messages for the King of Spain. In these messages
the whole nature of the woman was revealed. Not a single friend, not a
single enemy, was forgotten; the slightest service, the slightest wrong,
had its place assigned in her faithful and implacable memory for
retribution or reward. Forgiveness of injuries was as alien from her
fierce and loyal spirit as forgetfulness of benefits; the destruction of
England and its liberties by Spanish invasion and conquest was the
strongest aspiration of her parting soul.
At eight o'clock next morning she entered the hall of execution, having
taken leave of the weeping envoy from Scotland, to whom she gave a brief
message for her son; took her seat on the scaffold; listened with an air
of even cheerful unconcern to the reading of her sentence; solemnly
declared her innocence of the charge conveyed in it, and her consolation
in the prospect of ultimate justice; rejected the professional services
of Richard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough; lifted up her voice in Latin
against his in English prayer; and when he and his fellow-worshippers
had fallen duly silent, prayed aloud for the prosperity of her own
Church, for Elizabeth, for her son, and for all the enemies whom she had
commended over night to the notice of the Spanish invader; then, with no
less courage than had marked every hour and every action of her life,
received the stroke of death from the wavering hand of the headsman.
FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE
MASSACRE OF THE HUGUENOTS IN AMERICA
A.D. 1565
GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS
Although Florida was discovered by Ponce de Leon as early as 1513,
and was soon after visited by other Spanish explorers, no Spaniard
gained permanent foothold there until after the middle of the
sixteenth century. But when the Spaniards did secure such a
foothold, it was to found the first permanent settlement on the
mainland of the United States.
The vast territory which the Spaniards named Florida was claimed by
Spain in right of the discoveries of Columbus, the grant of the
pope, and various expeditions to the region; by England in right of
Cabot's discovery; and by France on account of Verrazano's voyage
(1524) and "vague traditions" of French visitors to the coast.
Following the early Spanish attempts at colonization, came the first
Huguenot settlers from France, seeking refuge in the New World from
persecution at home. What they did and what befell them in the
Florida country, and how the founding of our oldest town, St.
Augustine, was begun by their Spanish supplanters, is told by
Fairbanks in an interesting and carefully verified account.
The settlement of Florida had its origin in the religious troubles
experienced by the Huguenots under Charles IX in France. Their
distinguished leader, Admiral Coligny, as early as 1555, projected
colonies in America, and sent an expedition to Brazil, which proved
unsuccessful. Having procured permission from Charles IX to found a
colony in Florida, a designation which embraced in rather an indefinite
manner the whole country from the Chesapeake to the Tortugas, he sent an
expedition in 1562 from France, under command of Jean Ribault, composed
of many young men of good family. They first landed at the St. John's
River, where they erected a monument, but finally established a
settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina, and erected a fort. After some
months, however, in consequence of dissensions among the officers of the
garrison and difficulties with the Indians, this settlement was
abandoned.
In 1564 another expedition came out under the command of Rene de
Laudonniere, and made their first landing at the River of Dolphins,
being the present harbor of St. Augustine, and so named by them in
consequence of the great number of dolphins (porpoises) seen by them at
its mouth. They afterward coasted to the north, and entered the river
St. John's, called by them the river May.
Upon an examination of this river Laudonniere concluded to establish his
colony on its banks, and, proceeding about two leagues above its mouth,
built a fort upon a pleasant hill of "mean height," which, in honor of
his sovereign, he named Fort Caroline. The colonists, after a few
months, were reduced to great distress, and were about taking measures
to abandon the country a second time, when Ribault arrived with
reenforcements.
It is supposed that intelligence of these expeditions was communicated
by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain. Jealousy of the
aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their
own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of
hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II of
Spain to despatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted, and
remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession
of the country for himself. The compact made between the King and
Menendez was, that he should furnish one galleon completely equipped,
and provisions for a force of six hundred men; that he should conquer
and settle the country.
He obligated himself to carry one hundred horses, two hundred horned
cattle, four hundred hogs, four hundred sheep and some goats, and five
hundred slaves--for which he had a permission free of duties--the third
part of which should be men, for his own service and that of those who
went with him, to aid in cultivating the land and in building; that he
should take twelve priests, and four fathers of the Jesuit order. He was
to build two or three towns of one hundred families, and in each town
should build a fort according to the nature of the country. He was to
have the title of _Adelantado_ of the country, as also to be entitled a
marquis (and his heirs after him), to have a tract of land, receive a
salary of two thousand ducats, a percentage of the royal duties, and
have the freedom of all the other ports of New Spain.
His force consisted, at starting, of eleven sail of vessels, with two
thousand six hundred men; but, owing to storms and accidents, not more
than one-half arrived. He came upon the coast on August 28, 1565,
shortly after the arrival of the fleet of Ribault. On September 7th
Menendez cast anchor in the River of Dolphins, the harbor of St.
Augustine. He had previously discovered and given chase to some of the
vessels of Ribault off the mouth of the river May. The Indian village of
Selooe then stood upon the site of St. Augustine, and the landing of
Menendez was upon the spot where the city of St. Augustine now stands.
Fra Francisco Lopez de Mendoza, the chaplain of the expedition, thus
chronicles the disembarkation and attendant ceremonies:
"On Saturday, September 8th, the day of the nativity of Our Lady, the
General disembarked, with numerous banners displayed, trumpets and other
martial music resounding, and amid salvos of artillery.
"Carrying a cross, I proceeded at the head, chanting the hymn '_Te Deum
Laudamus_.' The General marched straight up to the cross, together with
all those who accompanied him; and, kneeling, they all kissed the
cross. A great number of Indians looked upon these ceremonies, and
imitated whatever they saw done. Thereupon the General took possession
of the country in the name of his majesty. All the officers then took
an oath of allegiance to him, as their general and as adelantado of the
whole country."
The name of St. Augustine was given, in the usual manner of the early
voyagers, because they had arrived upon the coast on the day dedicated
in their calendar to that eminent saint of the primitive Church, revered
alike by the good of all ages for his learning and piety.
The first troops who landed, says Mendoza, were well received by the
Indians, who gave them a large mansion belonging to the chief, situated
near the banks of the river. The engineer officers immediately erected
an entrenchment of earth, and a ditch around this house, with a slope
made of earth and fascines, these being the only means of defence which
the country presents; for, says the father with surprise, "there is not
a stone to be found in the whole country." They landed eighty cannon
from the ships, of which the lightest weighed five hundred pounds.
Menendez had by no means forgotten the errand upon which he principally
came; and by inquiries of the Indians he soon learned the position of
the French fort and the condition of its defenders. Impelled by
necessity, Laudonniere had been forced to seize from the Indians food to
support his famished garrison, and had thus incurred their enmity, which
was soon to produce its sad results.
The Spaniards numbered about six hundred combatants, and the French
about the same; but arrangements had been made for further accessions to
the Spanish force, to be drawn from Santo Domingo and Havana, and these
were daily expected.
It was the habit of those days to devolve almost every event upon the
ordering of a special providence; and each nation had come to look upon
itself almost in the light of a peculiar people, led like the Israelites
of old by signs and wonders; and as in their own view all their actions
were directed by the design of advancing God's glory as well as their
own purposes, so the blessing of Heaven would surely accompany them in
all their undertakings.
So believed the crusaders on the plains of Palestine; so believed the
conquerors of Mexico and Peru; so believed the Puritan settlers of New
England--alike in their Indian wars and their oppressive social
polity--and so believed, also, the followers of Menendez and of Ribault;
and in this simple and trusting faith, the worthy chaplain gives us the
following account of the miraculous escape and deliverance of a portion
of the Spanish fleet:
"God and his Holy Mother have performed another great miracle in our
favor. The day following the landing of the General in the fort he said
to us that he was very uneasy, because his galley and another vessel
were at anchor, isolated and a league at sea, being unable to enter the
port on account of the shallowness of the water, and that he feared that
the French might come and capture or maltreat them. As soon as this idea
came to him he departed, with fifty men, to go on board of his galleon.
He gave orders to three shallops which were moored in the river to go
out and take on board the provisions and troops which were on board the
galleon. The next day, a shallop having gone out thither, they took on
board as much of the provisions as they could, and more than a hundred
men who were in the vessel, and returned toward shore; but half a league
before arriving at the bar they were overtaken by so complete a calm
that they were unable to proceed farther, and thereupon cast anchor and
passed the night in that place.
"The day following, at break of day, they raised anchor as ordered by
the pilot, as the rising of the tide began to be felt. When it was
fully light they saw astern of them, at the poop of the vessel, two
French ships which during the night had been in search of them. The
enemy arrived with the intention of making an attack upon them. The
French made all haste in their movements, for our men had no arms on
board, and had only embarked the provisions. When day appeared, and our
people discovered the French, they addressed their prayers to Our Lady
of _Bon Secours d'Utrera_, and supplicated her to grant them a little
wind, for the French were already close up to them. They say that Our
Lady descended herself upon the vessel; for the wind freshened and blew
fair for the bar, so that the shallop could enter it. The French
followed it; but as the bar had but little depth and their vessels were
large, they were not able to go over it, so that our men and the
provisions made a safe harbor.
"When it became still clearer they perceived, besides the two vessels of
the enemy, four others at a distance, being the same which we had seen
in the port the evening of our arrival. They were well furnished with
troops and artillery, and had directed themselves for our galleon and
the other ship, which were alone at sea. In this circumstance God
afforded us two favors: the first was, that the same evening after they
had discharged the provisions and the troops I have spoken of, at
midnight the galleon and the other vessel put to sea without being
perceived by the enemy; the one for Spain, and the other for Havana for
the purpose of seeking the fleet which was there; and in this way
neither was taken.
"The second favor, by which God rendered us a still greater service, was
that on the day following the one I have described there arose a great
storm, and so great a tempest that certainly the greater part of the
French vessels must have been lost at sea; for they were overtaken upon
the most dangerous coast I have ever seen, and were very close to the
shore; and if our vessels, that is, the galleon and its consort, are not
shipwrecked, it is because they were already more than twelve leagues
off the coast, which gave them the facility of manoeuvring as well as
they could, relying upon the aid of God to preserve them."
Menendez had ascertained from the Indians that a large number of the
French troops had embarked on board of the vessels which he had seen off
the harbor, and he had good ground for believing that these vessels
would either be cast helpless upon the shore, or be driven off by the
tempest to such a distance as would render their return for some days
impossible. He at once conceived the project of attacking the French
fort upon the river May by land.
The troops, having heard mass, marched out in order, preceded by twenty
Biscayans and Asturians, having as their captain Martin de Ochoa, a
leader of great fidelity and bravery, furnished with axes to open a road
where they could not get along. At this moment there arrived two
Indians, who said that they had been at the French six days before, and
who "seemed like angels" to the soldiers, sent to guide their march.
Halting for refreshment and rest wherever suitable places could be
found, and the Adelantado always with the vanguard, in four days they
reached the vicinity of the fort, and came up within a quarter of a
league of it, concealed by a grove of pine trees. It rained heavily, and
a severe storm prevailed. The place where they had halted was a very bad
one and very marshy; but he decided to stop there, and went back to seek
the rear-guard, lest they might lose their way.
About ten at night the last of the troops arrived, very wet indeed, for
there had been much rain during the four days; they had passed marshes
with the water rising to their waists, and every night there was so
great a flood that they were in great danger of losing their powder,
their match-fire, and their biscuit; and they became desperate, cursing
those who brought them there, and themselves for coming.
Menendez pretended not to hear their complaints, not daring to call a
council as to proceeding or returning, for both officers and soldiers
went forward very unquietly. Remaining firm in his own resolve, two
hours before dawn he called together the Master of the Camp and the
captains, to whom he said that during the whole night he had sought of
God and his Holy Mother that they would favor and instruct him what he
should do most advantageous for their holy service; and he was persuaded
that they had all done the same. "But now, gentlemen," he proceeded, "we
must make some determination, finding ourselves exhausted, lost, without
ammunition or provisions, and without the hope of relief."
Some answered very promptly, "Why should they waste their time in giving
reasons? for, unless they returned quickly to St. Augustine, they would
be reduced to eating palmettos; and the longer they delayed, the greater
trouble they would have."
The Adelantado said to them that what they said seemed very reasonable,
but he would ask them to hear some reasons to the contrary, without
being offended. He then proceeded--after having smoothed down their
somewhat ruffled dispositions, considerably disturbed by their first
experience in encountering the hardships of such a march--to show them
the danger of retreat was then greater than an advance would be, as they
would lose alike the respect of their friends and foes; that if, on the
contrary, they attacked the fort, whether they succeeded in taking it or
not, they would gain honor and reputation.
Stimulated by the speech of their general, they demanded to be led to
the attack, and the arrangements for the assault were at once made.
Their French prisoner was placed in the advance; but the darkness of the
night and the severity of the storm rendered it impossible to proceed,
and they halted in a marsh, with the water up to their knees, to await
daylight.
At dawn, the Frenchman recognized the country, and the place where they
were, and where stood the fort; upon which the Adelantado ordered them
to march, enjoining upon all, at the peril of their lives, to follow
him; and coming to a small hill, the Frenchman said that behind that
stood the fort, about three bow-shots distant, but lower down, near the
river. The General put the Frenchman into the custody of Castaneda. He
went up a little higher, and saw the river and one of the houses, but he
was not able to discover the fort, although it was adjoining them; and
he returned to Castaneda, with whom now stood the Master of the Camp and
Ochoa, and said to them that he wished to go lower down, near to the
houses which stood behind the hill, to see the fortress and the
garrison, for, as the sun was now up, they could not attack the fort
without a reconnaissance. This the Master of the Camp would not permit
him to do, saying this duty appertained to him; and he went alone with
Ochoa near to the houses, from whence they discovered the fort; and,
returning with their information, they came to two paths, and leaving
the one by which they came, they took the other.
The Master of the Camp discovered his error, coming to a fallen tree,
and turned his face to inform Ochoa, who was following him; and as they
turned to seek the right path, he stopped in advance, and the sentinel
discovered them, who imagined them to be French; but examining them he
perceived they were unknown to him. He hailed, "Who goes there?" Ochoa
answered, "Frenchmen." The sentinel was confirmed in his supposition
that they were his own people, and approached them; Ochoa did the same;
but seeing they were not French, the sentinel retreated. Ochoa closed
with him, and with his drawn sword gave him a cut over the head, but did
not hurt him much, as the sentinel fended off the blow with his sword;
and the Master of the Camp, coming up at that moment, gave him a thrust,
from which he fell backward, making a loud outcry. The Master of the
Camp, putting his sword to his breast, threatened him with instant death
unless he kept silence. They tied him thereupon, and took him to the
General, who, hearing the noise, thought the Master of the Camp was
being killed, and meeting with the Sergeant-major, Francisco de Recalde,
Diego de Maya, and Andres Lopez Patino, with their standards and
soldiers, without being able to restrain himself, he cried out,
"Santiago! Upon them! Help of God, victory! The French are destroyed.
The Master of the Camp is in their fort, and has taken it." Upon which,
all rushed forward in the path without order, the General remaining
behind, repeating what he had said many times; himself believing it to
be certain that the Master of the Camp had taken with him a considerable
force, and had captured the fort.
So great was the joy of the soldiers, and such their speed, that they
soon came up with the Master of the Camp and Ochoa, who was hastening to
receive the reward of carrying the good news to the General of the
capture of the sentinel. But the Master of the Camp, seeing the spirit
which animated the soldiery, killed the sentinel, and cried out with a
loud voice to those who were pressing forward, "Comrades! do as I do.
God is with us;" and turned running toward the fort, and, meeting two
Frenchmen on the way, he killed one of them, and Andres Lopez Patino the
other. Those in the environs of the fort, seeing this tragedy enacted,
set up loud outcries; and in order to know the cause of the alarm, one
of the French within opened the postern of the principal gate, which he
had no sooner done than it was observed by the Master of the Camp; and,
throwing himself upon him, he killed him and entered the gate, followed
by the most active of his followers.
The French, awakened by the clamor, some dressed, others in their
night-clothes, rushed to the doors of their houses to see what had
happened; but they were all killed, except sixty of the more wary, who
escaped by leaping the walls.
Immediately the standards of the Sergeant-major and of Diego Mayo were
brought in, and set up by Rodrigo Troche and Pedro Valdes Herrera, with
two cavaliers, at the same moment. These being hoisted, the trumpets
proclaimed the victory, and the band of soldiers who had entered opened
the gates and sought the quarters, leaving no Frenchman alive.
The Adelantado, hearing the cries, left Castaneda in his place to
collect the people who had not come up, who were at least half the
force, and went himself to see if they were in any danger. He arrived at
the fort running; and as he perceived that the soldiers gave no quarter
to any of the French, he shouted "that, at the penalty of their lives,
they should neither wound nor kill any woman, cripple, or child under
fifteen years of age." By which seventy persons were saved, the rest
were all killed.
Renato de Laudonniere, the commander of the fort, escaped, with his
servant and some twenty or thirty others, to a vessel lying in the
river.
Such is the Spanish chronicle, contained in Barcia, of the capture of
Fort Caroline. Its details in the main correspond with the account of
Laudonniere, and of Nicolas Challeux, the author of the letter printed
at Lyons, in France, under date of August, 1566, by Jean Saugrain. In
some important particulars, however, the historians disagree. It has
been already seen that Menendez is represented as having given orders to
spare all the women, maimed persons, and all children under fifteen
years of age. The French relations of the event, on the contrary, allege
that an indiscriminate slaughter took place, and that all were
massacred, without respect to age, sex, or condition; but as this
statement is principally made upon the authority of a terrified and
flying soldier, it is alike due to the probabilities of the case, and
more agreeable to the hopes of humanity, to lessen somewhat the horrors
of a scene which has need of all the palliation which can be drawn from
the slightest evidences of compassion on the part of the stern and
bigoted leader.
Some of the fugitives from the fort fled to the Indians; and ten of
these were given up to the Spaniards, to be butchered in cold blood,
says the French account--to be sent back to France, says the Spanish
chronicle.
September 24th being the day of St. Matthew, the name of the fort was
changed to San Matteo, by which name it was always subsequently called
by the Spaniards; and the name of St. Matthew was also given by them to
the river, now called St. John's, on which it was situated.
The Spaniards proceeded at once to strengthen the fortress, deepening
and enlarging the ditch, and raised and strengthened the ramparts and
wall in such manner, says the boastful Mendoza, "that, if the half of
all France had come to attack it, they could not have disturbed it;" a
boast upon which the easy conquest of it by De Gourgues, three years
subsequently, affords an amusing commentary. They also constructed,
subsequently, two small forts at the mouth of the river, one on each
side, which probably were located, the one on Batten Island, and the
other at Mayport Mills.
Leaving three hundred soldiers as a garrison under his son-in-law, De
Valdez, Master of the Camp, who was now appointed governor of the fort,
Menendez marched from St. Augustine, beginning now to feel considerable
anxiety lest the French fleet, escaping from the tempest, might return
and visit upon his own garrison at St. Augustine the fate of Fort
Caroline. He took with him upon his return but fifty soldiers, and,
owing to the swollen waters, found great difficulty in retracing his
route. When within a league of St. Augustine, he allowed one of the
soldiers to go forward to announce his victory and safe return.
The garrison at St. Augustine had been in great anxiety respecting their
leader, and from the accounts given by those who had deserted, they
feared the total loss of the expedition. The worthy captain thus
describes the return of Menendez: "The same day, being Monday, we saw a
man coming, crying out loudly. I myself was the first to run to him for
the news. He embraced me with transport, crying, 'Victory! Victory! The
French fort is ours.' I promised him the present which the bearer of
good news deserves, and gave him the best in my power.
"At the hour of vespers our good General arrived, with fifty
foot-soldiers very much fatigued. As soon as I learned that he was
coming, I ran home and put on a new soutain, the best which I had, and a
surplice, and, going out with a crucifix in my hand, I went forward to
receive him; and he, a gentleman and a good Christian, before entering,
kneeled and all his followers, and returned thanks to the Lord for the
great favors which he had received. My companions and myself marched in
front in procession chanting, so that we all returned with the
demonstrations of joy."
REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST SPAIN
RISE OF THE GUEUX OR BEGGARS
A.D. 1566
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER
During the later mediaeval and early modern periods, European states
and provinces passed through many changes of political relation. In
those times the territories comprised under the name of the
Netherlands--embracing the present Holland and Belgium--belonged
successively, in whole or in part, to different governments. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the region was united with
Burgundy; in 1477 it passed to the Hapsburgs; and later it came
under Spanish dominion.
In the reign of Charles V the Protestant Reformation spread through
the Netherlands, whose peoples shared in all the disputes and
turbulences of that religious revolution. Often in great peril,
the liberties of the Netherlands were more than ever endangered by
the absorption of the provinces into the vast empire of Charles.
The Emperor issued persecuting edicts against the Protestant
inhabitants, introduced the Inquisition with its terrible _auto
dafe_, which spared neither character nor sex, and by his severe
oppression caused the people of the Netherlands to feel themselves
"destined to perpetual slavery." The number of martyrs there during
the reign of Charles has been estimated on high authority at one
hundred thousand, although some modern historians place it far
below. The Inquisition, at all events, did some of its most cruel
work in the Netherlands during that period.
Toward the end of Charles' reign the Netherlands secured a certain
degree of exemption from these persecutions. Philip II, when he
succeeded his father, Charles V, on the throne of Spain, renewed
such favorable pledges to the Netherlands as the Emperor had given.
But once in full power (1555), Philip began the "dark and bloody
reign" which a few years later drove the Netherlander to their great
revolt, under the lead of William, Prince of Orange, called "William
the Silent."
In 1563 William and the Counts of Egmont and Horn, members of the
council of state, sent to Philip II a petition for the recall of
Cardinal Granvella, adviser of the regent, Margaret of Parma, who
was violently persecuting the Protestants. Although next year
Granvella was recalled, Philip did not change his determination to
destroy political and religious liberty in the Netherlands, and his
continued oppressions provoked his subjects there to rise in
self-defence.
As Schiller's history of the revolt, here presented, covers only
the preparatory stage, the brilliant summary, from another portion
of his works, is added to give completeness to his account.
A universal spirit of revolt pervaded the whole nation. Men began to
investigate the rights of the subject, and to scrutinize the prerogative
of kings. "The Netherlanders were not so stupid," many were heard to
say, with very little attempt at secrecy, "as not to know right well
what was due from the subject to the sovereign, and from the king to
the subject; and that, perhaps, means would yet be found to repel force
with force, although at present there might be no appearance of it." In
Antwerp a placard was set up in several places calling upon the town
council to accuse the King of Spain before the supreme court, at Spires,
of having broken his oath and violated the liberties of the country, for
Brabant, being a portion of the Burgundian circle, was included in the
religious peace of Passau and Augsburg.
About this time, too, the Calvinists published their confession of faith,
and in a preamble, addressed to the King, declared that they, although a
hundred thousand strong, kept themselves, nevertheless, quiet, and, like
the rest of his subjects, contributed to all the taxes of the country;
from which it was evident, they added, that of themselves they entertained
no ideas of insurrection. Bold and incendiary writings were publicly
disseminated, which depicted the Spanish tyranny in the most odious
colors, and reminded the nation of its privileges and occasionally also
of its powers.[1]
[1] The Regent mentioned to the King a number (three thousand)
of these writings. It is remarkable how important a part
printing, and publicity in general, played in the rebellion of
the Netherlands. Through this organ one restless spirit spoke to
millions. Besides the lampoons, which for the most part were
composed with all the low scurrility and brutality that were the
distinguishing characteristics of most of the Protestant polemical
writings of the time, works were occasionally published which
defended religious liberty in the fullest sense of the word.
The warlike preparations of Philip against the Porte, as well as those
which, for no intelligible reason, Eric, Duke of Brunswick, about this
time made in the vicinity, contributed to strengthen the general
suspicion that the Inquisition was to be forcibly imposed on the
Netherlands. Many of the most eminent merchants already spoke of
quitting their houses and business, to seek in some other part of the
world the liberty of which they were here deprived; others looked about
for a leader, and let fall hints of forcible resistance and of foreign
aid.
That in this distressing position of affairs the Regent might be left
entirely without an adviser and without support, she was now deserted by
the only person who was at the present moment indispensable to her, and
who had contributed to plunge her into this embarrassment. "Without
kindling a civil war," wrote to her William of Orange, "it was
absolutely impossible to comply now with the orders of the King. If,
however, obedience was to be insisted upon, he must beg that his place
might be supplied by another, who would better answer the expectations
of his majesty and have more power than he had over the minds of the
nation. The zeal which on every other occasion he had shown in the
service of the crown would, he hoped, secure his present proceeding from
misconstruction; for, as the case now stood, he had no alternative
between disobeying the King and injuring his country and himself." From
this time forth William of Orange retired from the council of state to
his town of Breda, where, in observant but scarcely inactive repose, he
watched the course of affairs. Count Horn followed his example.
Egmont, ever vacillating between the republic and the throne, ever
wearying himself in the vain attempt to unite the good citizen with the
obedient subject--Egmont, who was less able than the rest to dispense
with the favor of the monarch, and to whom, therefore, it was less an
object of indifference, could not bring himself to abandon the bright
prospects which were now opening for him at the court of the Regent. The
Prince of Orange had, by his superior intellect, gained an influence
over the Regent which great minds cannot fail to command from inferior
spirits. His retirement had opened a void in her confidence, which Count
Egmont was now to fill by virtue of that sympathy which so naturally
subsists between timidity, weakness, and good nature. As she was as much
afraid of exasperating the people by an exclusive confidence in the
adherents of the crown as she was fearful of displeasing the King by too
close an understanding with the declared leaders of the faction, a
better object for her confidence could now hardly be presented than this
very Count Egmont, of whom it could not be said that he belonged to
either of the two conflicting parties.
Up to this point the general peace had, it appears, been the sincere
wish of the Prince of Orange, the Counts Egmont and Horn, and their
friends. They had pursued the true interest of their sovereign as much
as the general weal; at least their exertions and their actions had been
as little at variance with the former as with the latter. Nothing had as
yet occurred to make their motives suspected or to manifest in them a
rebellious spirit. What they had done they had done in discharge of
their bounden duty as members of a free state, as the representatives of
the nation, as advisers of the King, as men of integrity and honor. The
only weapons they had used to oppose the encroachments of the court had
been remonstrances, modest complaints, petitions. They had never allowed
themselves to be so far carried away by a just zeal for their good cause
as to transgress the limits of prudence and moderation, which on many
occasions are so easily overstepped by party spirit. But all the nobles
of the republic did not now listen to the voice of that prudence, all
did not abide within the bounds of moderation.
While in the council of state the great question was discussed, whether
the nation was to be miserable or not, while its sworn deputies summoned
to their assistance all the arguments of reason and of equity, and while
the middle classes and the people contented themselves with empty
complaints, menaces, and curses, that part of the nation which of all
seemed least called upon, and on whose support least reliance had been
placed, began to take more active measures. We have already described a
class of the nobility whose services and wants Philip, at his accession,
had not considered it necessary to remember. Of these, by far the
greater number had asked for promotion from a much more urgent reason
than a love of the mere honor. Many of them were deeply sunk in debt,
from which by their own resources they could not hope to emancipate
themselves. When, then, in filling up appointments, Philip passed them
over, he wounded them in a point far more sensitive than their pride.
In these suitors he had by his neglect raised up so many idle spies and
merciless judges of his actions, so many collectors and propagators of
malicious rumor. As their pride did not quit them with their prosperity,
so now, driven by necessity, they trafficked with the sole capital which
they could not alienate--their nobility, and the political influence of
their names; and brought into circulation a coin which only in such a
period could have found currency--their protection. With a self-pride,
to which they gave the more scope as it was all they could now call
their own, they looked upon themselves as a strong intermediate power
between the sovereign and the citizen, and believed themselves called
upon to hasten to the rescue of the oppressed state, which looked
imploringly to them for succor.
This idea was ludicrous only so far as their self-conceit was concerned
in it; the advantages which they contrived to draw from it were
substantial enough. The Protestant merchants, who held in their hands
the chief part of the wealth of the Netherlands, and who believed they
could not at any price purchase too dearly the undisturbed exercise of
their religion, did not fail to make use of this class of people, who
stood idle in the market and ready to be hired. These very men, whom at
any other time the merchants, in their pride of riches, would most
probably have looked down upon, now appeared likely to do them good
service through their numbers, their courage, their credit with the
populace, their enmity to the Government, nay, through their beggarly
pride itself and their despair. On these grounds they zealously
endeavored to form a close union with them, and diligently fostered the
disposition for rebellion, while they also used every means to keep
alive their high opinions of themselves, and, what was most important,
lured their poverty by well-applied pecuniary assistance and glittering
promises. Few of them were so utterly insignificant as not to possess
some influence, if not personally, yet at least by their relationship
with higher and more powerful nobles; and, if united, they would be able
to raise a formidable voice against the crown. Many of them had either
already joined the new sect or were secretly inclined to it; and even
those who were zealous Roman Catholics had political or private grounds
enough to set them against the decrees of Trent and the Inquisition.
All, in fine, felt the cause of vanity sufficiently powerful not to
allow the only moment to escape them in which they might possibly make
some figure in the republic.
But much as might be expected from the cooeperation of these men in a
body, it would have been futile and ridiculous to build any hopes on any
one of them singly; and the great difficulty was to effect a union among
them. Even to bring them together, some unusual occurrence was
necessary; and, fortunately, such an incident presented itself. The
nuptials of Baron Montigny, one of the Belgian nobles, as also those of
the prince Alexander of Parma, which took place about this time in
Brussels, assembled in that town a great number of the Belgian nobles.
On this occasion relations met relations; new friendships were formed
and old renewed; and, while the distress of the country was the topic of
conversation, wine and mirth unlocked lips and hearts, hints were
dropped of union among themselves and of an alliance with foreign
powers. These accidental meetings soon led to concealed ones, and public
discussions gave rise to secret consultations. Two German barons,
moreover, a Count of Holle and of Schwarzenberg, who happened at this
time to be on a visit to the Netherlands, omitted nothing to awaken
expectations of assistance from their neighbors. Count Louis of Nassau,
too, had also, a short time before, visited several German courts to
ascertain their sentiments.[2] It has even been asserted that secret
emissaries of the admiral Coligny were seen at this time in Brabant; but
this, however, may be reasonably doubted.
[2] It was not without cause that the Prince of Orange suddenly
disappeared from Brussels in order to be present at the election
of a king of Rome in Frankfort. An assembly of so many German
princes must have greatly favored a negotiation.
If ever a political crisis was favorable to an attempt at revolution, it
was the present: a woman at the helm of government; the governors of
provinces disaffected themselves, and disposed to wink at
insubordination in others; most of the state counsellors quite
inefficient; no army to fall back upon; the few troops there were, long
since discontented on account of the outstanding arrears of pay, and
already too often deceived by false promises to be enticed by new;
commanded, moreover, by officers who despised the Inquisition from their
hearts, and would have blushed to draw a sword in its behalf; and
lastly, no money in the treasury to enlist new troops or to hire
foreigners. The court at Brussels, as well as the three councils, not
only divided by internal dissensions, but in the highest degree venal
and corrupt; the Regent without full powers to act on the spot, and the
King at a distance; his adherents in the provinces few, uncertain, and
dispirited; the faction numerous and powerful; two-thirds of the people
irritated against popery and desirous of a change--such was the
unfortunate weakness of the Government, and the more unfortunate still
that this weakness was so well known to its enemies!
In order to unite so many minds in the prosecution of a common object, a
leader was still wanting, and a few influential names, to give political
weight to their enterprise. The two were supplied by Count Louis of
Nassau, and Henry Count Brederode, both members of the most illustrious
houses of the Belgian nobility, who voluntarily placed themselves at the
head of the undertaking. Louis of Nassau, brother of the Prince of
Orange, united many splendid qualities, which made him worthy of
appearing on so noble and important a stage. In Geneva, where he
studied, he had imbibed at once a hatred to the hierarchy and a love to
the new religion, and, on his return to his native country, had not
failed to enlist proselytes to his opinions. The republican bias which
his mind had received in that school kindled in him a bitter hatred of
all that bore the Spanish name, which animated his whole conduct, and
only left him with his latest breath. Popery and Spanish rule were in
his mind identical, as indeed they were in reality; and the abhorrence
which he entertained for the one helped to strengthen his dislike to the
other.
Closely as the brothers agreed in their inclinations and aversions, the
ways by which each sought to gratify them were widely dissimilar. Youth
and an ardent temperament did not allow the younger brother to follow
the tortuous course through which the elder wound himself to his object.
A cold, calm circumspection carried the latter slowly, but surely, to
his aim; and with a pliable subtlety he made all things subserve his
purpose; with a foolhardy impetuosity, which overthrew all obstacles,
the other at times compelled success, but oftener accelerated disaster.
For this reason William was a general, and Louis never more than an
adventurer; a sure and powerful arm, if only it were directed by a wise
head. Louis' pledge once given was good forever; his alliances survived
every vicissitude, for they were mostly formed in a pressing moment of
necessity, and misfortune binds more firmly than thoughtless joy. He
loved his brother as dearly as he did his cause, and for the latter he
died.
Henry of Brederode, Baron of Viane and Burgrave of Utrecht, was
descended from the old Dutch counts, who formerly ruled that province as
sovereign princes. So ancient a title endeared him to the people, among
whom the memory of their former lords still survived and was the more
treasured the less they felt they had gained by the change. This
hereditary splendor increased the self-conceit of a man upon whose
tongue the glory of his ancestors continually hung, and who dwelt the
more on former greatness, even amid its ruins, the more unpromising the
aspect of his own condition became. Excluded from the honors and
employments to which in his opinion his own merits and his noble
ancestry fully entitled him--a squadron of light cavalry being all that
was intrusted to him--he hated the Government, and did not scruple
boldly to canvass and to rail at its measures. By these means he won the
hearts of the people.
Besides these two, there were others also from among the most
illustrious of the Flemish nobles--the young Count Charles of Mansfeld,
a son of that nobleman whom we have found among the most zealous
royalists, the Count Kinlemburg, two counts of Bergen and of Battenburg,
John of Marnix, Baron of Thoulouse, Philip of Marnix, Baron of St.
Aldegonde, with several others, who joined the league, which about the
middle of November, in the year 1565, was formed at the house of Von
Hammes, king-at-arms of the Golden Fleece. Here it was that six men
decided the destiny of their country--as formerly a few confederates
consummated the liberty of Switzerland--kindled the torch of a
forty-years' war, and laid the basis of a freedom which they themselves
were never to enjoy.
The objects of the league were set forth in the following declaration,
to which Philip of Marnix was the first to subscribe his name: "Whereas
certain ill-disposed persons, under the mask of a pious zeal, but in
reality under the impulse of avarice and ambition, have by their evil
counsels persuaded our most gracious sovereign the King to introduce
into these countries the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition--a
tribunal diametrically opposed to all laws human and divine, and in
cruelty far surpassing the barbarous institutions of heathenism--which
raises the inquisitors above every other power, and debases man to a
perpetual bondage, and by its snares exposes the honest citizen to a
constant fear of death, inasmuch as anyone--priest, it may be, or a
faithless friend, a Spaniard or a reprobate--has it in his power at any
moment to cause whom he will to be dragged before that tribunal, and to
be placed in confinement, condemned and executed, without the accused
ever being allowed to face his accuser or to adduce proof of his
innocence--we, therefore, the undersigned, have bound ourselves to watch
over the safety of our families, our estates, and our own persons. To
this we hereby pledge ourselves, and to this end bind ourselves as a
sacred fraternity, and vow with a solemn oath to oppose to the best of
our power the introduction of this tribunal into these countries,
whether it be attempted openly or secretly, and under whatever name it
may be disguised. We at the same time declare that we are far from
intending anything unlawful against the King our sovereign; rather is it
our unalterable purpose to support and defend the royal prerogative, and
to maintain peace, and, as far as lies in our power to put down all
rebellion. In accordance with this purpose we have sworn, and now again
swear, to hold sacred the Government, and to respect both in word and
deed, which witness almighty God!
"Further, we vow and swear to protect and defend one another, in all
times and places, against all attacks whatsoever touching the articles
which are set forth in this covenant. We hereby bind ourselves that no
accusation of any of our followers, in whatever name it may be clothed,
whether rebellion, sedition, or other wise, shall avail to annul our
oath toward the accused or absolve us from our obligation toward him. No
act which is directed against the Inquisition can deserve the name of a
rebellion. Whoever, therefore, shall be placed in arrest on any charge,
we here pledge ourselves to assist him to the utmost of our ability, and
to endeavor by every allowable means to effect his liberation. In this,
however, as in all matters, but especially in the conduct of all
measures against the tribunal of the Inquisition, we submit ourselves to
the general regulations of the league, or to the decision of those whom
we may unanimously appoint our counsellors and leaders.
"In witness hereof, and in confirmation of this our common league and
covenant, we call upon the holy name of the living God, maker of heaven
and earth and of all that are therein, who searches the hearts, the
consciences, and the thoughts, and knows the purity of ours. We implore
the aid of his holy spirit, that success and honor may crown our
undertaking to the glory of his name and to the peace and blessing of
our country!"
This covenant was immediately translated into several languages and
quickly disseminated through the provinces. To swell the league as
speedily as possible, each of the confederates assembled all his
friends, relations, adherents, and retainers. Great banquets were held,
which lasted whole days--irresistible temptations for a sensual
luxurious people, in whom the deepest wretchedness could not stifle the
propensity for voluptuous living. Whoever repaired to these
banquets--and everyone was welcome--was plied with officious assurances
of friendship, and, when heated with wine, carried away by the example
of numbers and overcome by the fire of a wild eloquence. The hands of
many were guided while they subscribed their signatures; the hesitating
were derided, the pusillanimous threatened, the scruples of loyalty
clamored down; some even were quite ignorant what they were signing, and
were ashamed afterward to inquire. To many whom mere levity had brought
to the entertainment, the general enthusiasm left no choice, while the
splendor of the confederacy allured the mean, and its numbers encouraged
the timorous.
The abettors of the league had not scrupled at the artifice of
counterfeiting the signature and seals of the Prince of Orange, Counts
Egmont, Horn, Megen, and others, a trick which won them hundreds of
adherents. This was done especially with a view of influencing the
officers of the army, in order to be safe in this quarter if matters
should come at last to violence. The device succeeded with many,
especially with subalterns, and Count Brederode even drew his sword upon
an ensign who wished time for consideration. Men of all classes and
conditions signed it. Religion made no difference. Roman Catholic
priests even were associates of the league. The motives were not the
same with all, but the pretext was similar. The Roman Catholics desired
simply the abolition of the Inquisition and a mitigation of the edicts;
the Protestants aimed at unlimited freedom of conscience.
A few daring spirits only entertained so bold a project as the overthrow
of the present Government, while the needy and indigent based the vilest
hopes on a general anarchy. A farewell entertainment, which about this
very time was given to the Counts Schwarzenberg and Holle in Breda, and
another shortly afterward in Hogstraten, drew many of the principal
nobility to these two places, and of these several had already signed
the covenant. The Prince of Orange, Counts Egmont, Horn, and Megen were
present at the latter banquet, but without any concert of design, and
without having themselves any share in the league, although one of
Egmont's own secretaries and some of the servants of the other three
noblemen had openly joined it. At this entertainment three hundred
persons gave in their adhesion to the covenant, and the question was
mooted whether the whole body should present themselves before the
Regent armed or unarmed, with a declaration or with a petition? Horn and
Orange--Egmont would not countenance the business in any way--were
called in as arbiters upon this point, and they decided in favor of the
more moderate and submissive procedure. By taking this office upon them,
they exposed themselves to the charge of having in no very covert manner
lent their sanction to the enterprise of the confederates. In
compliance, therefore, with their advice it was determined to present
their address unarmed and in the form of a petition, and a day was
appointed on which they should assemble in Brussels.
The first intimation the Regent received of this conspiracy of the
nobles was given by the Count of Megen soon after his return to the
capital. "There was," he said, "an enterprise on foot; no less than
three hundred of the nobles were implicated in it; it referred to
religion; the members of it had bound themselves together by an oath;
they reckoned much on foreign aid; she would soon know more about it."
Though urgently pressed, he would give her no further information. "A
nobleman," he said, "had confided it to him under the seal of secrecy,
and he had pledged his word of honor to him." What really withheld him
from giving her any further explanation was, in all probability, not so
much any delicacy about his honor, as his hatred of the Inquisition,
which he would not willingly do anything to advance. Soon after him,
Count Egmont delivered to the Regent a copy of the covenant, and also
gave her the names of the conspirators, with some few exceptions. Nearly
at the same time the Prince of Orange wrote to her: "There was, as he
had heard, an army enlisted, four hundred officers were already named,
and twenty thousand men would presently appear in arms." Thus the rumor
was intentionally exaggerated, and the danger was multiplied in every
mouth.
The Regent petrified with alarm at the first announcement of these
tidings, and guided solely by her fears, hastily called together all the
members of the council of state who happened to be then in Brussels, and
at the same time sent a pressing summons to the Prince of Orange and
Count Horn, inviting them to resume their seats in the senate.
The members of the senate had not yet dispersed, when all Brussels
resounded with the report that the confederates were approaching the
town. They consisted of no more than two hundred horse, but rumor
greatly exaggerated their numbers. Filled with consternation, the Regent
consulted with her ministers whether it was best to close the gates on
the approaching party or to seek safety in flight. Both suggestions were
rejected as dishonorable; and the peaceable entry of the nobles soon
allayed all fears of violence. The first morning after their arrival
they assembled at Kuilemburg house, where Brederode administered to them
a second oath, binding them, before all other duties, to stand by one
another, and even with arms if necessary. At this meeting a letter from
Spain was produced, in which it was stated that a certain Protestant,
whom they all knew and valued, had been burned alive in that country by
a slow fire. After these and similar preliminaries he called on them one
after another, by name, to take the new oath, and renew the old one in
their own names and in those of the absent. The next day, April 5, 1566,
was fixed for the presentation of the petition. Their numbers now
amounted to between three hundred and four hundred. Among them were many
retainers of the high nobility, as also several servants of the King
himself and of the Duchess.
With the Counts of Nassau and Brederode at their head, and formed in
ranks of four by four, they advanced in procession to the palace; all
Brussels attended the unwonted spectacle in silent astonishment. Here
were to be seen a body of men, advancing with too much boldness and
confidence to look like supplicants, and led by two men who were not
wont to be petitioners and, on the other hand, with so much order and
stillness as do not usually accompany rebellion. The Regent received the
procession, surrounded by all her counsellors and the Knights of the
Fleece. "These noble Netherlanders," thus Brederode respectfully
addressed her, "who here present themselves before your highness, wish
in their own name, and of many others besides, who are shortly to
arrive, to present to you a petition, of whose importance, as well as of
their own humility, this solemn procession must convince you. I, as
speaker of this body, entreat you to receive our petition, which
contains nothing but what is in unison with the laws of our country and
the honor of the King."
"Never"--so ran the petition, which, according to some, was drawn up by
the celebrated Balduin--"never had they failed in their loyalty to their
King, and nothing now could be further from their hearts; but they would
rather run the risk of incurring the displeasure of their sovereign than
allow him to remain longer in ignorance of the evils with which their
native country was menaced, by the forcible introduction of the
Inquisition, and the continued enforcement of the edicts. They had long
remained consoling themselves with the expectation that a general
assembly of the states would be summoned to remedy these grievances; but
now that even this hope was extinguished, they held it to be their duty
to give timely warning to the Regent. They, therefore, entreated her
highness to send to Madrid an envoy, well disposed, and fully acquainted
with the state and temper of the times, who should endeavor to persuade
the King to comply with the demands of the whole nation, and abolish the
Inquisition, to revoke the edicts, and in their stead cause new and more
humane ones to be drawn up at a general assembly of the states. But, in
the mean while, until they could learn the King's decision, they prayed
that the edicts and the operations of the Inquisition be suspended."
"If," they concluded, "no attention should be paid to their humble
request, they took God, the King, the Regent and all her counsellors to
witness that they had done their part, and were not responsible for any
unfortunate result that might happen."
The following day the confederates, marching in the same order of
procession, but in still greater numbers--Counts Bergen and Kuilemberg
having in the interim joined them with their adherents--appeared before
the Regent in order to receive her answer. It was written on the margin
of the petition, and was to the effect "that entirely to suspend the
Inquisition and the edicts, even temporarily, was beyond her powers; but
in compliance with the wishes of the confederates, she was ready to
despatch one of the nobles to the King, in Spain, and also to support
their petition with all her influence. In the mean time she would
recommend the inquisitors to administer their office with moderation;
but in return, she should expect, on the part of the league, that they
should abstain from all acts of violence, and undertake nothing to the
prejudice of the Catholic faith." Little as these vague and general
promises satisfied the confederates, they were, nevertheless, as much as
they could have reasonably expected to gain at first.
The granting or refusing of the petition had nothing to do with the
primary object of the league. Enough for them at present that it was
once recognized; enough that it was now, as it were, an established
body, which by its power and threats might, if necessary, overawe the
Government. The confederates, therefore, acted quite consistently with
their designs, in contenting themselves with this answer, and referring
the rest to the good pleasure of the King. As, indeed, the whole
pantomime of petitioning had only been invented to cover the more daring
plan of the league, until it should have strength enough to show itself
in its true light; they felt that much more depended on their being able
to continue this mask, and on the favorable reception of their petition,
than on its speedily being granted. In a new memorial, which they
delivered three days after, they pressed for an express testimonial from
the Regent, that they had done no more than their duty, and been guided
simply by their zeal for the service of the King. When the Duchess
evaded a declaration, they even sent a person to repeat this request in
a private interview. "Time alone and their future behavior," she replied
to this person, "would enable her to judge of their designs."
The league had its origin in banquets, and a banquet gave it form and
perfection. On the very day that the second petition was presented,
Brederode entertained the confederates in Kuilemberg house. About three
hundred guests assembled; intoxication gave them courage, and their
audacity rose with their numbers. During the conversation one of their
number happened to remark that he had overheard the Count of Barlaimont
whisper in French to the Regent, who was seen to turn pale on the
delivery of the petitions, that "she need not be afraid of a band of
beggars (_gueux_);" in fact, the majority of them had by their bad
management of their incomes only too well deserved this appellation.
Now, as the very name of their fraternity was the very thing which had
most perplexed them, an expression was eagerly caught up, which, while
it cloaked the presumption of their enterprise in humility, was at the
same time appropriate to them as petitioners. Immediately they drank to
one another under this name, and the cry "Long live the Gueux!" was
accompanied with a general shout of applause. After the cloth had been
removed, Brederode appeared with a wallet over his shoulder, similar to
that which the vagrant pilgrims and mendicant monks of the time used to
carry; and after returning thanks to all for their accession to the
league, and boldly assuring them that he was ready to venture life and
limb for every individual present, he drank to the health of the whole
company out of a wooden beaker. The cup went round, and everyone uttered
the same vow as he set it to his lips. Then one after the other they
received the beggar's purse, and each hung it on a nail which he had
appropriated to himself. The shouts and uproar attending this buffoonery
attracted the Prince of Orange and Counts Egmont and Horn, who, by
chance, were passing the spot at the very moment, and on entering the
house were boisterously pressed by Brederode, as host, to remain and
drink a glass with them.[3]
[3] "But," Egmont asserted in his written defence, "we drank only
one single small glass, and thereupon they cried, 'Long live the
King and the Gueux!' This was the first time that I heard that
appellation, and it certainly did not please me. But the times
were so bad that one was often compelled to share in much that
was against one's inclination, and I knew not but I was doing an
innocent thing."
The entrance of three such influential personages renewed the mirth of
the guests, and their festivities soon passed the bounds of moderation.
Many were intoxicated; guests and attendants mingled together without
distinction, the serious and the ludicrous; drunken fancies and affairs
of state were blended one with another in a burlesque medley; and the
discussions on the general distress of the country ended in the wild
uproar of a bacchanalian revel. But it did not stop here; what they had
resolved on in the moment of intoxication, they attempted when sober to
carry into execution. It was necessary to manifest to the people in some
striking shape the existence of their protectors, and likewise to fan
the zeal of the faction by a visible emblem; for this end nothing could
be better than to adopt publicly this name of Gueux, and to borrow from
it the tokens of the association. In a few days the town of Brussels
swarmed with ash-gray garments, such as were usually worn by mendicant
friars and penitents. Every confederate put his whole family and
domestics in this dress. Some carried wooden bowls thinly overlaid with
plates of silver, cups of the same kind, and wooden knives; in short,
the whole paraphernalia of the beggar tribe, which they either fixed
around their hats or suspended from their girdles. Round the neck they
wore a golden or silver coin, afterward called the "Guesen penny," of
which one side bore the effigy of the King, with the inscription "True
to the King"; on the other side were seen two hands folded together,
holding a wallet, with the words "as far as the beggar's scrip." Hence
the origin of the name "Gueux," which was subsequently borne in the
Netherlands by all who seceded from popery and took up arms against the
King.
A name decides the whole issue of things. In Madrid that was called
rebellion which in Brussels was styled only a lawful remonstrance. The
complaints of Brabant required a prudent mediator; Philip II sent an
executioner, and the signal for war was given. An unparalleled tyranny
assailed both property and life.
The despairing citizens, to whom the choice of death was all that was
left, chose the nobler one on the battle-field. A wealthy and luxurious
nation loves peace, but becomes warlike as soon as it becomes poor. Then
it ceases to tremble for a life which is deprived of everything that had
made it desirable. In a moment the rage of rebellion seizes the most
distant provinces; trade and commerce are at a standstill, the ships
disappear from the harbors, the artisan abandons his workshop, the
rustic his uncultivated fields. Thousands fled to distant lands; a
thousand victims fell on the bloody field, and fresh thousands pressed
on; for divine, indeed, must that doctrine be for which men could die so
joyfully. All that was wanting was the last achieving hand, the
enlightened enterprising spirit, to seize on this great political crisis
and to mature the offspring of chance to the designs of wisdom. William
the Silent devoted himself, a second Brutus, to the great cause of
liberty. Superior to a timorous selfishness, he sent in to the throne
his resignation of offices which devolved on him objectionable duties,
and, magnanimously divesting himself of all his princely dignities, he
descended to a state of voluntary poverty, and became but a citizen of
the world. The cause of justice was staked upon the hazardous game of
battle; but the sudden levies of mercenaries and peaceful husbandmen
could not withstand the terrible onset of an experienced force. Twice
did the brave William lead his dispirited troops against the tyrant,
twice was he abandoned by them, but not by his courage.
Philip II sent as many reenforcements as the dreadful importunity of his
viceroy begged for. Fugitives whom their fatherland rejected sought a
new country on the ocean, and turned to satisfy, on the ships of their
enemy, the demon of vengeance and of want. Naval heroes were now formed
out of corsairs, and a marine collected out of piratical vessels; and
out of morasses arose a republic. Seven provinces threw off the yoke at
the same time, to form a new, youthful state, powerful by its waters and
its union and despair. A solemn decree of the whole nation deposed the
tyrant, and the Spanish name disappeared from all the laws.
For what had now been done no forgiveness remained; the republic became
formidable, because it was no longer possible for her to retrace her
steps; factions distracted her within; her terrible element, the sea
itself, leaguing with her oppressors, threatened her very infancy with a
premature grave. She felt herself succumb to the superior force of the
enemy, and cast herself a suppliant before the most powerful thrones of
Europe, begging them to accept a dominion which she herself could no
longer protect. At last, but with difficulty--so despised at first was
this state that even the rapacity of foreign monarchs spurned her
opening bloom--a stranger deigned to accept their importunate offer of a
dangerous crown. New hopes began to revive her sinking courage; but in
this new father of his country, destiny gave her a traitor; and in the
critical emergency, when the implacable foe was in full force before her
very gates, Charles of Anjou invaded the liberties which he had been
called to protect. The assassin's hand, too, tore the steersman from the
rudder, and with William of Orange the career, seemingly, of the infant
republic and all her guardian angels fled; but the ship continued to
scud along in the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe
without the steersman's help.
Philip II missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor and
perhaps also his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism
in the obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a
brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory;
and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for
the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country;
victor and vanquished alike were bathed in blood; while the rising
republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of
the ruins erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty
years a war lasted, whose happy termination was not to bless the dying
eye of Philip; which destroyed one paradise in Europe, to create a new
one out of its shattered fragments; which destroyed the choicest flower
of military youth; and while it enriched more than a quarter of the
globe, impoverished the possessor of the golden Peru. This monarch, who,
even without oppressing his subjects, could expend nine hundred tons of
gold, but who by tyrannical means extorted far more, heaped on his
depopulated kingdom a debt of one hundred and forty millions of ducats.
An implacable hatred of liberty swallowed up all these treasures and
consumed in fruitless labor his royal life. But the Reformation throve
amid the devastation of his sword, and over the blood of her citizens
the banner of the new republic floated victorious.
LEPANTO: DESTRUCTION OF THE TURKISH NAVAL POWER
A.D. 1571
SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL
By the defeat of the Turks in the naval fight near Lepanto their
power was so seriously shaken that its decline may be reckoned to
have begun with that event. For many years, under their great sultan
Solyman, the Magnificent, they had kept Europe in terror of their
assaults. They had taken a recognized place among European peoples.
Before his alliance with Francis I of France (1534), Solyman had
made himself master of Hungary, and by threatening Vienna he so
alarmed Charles V that the Emperor agreed to the Peace of Nuremberg,
in order that he might unite Protestants and Catholics against the
Ottoman foe.
Although Solyman withdrew before the united forces of the Christian
empire, the Turks continued their depredations, especially on the
coasts of Italy and Spain. Charles succeeded in repelling them
there, and defeated them (1535) at Tunis, but they soon renewed
their frightful ravages along the European shores.
Finally, in the reign of Solyman's successor, Selim II, they were
met with effectual resistance through the efforts of the Holy League
formed in 1570 by Spain, Venice, and Pope Pius V. Selim in that year
captured and pillaged Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. In May, 1571,
the League agreed upon a plan of action, and after a series of
indecisive operations the allies accomplished their task in the
manner described below. Their forces were commanded by Don John of
Austria, a Spanish soldier, illegitimate son of Charles V. Don John
had already (1569-1570) defeated the Moriscoes or Moors in Granada.
Stirling-Maxwell is the authoritative historian of his remarkable
career. Sir William's account of the important victory near Lepanto
is one of our most interesting examples of military narration.
The Gulf of Lepanto is a long inlet of irregular shape, extending east
and west, and bounded on the north by the shores of Albania, the ancient
Epirus, and on the south by the coast of Morea, and closed at its
eastern end by the Isthmus of Corinth. The bold headland on the north
side, guarded by the castle of Roumelia, and the lower promontory on the
south with the castle of the Morea, advancing from the opposite shores
into its waters, divide the long inlet into two unequal parts. The first
of these parts consists of the mouth of the gulf and the lake-like
basin, together forming the Gulf of Patras. The second is the long reach
of waters within the castled headlands called the Gulf (anciently) of
Corinth, and now of Epakte or Lepanto. When the hostile fleets came in
sight of each other, that of the League was entering the gulf near its
northern shore, while that of the Turk was about fifteen miles within
its jaws, his vast crescent-shaped line stretching almost from the broad
swampy shallows which lie beneath the Acarnanian mountains to the margin
of the rich lowlands of the Morea.
As the two armaments now advanced, each in full view of the other, the
sea was somewhat high, and the wind, blowing freshly from the east, was
in the teeth of the Christians. But in the course of the morning the
waves of the gulf fell to a glassy smoothness, and the breeze shifted to
the west, a change fortunate for the sailors of the League, which their
spiritual teachers did not fail to declare a special interposition of
God in behalf of the fleet which carried the flag of his vicar upon
earth.
At the sound of the signal gun each captain began to prepare his ship
for action. By order of Don John of Austria the sharp peaks of the
galleys, the spurs (_espolones_) as they were called, had been cut off,
it being thought expedient to sacrifice those weapons of offence, which
were somewhat uncertain in their operation, to insure the more effectual
working of the guns on the forecastle and gangway; and the bulwarks had
been strengthened, and heightened by means of boarding-nettings. In
some vessels the rowers' benches were removed or planked over, to give
more space and scope to the soldiers. Throughout the fleet the Christian
slaves had their fetters knocked off and were furnished with arms,
which they were encouraged to use valiantly by promises of freedom and
rewards. Of the Moslem slaves, on the contrary, the chains which
secured them to their places were carefully examined, and their rivets
secured; and they were, besides, fitted with handcuffs, to disable them
from using their hands for any purpose but tugging on the oar. The
arquebusier, the musketeer, and the bombardier looked carefully to the
state of their weapons, ammunition, and equipments; the sailor sharpened
his pike and cutlass; the officer put on his strongest casque and his
best-wrought cuirass; the stewards placed supplies of bread and wine in
convenient places, ready to the hands of the combatants; and the surgeons
prepared their instruments and bandages, and spread tables in dark and
shaded nooks, for the use of the wounded.
While these preparations occupied their subordinate officers, the chiefs
of the armament repaired to the flag-ship to learn the final resolution
and receive the last instructions of Don John of Austria. Some of these
went for the purpose of combating that resolution and objecting to those
instructions; for that eagerness to fight, which pervaded the soldiers
and sailors, was not unanimously shared by their leaders. Veniero,
although he had been hitherto very desirous of meeting the enemy, was
now anxious and dispirited. Doria and Ascanio de la Corgnia reminded
their young commander that the Turk, who was evidently bent upon
fighting, had a convenient harbor and arsenal behind him at Lepanto;
while for the fleet of the League, far from accessible ports, a disaster
implied total destruction. Some of their colleagues ventured to advise
Don John to retire while it was still in his power to do so. He refused
to discuss a question which had been decided at Corfu. "Gentlemen," he
said, "the time for counsel is past, and the time for fighting has
come," and with these words dismissed them to their ships.
While the galleys were taking up their positions, Don John of Austria,
in complete armor and attended by Don Luis de Cordoba and his secretary
Juan de Soto, transferred himself to a frigate remarkable for speed and
armed with a single German gun, and ran along the line to the right of
the flag-ship, embracing the whole extent of the right wing. As he
neared each galley he addressed a few words of encouragement to the
officers and men. He reminded the Venetians of the cruel outrages which
the Republic had lately received from the Turk in the Adriatic, Corfu,
and especially in Cyprus; and that now was the time to take signal
vengeance; and he therefore bid them use their weapons as these
recollections and the great opportunity required. To the Spaniards he
said: "My children, we are here to conquer or to die as Heaven may
determine. Do not let our impious foe ask us, 'Where is your God?' Fight
in his holy name, and in death or victory you will win immortality." His
words were eminently successful. They were in all cases received with
enthusiastic applause. The soldiers and sailors were delighted and
inspired by the gallant bearing and language of their young leader. As
he left them, shipmates who had quarrelled as only shipmates can, and
who had not spoken for weeks, embraced, and swore to conquer or to die
in the sacred cause of Christ.
As the two fleets approached--the Christians wafted gently onward by a
light breeze, the Ottomans plying their oars to the utmost--the Turkish
commander, who like Don John sailed in the centre of his line, fired a
gun. Don John acknowledged the challenge and returned the salute. A
second shot elicited a second reply. The two armaments had approached
near enough to enable each to distinguish the individual vessels of the
other and to scan their various banners and insignia. The Turks advanced
to battle shouting and screaming and making a great uproar with
ineffectual musketry. The Christians preserved complete silence. At a
certain signal a crucifix was raised aloft in every ship in the fleet.
Don John of Austria, sheathed in complete armor, and standing in a
conspicuous place on the prow of his ship, now knelt down to adore the
sacred emblem, and to implore the blessing of God on the great
enterprise which he was about to commence. Every man in the fleet
followed his example and fell upon his knees. The soldier, poising his
firelock, knelt at his post by the bulwarks, the gunner knelt with his
lighted match beside his gun. The decks gleamed with prostrate men in
mail. In each galley, erect and conspicuous among the martial throng,
stood a Franciscan or a Dominican friar, a Theatine or a Jesuit, in his
brown or black robe, holding a crucifix in one hand and sprinkling holy
water with the other, while he pronounced a general absolution, and
promised indulgence in this life, or pardon in the next, to the
steadfast warriors who should quit them like men and fight the good
fight of faith against infidel.
In the night between October 6th and 7th, 1571, about the same hour that
the Christian fleet weighed anchor at Cephalonia, the Turks had left
their moorings in the harbor of Lepanto. While Don John, baffled by the
winds and waves, was beating off the Curzolarian Isles, the Pacha was
sailing down the gulf before a fair breeze. Every Turk on board the
Sultan's fleet believed that he was about to assist in conveying the
armament of the Christian powers to the Golden Horn, in obedience to the
commands of the Padishah. The soldiers and sailors, lately recruited by
large reenforcements, were many of them fresh from quarters on shore.
Officers and men were in the highest spirits, eager for the battle which
they knew to be at hand, and in which they supposed their success to be
certain. For although Ali was well informed as to the position and
movements of the fleet of the League, he was no less mistaken as to the
strength of the Christians than the Christians were as to his own. He
had been more successful in pouring fictions into the ear of Don John
than in obtaining accurate intelligence for himself.
The Greek fishermen, in reporting to each leader the condition of his
enemy, had, as we have seen, taken care to please and deceive both.
Karacosh had indeed been present at the review of Gomenzia, but he had
erred considerably in his reckoning of the numbers of the Christian
fleet. Either by accident or design, he computed the vessels at fifty
less than the real number, and he, besides, greatly underrated the
weight of the artillery. Ali was still further deceived by the reports
of three Spanish soldiers, captured on the shore near Gomenzia, where
they had strayed too far from their boat. These prisoners assured the
Pacha that the Christian fleet had not as yet been joined either by the
great ships or the galeases, and that forty galleys, sent under Santa
Cruz to Otranto for troops, and two galleys with which Andrade had gone
on a cruise of observation, had not yet returned. This story confirmed
the accounts both of Karacosh and the Greek fishermen. The Pacha was
naturally no less anxious to meet Don John with Santa Cruz than Don John
had been to meet the Pacha without the Viceroy of Algiers. It was no
wonder, then, that the chiefs of the Turkish fleet led their galleys
down the gulf in the ardent hope of speedily meeting with an enemy in
whom they made certain of finding a rich and easy prey. The three
hundred sail of the Sultan moved, as already described, in the form of
an immense crescent, stretching nearly from shore to shore.
When the Christian armament first came in sight, nothing was seen of it
but the small vanguard of Cardona's Sicilian galleys, and a portion of
the right wing under Doria. The rest was hidden by the rocky headlands
at the north of the gulf. For a while this circumstance buoyed up the
Turks in their belief that the force of the enemy was greatly inferior
to their own. As, however, the long lines of the centre under Don John
of Austria, and of the left wing under Barbarigo, came galley after
galley into view, they began to discover their mistake. The men posted
aloft were eagerly questioned by the officers as to the result of their
observations, and their answers, always announcing accessions of
strength to the Christians, led to misgivings, and to vehement
denunciations against Karacosh for the inaccuracy of his report from
Gomenzia. When Ali perceived that the Christians had adopted a long
straight line of battle, he also caused his fleet to take the same
order, drawing in the horns and advancing the centre of his crescent. As
the fleets came nearer to each other, the leaders of the League were
encouraged by observing that the enemy's rear was not covered by
anything that could be called a reserve, but only by a number of small
craft. Ali, on the contrary, was surprised to see the galeases which had
been pushed forward by the Christians. He inquired what these _mahones_
were, and was told that they were not mahones, but galeases; the very
vessels, in fact, which he had been led to believe had been separated
from the enemy, and whose formidable artillery he did not expect to
encounter. He also observed with concern the large number of the
galleys which were Spanish, or western (_ponenirinas_, as they were
called in the Levant), and of a stronger build than those which were
constructed at Venice by the Orientals. He now saw that the victory was
not to be so easy as he had anticipated, and that he must neglect no
means that might avert defeat. A kind-hearted as well as a brave man,
he had always been remarkable for the humanity with which he had cared
for the unhappy Christian slaves who rowed his galley. He now walked
forward to their benches and said to them in Spanish: "Friends, I
expect you to-day to do your duty by me, in return for what I have done
for you. If I win the battle, I promise you your liberty; if the day is
yours, God has given it to you."
When the fleets neared each other, and the Christians were all prostrate
before their crucifixes and friars, and no sound was heard on their
decks but the voices of the holy fathers, the Turks were indulging in
every kind of noise which nature or art had furnished them with the
means of producing. Shouting and screaming, they bade the Christians
come on "like drowned hens" and be slaughtered; then they danced and
stamped and clanged their arms; they blew trumpets, clashed cymbals, and
fired volleys of useless musketry. When the Christians had ended their
devotions and stood to their guns, or in their ordered ranks, each
galley, in the long array, seemed on fire, as the noon-tide sun blazed
on helmet and corselet, and pointed blades and pikes with flame. The
bugles now sounded a charge, and the bands of each vessel began to play.
Before Don John retired from the forecastle to his proper place on the
quarter-deck, it is said by one of the officers, who had written an
account of the battle, that he and two of his gentlemen, "inspired with
youthful ardor, danced a galliard on the gun platform to the music of
the fifes." The Turkish line, to the glitter of arms, added yet more
splendor of color from the brilliant and variegated garb of the
janizaries, their tall and fanciful crests and prodigious plumes, and
from the multitude of flags and streamers which every galley displayed
from every available point and peak. Long before the enemy were within
range the Turkish cannon opened. The first shot that took effect carried
off the point of the pennant of Don Juan de Cardona, who in his swiftest
vessel was hovering along the line, correcting trifling defects of
position and order, like a sergeant drilling recruits. About noon a
flash was seen to proceed from one of the galeases of the Christian
fleet. The shot was aimed at the flag-ship of the Pacha, conspicuous in
the centre of the line, and carrying the sacred green standard of the
Prophet. Passing through the rigging of the vessel, the ball carried off
a portion of the highest of the three splendid lanterns which hung on
the lofty stern as symbols of command. The Pacha, from his quarter-deck,
looked up on hearing the crash, and perceiving the ominous mischief,
said, "God grant we may be able to give a good answer to this question."
The next shot split off a great piece of the poop of an adjacent galley.
Of the six galeases four were soon pouring a murderous fire into the
Turkish centre and right wing; the remaining two, which were intended to
gall the left wing, having been rendered of little use, then and during
the battle, by dexterous southerly movements of Aluch Ali. The balls
from the galeases appeared to stop the vessels which they struck, and
which seemed to have been met as by a wall. Two of them were speedily
sunk by the terrible fire. Perceiving the great superiority of the
galeases in weight of metal, Ali ordered his galleys not to attempt to
attack them, but, avoiding them as well as they could, to push on
against the galleys of the Christians. Obedience to this order, however
necessary, produced great confusion in the Turkish line.
The Pacha of Alexandria, who led the right wing, endeavored both to
elude the galeases and circumvent his antagonists, the Venetians on the
Christian left, by passing between them and the shore. Barbarigo
observed the movement, and prepared to oppose by adopting it; but his
pilots, inferior to those of Sirocco in local knowledge, dreading the
shoals and shallows, did not stand toward the coast with sufficient
boldness. The Pacha therefore effected his purpose with a few of his
vessels and Barbarigo found himself placed between two fires; his own
galley at one time being engaged by no less than eight Turkish vessels.
As they approached the Christians, the Turks assailed them not only with
cannon and musketry, but also with showers of arrows, many of which,
from the wounds inflicted by them, were supposed to have been poisoned.
As Barbarigo stood giving orders on his quarter-deck, he became a
conspicuous mark; and the hail of arrows fell so thick around him that
the great lantern which adorned the galley's stern was afterward found
to be studded with their shafts. At length one of these ancient missiles
pierced the left eye of the gallant commander and compelled his
immediate removal below. The wound, in three days, proved mortal. His
nephew, Marco Contarini, rushing to his assistance, was also slain.
These untoward events for a moment paralyzed the efforts of the
Venetians. The galley became the centre of so severe a fire that its
defenders were more than once swept away, and it was in great danger of
being taken. Frederigo Nano, however, who, by Barbarigo's desire, had
assumed the command, succeeded in rallying his men, and not only beat
off Sirocco, but made a prize of one of his best galleys and its
commander, the corsair Kara Ali. The combat between the Turks and the
Venetians seemed inspired by the intensest personal hatred; the Turks
thirsting for fresh conquests, the Venetians for vengeance. That they
might the more effectually use their weapons, many of the soldiers of
St. Mark uncovered their faces and laid aside their shields. No quarter
was given, and the slaughter was very great on both sides. One of the
Sultan's galleys near the shore being very hard pressed, the Turks
jumped overboard and escaped to land. Some of the Venetians followed and
slew them as they ran to the cover of some rocks. One of these pursuers,
being armed only with a stick, contrived with that simple weapon to pin
his victim through the mouth to the ground, to the great admiration of
his comrades.
As the centre divisions of the two fleets closed with each other the
wisdom of Don John in retrenching the fore-peaks of his vessels became
abundantly apparent. The Turks had neglected to take this precaution;
the efficiency of their forecastle guns was therefore greatly impaired.
Their prows were also much higher than the prows of their antagonists.
While their shot passed harmlessly over the enemy, his balls struck
their galleys close to water-mark with fatal precision. The fire of the
Christians was the more murderous because many of the Turkish vessels
were crowded with soldiers both on the deck and below.
Ali and Don John had each directed his helmsman to steer for the
flag-ship of the enemy. The two galleys soon met, striking each other
with great force. The left prow of the Pacha towered high above the
lower forecastle of Don John, and his galley's peak was thrust through
the rigging of the other vessel until its point was over the fourth
rowing-bench. Thus linked together the two flag-ships became a
battle-field which was strongly contested for about two hours. The Pacha
had on board four hundred picked janizaries--three hundred armed with
the arquebus and one hundred with the bow. Two galliots and ten galleys,
all filled with janizaries, lay close astern, the galliots being
connected with the Pacha's vessels by ladders, up which reenforcements
immediately came when wanted. The galley of Pertau Pacha fought
alongside. Don John's consisted of three hundred arquebusiers; but his
forecastle artillery was, for reasons above mentioned, more efficient,
while his bulwarks, like those of other Christian vessels, were
protected from boarders by nettings and other devices with which the
Turks had not provided themselves. Requesens, wary and watchful, lay
astern with two galleys, from which he led fresh troops into the
flag-ship from time to time. Alongside, Vaniero and Colonna were each
hotly engaged with an antagonist. The combat between the two chiefs was
on the whole not unequal, and it was fought with great gallantry on both
sides. From the Turkish forecastle the arquebusiers at first severely
galled the Christians. Don Lope de Figueroa, who commanded on the prow
of the flag-ship, lost so many of his men that he was compelled to ask
for assistance. Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who led a party to his aid,
was struck on the chest by a spent ball from an esmeril, and in falling
backward received injuries from which he soon expired. Considerable
execution was also done by the Turkish arrows, with which portions of
the masts and spars bristled. Several of these missiles came from the
bow of the Pacha himself, who was probably the last commander-in-chief
who ever drew a bowstring in European battle. But on the whole the fire
of the Christians was greatly superior to that of the Turks. Twice the
deck of Ali was swept clear of defenders, and twice the Spaniards rushed
on board and advanced as far as the mainmast. At that point they were on
each occasion driven back by the janizaries, who, though led by Ali in
person, do not appear to have made good a footing on the deck of Don
John. A third attempt was more successful. Not only did the Spaniards
pass the mast, but they approached the poop and assailed it with a
vigorous fire. The Pacha led on his janizaries to meet them, but it
seems with small hope of making a successful resistance, for at the same
moment he threw into the sea a small box which was supposed to contain
his most precious jewels. A ball from an arquebuse soon afterward struck
him in the forehead. He fell forward upon the gangway (_crucija_). A
soldier from Malaga, seizing the body, cut off the head and carried it
to Don John, who was already on board the Turkish vessel, leading a
fresh body of men to the support of their comrades. The trophy was then
raised on the point of a lance, to be seen by friend and foe. The Turks
paused for a moment panic-stricken; the Christians shouted victory, and,
hauling down the Turkish standard, hoisted a flag with a cross in its
place. Don John ordered his trumpets to sound, and the good news was
soon proclaimed in the adjacent galleys of the League. The Turks
defended their flag-ship but feebly after the death of their Pacha. The
vessel, which was the first taken, was in the hands of the Spaniards
about two o'clock in the afternoon--about an hour and a half after the
two leaders had engaged each other. A brigantine which had been employed
in bringing up fresh troops, surrendered almost at the same time. The
neighboring galleys of the Sultan had themselves been by this time too
severely handled to render much assistance. Only one serious attempt was
made to recover the ship of Ali or to avenge its loss. Several galleys
from other parts of the line bore down at once upon Don John. The
movement was perceived by Santa Cruz, whose vessels of reserve were
still untouched. Dashing into the advancing squadron, he had the
good-fortune to sink one galley by the force of his fire; and he
immediately boarded another and put all the janizaries to the sword. Don
John himself dealt with the remaining assailants.
Vaniero and Colonna fought with great gallantry and success, and each
vanquished the Turk who had engaged him. The brave old Admiral of Venice
fairly earned the Doge's cap, which soon after crowned his hoary brow.
He was often in the thickest of the fire; and when, in the absence of
many of his men, who had boarded the Turkish flag-ship, his own was also
boarded, he repulsed the assailants in person, and, fighting with all
the vigor of youth, received a wound in the foot on the deck of the
galley of Pertau Pacha, whither he had pursued his advantage. A second
Turkish galley, advancing to attack Vaniero, was run into about midships
and sunk by Giovanni Contarini. Giovanni de Loredano and Caterino
Malipieri were less happy in the enemies whom they encountered, and
perished in their sunken vessels. From the flag-ship of Genoa the young
Prince of Parma, followed by a single Spanish soldier named Alonso
Davalos, leaped into a Turkish galley, fought their way through its
defenders without a wound, and might also boast of having, unaided,
caused it to strike its flag. Two other Turks afterward surrendered to
the Genoese flag-ship, the captain of which, Ettore Spinola, lost his
life by an arrow. In the flag-ship of Savoy, under a captain named Leni,
of remarkable courage, who was also severely wounded, the Prince of
Urbino likewise greatly distinguished himself. The gallant Karacosh was
compelled to surrender to Juan Bautista Cortez, a captain of the King of
Spain, although his galley was defended by one hundred fifty picked
janizaries and was one of the best built and equipped vessels in the
fleet. The Eleugina of the Pope had the credit of taking the guard-ship
of Rhodes; and the Toscana, also a papal galley, in making a prize of
the vessel of the Turkish paymaster recovered to the pontifical squadron
the flag-ship of the contingent of Pius IV in the unfortunate battle of
Gerbi. The crowning achievement of the central division was performed by
the Grand Commander, who attacked and captured after an obstinate and
bloody contest, a fine galley, in which were the sons of the deceased
Ali Pacha. These lads--Mahomet Bey, aged seventeen years, and Said Bey,
aged thirteen--had been brought to sea by their father for the first
time. Their capture was of importance, because the mother of one of them
was a sister of Sultan Selim.
Juan de Cardona, who sailed on the left of the right wing, finding no
enemy opposed to him, brought his vessel round to the rear of the
Turkish centre, and attacked Pertau Pacha, with whom Paolo Giordano
Orsini was engaged in a somewhat unequal conflict. After a stout
resistance the Christians entered the Turkish galley, out of which the
Pacha, though wounded, succeeded in escaping in a boat.
The right wing of the Christians and the Turkish left wing did not
engage each other until some time after the other divisions were in
deadly conflict. Doria and Aluch Ali were, each of them, bent on
outmanoeuvring the other. The Algerine did not succeed, like Sirocco,
in insinuating himself between his adversary and the shore. But the
seamen whose skill and daring were the admiration of the Mediterranean
were not easily baffled. Finding himself foiled in his first attempt, he
slackened his course, and, threatening sometimes one vessel and
sometimes another, drew the Genoese eastward, until the inferior speed
of some of the galleys had caused an opening at the northern end of the
Christian line. Upon this opening the crafty corsair immediately bore
down with all the speed of his oars, and passed through it with most of
his galleys. This evolution placed him in the rear of the whole
Christian line of battle. On the extreme right of the centre division
sailed Prior Giustiniani, the commodore of the small Maltese squadron.
This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and
had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had,
the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of
boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St.
John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of
battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling
round like a hawk, he bore down from behind upon the unhappy prior. The
three war-worn vessels of St. John were no match for seven stout
Algerines which had not yet fired a shot. The knights and their men
defended themselves with a valor worthy of their heroic order. A youth
named Bernardino de Heredia, son of the Count of Fuentes, signally
distinguished himself; and a Saragossan knight, Geronimo Ramirez,
although riddled with arrows like another St. Sebastian, fought with
such desperation that none of the Algerine boarders cared to approach
him until they saw that he was dead. A knight of Burgundy leaped alone
into one of the enemy's galleys, killed four Turks, and defended himself
until overpowered by numbers. On board the prior's vessel, when he was
taken, he himself, pierced with five arrow wounds, was the sole
survivor, except two knights, a Spaniard and a Sicilian, who, being
senseless from their wounds, were considered as dead. Having secured the
banner of St. John, Aluch Ali took the prior's ship in tow, and was
making the best of his way out of a battle which his skilful eye soon
discovered to be irretrievably lost. He had not, however, sailed far
when he was in turn descried by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who, with
his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of
Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind for the fate of Giustiniani,
and resolved to content himself with the banner of Malta. Cutting his
prize adrift, he plied his oars and escaped, leaving the prior
grievously wounded to the care of his friends, and once more master, not
only of his ship, but of three hundred dead enemies who cumbered the
deck, a few living Algerine mariners who were to navigate the vessel,
and some Turkish soldiers, from whom he had just purchased his life.
This struggle cost the order, in killed alone, upward of thirty knights,
among whom was the Grand Bailiff of Germany, commander-in-chief of its
land forces. A few were also made prisoners, most of them desperately
wounded. For one of them, Borgianni Gianfigliazzi, his relations at
Florence, supposing him dead, performed funeral obsequies, in spite of
which he returned home from captivity, and was afterward ambassador from
the Grand Duke to Sultan Amurath. Two other knights, Mastrillo and
Caraffa, finding themselves unsupported in an enemy's brigantine, had
given themselves up, and had just bribed their captor to spare their
lives and admit them to a ransom, when a Neapolitan galley coming by
boarded the brigantine and turned their new master into their slave.
The main body of the Turkish left wing, though long of engaging the
Christian right, fought with perhaps greater fierceness than any other
part of the fleet. The battle was raging in that part of the line with
very doubtful aspect, when Don John of Austria found himself free from
the attacks of the enemies immediately around him. Thither, therefore,
he steered to the assistance of his comrades. The Turks, perceiving the
approach of a succoring squadron, and surmising the disasters which had
occurred in the centre, immediately gave way and dispersed. Sixteen of
the Algerine galleys, however, retired together, and rallying at a
little distance, adopted the tactics of their chief, by making a circuit
toward the shore of the Morea, and endeavoring to sweep round upon the
rear of the Christians. Their manoeuvres were closely watched by Don
Juan de Cardona, who placed himself in their path with eight galleys.
The encounter which took place between the two unequal squadrons was one
of the bloodiest episodes of the battle. Cardona was completely
successful, disabling some of his antagonists and putting the rest to
flight. His loss was, however, very severe. His own galley suffered more
damage than any vessel in the fleet which was not rendered absolutely
unfit for service. The forecastle was a ruin; the bulwark and defences
of all kinds were shattered to pieces; and the masts and spars were
stuck full of arrows. Cardona himself, after escaping a ball from an
arquebus, which was turned by a cuirass of fine steel given to him at
Genoa by the Prince of Tuscany, received a severe wound in the throat,
of which he died. Of the five hundred Sicilian soldiers who fought on
board his galleys only fifty remained unwounded. Many of the officers
were slain, and not one escaped without a wound. Others had suffered
even greater loss. In the Florence, a papal galley, not only many
knights of St. Stephen were killed, but also every soldier and slave;
and the captain, Tommaso de' Medicis, himself severely wounded, found
himself at the head of only seventeen wounded seamen. In the San
Giovanni, another vessel of the Pope, the soldiers were also killed to a
man, the rowing-benches occupied by corpses, and a captain laid for dead
with two musket-balls in his neck. The Piamontesa of Savoy had likewise
lost her commander and all of her soldiers and rowers.
Although Doria, having suffered himself to be outmanoeuvred by Aluch
Ali, and having failed to exchange a shot with that leader, could not
claim any considerable part of the laurels of the day, he was
nevertheless frequently engaged with other foes and made several prizes.
He escaped without a wound, though he was covered with blood of a
soldier killed by a cannon-ball close behind him.
On the left wing of the Christian fleet, the battle, which had begun so
unpropitiously, was also brought to a prosperous issue. The wound of
Barbarigo transferred the command to the commissary Canale. Aided by
Nano, who commanded Barbarigo's galley, Canale engaged and sunk the
vessel of the Pacha of Alexandria. Mahomet Sirocco himself, severely
wounded, was fished out of the sea by Gian Contarini, and sent on board
Canale's galley. As the wound of the Turk appeared to be mortal, the
Venetian relieved him from further suffering by cutting off his head.
Marco Quirini likewise did gallant service, compelling several of the
enemy to strike their flags. Of the remaining galleys many were run
ashore by their crews, of whom the greater number were slain or drowned
as they attempted to swim to land.
The victory of the Christians at Lepanto was in a great measure to be
ascribed to the admirable tactics of their chief. The shock of the
Turkish onset was effectually broken by the dexterous disposition made
of the galeases of Venice. Indeed, had the great ships been there to
strengthen the sparse line formed by these six vessels, it is not
impossible that the Turks would have failed in forcing their way through
the wall of that terrible fire. Each Christian vessel, by the
retrenchment of its peak, enjoyed an advantage over its antagonist in
the freer play of its artillery. When, however, the galleys of Selim
came to close combat with the galleys of the League, the battle became a
series of isolated struggles which depended more upon individual mind
and manhood than upon any comprehensive plan of far-seeing calculation.
But Don John of Austria had the merit or the good-fortune of bringing
his forces into action in the highest moral and material perfection; of
placing admirable means in the hands of men whose spirit was in the
right temper to use them. He struck his great blow at the happy moment
when great dangers are cheerfully confronted and great things easily
accomplished.
His plan of battle was on the whole admirably executed. The galleys of
the various confederates were so studiously intermingled that each
vessel was incited to do its utmost by the spur of rivalry. Vaniero and
Colonna deserve their full share of the credit of the day; and the
gallant Santa Cruz, although at first stationed in the rear, soon found
and employed his opportunity of earning his share of laurels. On Doria
alone Roman and Venetian critics, and indeed public opinion, pronounced
a less favorable verdict. His shoreward movement unquestionably had the
effect of enabling Aluch Ali to cut the Christian line and fall with
damaging force upon its rear, and of rendering the victory more costly
in blood and less rich in prizes. This movement was ascribed to the
desire of the Genoese to spare his own ships, and to secure a safe
retreat for himself in case of a disaster; and he was further even
taunted with cowardice for hauling down the gilded celestial sphere, the
proud cognizance of his house, which usually surmounted his flag-staff.
To the latter charge his friends replied that the sphere was taken down
to secure it from injury, it being the gift of his wife, and that his
ship was too well known to both the fleets to find safety in the want of
her usual badge. The other accusations, they considered, were disposed
of by the necessity of shaping his course according to the tactics of
the Algerine, and abundantly refuted by the vigor and success with which
he at last attacked the enemy. It is not improbable that the true
explanation of his conduct is that offered by the captain of a
Neapolitan galley, present at the battle, that he wished to gain an
advantage over Aluch Ali by seamanship, and that the renegade, no less
skilled in the game, played it on this occasion better than he.
Although in numbers, both of men and vessels, the Sultan's fleet was
superior to the fleet of the League, this superiority was more than
counterbalanced by other important advantages possessed by the
Christians. The artillery of the West was of greater power and far
better served than the ordnance of the East; and its fire was rendered
doubly disastrous by the thronged condition of the Turkish vessels. The
lofty-peaked prows of these vessels seriously interfered, as we have
already seen, with the working of their guns. A great number of their
combatants were armed with the bow instead of the firelock, which placed
them at an obvious disadvantage, except during heavy rains, which
extinguished the match of the latter weapon. Of the Turks who carried
the musket or arquebus few could handle them with the expertness of a
Christian soldier. The advantages which the League derived from its
galeases were heightened by the fact that a large proportion of its
other vessels were superior to their antagonists. The galleys of the
King of Spain were, in general, both more strongly built and more
carefully protected against boarders than those of the Sultan. Even
early in the battle the Moslems began to discover that they were
overmatched. In many of the galleys the guns were at once silenced by
the heavier artillery of the Christians, in whose hands the fire of the
arquebus and the musket, when they came to close quarters, proved so
withering that the enemy's deck was sometimes swept clean before they
boarded, and the turbaned heads of the janizaries were seen crouching
beneath the benches of the slaves. When the conflict was transferred to
the Turkish decks, the Christians, however, found themselves fiercely
met, and among other means of opposing their progress they perceived
that the central gangway (_corsia_) had been torn up, or they slipped
upon planking which had been smeared with butter, oil, or even, it is
said, with honey, to render the footing insecure. So efficient were the
nettings and other precautions with which Don John of Austria defended
the bulwarks of his ships that he was able to inform Philip II that not
a Turk had set foot upon a single deck belonging to his majesty.
Such were some of the chief causes of the success of the arms of the
League. In the sixteenth century, in a vast concourse of men of the
South, hot from battle and largely leavened with priests and friars, it
was natural that the victory should be by many ascribed to a more
mysterious agency. In the opinion of these persons the Almighty had
evidently been fighting on the side of the Pope and the Cross, although
they would perhaps have demurred to the logical deduction from that
opinion that at Cyprus he had steadily adhered to the drunken Sultan and
the Crescent. It was not only in the victory that they saw the finger of
Omnipotence, but in many accidents and incidents of the day. The wind,
which wafted the Turks swiftly to destruction, changed at the precise
moment when it was needed to aid the onset of the Christians. The
boisterous sea also sank to smoothness in the special interest of the
League. Of the clergy and friars who ministered on the Spanish decks to
the wounded and dying, although some of them were struck, not one was
killed. The Venetians were less fortunate, having four chaplains killed
and three wounded; and the Pope likewise lost one of his friars, who
died of his wounds soon after the battle. The churchmen exposed
themselves as freely as the combatants, whom they encouraged from
conspicuous posts either on deck or in the rigging, and sometimes by
example as well as precept. A Spanish Capuchin, an old soldier, had tied
his crucifix to a halbert, and, crying that Christ would fight for his
faith, led the boarders of his galley over the bulwarks of her
antagonist; after using his weapon manfully, he returned victorious and
untouched.
An Italian priest, with a great gilded crucifix in one hand and a sword
in another, stood cheering on his spiritual sons, unharmed in the
fiercest centre of the arrowy sleet and iron hail. A Roman Capuchin,
finding his flock getting the worst of it, seized a boat-hook, and,
pulling his peaked hood over his face, rushed into the fray, laid about
him until he had slain seven Turks and driven the rest from the deck,
and lived to call a smile to the thin lips of Pius V by telling the
story of his prowess. The green banner of Mecca, brought from the
Prophet's tomb, and unfurled from the main-top of Ali, was riddled with
shot, which rendered illegible many of the sacred words with which it
was embroidered. But the azure standard of the League, blessed by the
supreme Pontiff and emblazoned with the image of the crucified Redeemer,
remained untouched by bolt or bullet, although masts, spars, and shrouds
around were torn and shattered from top to bottom.
The battle was over about four o'clock in the afternoon. The rout of the
centre and right wing of the Turk was complete. The vessels which
composed these divisions were either sunk or taken, or they had singly
sought safety in flight. A few galleys of the left wing still followed
the banner of the Viceroy of Algiers. After hovering for a while near
the coast of the Morea he made sail for St. Maura. Don John of Austria,
with Doria and some other captains, gave him chase, but was compelled to
desist for want of oarsmen. The pursuit, however, was not altogether
unsuccessful, for several of the panic-stricken Algerines ran their
galleys ashore, where some of them suffered shipwreck on the rocks. In
the course of the night Aluch Ali and his little squadron of fugitives
stole back from St. Maura to Lepanto. That harbor afforded a refuge to
about nine-and-twenty vessels, most of them much shattered, the sole
remains of the proud and confident armament which had so lately sailed
out from between the two castles.
MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW
A.D. 1572
HENRY WHITE ISAAC D'ISRAELI JNO. RUDD
Among the numberless butcheries which history, both ancient and
modern, records, there has been none more remarkable in motive,
execution, and number of victims than the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. It is scarcely less remarkable as being one of those
historic crimes which defeat their own purpose by reacting against
the perpetrators and advancing the cause of those who suffer
outrage.
The tragedy of St. Bartholomew's Day marked the culmination of the
great struggle which devastated France in the latter half of the
sixteenth century. During the reign of Francis I (1515-1547) and his
immediate successors, Henry II (1547-1559), Francis II (1559-1560),
and Charles IX (1560-1574), "the Huguenot (French Protestant)
character was formed, and the nation gradually separated into two
parties so fanatically hostile that the extermination of the weaker
seemed the only possible means of reestablishing the unity of
France."
The "Puritans of France" were persecuted under all these kings.
During the minority of Charles IX his mother, Catherine de' Medici,
was regent, and throughout his reign she dictated the King's policy.
Under this rule the persecutions continued with increasing violence.
From 1562 to 1570 France was torn with civil wars between Catholics
and Protestants. On the Protestant side the great leaders were the
Prince of Conde, Admiral Coligny, and later Henry of Navarre. Conde
was murdered in 1569. By the Peace of St. Germain (1570) the
Huguenots received some favorable concessions. The weak Charles IX,
now in fear of Philip II of Spain, was inclining to the Protestant
side. Seconded by Coligny, he planned alliances with all the enemies
of Philip in Europe. But Catherine overruled him. Charles and
Coligny, however, had their way in the marriage of the King's
sister, Margaret of Valois, to Henry of Navarre. Coligny now gained
a stronger influence over the young Charles. He was followed by a
large body of exulting Protestants to Paris, and the Catholic party,
headed by Catherine, the Duke of Anjou, and the Guises, became
greatly enraged.
Of the terrible massacre which followed, and in which the number
killed throughout France has been estimated at from twenty thousand
to one hundred thousand, Coligny was the first victim. One attempt
to assassinate him failed; he was only wounded; and the Queen-mother
then plied her weak son with argument and persuasion in order to
make him consent to the admiral's murder and to the massacre which
had been arranged, with profound secrecy, for August 24th. She told
him of a Huguenot plot, in which, at a signal from Coligny,
conspirators were to rise throughout the kingdom, overturn the
throne, take Charles himself prisoner, and destroy the Queen-mother
and the Catholic nobility. She showed him some proofs, "forged or
real," of his personal danger.
As a counter-view to the intensely bitter picture of Catherine
presented by most non-Catholic historians, and represented here by
White, the explanation of Charles IX himself, in the letter
furnished by D'Israeli, possesses a peculiar interest.
HENRY WHITE
The King sat moody and silent, biting his nails, as was his wont. He
would come to no decision. He asked for proofs, and none was
forthcoming, except some idle gossip of the streets and the foolish
threats of a few hot-headed Huguenots. Charles had learned to love the
admiral: could he believe that the gentle Coligny and that
Rochefoucault, the companion of his rough sports, were guilty of this
meditated plot? He desired to be the king of France--of Huguenots and
Catholics alike--not a king of party. Catherine, in her despair,
employed her last argument. She whispered in his ear, "Perhaps, sire,
you are afraid." As if struck by an arrow, he started from his chair.
Raving like a madman, he bade them hold their tongues, and with fearful
oaths exclaimed: "Kill the admiral, if you like, but kill all the
Huguenots with him--all--all--all--so that not one be left to reproach
me hereafter. See to it at once--at once; do you hear?" And he dashed
furiously out of the closet, leaving the conspirators aghast at his
violence.
But there was no time to be lost; the King might change his mind; the
Huguenots might get wind of the plot. The murderous scheme must be
carried out that very night, and accordingly the Duke of Guise was
summoned to the Louvre. And now the different parts of the tragedy were
arranged, Guise undertaking, on the strength of his popularity with the
Parisian mob, to lead them to the work of blood. We may also imagine him
begging as a favor the privilege of despatching the admiral in
retaliation for his father's murder. The city was parted into districts,
each of which was assigned to some trusty officer, Marshal Tavannes
having the general superintendence of the military arrangements. The
conspirators now separated, intending to meet again at ten o'clock.
Guise went into the city, where he communicated his plans to such of the
mob leaders as could be trusted. He told them of a bloody conspiracy
among the Huguenot chiefs to destroy the King and the royal family and
extirpate Catholicism; that a renewal of war was inevitable, but it was
better that war should come in the streets of Paris than in the open
field, for the leaders would thus be far more effectually punished and
their followers crushed. He affirmed that letters had been intercepted
in which the admiral had sought the aid of German reiters and Swiss
pikemen, and that Montmorency was approaching with twenty-five thousand
men to burn the city, as the Huguenots had often threatened. And, as if
to give color to this idle story, a small body of cavalry had been seen
from the walls in the early part of the day.
Such arguments and such falsehoods were admirably adapted to his
hearers, who swore to carry out the Duke's orders with secrecy and
despatch. "It is the will of our lord the King," continued Henry of
Guise, "that every good citizen should take up arms to purge the city of
that rebel Coligny and his heretical followers. The signal will be given
by the great bell of the Palace of Justice. Then let every true Catholic
tie a white band on his arm and put a white cross in his cap, and begin
the vengeance of God." Finding upon inquiry that Le Charron, the provost
of the merchants, was too weak and tender-hearted for the work before
him, the Duke suggested that the municipality should temporarily confer
his power on the ex-provost Marcel, a man of very different stamp.
About four in the afternoon Anjou rode through the crowded streets in
company with his bastard brother Angouleme. He watched the aspect of the
populace, and let fall a few insidious expressions in no degree
calculated to quiet the turbulent passions of the citizens. One account
says he distributed money, which is not probable, his afternoon ride
being merely a sort of reconnaissance. The journals of the Hotel de
Ville still attest the anxiety of the court--of Catherine and her
fellow-conspirator--that the massacre should be sweeping and complete.
"Very late in the evening"--it must have been after dark, for the King
went to lie down at eight, and did not rise until ten--the provost was
sent for. At the Louvre he found Charles, the Queen-mother, and the Duke
of Anjou, with other princes and nobles, among whom we may safely
include Guise, De Retz, and Tavannes. The King now repeated to him the
story of the Huguenot plot which had already been whispered abroad by
Guise of Anjou, and bade him shut the gates of the city, so that no one
could pass in or out, and take possession of the keys. He was also to
draw up all the boats on the river bank and chain them together, to
remove the ferry, to muster under arms the able-bodied men of each ward
under their proper officers, and hold them in readiness at the usual
mustering-places to receive the orders of his majesty. The city
artillery, which does not appear to have been as formidable as the word
would imply, was to be stationed at the Greve to protect the Hotel de
Ville or for any other duty required of it. With these instructions the
provost returned to the Hotel de Ville, where he spent great part of the
night in preparing the necessary orders, which were issued "very early
the next morning." There is reason for believing that these measures
were simply precautions in case the Huguenots should resist and a bloody
struggle should have to be fought in the streets of their capital. The
municipality certainly took no part in the earlier massacres, whatever
they may have done later. Tavannes complains of the "want of zeal" in
some of the citizens, and Brantome admits that "it was necessary to
threaten to hang some of the laggards."
That evening the King had supped in public, and, the hours being much
earlier than with us, the time was probably between six and seven. The
courtiers admitted to witness the meal appear to have been as numerous
as ever, Huguenots as well as Catholics, victims and executioners.
Charles, who retired before eight o'clock, kept Francis, Count of La
Rochefoucault, with him for some time, as if unwilling to part with him.
"Do not go," he said; "it is late. We will sit and talk all night."
"Excuse me, sire, I am tired and sleepy."
"You must stay; you can sleep with my valets." But as Charles was rather
too fond of rough practical jokes, the Count still declined, and went
away, suspecting no evil, to pay his usual evening visit to the Dowager
Princess of Conde. He must have remained some time in her apartments,
for it was past twelve o'clock when he went to bid Navarre good-night.
As he was leaving the palace a man stopped him at the foot of the stairs
and whispered in his ear. When the stranger left. La Rochefoucault bade
Mergey, one of his suite, to whom we are indebted for these particulars,
return and tell Henry that Guise and Nevers were about the city. During
Mergey's brief absence something more appears to have been told the
Count, for he returned upstairs with Nancay, captain of the guard, who,
lifting the tapestry which closed the entrance to Navarre's antechamber,
looked for some time at the gentlemen within, playing at cards or dice,
others talking. At last he said: "Gentlemen, if any one of you wishes to
retire, you must do so at once, for we are going to shut the gates." No
one moved, as it would appear, for at Charles' express desire, it is
said--which is scarcely probable--these Huguenot gentlemen had gathered
round the King of Navarre to protect him against any outrage of the
Guises. In the court-yard Mergey found the guard under arms. "M.
Rambouillet, who loved me," he continues, "was sitting by the wicket as
I passed out. He took my hand, and with a piteous look said: 'Adieu,
Mergey; adieu, my friend,' not daring to say more, as he told me
afterward."
Coligny's hotel had been crowded all day by visitors; the Queen of
Navarre had paid him a visit, and most of the gentlemen in Paris,
Catholic as well as Huguenot, had gone to express their sympathy. For
the Frenchman is a gallant enemy and respects brave men; and the foul
attempt upon the admiral, whom they had so often encountered on the
battle-field, was felt as a personal injury. A council had been held
that day, at which the propriety of removing in a body from Paris and
carrying the admiral with them had again been discussed. Navarre and
Conde opposed the proposition, and it was finally resolved to petition
to the King "to order all the Guisians out of Paris, because they had
too much sway with the people of the town." One Bouchavannnes, a
traitor, was among them, greedily listening to every word, which he
reported to Anjou, strengthening him in his determination to make a
clean sweep that very night.
As the evening came on, the admiral's visitors took their leave.
Teligny, his son-in-law, was the last to quit his bedside. To the
question whether the admiral would like any of them to keep watch in his
house during the night, he answered, says the contemporary biographer,
"that it was labor more than needed, and gave them thanks with very
loving words." It was after midnight when Teligny and Guerchy departed,
leaving Ambrose Pare and Pastor Merlin with the wounded man. There were
besides in the house two of his gentlemen, Cornaton, afterward his
biographer, and La Bonne; his squire Yolet, five Switzers belonging to
the King of Navarre's guard, and about as many domestic servants. It was
the last night on earth for all except two of that household.
It is strange that the arrangements in the city, which must have been
attended with no little commotion, did not rouse the suspicion of the
Huguenots. Probably, in their blind confidence, they trusted implicitly
in the King's word that these movements of arms and artillery, these
postings of guards and midnight musters, were intended to keep the
Guisian faction in order. There is a story that some gentlemen, aroused
by the measured tread of the soldiers and the glare of torches--for no
lamps then lit up the streets of Paris--went outdoors and asked what it
meant. Receiving an unsatisfactory reply, they proceeded to the Louvre,
where they found the outer court filled with armed men, who, seeing them
without the white cross and the scarf, abused them as "accursed
Huguenots," whose turn would come next. One of them who replied to this
insolent threat, was immediately run through with a spear. This, if the
incident be true, occurred about one o'clock on Sunday morning, August
24th, the festival of St. Bartholomew.
Shortly after midnight the Queen-mother rose and went to the King's
chamber, attended only by one lady, the Duchess of Nemours, whose thirst
for revenge was to be satisfied at last. She found Charles pacing the
room in one of those fits of passion which he at times assumed to
conceal his infirmity of purpose. At one moment he swore he would raise
the Huguenots and call them to protect their sovereign's life as well as
their own. Then he burst out into violent imprecations against his
brother Anjou, who had entered the room but did not dare say a word.
Presently the other conspirators arrived--Guise, Nevers, Birague, De
Retz, and Tavannes. Catherine alone ventured to interpose, and, in a
tone of sternness well calculated to impress the mind of her weak son,
she declared that there was now no turning back: "It is too late to
retreat, even were it possible. We must cut off the rotten limb, hurt it
ever so much; if you delay, you will lose the finest opportunity God
ever gave man of getting rid of his enemies at a blow." And then, as if
struck with compassion for the fate of her victims, she repeated in a
low tone--as if talking to herself--the words of a famous Italian
preacher, which she had often been heard to quote before: "_E la pieta
lor ser crudele, e la crudelta lor ser pietosa_" ("Mercy would be
cruel to them, and cruelty merciful"). Catherine's resolution again
prevailed over the King's weakness, and, the final orders being given,
the Duke of Guise quitted the Louvre, followed by two companies of
arquebusiers and the whole of Anjou's guard.
As soon as Guise had left, the chief criminals--each afraid to lose
sight of the other, each needing the presence of the other to keep his
courage up--went to a room adjoining the tennis-court overlooking the
Place Bassecour. Of all the party--Charles, Catherine, Anjou, and De
Retz--Charles was the least guilty and the most to be pitied. They went
to the window, anxiously listening for the signal that the work of death
had begun. Their consciences, no less than their impatience, made it
impossible for them to sit calmly within the palace. Anjou's narrative
continues: "While we were pondering over the events and the consequences
of such a mighty enterprise, of which, to tell the truth, we had not
thought much until then, we heard a pistol shot. The sound produced such
an effect upon all three of us that it confounded our senses and
deprived us of judgment. We were smitten with terror and apprehension of
the great disorders about to be perpetrated." Catherine, who was a timid
woman, adds Tavannes, would willingly have recalled her orders, and with
that intent hastily despatched a gentleman to the Duke of Guise
expressly desiring him to return and attempt nothing against the
admiral. "It is too late," was the answer brought back; "the admiral is
dead"--a statement at variance with other accounts. "Thereupon,"
continues Anjou, "we returned to our former deliberations, and let
things take their course."
Between three and four in the morning the noise of horses and measured
tramp of foot-soldiers broke the silence of the narrow street in which
Coligny lay wounded. It was the murderers seeking their victims: they
were Henry of Guise with his uncle the Duke of Aumale, the bastard of
Angouleme, and the Duke of Nevers, with other foreigners, Italian and
Swiss, namely, Fesinghi (or Tosinghi) and his nephew Antonio, Captain
Petrucci, Captain Studer of Winkelbach with his soldiers, Martin Koch of
Freyberg, Conrad Burg, Leonard Grunenfelder of Glaris, and Carl
Dianowitz, surnamed Behm (the Bohemian?). There were, besides, one
Captain Attin, in the household of Aumale, and Sarlabous, a renegade
Huguenot and commandant of Havre. It is well to record the names even of
these obscure individuals who stained their hands in the best blood of
France. De Cosseins, too, was there with his guard, some of whom he
posted with their arquebuses opposite the windows of Coligny's hotel,
that none might escape.
Presently there was a loud knock at the outer gate--"Open in the King's
name." La Bonne, imagining it to be a message from the Louvre, hastened
with the keys, withdrew the bolt, and was immediately butchered by the
assassins who rushed into the house. The alarmed domestics ran half
awake to see what was the uproar: some were killed outright, others
escaped upstairs, closing the door at the foot and placing some
furniture against it. This feeble barrier was soon broken down, and the
Swiss who had attempted to resist were shot. The tumult woke Coligny
from his slumbers, and divining what it meant--that Guise had made an
attack on the house--he was lifted from his bed, and, folding his
_robe-de-chambre_ round him, sat down prepared to meet his fate.
Cornaton entering the room at this moment, Ambrose Pare asked him what
was the meaning of the noise. Turning to his beloved master he replied:
"Sir, it is God calling us to himself. They have broken into the house,
and we can do nothing."
"I have been long prepared to die," said the admiral. "But you must all
flee for your lives, if it be not too late; you cannot save me. I commit
my soul to God's mercy." They obeyed him, but only two succeeded in
making their way over the roofs. Pastor Merlin lay hid for three days in
a loft, where he was fed by a hen, that every morning laid an egg within
his reach.
Pare and Coligny were left alone--Coligny looking as calm and collected
as if no danger impended. After a brief interval of suspense the door
was dashed open, and Cosseins, wearing a corselet and brandishing a
bloody sword in his hand, entered the room, followed by Behm, Sarlabous,
and others; a party of Anjou's Swiss guard, in their tricolored uniform
of black, white, and green, keeping in the rear. Expecting resistance,
the ruffians were for a moment staggered at seeing only two unarmed men.
But his brutal instincts rapidly regaining the mastery, Behm stepped
forward, and pointing his sword at Coligny's breast asked, "Are you not
the admiral?"
"I am, but, young man, you should respect my gray hairs, and not attack
a wounded man. Yet what matters it? You cannot shorten my life except by
God's permission." The German soldier, uttering a blasphemous oath,
plunged his sword into the admiral's breast.
"_Jugulumque parans, immota tonebat_
_Ora senex._"
Others in the room struck him also, Behm repeating his blows until the
admiral fell to the floor. The murderer now ran to the window and
shouted into the court-yard, "It is all over." Henry of Guise, who had
been impatiently ordering his creatures to make haste, was not satisfied.
"Monsieur d'Angouleme will not believe it unless he sees him," returned
the Duke. Behm raised the body from the ground, and dragged it to the
window to throw it out; but life was not quite extinct, and the admiral
placed his foot against the wall, faintly resisting the attempt. "Is it
so, old fox?" exclaimed the murderer, who drew his dagger and stabbed
him several times. Then, assisted by Sarlabous, he threw the body down.
It was hardly to be recognized. The bastard of Angouleme--the chevalier
as he is called in some of the narratives--wiped the blood from the face
of the corpse. "Yes, it is he; I know him well," said Guise, kicking the
body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a
good beginning. Forward--by the King's command." He mounted his horse
and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically
exclaimed as he looked at the body, "_Sic transit gloria mundi_."
Tosinghi took the chain of gold--the insignia of his office--from the
admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of
Nevers, cut off the head and carried it away carefully to the Louvre. Of
all who were found in the house, not one was spared except Ambrose Pare,
who was escorted in safety to the palace by a detachment of Anjou's
guard.
Coligny's headless trunk was left for some hours where it fell, until it
became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round Paris.
They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and blacken the
remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out
again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance
with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the
hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged up by the
heels. All the court went to gratify their eyes with the sight, and
Charles, unconsciously imitating the language of Vitellius, said, as he
drew near the offensive corpse, "The smell of a dead enemy is always
sweet." The body was left hanging for a fortnight or more, after which
it was privily taken down by the admiral's cousin, Marshal Montmorency,
and it now rests, after many removals, in a wall among the ruins of his
hereditary castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing. What became of the head no one
knows.
When Guise left the admiral's corpse lying in the court-yard, he went
to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were
killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the
enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a
man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor
La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly
fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard
shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly
unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons in the
King's name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging in one of
his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him as he had punished others,
like schoolboys. He opened the door and fell dead across the threshold,
pierced by a dozen weapons.
When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that
it was "too late," Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the
royal commands might incense the King and awaken him to a sense of all
the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately
gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin
bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice,
she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that
warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower,
rousing all Paris from their slumbers.
Immediately from every quarter of that ancient city uprose a tumult as
of hell. The clanging of bells, the crashing doors, the rush of armed
men, the musket-shots, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all
the yells of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves--made
such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, and the sanest
appear to have lost their reason. Women unsexed, men wanting but the
strength of the wild beast, children without a single charm of youth or
innocence, crowded the streets where rising day still struggled with
the glare of a thousand torches. They smelt the odor of blood, and,
thirsting to indulge their passions for once with impunity, committed
horrors that have become the marvel of history.
Within the walls of the Louvre, within the hearing of Charles and his
mother, if not actually within their sight, one of the foulest scenes of
this detestable tragedy was enacted. At daybreak, says Queen Margaret of
Navarre, her husband rose to go and play tennis, with a determination
to be present at the King's _lever_, and demand justice for the assault
on the admiral. He left his apartment, accompanied by the Huguenot
gentlemen who had kept watch around him during the night. At the foot
of the stairs he was arrested, while the gentlemen with him were
disarmed, apparently without any attempt at resistance. A list of them
had been carefully drawn up, which the sire D'O, quartermaster of the
guards, read out. As each man answered his name, he stepped into the
court-yard, where he had to make his way through a double line of Swiss
mercenaries. Sword, spear, and halberd made short work of them, and two
hundred, according to Davila, of the best blood of France soon lay a
ghastly pile beneath the windows of the palace. Charles, it is said,
looked on coldly at the horrid deed, the victims appealing in vain to
his mercy. Among the gentlemen they murdered were two who had been
boldest in their language to the King not many hours before--Segur,
Baron of Pardaillan, and Armand de Clermont, Baron of Pilles, who with
stentorian voices called upon the King to be true to his word. De
Pilles took off his rich cloak and offered it to someone whom he
recognized: "Here is a present from the hand of De Pilles, basely and
traitorously murdered."
"I am not the man you take me for," said the other, refusing the cloak.
The Swiss plundered their victims as they fell, and, pointing to the
heap of half-naked bodies, described them to the spectators as the men
who had conspired to kill the King and all the royal family in their
sleep, and make France a republic. But more disgraceful than even this
massacre was the conduct of some of the ladies in Catherine's train, of
her "flying squadron," who, later in the day, inspected and laughed at
the corpses as they lay stripped in the court-yard, being especially
curious about the body of Soubise, from whom his wife had sought to be
divorced on the ground of nullity of marriage.
A few gentlemen succeeded in escaping from this slaughter. Margaret,
"seeing it was daylight," and imagining the danger past of which her
sister had told her, fell asleep. But her slumbers were soon rudely
broken. "An hour later," she continues, "I was awoke by a man knocking
at the door and calling, 'Navarre! Navarre!' The nurse, thinking it was
my husband, ran and opened it. It was a gentleman named Leran, who had
received a sword-cut in the elbow and a spear-thrust in the arm; four
soldiers were pursuing him, and they all rushed into my chamber after
him. Wishing to save his life, he threw himself upon my bed. Finding
myself clasped in his arms, I got out on the other side; he followed me,
still clinging to me. I did not know the man, and could not tell whether
he came to insult me or whether the soldiers were after him or me. We
both shouted out, being equally frightened. At last, by God's mercy,
Captain de Nancay of the guards came in, and, seeing me in this condition,
could not help laughing, although commiserating me. Severely reprimanding
the soldiers for their indiscretion, he turned them out of the room, and
granted me the life of the poor man who still clung to me. I made him
lie down and had his wounds dressed in my closet until he was quite
cured. While changing my night-dress, which was all covered with blood,
the captain told me what had happened, and assured me that my husband
was with the King and quite unharmed. He then conducted me to the room
of my sister of Lorraine, which I reached more dead than alive. As I
entered the anteroom, the doors of which were open, a gentleman named
Bourse, running from the soldiers who pursued him, was pierced by a
halberd three paces from me. I fell almost fainting into Captain de
Nancay's arms, imagining the same thrust had pierced us both. Being
somewhat recovered, I entered the little room where my sister slept.
While there De Moissans, my husband's first gentleman, and Armagnac, his
first _valet-de-chambre_, came and begged me to save their lives. I
went and threw myself at the feet of the King and the Queen--my
mother--to ask the favor, which they at last granted me."
When Captain de Nancay arrived so opportunely, he was leaving the
King's chamber, whither he had conducted Henry of Navarre and the
Prince of Conde. The tumult and excitement had worked Charles up to
such a pitch of fury that the lives of the princes were hardly safe.
But they were gentlemen, and their first words were to reproach the
King for his breach of faith. Charles bade them be silent--"_Messe ou
mort_"--("Apostatize or die"). Henry demanded time to consider; while
the Prince boldly declared that he would not change his religion:
"With God's help it is my intention to remain firm in my profession."
Charles, exasperated still more by this opposition to his will, angrily
walked up and down the room, and swore that if they did not change in
three days he would have their heads. They were then dismissed, but
kept close prisoners within the palace.
The houses in which the Huguenots lodged, having been registered, were
easily known. The soldiers burst into them, killing all they found,
without regard to age or sex, and if any escaped to the roof they were
shot down like pigeons. Daylight served to facilitate a work that was
too foul even for the blackest midnight. Restraint of every kind was
thrown aside, and while the men were the victims of bigoted fury, the
women were exposed to violence unutterable. As if the popular frenzy
needed excitement, Marshal Tavannes, the military director of this deed
of treachery, rode through the streets with dripping sword, shouting:
"Kill! Kill! Bloodletting is as good in August as in May." One would
charitably hope that this was the language of excitement, and that in
his calmer moods he would have repented of his share in the massacre.
But he was consistent to the last. On his death-bed he made a general
confession of his sins, in which he did not mention the day of St.
Bartholomew; and when his son expressed surprise at the omission, he
observed, "I look upon that as a meritorious action, which ought to
atone for all the sins of my life."
The massacre soon exceeded the bounds upon which Charles and his mother
had calculated. They were willing enough that the Huguenots should be
murdered; but the murderers might not always be able to draw the line
between orthodoxy and heresy. Things were fast getting beyond all
control; the thirst for plunder was even keener than the thirst for
blood. And it is certain that among the many ignoble motives by which
Charles was induced to permit the massacre, was the hope of enriching
himself and paying his debts out of the property of the murdered
Huguenots. Nor were Anjou and others insensible to the charms of
heretical property. Hence we find the provost of Paris remonstrating
with the King about "the pillaging of the houses and the murders in the
streets by the guards and others in the service of his majesty and the
princes." Charles, in reply, bade the magistrates "mount their horses,
and with all the force of the city put an end to such irregularities,
and remain on the watch day and night." Another proclamation,
countersigned by Nevers, was issued about five in the afternoon,
commanding the people to lay down the arms which they had taken up "that
day by the King's orders," and to leave the streets to the soldiers
only--as if implying that they alone were to kill and plunder.
The massacre, commenced on Sunday, was continued through that and the
two following days. Capilupi tells us, with wonderful simplicity, "that
it was a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently find
leisure to kill and plunder." It is impossible to assign to each day its
task of blood; in all but a few exceptional cases, we know merely that
the victims perished in the general slaughter. Writing in the midst of
the carnage, probably not later than noon on the 24th, the nuncio
Salviati says: "The whole city is in arms; the houses of the Huguenots
have been forced with great loss of life, and sacked by the populace
with incredible avidity. Many a man to-night will have his horses and
his carriage, and will eat and drink off plate, who had never dreamed of
it in his life before. In order that matters may not go too far, and to
prevent the revolting disorders occasioned by the insolence of the mob,
a proclamation has just been issued, declaring that there shall be three
hours in the day during which it shall be unlawful to rob and kill; and
the order is observed, though not universally. You can see nothing in
the streets but white crosses in the hats and caps of everyone you meet,
which has a fine effect!" The nuncio says nothing of the streets
encumbered with bleeding corpses, nothing of the cart-loads of bodies
conveyed to the Seine, and then flung into the river, "so that not only
were all the waters in it turned to blood, but so many corpses grounded
on the bank of the little island of Louvre that the air became infected
with the smell of corruption." The living, tied hand and foot, were
thrown off the bridges. One man--probably a rag-gatherer--brought two
little children in his creel, and tossed them into the water as
carelessly as if they had been blind kittens. An infant, yet unable to
walk, had a cord tied round its neck, and was dragged through the
streets by a troop of children nine or ten years old. Another played
with the beard and smiled in the face of the man who carried him; but
the innocent caress exasperated instead of softened the ruffian, who
stabbed the child, and with an oath threw it into the Seine. Among
the earliest victims was the wife of the King's _plumassier_. The
murderers broke into her house on the Notre-Dame bridge, about four in
the morning, stabbed her, and flung her still breathing into the river.
She clung for some time to the wooden piles of the bridge, and was
killed at last with stones, her body remaining for four days entangled
by her long hair among the woodwork. The story goes that her husband's
corpse, being thrown over, fell against hers and set it free, both
floating away together down the stream. Madeleine Briconnet, the widow
of Theobald of Yverni, disguised herself as a woman of the people, so
that she might save her life, but was betrayed by the fine petticoat
which hung below her coarse gown. As she would not recant, she was
allowed a few moments' prayer, and then tossed into the water. Her
son-in-law, the marquis Renel, escaping in his shirt, was chased by the
murderers to the bank of the river, where he succeeded in unfastening a
boat. He would have got away altogether but for his cousin Bussy
d'Amboise, who shot him down with a pistol. One Keny, who had been
stabbed and flung into the Seine, was revived by the reaction of the
cold water. Feeble as he was he swam to a boat and clung to it, but was
quickly pursued. One hand was soon cut off with a hatchet, and as he
still continued to steer the boat down the stream, he was "quieted" by a
musket-shot. One Puviaut, or Pluviaut, who met with a similar fate,
became the subject of a ballad.
Captain Moneins had been put into a safe hiding-place by his friend
Fervacques, who went and begged the King to spare the life of the
fugitive. Charles not only refused, but ordered him to kill Moneins if
he desired to save his own life. Fervacques would not stain his own
hands, but made his friend's hiding-place known.
Brion, governor of the young Marquis of Conti, the Prince of Conde's
brother, snatched the child from his bed, and, without stopping to dress
him, was hurrying away to a place of safety, when the boy was torn from
his arms, and he himself murdered before the eyes of his pupil. We are
told that the child "cried and begged they would save his tutor's life."
The houses on the bridge of Notre-Dame, inhabited principally by
Protestants, were witnesses to many a scene of cruelty. All the inmates
of one house were massacred, except a little girl, who was dipped stark
naked in the blood of her father and mother and threatened to be served
like them if she turned Huguenot. The Protestant booksellers and
printers were particularly sought after. Spire Niquet was burned over a
slow fire made out of his own books, and thrown lifeless, but not dead,
into the river. Oudin Petit fell a victim to the covetousness of his
son-in-law, who was a Catholic bookseller. Rene Bianchi, the Queen's
perfumer, is reported to have killed with his own hands a young man, a
cripple, who had already displayed much skill in goldsmith's work. This
is the only man whose death the King lamented, "because of his excellent
workmanship, for his shop was entirely stripped."
Mezeray writes that seven hundred or eight hundred people had taken
refuge in the prisons, hoping they would be safe "under the wings of
Justice"; but the officers selected for this work had brought them into
the fitly named "Valley of Misery," and there beat them to death with
clubs and threw their bodies into the river. The Venetian ambassador
corroborates this story, adding that they were murdered in batches of
ten. Where all were cruel, some few persons distinguished themselves by
especial ferocity. A gold-beater, named Crozier, one of those
prison-murderers, bared his sinewy arm and boasted of having killed four
thousand persons with his own hands. Another man--for the sake of human
nature we would fain wish him to be the same--affirmed that unaided he
had "despatched" eighty Huguenots in one day. He would eat his food with
hands dripping with gore, declaring "that it was an honor to him,
because it was the blood of heretics." On Tuesday a butcher, Crozier's
comrade, boasted to the King that he had killed one hundred fifty the
night before. Coconnas, one of the _mignons_ of Anjou, prided himself
on having ransomed from the populace as many as thirty Huguenots, for
the pleasure of making them abjure, and then killing them with his own
hand, after he had "secured them for hell."
About seven o'clock the King was at one of the windows of his palace,
enjoying the air of that beautiful August morning, when he was startled
by shouts of "Kill, kill!" They were raised by a body of guards, who
were firing with much more noise than execution at a number of Huguenots
who had crossed the river--"to seek the King's protection," says one
account; "to help the King against the Guises," says another. Charles,
who had just been telling his mother that "the weather seemed to rejoice
at the slaughter of the Huguenots," felt all his savage instincts kindle
at the sight. He had hunted wild beasts; now he would hunt men, and,
calling for an arquebuse, he fired at the fugitives, who were
fortunately out of range. Some modern writers deny this fact, on the
ground that the balcony from which Charles is said to have fired was not
built until after 1572. Were this true, it would only show that
tradition had misplaced the locality. Brantome expressly says the King
fired on the Huguenots--not from a balcony, but--"from his bedroom
window." Marshal Tesse heard the story, according to Voltaire, from the
man who loaded the arquebuse. Henault, in his _Abrege chronologique_,
mentions it with a "_dit-on_" and it is significant that the passage
is suppressed in Latin editions. Simon Goulart, in his contemporary
narrative, uses the same words of caution.
Not many of the Huguenot gentlemen escaped from the toils so skilfully
drawn round them on that fatal Saturday night: yet there were a few. The
Count of Montgomery--the same who was the innocent cause of the death of
Henry II--got away safe, having been forewarned by a friend who swam
across the river to him. Guise set off in hot pursuit, and would
probably have caught him up had he not been waiting for the keys of the
city gate. Some sixty gentlemen, also, lodging near him in the Faubourg
St. Germain, were the companions of his flight.
Sully, afterward the famous minister of Henry IV, had a narrow escape.
He was in his twelfth year, and had gone to Paris in the train of Joan
of Navarre for the purpose of continuing his studies. "About three after
midnight," he says, "I was awoke by the ringing of bells and the
confused cries of the populace. My governor, St. Julian, with my
_valet-de-chambre_, went out to know the cause; and I never heard
of them afterward. They, no doubt, were among the first sacrificed to
the public fury. I continued alone in my chamber, dressing myself, when
in a few moments my landlord entered, pale and in the most utmost
consternation. He was of the Reformed religion, and, having learned what
was the matter, had consented to go to mass to save his life and
preserve his house from being pillaged. He came to persuade me to do the
same and to take me with him. I did not think proper to follow him, but
resolved to try if I could gain the College of Burgundy, where I had
studied; though the great distance between the house in which I then was
and the college made the attempt very dangerous. Having disguised myself
in a scholar's gown, I put a large prayer-book under my arm, and went
into the street. I was seized with horror inexpressible at the sight of
the furious murderers, running from all parts, forcing open the houses,
and shouting out: 'Kill, kill! Massacre the Huguenots!' The blood which
I saw shed before my eyes, redoubled my terror. I fell into the midst of
a body of guards, who stopped and questioned me, and were beginning to
use me ill, when, happily for me, the book that I carried was perceived
and served me for a passport. Twice after this I fell into the same
danger, from which I extricated myself with the same good-fortune. At
last I arrived at the College of Burgundy, where a danger still greater
than any that I had yet met with awaited me. The porter having twice
refused me entrance, I continued standing in the midst of the street, at
the mercy of the savage murderers, whose number increased every moment,
and who were evidently seeking for their prey, when it came into my head
to ask for La Faye, the principal of the college, a good man, by whom I
was tenderly beloved. The porter, prevailed upon by some small pieces of
money which I put in his hand, admitted me; and my friend carried me to
his apartment, where two inhuman priests whom I heard mention 'Sicilian
Vespers,' wanted to force me from him, that they might cut me in pieces,
saying the order was, not to spare even infants at the breast. All the
good man could do was to conduct me privately to a distant chamber,
where he locked me up. Here I was confined three days, uncertain of my
destiny, and saw no one but a servant of my friend's, who came from time
to time to bring me provisions."
Not until the second day does there appear to have been any remorse or
pity for the horrors inflicted upon the wretched Huguenots. Elizabeth of
Austria, the young Queen who hoped shortly to become a mother,
interceded for Conde, and so great was her agitation and distress that
her "features were quite disfigured by the tears she had shed night and
day." And, the Duke of Alencon, a youth of by no means lovable
character, "wept much," we are told, "over the fate of those brave
captains and soldiers." For this tenderness he was so bitterly
reproached by Charles and his mother that he was forced to keep out of
their sight. Alencon was partial to Coligny, and when there was found
among the admiral's papers a report in which he condemned appanages, the
grants usually given by the crown to the younger members of the royal
family, Catherine exultingly showed it to him--"See what a fine friend
he was to you."
"I know not how far he may have been my friend," replied the Duke, "but
the advice he gave me was very good."
If Mezeray is to be trusted, Charles broke down on the second day of the
massacre. Since Saturday he had been in a state of extraordinary
excitement, more like madness than sanity, and at last his mind gave way
under the pressure. To his surgeon, Ambrose Pare, who kept at his side
all through these dreadful hours, he said: "I do not know what ails me.
For these two or three days past, both mind and body have been quite
upset. I burn with fever; all around me grin pale blood-stained faces.
Ah! Ambrose, if they had but spared the weak and innocent." A change,
indeed, had come over him; be became more restless than ever, his looks
savage, his buffoonery coarser and more boisterous. "_Ne mai poteva
pigliar requie_" says Sigismond Cavalli. Like Macbeth, he had murdered
sleep. "I saw the King on my return from Rochelle," says Brantome, "and
found him entirely changed. His features had lost all the gentleness
[_douceur_] usually visible in them."
"About a week after the massacre," says a contemporary, "a number of
crows flew croaking round and settled on the Louvre. The noise they made
drew everybody out to see them, and the superstitious women infected the
King with their own timidity. That very night Charles had not been in
bed two hours when he jumped up and called for the King of Navarre, to
listen to a horrible tumult in the air; shrieks, groans, yells, mingled
with blasphemous oaths and threats, just as they were heard on the night
of the massacre. The sound returned seven successive nights, precisely
at the same hour." Juvenal des Ursins tells the story rather
differently. "On August 31st I supped at the Louvre with Madame de
Fiesque. As the day was very hot we went down into the garden and sat in
an arbor by the river. Suddenly the air was filled with a horrible noise
of tumultuous voices and groans, mingled with cries of rage and madness.
We could not move for terror; we turned pale and were unable to speak.
The noise lasted for half an hour, and was heard by the King, who was so
terrified that he could not sleep the rest of the night." As for
Catherine; knowing that strong emotions would spoil her digestion and
impair her good looks, she kept up her spirits. "For my part," she said,
"there are only six of them on my conscience;" which is a lie, for when
she ordered the tocsin to be rung, she must have foreseen the
horrors--perhaps not all the horrors--that would ensue.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
An original document now lying before me, the autograph letter of
Charles IX, will prove that that unparalleled massacre, called by the
world religious, was, in the French cabinet, considered merely as
political; one of those revolting state expedients which a pretended
instant necessity has too often inflicted on that part of a nation
which, like the under-current, subterraneously works its way, and runs
counter to the great stream, till the critical moment arrives when one
or the other must cease.
The massacre began on St. Bartholomew Day, in August, 1572, lasted in
France during seven days; that awful event interrupted the
correspondence of our court with that of France. A long silence ensued;
the one did not dare tell the tale which the other could not listen to.
But sovereigns know how to convert a mere domestic event into a
political expedient. Charles IX, on the birth of a daughter, sent over
an ambassador extraordinary to request Elizabeth to stand as sponsor; by
this the French monarch obtained a double purpose; it served to renew
his interrupted intercourse with the silent Queen, and alarmed the
French Protestants by abating their hopes, which long rested on the aid
of the English Queen.
The following letter, dated February 8, 1573, is addressed by the King
to La Motte Fenelon, his resident ambassador at London. The King in this
letter minutely details a confidential intercourse with his mother,
Catherine de' Medici, who, perhaps, may have dictated this letter to the
secretary, although signed by the King with his own hand. Such minute
particulars could only have been known to herself. The Earl of
Wolchester (Worcester) was now taking departure, having come to Paris on
the baptism of the princess; and accompanied by Walsingham, our resident
ambassador, after taking leave of Charles, had the following interview
with Catherine de' Medici. An interview with the young monarch was
usually concluded by a separate audience with his mother, who probably
was still the directress of his councils.
After Catherine de' Medici had assured the Earl of Worcester of her
great affection for the Queen of England, and the King's strict
intention to preserve it, she took this opportunity of inquiring of the
Earl of Worcester the cause of the Queen his mistress' marked coolness
toward them. The narrative becomes now dramatic.
"On this, Walsingham, who always kept close by the side of the Count
[Earl of Worcester], here took on himself to answer, acknowledging that
the said Count had indeed been charged to speak on this head; and he
then addressed some words in English to Worcester. And afterward the
Count gave to my lady and mother to understand that the Queen his
mistress had been waiting for an answer on two articles; the one
concerning religion, and the other for an interview.
"In regard to what has occurred these latter days, that he must have
seen how it happened by the fault of the chiefs of those who remained
here; for when the late admiral was treacherously wounded at Notre Dame,
he knew the affliction it threw us into--fearful that it might have
occasioned great troubles in this kingdom--and the diligence we used to
verify judicially whence it proceeded; and the verification was nearly
finished, when they were so forgetful as to raise a conspiracy, to
attempt the lives of myself, my lady and mother, and my brothers, and
endanger the whole state; which was the cause that to avoid this I was
compelled, to my very great regret, to permit what had happened in
Paris; but as he had witnessed, I gave orders to stop, as soon as
possible, this fury of the people, and place everyone on repose. On
this, the Sieur Walsingham replied to my lady and mother that the
exercise of the said religion had been interdicted in this kingdom. To
which she also answered that this had not been done but for a good and
holy purpose; namely, that the fury of the Catholic people might the
sooner be allayed, who else had been reminded of the past calamities,
and would again have been let loose against those of the said religion
had they continued to preach in this kingdom. Also should these once
more fix on any chiefs, which I will prevent as much as possible, giving
him clearly and pointedly to understand that what is done here is much
the same as what has been done and is now practised by the Queen his
mistress in her kingdom. For she permits the exercise but of one
religion, although there are many of her people who are of another; and
having also during her reign punished those of her subjects whom she
found seditious and rebellious. It is true this has been done by the
laws, but I, indeed, could not act in the same manner; for finding
myself in such imminent peril, and the conspiracy raised against me and
mine and my kingdom ready to be executed, I had no time to arraign and
try in open justice as much as I wished, but was constrained, to my very
great regret, to strike the blow [_lascher la main_] in what has been
done in this city."
This letter of Charles IX, however, does not here conclude. "My lady and
mother" plainly acquaints the Earl of Worcester and Sir Francis
Walsingham that her son had never interfered between their mistress and
her subjects, and in return expects the same favor although, by accounts
they had received from England, many ships were arming to assist their
rebels at La Rochelle. "My lady and mother" advances another step, and
declares that Elizabeth by treaty is bound to assist her son against his
rebellious subjects; and they expect, at least, that Elizabeth will not
only stop these armaments in all her ports, but exemplarily punish the
offenders. I resume the letter.
"And on hearing this, the said Walsingham changed color, and appeared
somewhat astonished, as my lady and mother well perceived by his face;
and on this he requested the Count of Worcester to mention the order
which he knew the Queen his mistress had issued to prevent these people
from assisting those of La Rochelle; but that in England, so numerous
were the seamen and others who gained their livelihood by maritime
affairs, and who would starve without the entire freedom of the seas,
that it was impossible to interdict them."
Such is the first letter on English affairs which Charles IX despatched
to his ambassador, after an awful silence of six months, during which
time La Motte Fenelon was not admitted into the presence of Elizabeth.
The apology for the massacre of St. Bartholomew comes from the King
himself, and contains several remarkable expressions, which are at least
divested of that style of bigotry and exultation we might have expected:
on the contrary, this sanguinary and inconsiderate young monarch, as he
is represented, writes in a subdued and sorrowing tone, lamenting his
hard necessity, regretting he could not have recourse to the laws, and
appealing to others for his efforts to check the fury of the people,
which he himself had let loose. Catherine de' Medici, who had governed
from the tender age of eleven years, when he ascended the throne, might
unquestionably have persuaded him that a conspiracy was on the point of
explosion. Charles IX died young, and his character is unfavorably
viewed by the historians. In the voluminous correspondence which I have
examined, could we judge by state letters of the character of him who
subscribes them, we must form a very different notion; they are so
prolix and so earnest that one might conceive they were dictated by the
young monarch himself!
[Illustration: Catherine de Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues
from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the massacre of St.
Bartholomew
Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan.]
JNO. RUDD
Popular error has done more injury to the memory of Catherine de' Medici
than to that of any other woman famous in history. To understand
Catherine, and the part she played on the stage of French politics, her
training and the position she held must be understood. It is one thing
to look upon her on the obverse as wholly without heart, a trafficker in
human life, a ghoul who smiled with complacency on the victims of her
hate, and another to look on the reverse of the medal. The Massacre of
St. Bartholomew is pointed to as a crime--a religious crime. But is this
true? It may not have been an act in accordance with twentieth-century
morality, but bad, horrible indeed as it was, were there not extenuating
circumstances attending it--looked upon in the light of that age? To
Catherine de' Medici--perhaps justly--has been given the credit--or
infamy, if you will--of its conception and execution.
"Historians are privileged liars"--this is a truism as valid to-day as
when expressed by its brilliant creator. The throne of France was saved
by Catherine de' Medici, the royal power was maintained by her under
such difficulties as few rulers would have withstood. She is painted by
Catholic and Protestant writers alike as standing without the gates of
the Louvre, the morning after the massacre, and there gloating over the
bodies of the slain lying about the palace entrance.
Apart from her political duty, as she understood it, and which meant the
upholding of the monarchy, Catherine was a true woman; kind to her
suite, faithful to her friends. She had none of the weaknesses of her
sex; she lived chaste amid the debauchery of the most licentious court
in Europe. The losses to art caused by the destructive Calvinists she
replaced by erecting noble buildings and beautifying Paris. But she had
the sense of royalty developed to the utmost; she defended it to the
extreme. In France the opposition was always Protestant. It was her
enemy, the enemy of the crown, the arch-enemy of France. It is laid to
her charge that she coquetted with the Huguenots, whom she afterward
slew. This there is no denying; she had but her craft with which to
oppose the Guise faction, the various court cliques, and the Huguenots
themselves.
An expert at the game, she played one piece against another, skilfully
avoiding the checkmate. Pawns might be lost, bishops fall to her hand,
knights be unhorsed, but her king was secured. She could only triumph by
cunning.
A state cannot be governed by the same rule of morality as that which
should govern individual conduct; it is impossible that it should be so.
Professor Saintsbury says: "Every cool-headed student of history and
ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse of the principle at
this time, and by the persons of whom Catherine de' Medici, if not the
most blamable, _has had the most blame put on her_, that brought the
principle itself into discredit."[1]
[1] The author, not Professor Saintsbury, is responsible for the
Italics.
Casimir Perier, the noted French statesman, wrote, "All power is a
permanent conspiracy." This is as true to-day in republican America as
it was at that time in monarchical France. And it was not religion, as
such, that led to the horrible scenes of that fatal August 24th; it was
a move in the game of politics. Protestantism spelt republicanism; to
one raised as Catherine had been, taught her life through by bitter
experience, any means available, any course adopted, was righteous if it
answered the purpose of saving the realm.
Research into this period will amply repay the explorer with enlarged
ideas of its meaning and its issues. Of the Queen-mother "naught
extenuate nor aught set down in malice." Catherine compares more than
favorably with Marie de' Medici, whom history has painted in brighter
hue. Bigotry has blasted the name of one who for her time was at least
the equal of any ruler in Europe.
HEROIC AGE OF THE NETHERLANDS
SIEGE OF LEYDEN
A.D. 1573
THOMAS HENRY DYER
Events followed one another rapidly after the rising of the
Netherlanders in 1566. The organization of the Gueux ("beggars"),
the league of noblemen pledged to resist the introduction of the
Inquisition into the Low Countries by Philip II of Spain, had shown
itself prepared for extreme action in self-defence. The name Gueux,
first used in contempt, was borne in honor by the patriots in the
ensuing war, which Philip conducted as a "war of extermination."
In 1567 the Duke of Alva, a famous veteran of the wars of Charles V
and of Philip, was sent to the Netherlands as governor, where his
cruelties soon made him notorious. He established the court known as
the Council of Blood, which first sat in September, 1567. In less
than three months this tribunal put to death eighteen hundred
persons, including Horn, Egmont, and other eminent patriots. As many
as one hundred thousand of the population are said to have emigrated
at this time to England.
William of Orange, the great leader of the Netherlanders, refused to
appear before the Council of Blood. He had resigned his offices,
civil and military, and now retired to Dillenburg, still proclaiming
his adhesion to the Protestant faith. But in 1568 he gathered two
armies. Alva destroyed one of them, and the other was disbanded. In
1570 William issued letters of marque to seamen who were nicknamed
"Sea Beggars," and bore a prominent part in the war of independence.
In 1572 they captured Briel. That year Mons was captured by Louis of
Nassau, William's brother, but in September it was retaken by Alva.
In Dyer's narrative the subsequent course of events, to the
Pacification of Ghent, is clearly and succinctly traced.
Soon after the capture of Mons, Alva went to Brussels and left the
conduct of the war to his son, Frederick de Toledo. Zutphen and Naarden
successively yielded to Frederick's arms, and became the scenes of the
most detestable violence. Alva ordered his son not to leave a single man
alive in Zutphen, and to burn down all the houses--commands which were
almost literally obeyed. The treatment of Naarden was still more
revolting. The town had capitulated, and Don Julian Romero, an officer
of Don Frederick's, had pledged his word that the lives and property of
the inhabitants should be respected. Romero then entered the town with
some five hundred musketeers, for whom the citizens provided a sumptuous
feast; and he summoned the inhabitants to assemble in the Gast Huis
Church, then used as a town hall. More than five hundred of them had
entered the church when a priest, suddenly rushing in, bade them prepare
for death. Scarcely had the announcement been made when a band of
Spanish soldiers entered and, after discharging a volley into the
defenceless crowd, attacked them sword in hand. The church was then
fired and the dead and dying consumed together.
But these cruelties only steeled the Hollanders to a more obstinate
resistance; nor must it be concealed that in these _plusquam civilia
bella_, where civil hatred was still further embittered by sectarian
malignancy, the Dutch sometimes displayed as much savageness as their
adversaries. Thus, during the struggle in Zealand, a surgeon at Veer cut
out the heart of a Spanish prisoner, and, fixing it on the prow of a
vessel, invited his fellow-townsmen to fix their teeth in it, an
invitation with which many complied.
The war was continued during the winter (1572-1573). In December the
Spaniards marched to attack a fleet frozen up near Amsterdam. It was
defended by a body of Dutch musketeers on skates, who, by the superior
skill of their evolutions, drove the enemy back and killed great numbers
of them. In consequence of this extraordinary combat, Alva ordered seven
thousand pairs of skates, and directed his soldiers to be instructed in
their use. Siege was then laid to Haarlem, which town, warned by the
fate of Zutphen and Naarden, made a defence that astonished all Europe.
A corps of three hundred respectable women, armed with musket, sword,
and dagger, and led by Kenan Hasselaer, a widow lady of distinguished
family, about forty-seven years of age, enrolled themselves among its
defenders, and partook in some of the most fiercely contested actions.
Battles took place upon Haarlem Lake, on which the Prince of Orange had
more than a hundred sail of various kinds; till at length Bossu, whose
vessels were larger, though less numerous, entirely defeated the
Hollanders, and swept the lake in triumph (May 28, 1573). The siege had
lasted seven months, and Frederick de Toledo, who had lost a great part
of his army by hunger, cold, and pestilence, was inclined to abandon the
enterprise; but he was kept to it by the threats of his father, and on
the 12th of July Haarlem surrendered. Don Frederick had written a letter
solemnly assuring the besieged that no punishment should be inflicted
except on those who deserved it in the opinion of the citizens
themselves, yet he was in possession of strict orders from his father to
put to death the whole garrison, except the Germans, and also to execute
a large number of the inhabitants. Between two and three thousand were
slaughtered; three hundred were drowned in the lake tied by twos back to
back.
The resistance of Haarlem and other places determined Alva to try what
might be done by an affectation of clemency; and on the 26th of July he
issued a proclamation in which Philip was compared to a hen gathering
its chickens under the parental wing. But in the same breath his
subjects were admonished not to excite his rage, cruelty, and fury, and
they were threatened that if his gracious offers of mercy were
neglected, his majesty would strip bare and utterly depopulate the land,
and cause it to be again inhabited by strangers. So ludicrous a specimen
of paternal love was not calculated to excite much confidence in the
breasts of the Hollanders, and Alkmaar, the next town to which Don
Frederick laid siege, though defended only by eight hundred soldiers and
thirteen hundred citizens against sixteen thousand veterans, also
resolved to hold out to the last extremity. Enraged at this contempt of
what he called his clemency, at Haarlem, Alva resolved to make Alkmaar
an example of his cruelty, and he wrote to Philip that everyone in it
should be put to the sword. But the inhabitants made a heroic defence
and repulsed the besiegers in many a bloody assault; till at length the
superstitious Spaniards, believing that the place was defended by the
devil, whom they thought that the Protestants worshipped, refused to
mount to the attack, suffering themselves rather to be run through the
body by their officers; and Don Frederick, finding from an intercepted
letter that the Prince of Orange contemplated cutting the dikes and
flooding the country, in order to prevent the place from being
surrendered, raised the siege (October 8th) after it had lasted seven
weeks.
About this time William published his _Epistle in the form of
supplication to his Royal Majesty of Spain, from the Prince of Orange
and States of Holland and Zealand_, which produced a profound
impression. It demanded that the privileges of the country should be
restored, and insisted on the recall of the Duke of Alva, whose
atrocities were vigorously described and condemned. Orange, as
stadtholder, was now acting as the King's representative in Holland,
and gave all his orders in Philip's name. He had recently turned
Calvinist, and in October publicly joined the Church at Dort. It was
reserved for the two greatest princes of the age to alleviate by their
apostasy, which, however, approached more nearly than the orthodoxy of
their adversaries, the spirit of true Christianity, the evils inflicted
on society by a consistent but bloody-minded and intolerant bigotry.
The siege of Alkmaar was one of the last acts under Alva's auspices in
the Netherlands, and formed a fitting termination to his career. He had
himself solicited to be recalled, and in December, 1573, he was
superseded by Don Luis de Requesens, Grand Commander of St. Jago. In
fact, Philip had found this war of extermination too expensive for his
exhausted treasury. Alva boasted on his journey back that he had caused
eighteen thousand six hundred Netherlanders to be executed. He was well
received by Philip, but soon after his return was imprisoned along with
his son, Don Frederick; the latter for having seduced a maid of honor,
his father for recommending him not to marry his victim. Alva was,
however, subsequently released to undertake the conquest of Portugal.
Requesens, the new Governor, had been vice-admiral to Don John of
Austria, had distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, and had
subsequently governed the Milanese with reputation. He was mild and just
and more liberal than the generality of Spaniards, though inferior to
Alva in military talent. He attempted immediately after his arrival in
the Netherlands to bring about a peace through the mediation of St.
Aldegonde, but Orange was too suspicious to enter into it. Requesens put
down robbery and murder, but he was neither able to abrogate the Council
of Blood nor to alleviate the oppressive taxes. Philip had selected him
as governor of the Netherlands, as a pledge of the more conciliatory
policy which he had thought it prudent to adopt; yet Requesens' hands
were tied up with such injunctions as rendered all conciliation
hopeless, and he was instructed to bring forward no measures which had
not for their basis the maintenance of the King's absolute authority and
the prohibition of all worship except the Roman Catholic.
The Gueux de Mer were at this time most troublesome to the Spaniards, as
their small vessels enabled them to penetrate up the rivers and canals.
A naval action had been fought (October 11, 1573) on the Zuyder Zee
between Count Bossu, who had collected a considerable fleet at
Amsterdam, and the patriot admiral Dirkzoon, in which Bossu was
completely defeated and taken prisoner. One of the first acts of
Requesens was to send a fleet under Sancho Davila, Julian Romero, and
Admiral Glimes to the relief of Middelburg, which had been besieged by
the patriots upward of eighteen months and was now reduced to the last
extremity. Orange visited the Zealand fleet under the command of Louis
Boissot (January 20, 1574), and an action ensued a few days later, in
which the Spaniards were completely beaten. Requesens himself beheld the
action from the lofty dike of Schakerloo, where he stood all day in a
drenching rain; and Romero, who had escaped by jumping out of a
porthole, swam ashore and landed at the very feet of the Grand
Commander. The Hollanders and Zealanders were now masters of the coast,
but the Spaniards still held their ground in the interior of Holland.
After raising the siege of Alkmaar, they had invested Leyden and cut off
all communication between the Dutch cities.
The efforts of the patriots were less fortunate on land, where they were
no match for the Spanish generals and their veteran troops. It had been
arranged that Louis of Nassau should march out of Germany with an army
of newly levied recruits and form a junction with his brother William,
who was at Bommel on the Waal. Toward the end of February, 1574, Louis
encamped within four miles of Maestricht, with the design of taking that
town; but finding that he could not accomplish this object, and having
suffered some losses, he marched down the right bank of the Meuse to
join his brother. When, however, he arrived at Mook, a village on the
Meuse a few miles south of Nimwegen, he found himself intercepted by the
Spaniards under Davila, who, having outmarched him on the opposite bank,
had crossed the river at a lower point on a bridge of boats, and placed
himself directly in his path. There was now no alternative but to fight,
and battle was delivered on the following day on the heath of Mook, when
fortune declared against the patriots. The gallant Louis, seeing that
the day was lost, put himself at the head of a little band of troopers,
and, accompanied by his brother Henry, and Duke Christopher, son of the
Elector Palatine Frederick III, made a desperate charge in which they
all perished, and were never heard of more. The only effect of Louis'
invasion was to cause the Spaniards to raise the siege of Leyden; before
which place, however, they afterward again sat down (May 26th).
The defence of Leyden formed a worthy parallel to that of Haarlem and
Alkmaar, and acquired for the garrison and the inhabitants the respect
and admiration of all Europe. A modern historian has aptly observed that
this was the heroic age of Protestantism. Never have the virtues which
spring from true patriotism and sincere religious conviction been more
strikingly developed and displayed. Leyden was defended by John van der
Does, Lord of Nordwyck, a gentleman of distinguished family, but still
more distinguished by his learning and genius, and his Latin poetry
published under the name of Joannes Douza. The garrison of Leyden was
small, and it relied for its defence chiefly on the exertions of the
inhabitants. The revictualling of the city had been neglected after the
raising of the first siege, and at the end of June it became necessary
to put the inhabitants on short allowance; yet they held out more than
three months longer. Orange, whose head-quarters were at Delft and
Rotterdam, had no means of relieving Leyden except by breaking down the
dikes on the Meuse and the Yssel, and thus flooding the country, a step
which would involve the destruction of the growing crops, besides other
extraordinary expenses; yet he succeeded in obtaining the consent of the
Dutch States to this extreme and desperate measure. On the 3d of August
he superintended in person the rupture of the dikes on the Yssel; at the
same time the sluices of Rotterdam and Schiedam were opened; the flood
began to pour over the land, while the citizens of Leyden watched with
anxious eyes from the tower of Hengist the rising of the waters.
A flotilla of two hundred flat-bottomed vessels had been provided,
stored with provisions, and manned by two thousand five hundred veterans
under the command of Boissot. But unexpected obstacles arose. Fresh
dikes appeared above the water, and had to be cut through amid the
resistance of the Spaniards. Twice the waters receded under the
influence of the east wind, and left the fleet aground; twice it was
floated again, as if by a providential interposition, by violent gales
from the north and west, which accumulated on the coast the waters of
the ocean. Meanwhile the besieged were suffering all the extremities of
famine; the most disgusting garbage was used for food, and caused a
pestilence which carried off thousands. In this extremity a number of
the citizens surrounded the burgomaster, Adrian van der Werf, demanding
with loud threats and clamors that he should either provide them with
food or surrender the city to the enemy. To these menaces Adrian calmly
replied, "I have taken an oath that I will never put myself or my
fellow-citizens in the power of the cruel and perfidious Spaniards, and
I will rather die than violate it." Then drawing his sword he offered it
to the surrounding crowd and bade them plunge it in his bosom and devour
his flesh if such an action could relieve them from their direful
necessity. This extraordinary address filled the people with amazement
and admiration and inspired them with a new courage. Their constancy was
soon rewarded with deliverance. On the night of October 1st a fresh gale
set in from the northwest; the ocean rushed furiously through the ruined
dikes; the fleet had soon two feet of water, and sailed on their onward
course amid storm and darkness. They had still to contend with the
vessels of the enemy, and a naval battle was fought amid the boughs of
orchards and the chimney-stacks of houses. But this was the last attempt
at resistance on the part of the Spaniards. Appalled both by the
constancy of their adversaries and by the rising flood, which was
gradually driving them into a narrow circle, the Spaniards abandoned the
two remaining forts of Zoetermonde and Lammen, which still stood between
the fleet and the city. From the latter they fled in alarm at the noise
of the falling of a large portion of the town walls which had been
thrown down by the waters, and which in the darkness they luckily
mistook for some operation of their adversaries; otherwise they might
easily have entered and captured Leyden. The fleet of Boissot approached
the city on the morning of October 3d. After the pangs of hunger were
relieved the whole population repaired to church to return thanks to the
Almighty for their deliverance. On October 4th another providential gale
from the northeast assisted in clearing off the water from the land. In
commemoration of this remarkable defence, and as a reward for the
heroism of the citizens, was founded the University of Leyden, as well
as a ten days' annual fair, free from all tolls and taxes. During this
siege the Gueux had been again successful at sea. On May 30th Boissot
defeated between Lilloo and Kalloo a Spanish fleet, took the admiral and
three ships, and chased the rest into Antwerp.
The bankrupt state of Philip II's exchequer, and the reverses which his
arms had sustained, induced him to accept in the following year the
proffered mediation of the emperor Maximilian, which he had before
arrogantly rejected, and a congress was held at Breda from March till
June, 1575. But the insurgents were suspicious, and Philip was
inflexible; he could not be induced to dismiss his Spanish troops, to
allow the meeting of the States-General, or to admit the slightest
toleration in matters of religion; and the contest was therefore renewed
with more fury than ever. The situation of the patriots became very
critical when the enemy, by occupying the islands of Duyveland and
Schouwen, cut off the communication between Holland and Zealand,
especially as all hope of succor from England had expired. Toward the
close of the year envoys were despatched to solicit the aid of
Elizabeth, and to offer her, under certain conditions, the sovereignty
of Holland and Zealand. Requesens sent Champagny to counteract these
negotiations, which ended in nothing. The English Queen was afraid of
provoking the power of Spain, and could not even be induced to grant the
Hollanders a loan. The attitude assumed at that time by the Duke of
Alencon in France also prevented them from entering into any
negotiations with that Prince.
In these trying circumstances William the Silent displayed the greatest
firmness and courage. It was now that he is said to have contemplated
abandoning Holland and seeking with its inhabitants a home in the New
World, having first restored the country to its ancient state of a waste
of waters, a thought, however, which he probably never seriously
entertained, though he may have given utterance to it in a moment of
irritation or despondency. On June 12, 1575, William had married
Charlotte de Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Montpensier. The Prince's
second wife, Anne of Saxony, had turned out a drunken, violent
character, and at length an intrigue which she formed with John Rubens,
an exiled magistrate of Antwerp, and father of the celebrated painter,
justified William in divorcing her. She subsequently became insane.
Charlotte de Bourbon had been brought up a Calvinist, but at a later
period, her father having joined the party of the persecutors, she took
refuge with the Elector Palatine, and it was under these circumstances
that she received the addresses of the Prince of Orange.
The unexpected death of Requesens, who expired of a fever, March 5,
1576, after a few days' illness, threw the government into confusion.
Philip II had given Requesens a _carte blanche_ to name his successor,
but the nature of his illness had prevented him from filling it up. The
government, therefore, devolved to the council of state, the members of
which were at variance with one another; but Philip found himself
obliged to intrust it _ad interim_ with the administration till a
successor to Requesens could be appointed. Count Mansfeld was made
commander-in-chief, but was totally unable to restrain the licentious
soldiery. The Spaniards, whose pay was in arrear, had now lost all
discipline. After the raising of the siege of Leyden they had beset
Utrecht and pillaged and maltreated the inhabitants, till Valdez
contrived to furnish their pay. No sooner had Requesens expired than
they broke into open mutiny and acted as if they were entire masters of
the country. After wandering about some time and threatening Brussels,
they seized and plundered Alost, where they established themselves;
and they were soon after joined by the Walloon and German troops. To
repress their violence, the council of state restored to the Netherlands
the arms of which they had been deprived, and called upon them by a
proclamation to repress force by force, but these citizen-soldiers were
dispersed with great slaughter by the disciplined troops in various
rencounters. Ghent, Utrecht, Valenciennes, Maestricht were taken and
plundered by the mutineers; and at last the storm fell upon Antwerp,
which the Spaniards entered early in November, and sacked during three
days. More than a thousand houses were burnt, eight thousand citizens
are said to have been slain, and enormous sums in ready money were
plundered. The whole damage was estimated at twenty-four million
florins. The horrible excesses committed in this sack procured for it
the name of the "Spanish Fury."
The government was at this period conducted in the name of the State of
Brabant. On September 5th De Heze, a young Brabant gentleman who was in
secret intelligence with the Prince of Orange, had, at the head of five
hundred soldiers, entered the palace where the council of state was
assembled, and seized and imprisoned the members. William, taking
advantage of the alarm created at Brussels by the sack of Antwerp,
persuaded the provisional government to summon the States-General,
although such a course was at direct variance with the commands of the
King. To this assembly all the provinces except Luxemburg sent deputies.
The nobles of the southern provinces, although they viewed the Prince of
Orange with suspicion, feeling that there was no security for them so
long as the Spanish troops remained in possession of Ghent, sought his
assistance in expelling them, which William consented to grant only on
condition that an alliance should be effected between the northern and
the southern, or Catholic, provinces of the Netherlands. This proposal
was agreed to, and toward the end of September Orange sent several
thousand men from Zealand to Ghent, at whose approach the Spaniards, who
had valorously defended themselves for two months under the conduct of
the wife of their absent general, Mondragon, surrendered and evacuated
the citadel. The proposed alliance was now converted into a formal
union, by the treaty called the Pacification of Ghent, signed November
8, 1576, by which it was agreed, without waiting for the sanction of
Philip, whose authority, however, was nominally recognized, to renew the
edict of banishment against the Spanish troops, to procure the
suspension of the decrees against the Protestant religion, to summon the
States-General of the northern and southern provinces, according to the
model of the assembly which had received the abdication of Charles V, to
provide for the toleration and practice of the Protestant religion in
Holland and Zealand, together with other provisions of a similar
character. About the same time with the Pacification of Ghent, all
Zealand, with the exception of the island of Tholen, was recovered from
the Spaniards.
SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE BY FROBISHER
A.D. 1576
GEORGE BEST
Martin Frobisher, the English navigator, was born in Yorkshire about
1535. When a lad he went to sea, and seems early to have dreamed of
a shorter route to China through the Arctic Ocean. He became the
pioneer in the long search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific by the northern coasts of the American continent. He
even contemplated the planting of English colonies on the Pacific
shore of the New World.
Columbus had found the western way to China barred by the continent
of America. Magellan discovered a southwest passage around that
continent. Half a century later Frobisher entered upon the northern
quest.
Frobisher was poorly educated, and wrote with difficulty. The
narrative of his first voyage was written by George Best from an
account furnished by Frobisher himself, whom Best accompanied on his
second and third voyages. The present narrative has therefore all
the value of a first-hand record, and it is included in the
_Principal Navigations_ of Hakluyt.
Although over two hundred voyages have now been made in search of
this passage, which in 1850-1854 was achieved by Sir Robert McClure,
the long-cherished hopes of its advantages have not been realized.
The route, for commercial purposes, is thus far quite useless, owing
to arctic conditions. Great gains, however, through these
expeditions, have been made in scientific knowledge.
Which thing being well considered and familiarly known to our General,
Captain Frobisher, as well for that he is thoroughly furnished of the
knowledge of the sphere and all other skills appertaining to the art of
navigation, as also for the confirmation he hath of the same by many
years' experience both by sea and land; and being persuaded of a new and
nearer passage to Cataya[1] than by Cabo de Buona Speranca, which the
Portugals yearly use, he began first with himself to devise, and then
with his friends to confer, and laid a plain plot unto them that that
voyage was not only possible by the northwest, but also, he could prove,
easy to be performed. And further, he determined and resolved with
himself to go make full proof thereof, and to accomplish or bring true
certificate of the truth, or else never to return again; knowing this to
be the only thing of the world that was left yet undone, whereby a
notable mind might be made famous and fortunate.
[1] Cathay (China).
But although his will were great to perform this notable voyage,[2]
whereof he had conceived in his mind a great hope by sundry sure reasons
and secret intelligence, which here, for sundry causes, I leave
untouched; yet he wanted altogether means and ability to set forward and
perform the same. Long time he conferred with his private friends of
these secrets, and made also many offers for the performing of the same
in effect unto sundry merchants of our country, above fifteen years
before he attempted the same, as by good witness shall well appear,
albeit some evil-willers, which challenge to themselves the fruits of
other men's labors, have greatly injured him in the reports of the same,
saying that they have been the first authors of that action, and that
they have learned him the way, which themselves as yet have never gone.
But perceiving that hardly he was hearkened unto of the merchants, which
never regard virtue without sure, certain, and present gains, he
repaired to the court, from whence, as from the fountain of our common
wealth, all good causes have their chief increase and maintenance, and
there laid open to many great estates and learned men the plot and sum
of his device. And among many honorable minds which favored his honest
and commendable enterprise, he was specially bound and beholding to the
Right Honorable Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, whose favorable mind
and good disposition hath always been ready to countenance and advance
all honest actions, with the authors and executers of the same. And so
by means of my lord his honorable countenance he received some comfort
of his cause, and by little and little, with no small expense and pain,
brought his cause to some perfection, and had drawn together so many
adventurers and such sums of money as might well defray a reasonable
charge to furnish himself to sea withal.
[2] Further details of this voyage may be gathered from the log of
Christopher Hall, master of the Gabriel, printed in Hakluyt. The
present narrative, prefixed to Best's accounts of the second and
third voyages, was preceded by a treatise intended to prove all
parts of the earth, even the poles, equally habitable.
He prepared two small barks of twenty and five-and-twenty ton apiece,
wherein he intended to accomplish his pretended voyage. Wherefore, being
furnished with the aforesaid two barks, and one small pinnace of ten ton
burden, having therein victuals and other necessaries for twelve months'
provision, he departed upon the said voyage from Blackwall, the 15. of
June,[3] Anno Domini 1576.
[3] The date is incorrect. Hall quitted his moorings at Ratcliffe
on the 7th, and left Deptford on the 8th. In passing the royal
palace of Greenwich, says Hall, "we shot off our ordnance, and
made the best show we could. Her majesty, beholding the same,
commended it, and bade us farewell, with shaking her hand at us
out of the window." Gravesend was passed on the 12th.
One of the barks wherein he went was named the Gabriel, and the other
the Michael; and, sailing northwest from England upon the 11. of July he
had sight of an high and ragged land, which he judged to be Frisland,[4]
whereof some authors have made mention; but durst not approach the same
by reason of the great store of ice that lay alongst the coast, and the
great mists that troubled them not a little. Not far from thence he lost
company of his small pinnace, which by means of the great storm he
supposed to be swallowed up of the sea; wherein he lost only four men.
Also the other bark, named the Michael, mistrusting the matter, conveyed
themselves privily away from him, and returned home, with great report
that he was cast away.
[4] The land was Greenland. Friesland was the name given to the
Faroe Islands in the voyage of the brothers Zeni. Hall saw the
rocky spires of the coast "rising like pinnacles of steeples" in
the afternoon sun.
The worthy captain, notwithstanding these discomforts, although his mast
was sprung and his topmast blown overboard with extreme foul weather,
continued his course toward the northwest, knowing that the sea at
length must needs have an ending and that some land should have a
beginning that way; and determined therefore at the least to bring true
proof what land and sea the same might be so far to the northwestward,
beyond any that man hath heretofore discovered. And the 20. of July he
had sight of an high land, which he called "Queen Elizabeth's
Foreland,"[5] after her majesty's name. And sailing more northerly
alongst that coast, he descried another foreland,[6] with a great gut,
bay, or passage, dividing as it were two main lands or continents
asunder. There he met with store of exceeding great ice all this coast
along, and, coveting still to continue his course to the northward, was
always by contrary wind detained overthwart these straits, and could not
get beyond.
[5] The northeast corner of the island to the north of Resolution
Island.
[6] The North Foreland, at the southeast corner of Hall's Island.
Within few days after, he perceived the ice to be well consumed and
gone, either there engulfed in by some swift currents or indrafts,
carried more to the southward of the same straits, or else conveyed some
other way; wherefore he determined to make proof of this place, to see
how far that gut had continuance, and whether he might carry himself
through the same into some open sea on the back side, whereof he
conceived no small hope; and so entered the same the one-and-twentieth
of July, and passed above fifty leagues therein, as he reported, having
upon either hand a great main or continent. And that land upon his right
hand as he sailed westward he judged to be the continent of Asia, and
there to be divided from the firm of America, which lieth upon the left
hand over against the same.
This place he named after his name, "Frobisher's Straits,"[7] like as
Magellanus at the southwest end of the world, having discovered the
passage to the South Sea, where America is divided from the continent of
that land, which lieth under the south pole, and called the same straits
"Magellan's Straits."
[7] Afterward called Frobisher Bay.
After he had passed sixty leagues into this aforesaid strait, he went
ashore, and found signs where fire had been made. He saw mighty deer,
that seemed to be mankind, which ran at him; and hardly he escaped with
his life in a narrow way, where he was fain to use defence and policy to
save his life. In this place he saw and perceived sundry tokens of the
peoples resorting thither. And being ashore upon the top of a hill, he
perceived a number of small things fleeting in the sea afar off, which
he supposed to be porpoises, or seals, or some kind of strange fish; but
coming nearer, he discovered them to be men in small boats made of
leather. And before he could descend down from the hill, certain of
those people had almost cut off his boat from him, having stolen
secretly behind the rocks for that purpose; where he speedily hastened
to his boat, and bent himself to his halberd, and narrowly escaped the
danger, and saved his boat.
Afterward he had sundry conferences with them, and they came aboard his
ship, and brought him salmon and raw flesh and fish, and greedily
devoured the same before our men's faces. And to show their agility,
they tried many masteries upon the ropes of the ship after our mariners'
fashion, and appeared to be very strong of their arms and nimble of
their bodies. They exchanged coats of seals' and bears' skins, and such
like, with our men, and received bells, looking-glasses, and other toys
in recompense thereof again. After great courtesy and many meetings, our
mariners, contrary to their captain's direction, began more easily to
trust them; and five of our men going ashore were by them intercepted
with their boat, and were never since heard of to this day again; so
that the captain being destitute of boat, bark, and all company, had
scarcely sufficient number to conduct back his bark again.
He could now neither convey himself ashore to rescue his men, if he had
been able, for want of a boat; and again the subtle traitors were so
wary, as they would after that never come within our men's danger. The
captain, notwithstanding, desirous of bringing some token from thence of
his being there, was greatly discontented that he had not before
apprehended some of them; and, therefore, to deceive the deceivers, he
wrought a pretty policy. For knowing well how they greatly delighted in
our toys, and specially in bells, he rang a pretty loud bell, making
signs that he would give him the same who would come and fetch it. And
because they would not come within his danger for fear, he flung one
bell unto them, which of purpose he threw short, that it might fall into
the sea and be lost. And to make them more greedy of the matter he rang
a louder bell, so that in the end one of them came near the ship side to
receive the bell. Which when he thought to take at the captain's hand,
he was thereby taken himself; for the captain, being readily provided,
let the bell fall, and caught the man fast, and plucked him with main
force, boat and all, into his bark out of the sea. Whereupon, when he
found himself in captivity, for very choler and disdain he bit his
tongue in twain within his mouth; notwithstanding, he died not thereof,
but lived until he came in England, and then he died of cold which he
had taken at sea.
Now with this new prey, which was a sufficient witness of the captain's
far and tedious travel toward the unknown parts of the world, as did
well appear by this strange infidel, whose like was never seen, read,
nor heard of before, and whose language was neither known nor understood
of any, the said Captain Frobisher returned homeward, and arrived in
England, in Harwich, the second of October following, and thence came to
London, 1576, where he was highly commended of all men for his great and
notable attempt, but specially famous for the great hope he brought of
the passage to Cataya.
And it is especially to be remembered that at their first arrival in
those parts there lay so great store of ice all the coast along, so
thick together, that hardly his boat could pass unto the shore. At
length, after divers attempts, he commanded his company, if by any
possible means they could get ashore, to bring him whatsoever thing they
could first find, whether it were living or dead, stock or stone, in
token of Christian possession, which thereby he took in behalf of the
Queen's most excellent majesty, thinking that thereby he might justify
the having and enjoying of the same things that grew in these unknown
parts.
Some of his company brought flowers, some green grass; and one brought a
piece of black stone, much like to a sea coal in color, which by the
weight seemed to be some kind of metal or mineral. This was a thing of
no account in the judgment of the captain at first sight; and yet for
novelty it was kept, in respect of the place from whence it came. After
his arrival in London, being demanded of sundry his friends what thing
he had brought them home out of that country, he had nothing left to
present them withal but a piece of this black stone. And it fortuned a
gentlewoman, one of the adventurer's wives, to have a piece thereof,
which by chance she threw and burned in the fire, so long that at the
length being taken forth, and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistened
with a bright marquesite of gold. Whereupon the matter being called in
some question, it was brought to certain gold-finers in London to make
assay thereof, who gave out that it held gold, and that very richly for
the quantity.[8] Afterward the same gold-finers promised great matters
thereof if there were any store to be found, and offered themselves to
adventure for the searching of those parts from whence the same was
brought. Some that had great hope of the matter sought secretly to have
a lease at her majesty's hands of those places, whereby to enjoy the
mass of so great a public profit unto their own private gains.
[8] The English assayers all pronounced the stone worthless. An
Italian, Giovanni Baptista Agnello, reported it to contain gold.
On being questioned as to how it was that he alone was able to
produce gold from the stone, he is said to have replied, "_Bisogna
safiere adular la natura_" ("Nature requires coaxing "). Agnello's
assay necessarily involved the addition of other substances for
the purpose of separating the gold; and it has been suggested that
the gold produced by him was itself added during this process.
There is no good reason for thinking so. Pyrites often contains a
minute proportion of gold. Admitting the possibility of trickery
in the case of the small specimen submitted to Agnello, it is
incredible that the fraud should have been successfully repeated
when the two hundred tons of mineral brought back by the second
expedition came to be tested. The mineral undoubtedly contained
gold, but not enough to pay for the carriage and working.
In conclusion, the hope of more of the same gold ore to be found kindled
a greater opinion in the hearts of many to advance the voyage again.
Whereupon preparation was made for a new voyage against the year
following, and the captain more specially directed by commission for the
searching more of this gold ore than for the searching any further
discovery of the passage. And being well accompanied with divers
resolute and forward gentlemen, her majesty then lying at the Right
Honorable the Lord of Warwick's house, in Essex, he came to take his
leave; and kissing her highness' hands, with gracious countenance and
comfortable words departed toward his charge.
BUILDING OF THE FIRST THEATRE IN ENGLAND
A.D. 1576
KARL MANTZIUS
_A History of the Theatre_, the scholarly work of Mantzius, has had
no time to become a classic--published 1904--but certainly the
author has delved into his subject with a minuteness and presented
it with a lively interest which fully justify the selection of his
work for presentation here.
The theatre has become so prominent an institution among us that its
origin must be of interest to all; and the building of the first
theatre is inextricably interwoven with the larger and vaguer story
of the rise of the modern drama itself. The dramatic arts of Greece
and Rome had never been wholly forgotten. Their traditions survived
in Italy in the crude pantomime performances of the common people.
Practically, however, the Middle Ages invented a new dramatic art of
their own, developed from the gorgeous religious pantomime of the
church services. The theatre was born of the cathedral; the stage,
of the altar.
The plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic
side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose
of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil
changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be
accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are
merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small
connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single,
slowly developing story to its climax and conclusion dawns upon the
modern stage only with the English Elizabethan drama.
Despite our imperfect knowledge of the plays and players of that
time, one feels almost justified in saying that the modern drama was
created about 1580 by Christopher Marlowe and was raised to the
highest point of its development about 1600 by William Shakespeare.
At the date of Shakespeare's birth, 1564, no permanent theatre as yet
existed in England. But there had long existed a class of professional
actors, descended partly from the mystery and the miracle-playing
artisans of the Middle Ages, partly from the strolling players,
equilibrists, jugglers, and jesters. Professional Italian actors,
players of the _commedia dell'arte_, who in the sixteenth century spread
their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players
with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat
vacillating and half-amateurish arts were still wanting.
While, however, as far as France is concerned, the Italian influence
must strike everybody who studies the stage history of the country, the
evidence of a fertilization of English scenic art by the commedia dell'
arte is scanty. Yet I think it is sufficient to deserve more attention
than has hitherto been bestowed upon it.
In any case there is sufficient evidence to prove that Italian
professional actors penetrated into England and exercised their art
there.
In January, 1577, an Italian comedian came to London with his company.
The English called him Drousiano, but his real name was Drousiano
Martinelli, the same who, with his brother Tristano, visited the court
of Philip II, and there is no reason to suppose that he was either the
first or the last of his countrymen who tried to carry off English gold
from merry London. The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the
authors of that period. Thus Thomas Heywood mentions all these doctors,
zanies, pantaloons, and harlequins, in which the French, and still more
the Italians, distinguished themselves. In Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_, and
in Ben Jonson's _The Case is Altered_, mention is made of the Italian
improvised comedy, and a few of the well-known types of character in the
dramatic literature of the time bear distinct traces of having been
influenced by Italian masks, _e.g._, Ralph Roister Doister in Udall's
comedy of that name; as well as the splendid Captain Bobadill and his no
less amusing companion, Captain Tucca, in Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his
Humour_ and _The Poetaster_, all of which are reproductions of the
typical _capitano_.
However, it is not these literary testimonies that I consider the most
striking evidence of the influence of Italian professional technique on
English professional actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the
highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmund Malone, about a
century ago, in Dulwich College, that mine of ancient English dramatic
research, founded by the actor Edward Alleyn.
Among the notes left by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager,
Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his
son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare
documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the
Shakespearean stage, Malone found four remarkable card-board tables, on
which the plots of as many plays were put down, together with the names
of the persons represented, their entrances and exits, cues for music,
sonnets, etc.
According to Collier's description, these tables--one of which only is
preserved, the three others having disappeared through the carelessness
and disorder which at that time prevailed in the Dulwich treasury--were
about fifteen inches in length and nine in breadth. They were divided
into two columns, and between these, toward the top of the table, there
was a square hole for hanging it up on a hook or some such thing. They
bore the following titles:
1. The Plotte of the Deade Man's Fortune.
2. The Plotte of the First Parte of Tamar Cain.
3. The Plotte of Frederick and Basilea.
4. The Plotte of the Second Parte of the Seven Deadlie Sinns.
The last-mentioned play is known for certain to have been composed by
the excellent comic actor, Richard Tarlton. Gabriel Harvey, the
astrologist, and the implacable antagonist of Thomas Nash, tells us in
his letters how Tarlton himself in Oxford invited him to see his
celebrated play on _The Seven Deadly Sins_; Harvey asked him which
of the seven was his own deadly sin, and he instantly replied, "By
G----, the sinne of other gentlemen, lechery."
Tarlton died in the year 1588, and some of the other plays, especially
_The Dead Man's Fortune_, are considered to be a good deal older than
his. They belong, therefore, to an early period of the English
Renaissance stage.
These four tables caused considerable trouble to Malone and his
contemporary Steevens, as well as to later investigators, as they are
without equals in the archaeology of the English stage. If these men had
known that such tables, containing the plot of the piece which was acted
at the time, were always hung upon the stage of the Italian commedia
dell' arte in order to assist the memory of the improvising actors, they
would have seen instantly that their essential historical importance to
us consists in their showing by documentary evidence how the early
Elizabethan scenic art in its outer form was influenced and improved by
the Italians.
The fact that one of the principal characters in the oldest scenario,
_The Dead Man's Fortune_, bears the name of "Panteloun" further confirms
this supposition.
This is not the place to investigate how far the English were influenced
by Italian professional dramatic art. At any rate, the English national
character differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive more
than an outward and formal stamp. And even this superficial effect is
much less significant in England than in France. Still, we are certainly
not mistaken in assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic
art, which already possessed no small amount of power; and we may take
it for granted that about the time of Shakespeare's birth London
possessed a socially and professionally organized class of actors, in
spite of the fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their own.
Before proper theatres were built, and after the time of the great
mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their art chiefly in the inns,
those splendid and expensive old public-houses which convey to our minds
the idea of old-fashioned and picturesque comfort; where the nobility
and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the carriers
unloaded their goods in the large square yards, which were surrounded on
all sides by the walls of the inn. On these walls there were galleries
running all round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep
picturesque ladders running up to them.
It was in these yards of the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, of The
Bull in Bishopsgate Street, La Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, or the
Tabbard Inn in Southwark that the actors set up their stages. Perhaps it
was this very circumstance that became one of the indirect reasons why
they finally were obliged to build a house for themselves.
Certainly the inns offered advantages to the actors; they were
meeting-places for the public, frequented by lords and other persons of
distinction; probably the companies paid next to nothing for the use of
them. In themselves they afforded good room for the audience, with a
natural pit for ordinary people in the yard, and with more comfortable
"boxes" for the more distinguished part of the audience on the
surrounding balconies and at the windows facing the yard.
On the other hand, these inn-theatres had their drawbacks. In the first
place, the actors were not on their own ground, and so, after all, they
were only tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult for them
to keep to regular prices, and especially to secure the payment of the
entrance fee, as they had probably to collect the money during or after
the performance, thus depending on the liberality of the public for
their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they were led into
quarrels with the lord mayor and with the citizens.
Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in the inns caused a
good deal of noise and disturbance in the quarters where they took
place, and that the joyous, but by no means refined or quiet, "pit,"
when going home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong ale
of the inn, was not animated by very respectful feelings toward their
sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who were scandalized as they watched
"merry London" crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that
these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves in some of the
coarse expressions in which the plays of those times abound, where
Puritanism, the sworn enemy, is concerned; "this barbarous sect," as it
is called by a modern English author, "from whose inherited and
contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly released."
It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens entertained a deep
and sincere hatred of anything connected with plays and actors, and if
it had been in their power to do what they liked, the world would once
for all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked vagabonds as
William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson.
Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the Puritans only.
Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed to have
gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensibility, and rude
obstinacy of the nation, was counterbalanced by a refined and
intellectual nobility, which was inspired by the new artistic and
philosophical thought of the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not
fully to recognize, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of those
times was destined to be. Thanks to men like Sir Francis Walsingham,
Lords Leicester, Nottingham, Strange, and Sussex, the drama resisted for
a time the violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most
fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well as her
successors, James I and Charles I, was fond of plays and favorably
inclined toward their performers.
Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by placing them under
the patronage of the nobility. The municipal authorities, who were
frequently Puritan, considered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry
as an acceptable means of livelihood; consequently, those who cultivated
these noble arts easily exposed themselves to being treated as
"masterless men," unless they could give a reference to some
distinguished aristocratic name.
The Queen ordered by law--in a statute which has often been
misunderstood--"that all common players of interludes wandering abroad,
other than players of interludes belonging to any baron of this realme,
or any other honorable personage of greater degree, to be authorized to
play under the hand and seale of arms of such baron or personage, shall
be adjudged and deemed rogues and vagabonds"; in other words, the Queen
urged all actors, for their own sakes, to place themselves under the
patronage of some nobleman, in order to protect them against the
persecution of the Puritan citizens.
But even such mighty protection could not entirely shield them, and it
was this very power of the London corporation to injure the actors that
caused the establishment of the first London theatre.
In the year 1572 the plague broke out in London; it killed many
thousands of people, and kept recurring at certain intervals during the
next twenty or thirty years, carrying horror and death with it. Under
these circumstances all dramatic performances were prohibited for a time
in London, a precaution which was reasonable enough, as the dense
crowding of people might have helped to spread the disease. But the
magistrate seems to have caught eagerly at this opportunity of
interfering.
In Harrison's _Description of England_ the event is reported as follows:
"Plaies are banished for a time out of London, lest the resort unto them
should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it, being already begonne.
Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for altogether as seminaries
of impiety, and their theatres pulled downe as no better than houses of
baudrie. It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so
rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I wish also to our comon
beare baitinges used on the Sabaothe daies."
We cannot help noticing the predilection of the Puritans for the coarse
bear-fights, which in their opinion were only displeasing to God when
performed on a Sabbath, whereas the playhouses at any time were no
better than the "ill-famed stews" in Southwark. It cannot be denied,
however, that under the prevailing circumstances it was quite right that
the playhouses should be temporarily forbidden.
But the sudden and unwarranted expulsion of all dramatic performances
from the precincts of London a few years later, 1575, cannot be
accounted for otherwise than by the increasing popularity which these
plays enjoyed among the non-Puritan public, and the envy with which the
clergy saw the people crowding much more to the places where actors
interpreted the rising poets than to those where the preachers
themselves enunciated their gloomy doctrine.
In the year 1574 the actor James Burbage, with four other actors, all
belonging to the retinue of the Earl of Leicester, had received
permission from the Queen to perform all kinds of plays anywhere in
England, "for the recreation of her beloved subjects as well as for her
own comfort and pleasure, if it should please her to see them."
Perhaps it was a counter-move on the part of the Puritan community when
the lord mayor and the corporation in the following year straightway
forbade all plays within the precincts of the town. If so, it proved a
failure. James Burbage resolutely hired a liberty outside the city, and
here, in 1576, on the premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he
built the first English playhouse, which he named "The Theatre."
In the following year The Theatre gained an ally in "The Curtain," which
was built in the same neighborhood, both, of course, causing great
indignation among the Puritans. In 1577, the year after the first
playhouse had been erected, there appeared a furious pamphlet, by John
Northbrooke, against "dicing, dancing, plays and interludes as well as
other idle pastimes."
No doubt all possible means were taken to have plays forbidden and the
playhouses pulled down, but though the attack of the Black Army never
ceased for a moment, the Puritans did not succeed in getting the better
of the theatres till the year 1642, when they acquired political power
through the civil war; and, fortunately for the part of mankind which
appreciates art, this precious flower of culture, one of the richest and
most remarkable periods in the life of dramatic art, had developed into
full bloom before the outbreak of the war.
In a sermon of 1578 we read the following bitter and deep-drawn sigh by
the clergyman John Stockwood: "Wyll not a fylthye playe wyth the blast
of a trumpette sooner call thyther a thousande than an houres tolling of
a bell bring to the sermon a hundred?--nay, even heere in the Citie,
without it be at this place and some other certaine ordinarie audience,
where shall you finde a reasonable company?--whereas, if you resort to
the Theatre, The Curtayne, and other places of playes in the Citie, you
shall on the Lord's Day have these places, with many other that I cannot
reckon, so full as possible they can throng."
That the bold defiance with which James Burbage and the other actors met
the lord mayor and the corporation should prove so successful lay almost
in the nature of things. The prohibition of plays within the bounds of
the city of London did not mean that they were looked upon with
animosity by the people, but merely that a majority of the corporation
was unfriendly to them. It was soon shown that, though the wise city
fathers could easily forbid the actors to perform their plays in London,
they could not prevent the enthusiastic public from walking in crowds a
mile out of town in order to see such performances, especially as people
were quite accustomed to the journey. Burbage, who was a business-like
man, had chosen his ground quite close to the public places, where the
Londoners practised their open-air sports and amused themselves with
tennis and football, stone-throwing, cock fights, and archery.
Although Burbage called his new building "The Theatre," the title was
not intended to mean _the_ theatre _par excellence_, for the word
"theatre" was not then commonly used to denote a building in which
dramatic representations were performed. It is more probable that he
thought he had succeeded in choosing an elegant name with a certain
suggestion of the old classics, which was euphonious and not quite
common.
The usual name for a theatre was the playhouse, a house intended for all
kinds of games and sport, such as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights,
jigs, morris-dances, and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic
performances.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the theatrical entertainments
of those times were something more or less literary; anyhow, something
quite apart from the dramatic performances of the present day. They were
meant to satisfy mixed desires in the nation; but, besides satisfying
its craving for beautiful, picturesque language, fine spectacles, and
merry jests, they also gratified its desire for the display of physical
strength, for shallow rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful
exercises of the body, indeed for all that might be included under the
notion of sport and give opportunity for betting.
Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between
animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty
bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and
foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and
boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd
jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day,
and danced interminable morris-dances.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works are now reckoned among
the first literature--so much so that they are scarcely read any
longer--at the time of which we are speaking were nothing but practical
playwrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that the time
would come when his plays would be counted among the most precious
treasures of posterity that, as we know, he did not even take the
trouble to have a printed edition of his works published.
The many fighting-scenes in the plays of the time, in Shakespeare's
among the rest, the wrestling-match in _As You Like It_, the duel
between Macduff and Macbeth, the fencing-scene between Hamlet and
Laertes, no doubt afforded opportunities for magnificent displays of
skill in the use of arms and in physical exercises, and we may be sure
that the spectators followed those scenes with an interest which was
perhaps more of a sporting than of a literary nature.
It was according to a well-calculated plan, therefore, that the elder
Burbage erected his playhouse north of the city, in Finsbury Fields,
where from ancient times the people had been accustomed to see and
practise military exercises and other sports, and where the soldiers
were still in the habit of practising archery and musketry.
And it was with equally sound calculation that he gave the theatre its
particular form, which remained essentially the same in all the
playhouses of the Shakespearean period.
Before the establishment of the permanent theatres there had long
existed amphitheatres for the performance of fights between animals, the
so-called "rings." These rings--the auditorium as well as the
arena--were open all round, and the seats, like those of the ancient
Greek theatre, were placed according to the natural formation of the
ground.
Burbage retained the circular amphitheatrical form; being a joiner as
well as an actor and manager, he was no doubt his own architect in his
new theatrical enterprise.
But instead of the roofless, open-air auditorium, he constructed a
covered circular wooden building with stories or galleries, which was
made so as to contain a number of boxes for the distinguished and
well-paying public, and which entirely enclosed the open, uncovered
arena, which, as it recalled the inn-yards, was called the "yard," or
afterward, perhaps on account of the high pitlike construction
surrounding it, the "pit," whence the poorest and humblest spectators
enjoyed the performances.
Finally, he built a covered "tire-house"--or "tiring-house," as it was
called in those times--for the actors, a place in which also all the
requisites and the so-called "properties" were kept. This tiring-house
stood within the circle, and its roof towered up above the auditorium.
From the tiring-house the stage--a simple wooden platform resting on
rams--was pushed forward, and it might be removed when the arena was to
be used for fights between animals, etc., instead of dramatic
performances.
By this reform of the building--a reform which became epoch-making to
the whole Shakespearean period--James Burbage obtained a threefold
advantage: more comfortable seats for the more distinguished portion of
the audience, where they were sheltered from wind and weather; the use
of the house both for plays and the baiting of animals; and the power to
oblige the public to pay their admission at certain doors of his
building, which spared him the unpleasant and unsafe collection of money
from spectators, who might not always be very willing to pay.
But this result was not obtained without considerable expense.
Though we are not so fortunate as to possess a drawing of the outside or
inside of The Theatre, about the shape of which, therefore, we must
partly draw our conclusions from analogy with other playhouses, we are
comparatively well informed as to its outward history till it was pulled
down, in 1598-1599.
Thus we know that the enterprise cost James Burbage six hundred
sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings fourpence, a considerable sum in
those days, which would be equal to about eightfold that amount in our
own time.
This money Burbage borrowed of his father-in-law, John Braynes, to whom
he had to pay high interest, and it represented only the cost of the
building itself, for he did not buy the ground on which it stood. This
ground belonged to one Giles Allen, and in the contract between him and
Burbage it was settled, among other points, that if, in the course of
the first ten years after the drawing up of the lease, Burbage spent a
sum of two hundred pounds or more on the building, he should have a
right to remove it after the expiration of the lease.
The lease was drawn up in the year 1576, for a period of twenty-one
years. In spite of many pecuniary difficulties, which the heavy rent and
high interest naturally entailed on Burbage--who for some time even
seems to have been obliged to mortgage his entire property--and
innumerable annoyances from the Puritans, Burbage succeeded in keeping
his theatre above water till the expiration of the lease and till his
own death, which occurred in 1597.
But before this date he had been negotiating with the proprietor, Giles
Allen, about a prolongation of the lease. Allen, who was evidently as
grasping as he was difficult to deal with, and who may not unjustly be
suspected of having been an instrument in the hands of the Puritan
authorities, had caused him a good deal of trouble in the course of
years. On seeing how people crowded to the theatre, he had tried, for
one thing, to press Burbage for a higher rent, and partly for religious,
partly for moral reasons, had threatened to forbid the running of a
playhouse on his property. The negotiations about the new lease had not
come to an end when the elder Burbage died, and left his two sons,
Cuthbert, who was a bookseller, and Richard, who was the leading actor
of his time, not only burdened with the playhouse, the long lease of
which had expired, but opposed by a proprietor with whom it was
impossible to come to terms, and by a magistrate who was more eager than
ever to deal a blow at the playhouses.
In the same year, when the two brothers took on The Theatre, the lord
mayor of London actually succeeded in inducing the privy council to
issue an order of suppression against it and other playhouses. The order
begins as follows: "Her Majestie being informed that there are verie
greate disorders committed in the common playhouses both by lewd matters
that are handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of bad
people, hathe given direction that not onlie no playes shall be used
within London or about the Citty, or in any public place, during this
tyme of sommer, but that all those playhouses that are erected and built
only for suche purposes shall be plucked downe, namelie The Curtayne and
The Theatre nere to Shorditch, or any other within that county."
It is not known whether the order was withdrawn or whether the disregard
of it was winked at--the court very likely was not particularly inclined
to see the sentence or condemnation carried out. At all events, neither
The Curtain nor The Theatre was pulled down at the time. But the order
shows how much power the Puritans possessed, and what difficulties the
brothers Burbage had to contend with.
They seem, however, to have inherited their father's resolute character.
Since it seemed quite impossible to come to terms with the grasping
proprietor, Allen, the brothers were sensible enough to avail themselves
of the clause in the now expired lease, which permitted them to pull
down and remove the buildings they had erected on the premises, in case
they had spent at least two hundred pounds on them during the first ten
years. This sum had been much exceeded at the time, and one day, to the
great consternation and anger of the astonished Giles Allen, they simply
removed The Theatre.
One of the paragraphs in the account of the subsequent lawsuit between
Allen and the Burbages gives a very vivid idea of this remarkable
removal. Allen accuses Cuthbert Burbage of "unlawfully combininge and
confederatinge himselfe with the sayd Richard Burbage, and one Peter
Streat, William Smyth and divers other persons, to the number of twelve,
to your subject unknowne, did aboute the eight and twentyth daye of
December in the one and fortyth yeere of your Highnes raygne (1598)
ryotouslye assemble themselves together, and then and there armed
themselves with dyvers and manye unlawfull and offensive weapons, as,
namelye, swordes, daggers, billes, axes, and such like, and so armed,
did then repayre unto the sayd Theatre, and then and there, armed as
aforesayd, in verye ryotous, outragious and forcyble manner, and
contrarye to the lawes of your highnes realme, attempted to pull down
the sayd Theatre, whereupon divers of your subjectes, servauntes, and
farmers, there goinge aboute in peaceable manner to procure them to
desist from that their unlawfull enterpryse, they the sayd ryotous
persons aforesayd notwithstanding procured then therein with greate
vyolence, not only then and there forcyblye and ryotouslye resisting
your subjectes, servauntes, and farmers, but also then and there
pulling, breaking, and throwing downe the sayd Theatre in verye
outragious, violent, and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and
terrefyeing not onlye of your subjectes sayd servauntes and farmers, but
of divers others of your Majesties loving subjectes there neere
inhabitinge; and having so done, did then alsoe in most forcible and
ryotous manner take and carrye away from thence all the wood and timber
thereof, unto the Bancksyde in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and
there erected a newe playehouse with the sayd timber and wood."
Such was the end of the first short-lived London playhouse. But the new
house, which was built out of its materials on the "Bankside," was the
celebrated "Globe," the name of which is inseparably connected with that
of Shakespeare.
As we said above, James Burbage, the creator of The Theatre, belonged to
the company which played under the patronage of Lord Leicester, and
therefore went under the name of "Lord Leicester's Servants" or "Men."
The four other actors, who in 1574 received a royal license to act from
Queen Elizabeth, were John Perkin, John Lanham, William Jonson, and
Robert Wilson.
While James Burbage was no doubt the leader of the company, Robert
Wilson is supposed to have been its chief actor, at all events of comic
parts, and he was the only one among the five who was also a dramatic
author. Under his name, but after his death, Cuthbert Burbage published,
in 1594, _The Prophecy of the Cobbler_; and among anonymous plays the
following are ascribed to him: _Fair Eve, The Miller's Daughter from
Manchester, The Three Ladies of London_, etc.
Most likely some of Wilson's plays were acted in The Theatre. With this
exception the internal history of this playhouse is rather obscure, and
very little is known of its _repertoire_. A few titles may be found in
contemporary literature, such as _The Blacksmith's Daughter_, mentioned
by the Puritan Gosson in his _School of Abuse_, as "containing the
treachery of Turks, the honorable bounty of a noble mind, the shining of
virtue in distress," _The Conspiracy of Catilina, Caesar and Pompey_, and
_The Play about the Fabians_.
All these must have belonged to the earliest repertoire of The Theatre,
for Gosson's _School of Abuse_ appeared in 1579.
It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original
pre-Shakespearean _Hamlet_ as having been acted in The Theatre. He
speaks of one who "looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries
so miserably at The Theatre, like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet revenge.'"
The same company, originally "Lord Leicester's Servants," continued to
act in The Theatre till it was pulled down. But the company several
times changed its patron and consequently its name. In 1588 Lord
Leicester died, and after his death Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange,
became the patron of the company; till 1592, therefore, the actors were
called "Lord Strange's Men." But in 1592 Lord Strange was created earl
of Derby; consequently the troupe became for two years "The Earl of
Derby's Men." In 1594 the Earl of Derby died, and Henry Carey, first
Lord Hunsdon and lord chamberlain, undertook to become patron of the
company, which, therefore, adopted the name of "The Lord Chamberlain's
Servants." The son of Lord Hunsdon, George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon,
after his father's death (in 1596) also inherited the patronage of the
actors, and for almost a year they had to content themselves with being
called "Lord Hunsdon's Men," until Lord Hunsdon became lord chamberlain,
like his father, and allowed the company to resume the title of "The
Lord Chamberlain's Servants," 1597. This name the actors retained until
the accession of King James, in 1603, after which they were promoted to
the title of "The King's Players"; this title put them in the first
rank, which, indeed, they had long held in reality, and which they kept
till the suppression of the playhouses in 1642.
It is no slight task for one who desires to study theatrical affairs in
the time of Shakespeare, to make himself acquainted with the varying
names of the companies of actors; but without such knowledge it would be
very difficult to pursue the thread of the history even of the leading
companies.
About the year 1590 our company received an addition in the person of a
young man, who was not only a skilled and useful actor, but who also
possessed the accomplishment of being able to adapt older plays to the
taste of the times, and even proved to have the gift of writing
tolerably good plays himself, though older and jealous colleagues might
hint at their not being altogether original. This young man, whose
capacities became of no slight use to the company and The Theatre, was
named William Shakespeare.
At this time the leading actors of The Theatre were the great tragedian
Richard Burbage, who was then quite a young man, Henry Condell, and John
Heminge, who continued to be the mainstays of the company. There was
also the clown, Augustine Phillips, an excellent comic actor of the old
school. These four became the most intimate friends of Shakespeare, and
to Condell and Heminge posterity owes special gratitude, since it was
they who, after the death of Shakespeare, undertook the publication of
the first printed collection of his plays.
It is impossible to decide definitely which of Shakespeare's plays
belonged to the repertoire of The Theatre. It is probable that his first
plays, _Love's Labor Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona_, and his first tragedy, _Romeo and Juliet_, saw the light on
this stage between 1589 and 1591. Afterward, between 1594 and 1597,
these were possibly increased by _A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard the
Second, King John, The Merchant of Venice_, and _Henry IV_.
The repertoire of The Theatre also included the so-called "jigs," merry
after-plays, mostly consisting of songs and dances, with frequent
allusions to the events of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the
magistrates, and other enemies of the playhouses.
It has been briefly mentioned above that not long after the
establishment of The Theatre--at the latest in the following year--this
playhouse gained a companion in The Curtain, which thus became the
second of its kind in London.
The two playhouses were very close to each other, but for this very
reason it seems natural to suppose that they were rather meant to
support than to rival each other. They were like a kind of
double-barrelled gun directed against the corporation, and they seem,
indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of the Puritans,
for they are generally mentioned together in the Puritan pamphlets
directed against playhouses and all other wickedness.
However, the history of The Curtain is almost unknown to us. While we
know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on
account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure
from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of
the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are
extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when
it was pulled down.
By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has been connected with
the front curtain of the stage. We shall see later that no such curtain
existed in the time of Shakespeare, and we do not know that the
background draperies of that period had the fixed name of "curtain."
Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the
fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for
some unknown reason, bore the name of "Curtayne Close." So the playhouse
was simply named after the spot on which it was built.
As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared
almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to
pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out.
But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to
have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of
pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of
their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it
seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their
Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief
magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county
of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council:
"We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their
playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in
their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality
that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all
the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are
meant thereby. This beinge a thinge verye unfitte, offensive and
contrary, to such direction as have been heretofore taken, that no
plaies should be openly shewed but such as were first perused and
allowed, and that minister no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do
hereby require you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to
whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Curtaine in Moorefeildes
to represent any such play, and that you will examine them who made that
play and to shew the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall
thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to forbidd them from
henceforth to play the same eyther privately or publiquely; and if upon
veiwe of the said play you shall finde the subject so odious and
inconvenient as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the
chiefest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before
us."
We know nothing of the result of this prosecution, but we may be allowed
to assume that it did not result in very severe measures. We seem to
read a certain concealed sympathy in the writ of the great lords, and we
cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens who felt
themselves hit and who brought the complaint. If the lords had been the
butt of the mockery, no doubt the proceeding of the actors would have
appeared to them much worse than "rashe and indiscreete."
Until the Globe theatre was built, the Burbages most likely possessed a
share in The Curtain. At any rate, their company used that building
alternately with their own; no doubt, for instance, during the period
between the pulling down of The Theatre and the building of the Globe.
During this period they played (as "The Lord Chamberlain's Men"), among
other things, no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson's _Every Man in
His Humour_, which, according to old tradition, was accepted on the
recommendation of Shakespeare, after having been put aside contemptuously
by the other leading actors. This splendid play had an enormous success.
Of Shakespeare's plays, _Much Ado about Nothing_ and _The Second Part of
King Henry IV_ were acted.
There is scarcely any reason for assuming, with Halliwell-Phillipps and
Ordish, that the first performance of _Henry V_ took place at The
Curtain. At the appearance of this play, in 1599, the Globe theatre was
built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that this popular play saw
the light. So the frequently mentioned "wooden O" in the prologue does
not allude to The Curtain, but to the Globe.
The outward shape of The Curtain we must imagine to have been, like that
of The Theatre, circular, and unroofed in the centre. It is generally
supposed to have been somewhat smaller than Burbage's first theatre.
The last period of the existence of The Curtain is enveloped in
obscurity. But there is no reason to suppose that it did not continue to
exist till all playhouses were put down, during the civil war,
1642-1647. If The Curtain was preserved as long as that, its life was
longer than that of any other playhouse of the Shakespearean period.
COSSACK CONQUEST OF SIBERIA
A.D. 1581
NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN[1]
Siberia, the northern home of the Tartars, was little known, even to
the Russians, until the latter part of the sixteenth century. The
Cossack conquest of the western portion of the region now called
Siberia opened that vast territory to Muscovite occupation, and
gradually it has become known to the world as part of the Russian
empire.
[1] Translated by Chauncey C. Starkweather.
Nothing certain is known of the origin of the Cossack tribes, and no
final agreement has been reached as to the derivation of their name.
According to later supposition, their nucleus was a body of refugees
from the ancient Russian lands invaded by Tartars in the thirteenth
century. Some of those refugees settled between the embouchures of
the Ural River, others near the mouth of the Don. Driven by invasion
to form themselves into a military organization, the Cossacks of the
Don became a formidable confederacy. Since 1549 they have been under
the protection of Russia, and have rendered great service to the
empire.
Although they have always, since the time of Ivan IV, called the
"Terrible" (1547-1584), furnished valorous soldiers to Russia, the
Cossacks of the Don have often rebelled and disowned her authority.
Russian troops have frequently been ordered to exterminate them.
During the last years of Ivan IV these Cossacks entered upon that
eastern conquest which led to Russian expansion into Asia. Karamzin,
the Russian historian, is the most eminent authority on this subject.
Among the enterprising leaders of the Cossacks at this time were Iermak
Timofeif, John Koltzo--condemned to death by the Czar--James Mikhailoff,
Necetas Pan, and Matthew Meschteriak, all noted for their rare
intrepidity. The Stroganoffs, having heard of the terror inspired by
their audacity among peaceful travellers, as well as amid the nomad
tribes of the neighborhood, proposed an honorable service to these five
brave men. On April 6, 1579, they sent them presents, accompanied by a
letter in which they urged them to quit an occupation unworthy of
Christian soldiers, to leave the class of brigands, and to become
warriors of the White Czar, the monarch of Muscovy; to seek, in fine,
dangers exempt from dishonor, by making peace with God and Russia. "We
have," they added, "lands and fortresses, but few soldiers; come and
defend great Perm and the Christian countries of the North." At these
propositions Iermak and his companions shed tears of emotion. The hope
of effacing their disgrace by glorious deeds, by services rendered to
the State, the idea of exchanging the title of audacious brigands for
that of brave defenders of their country, caused a keen sensibility in
these men, uncouth, if you will, but with hearts still susceptible of
remorse. Unfurling their standard on the bank of the Volga, they made an
appeal to their comrades, and assembled five hundred fifty bold
partisans, at the head of whom they arrived, burning with zeal, in the
presence of the Stroganoffs, who received them with joy, as the annalist
relates. The desires of the former, the promises of the latter, were
realized. The Cossack leaders became the bucklers of the Christian
country. The infidels trembled at the aspect of death which met them
wherever they dared to show themselves. Indeed, on July 22, 1581, the
Cossacks completely overthrew the mirza Begouly, who at the head of
seven hundred Vogulitches and Ostiaks, had ravaged the colonies founded
upon the Silva and the Tchusovaya. This success was the forerunner of
more considerable advantages.
The Stroganoffs had in view not merely the defence of their cities, in
calling the Cossacks to their service. When they had sufficiently tested
the courage and fidelity of these warriors, and had learned the talent
and boldness of Iermak Timofeif, their principal leader--of obscure
origin, the annals say, but illustrious by his greatness of soul--they
formed a troop especially composed of Tartars subject to Russia, of
Lithuanians and of Germans, ransomed from captivity among the Nogais,
for the latter brought, as a matter of custom in their encampments, the
prisoners whom they made in war, as mercenaries of the Czar. In fine,
after having made provisions of arms and of food, the Stroganoffs openly
announced an expedition, which, under the orders of Iermak, should have
Siberia for its objective point. The number of fighting men amounted to
eight hundred forty, all animated with zeal and transported with joy.
Some dreamed of honor, others thought of the spoils. The hope of
meriting their pardon by the Czar inflamed the Cossacks, and the German
or Polish captives, who sighed for liberty, considering Siberia the road
to their fatherland. Iermak began by organizing his little army. He
named the hetmans, subaltern officers, and appointed the brave John
Koltzo as second in command. Long-boats were laden with munitions of war
and food, light artillery and long arquebuses. He procured guides,
interpreters, priests, had prayers said, and received the final
instructions of the Stroganoffs. The latter were conceived in the
following terms: "Go in peace to scour the country of Siberia and put to
flight the impious Kutchum." After having taken the oath of valor and
chastity, Iermak set out, on September 1, 1581, at the sound of warlike
trumpets, on the Tchusovaya, and directed his march toward the Ural
Mountains, preparing himself for great activity, without counting upon
any assistance. This expedition was even made without the knowledge of
the Czar, for the Stroganoffs, who had obtained the grant of the
countries situated on the other side of the chain of rocky mountains,
thought themselves able to dispense with soliciting of the Czar a new
sanction for their important enterprise. We shall see that Ivan did not
share this opinion.
At the moment when the states of Kutchum were to become the conquest of
the Russian Pizarro--as redoubtable for the savages as he of Spain, but
less terrible for humanity--the Prince of Pelim with the Vogulitches,
the Ostiaks, the Siberian Tartars, and the Bashkirs made a sudden
irruption upon the borders of the Kama. He destroyed the Russian
colonies near Tcherdin, Ussolie, as well as many other new fortresses of
the Stroganoffs, and put to death or dragged into captivity a great
number of Christians who were deprived of defenders. But at the news of
the march of the Cossacks against Siberia he left our frontiers to fly
to the defence of his own states.
The crime of these depredations was laid to the Stroganoffs. Upon a
report of Basile Pilepitsin, Governor of Tcherdin, Ivan wrote him that
he was either unable on unwilling to look after the frontiers. "You have
taken upon yourself," he added, "to recall proscribed Cossacks, true
bandits, whom you have sent to make war upon Siberia. This enterprise,
suited to irritate the Prince of Pelim and the sultan Kutchum, is a
treason worthy of the last punishment! I command you to cause Iermak and
his companions to start without delay for Perm and Ussolie on the Kama,
where they may be able to efface their faults by forcing the Ostiaks and
the Vogulitches to submission. You may retain at the most one hundred
Cossacks for the security of your little towns. In case you shall not
execute my commands to the letter, if in the future Perm has still to
suffer the attacks of the Prince of Pelim or of the Sultan of Siberia, I
shall overwhelm you with the weight of my disgrace and I shall have all
those traitors of Cossacks hanged." This menacing despatch made the
Stroganoffs tremble. Nevertheless, a brilliant, unexpected success
justified their enterprise and changed into favor the wrath of their
sovereign.
In beginning the story of the exploits of Iermak we shall at first say
that, like everything that is extraordinary, they have made a strong
impression upon the imagination of the vulgar, and have given birth to
many fables, which are confused in the traditions with the real facts.
Under the title of "annals" they have led the historians themselves into
error. It is thus, for instance, that some hundreds of warriors, led by
Iermak, have been metamorphosed into an army, and, like the soldiers of
Cortes or Pizarro, have been counted as thousands. The months became
years. A somewhat difficult navigation appeared marvellous. Leaving at
one side the fabulous assertions we shall, for the principal facts, base
our statements upon official documents and on the most truthful
contemporaneous account of a conquest which was, indeed, of a most
surprising character.
In the first place, the Cossacks ascended, for four days, the course of
the Tchusovaya, rapid and sown with rocks, as far as the chain of the
Ural Mountains. The two following days, in the shadow of the masses of
stone with which the interior of these mountains is covered, they
reached, by means of the river Serebrennaia, the passage called the
"Route of Siberia." There they stopped, and, ignorant of what might next
happen to them, they constructed for their safety a kind of redoubt to
which they gave the name of _kokui_. They had so far found only deserts
and a small number of inhabitants. Then they moved, towing their small
crafts as far as the river of Iaravle. These places are, even to this
day, marked by the monuments of Iermak; rocks, caverns, remains of
fortifications, bear his name. It is asserted that the big boats
abandoned by him between the Serebrennaia and the Barantcha are not, in
our time, entirely decayed, and that lofty trees shade their ruins, half
reduced to dust. By the Iaravle and the Taghil the Cossacks, reaching
the Tura, which waters one of the provinces of the empire of Siberia,
for the first time drew the sword of conquerors. At the place where the
city of Turinsk now stands there then existed a little town, the domain
of the prince Yepantcha. He commanded a large number of Tartars and
Vogulitches, and received these audacious strangers with a hail of
arrows, shot from the banks of the river, at the place where is seen the
present village of Usseninovo; but, frightened by a discharge of
artillery, he forthwith took flight. Iermak caused the town to be
destroyed, of which the name alone remains, for the residents still give
to Turinsk the name "Town of Yepantcha." The camps and villages situated
along the Tura were devastated.
The Cossack leaders having taken, at the mouth of the Tavda, an officer
of Kutchum's, named Tausak, he, desirous of saving his life,
communicated to them important information regarding the country. As the
price of his frankness, his liberty was given him, and he hastened to
announce to his master that the predictions of the soothsayers of
Siberia were being realized, for according to some accounts these
pretended sorcerers had for a long time proclaimed the near and
inevitable downfall of this state by an invasion of Christians. Tausak
spoke of the Cossacks as wonderful men and invincible heroes, lancing
fire and thunder which penetrate through the cuirasses. Nevertheless,
Kutchum, although deprived of sight, had a strong soul. He made ready to
defend his country and his faith with courage. He at once gathered all
his subjects, made his nephew Mahmetkul enter the campaign at the head
of a large force of cavalry, and he himself threw up fortifications on
the bank of the Irtisch, at the foot of the Tchuvache mountain, thus
closing to the Cossacks the road to Isker.
The conquest of Siberia resembles, in more than one regard, that of
Mexico and Peru. Here, also, it was a handful of men who, by means of
fire-arms, put to flight thousands of soldiers armed with arrows or
javelins. For the Moguls, like the Tartars of the North, were ignorant
of the use of gunpowder, and toward the end of the sixteenth century
they still used the arms employed in the time of Genghis. Each one of
Iermak's warriors faced a crowd of the enemy. If his bullet only killed
one of them, the frightful detonation of his gun put to flight twenty or
thirty. In the first combat, held on the bank of the Tobol, at a place
called Babassan, Iermak, under shelter of intrenchments, checked by some
discharges of musketry the impetuosity of ten thousand men of
Mahmetkul's cavalry, who rushed forward to crush him. He at once attacks
them himself, carries off a complete victory, and, opened, as far as the
mouth of the Tobol, a route whose perils were not yet all dissipated.
Indeed, from the height of the steep banks of the river called
Dolojai-Yar the natives poured a shower of arrows on the boats of the
Cossacks.
Another less important affair took place sixteen versts from Irtysh, in
a country governed by a tribal chief named Karatcha, situated on the
shore of a lake which up to to-day bears the name of this intimate
counsellor of the sovereign of Siberia. Iermak having made himself
master of the enemy's camp, found rich booty there, consisting of
provisions of all kinds, as well as a large number of tuns of honey,
intended for the consumption of the sovereign.
The third combat, on the Irtysh, was bloody, and stubbornly fought. It
cost some companions of Iermak their lives, and served to prove how dear
even to barbarians is the independence of their fatherland; for the
defenders of Siberia displayed resolution and intrepidity. Nevertheless,
they yielded the victory to the Russians toward the end of the day,
awaiting a new battle, and without losing either courage or hope. The
blind Kutchum left the fortifications in order to camp upon the
Tchuvache mountain. Mahmetkul was intrusted with the guard of the
intrenchments, and the Cossacks, who the same evening captured the
little town of Atik-Murza, dared not take repose for fear of an attack.
Already the troops of Iermak were visibly diminished. Some Cossacks had
been killed and many wounded, and amid constant fatigues a great number
of them had no strength nor valor left. The leaders profited by this
night of unrest to hold a council on the course to take, and in this
consultation the voice of the weaklings was heard.
"We have satiated our vengeance," they said. "It is time to turn back.
New combats will be dangerous for us, since very soon we shall be unable
to conquer any more for lack of fighters."
"Brothers," answered the leaders, "there is left only one road for us,
and that is the one in the front of us. The rivers are already covered
with ice. In turning our backs, we shall perish amid the snows. And if
we were fortunate enough to get home to Russia, we should arrive there
with the tarnish of perjury, for we have pledged ourselves to conquer
Kutchum or to blot out our faults by a generous death. We have lived
long with a dishonored reputation. Let us know how to die after having
acquired a glorious one! It is God who awards the victory, and often to
the weaker, blessed be his name!"
"Amen!" responded the troop. At the first rays of the sun the Cossacks
hurled themselves on the intrenchments through a cloud of arrows,
crying, "God is for us!" The enemy themselves threw down their palisades
at three different points. The Siberians rushed out sabre or lance in
hand, and engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict which was disadvantageous
for the warriors of Iermak, who were too inferior in numbers. Men fell
on all sides: but the Cossacks, Germans, and Poles formed an unshakable
wall, loaded their guns in good order, and, by a sustained attack,
thinned the ranks of the enemy, whom they drove toward their
intrenchments. Iermak and Koltzo, at the first line, accomplished
prodigies of valor, repeating in a loud voice, "God is for us!" while
the blind Kutchum, placed upon the mountain, in the midst of his imams
and his mollahs, invoked Mahomet for the salvation of his true
believers.
Happily for the Russians, Mahmetkul, being wounded, was obliged to quit
the fight, and the mirzas carried him in a skiff to the other bank of
the Irtysh. At this news, consternation spread throughout the hostile
army. Deprived of its leader it despaired of victory. The Ostiak princes
take flight. They are followed by the Tartars. And Kutchum, learning
that the Christian banners are already floating over the intrenchments,
seeks his safety in the deserts of Ischim, having hardly had time to
remove a part of his treasure from his capital city. This general and
bloody battle decided the domination of the Russians from the chain of
Ural Mountains to the shores of the Obi and the Tobol. It cost the
Cossacks one hundred seven of their bravest warriors, and up to the
present day prayers for the repose of their souls are offered in the
Cathedral of Tobolsk.
On October 27th Iermak, already illustrious for history, after returning
thanks to heaven, made his triumphant entry into the town of Isker, or
Sibir, situated on an elevation on the bank of the Irtysh. It was
defended on one side by intrenchments and a deep moat; on the other, by
a triple rampart. According to the annalist, the conquerers found
immense riches in gold, silver, Asiatic cloth of gold, precious stones,
furs, and so forth, which they shared among themselves like brothers.
The town was entirely deserted. These warriors, who had just conquered a
kingdom, did not see a single inhabitant here. They glutted themselves
with gold and sables, and lacked for food. Nevertheless, three days
later, they saw the Ostiaks arrive, led by their prince Bohar, who came
to bring them presents and provisions, to take the oath of fidelity, and
to ask for mercy and protection. Soon there also appeared a great number
of Tartars with their women and children. They were accorded a gracious
reception by Iermak. He quieted them and let them return to their camps,
after demanding from them a small tribute.
This man, recently the leader of a band of brigands, who had just showed
himself to be an intrepid hero and a skilful captain, likewise employed
his extraordinary genius in matters relating to administration and to
military discipline. He inspired rude and savage peoples with an extreme
confidence in a new power. He succeeded by a just severity in curbing
his turbulent companions-in-arms, so that they dared not practise any
vexations in a country conquered by their boldness and through a
thousand dangers, at the extremity of the world. It is related that the
inflexible Iermak, managing the Christian warriors in the combats,
treated them with rigor for the least fault, and that he punished
disobedience and fornication equally with death. He not only exacted
complete submission from his whole troop, but also purity of soul, in
order to render himself agreeable to the master of the earth and to the
Master of heaven, persuaded that God would accord him the victory with a
small number of virtuous warriors, rather than with a large number of
hardened sinners. "His Cossacks," says the annalist of Tobolsk, "led a
chaste life, on the march as well as during their stay in the capital of
Siberia. Their battles were followed by prayer." But they were not yet
at the end of their dangers.
Some time passed without news of Kutchum, and the Cossack leaders, with
no inquietude, gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase in the
neighborhood of the town. But Kutchum had drawn near, in spite of his |
