Chapter VII: Part 7

Hardly less powerful than the French notion of chivalry in its influence on Edward’s mind was the new French conception of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer class was everywhere hardening customary into written rights, allegiance into subjection, loose ties, such as commendation, into a definite vassalage. But it was specially through French influence, the influence of St. Lewis and his successors, that the imperial theories of the Roman law were brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. When the “sacred majesty” of the Cæsars was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal head of a feudal baronage, every constitutional relation was changed. The “defiance” by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason, his after-resistance “sacrilege.” That Edward could appreciate what was sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He was never willfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. The high conception of royalty which he had borrowed from St. Lewis united with this legal turn of mind in the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or liberties unregistered in charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while his own good sense was overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which made her national independence conditional on the terms extorted from a claimant of her throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their fathers had borne. It is in the very anomalies of such a character, in its strange union of justice and wrong-doing, of nobleness and meanness, that we must look for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in Edward’s conduct and policy.

ROBERT BRUCE.

BY SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON.

[Born Lord of Annandale and Earl of Carrick 1274, died King of
Scotland 1329. Robert Bruce was descended from the younger branch
of the royal line of Scotland, to which succession had reverted by
the death of Margaret, the “Maiden of Norway.” Brought up in the
English court, where he was a favorite of Edward I, who claimed to
be over-lord of Scotland, and, as such, feudal superior of her
kings, he had vacillated in his course in the wars which had been
carried on by Edward to enforce that claim. In 1306 he threw off
all indecision, accepted the Scottish crown, and was invested at
Scone. Severely defeated at the beginning by the lieutenants of
Edward, he was relieved, by the death of the latter while marching
to take personal command, of his most dangerous antagonist. Edward
II for some years did not push aggression against Scotland, and the
Scottish monarch had recovered nearly all his dominions, when
Edward marched against him with a great army. The Scots gained an
overwhelming victory at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and
royal Scottish authority was re-established. The complete
independence of Scotland was not acknowledged however, till 1328,
in the reign of Edward III.]

Toward a due understanding of the extraordinary merits of Robert Bruce it is necessary to take a cursory view of the power with which he had to contend and of the resources of that kingdom, which, at that critical juncture, Providence committed to his charge. The power of England, against which it was his lot to struggle, was, perhaps, the most formidable which then existed in Europe. The native valor of her people, distinguished even under the weakest reign, was then led on and animated by a numerous and valiant feudal nobility. That bold and romantic spirit of enterprise which led the Norman arms to the throne of England and enabled Roger de Hauteville, with thirty followers, to win the crown of the Two Sicilies still animated the English nobles; and to this hereditary spirit was added the remembrance of the matchless glories which their arms had acquired in Palestine.

The barons who were then arrayed against Robert Bruce were the descendants of those iron warriors who combated for Christendom under the walls of Acre, and defeated the whole Saracen strength in the battle of Ascalon; the banners that were then unfurled for the conquest of Scotland were those which had waved victorious over the arms of Saladin; and the sovereign who led them bore the crown that had been worn by Richard in the Holy Wars, and wielded in his sword the terror of that mighty name at which even the accumulated hosts of Asia were appalled.

Nor were the resources of England less formidable for nourishing and maintaining the war. The prosperity which had grown up with the equal laws of our Saxon ancestors, and which the tyranny of the early Norman kings had never completely extinguished, had revived and spread under the wise and beneficent reigns of Henry II and Edward I. The legislative wisdom of the last monarch had given to the English law greater improvements than it had ever received in any subsequent reigns, while his heroic valor had subdued the rebellious spirit of his barons and trained their united strength to submission to the throne. The acquisition of Wales had removed the only weak point of his wide dominion and added a cruel and savage race to the already formidable mass of his armies. The navy of England already ruled the seas, and was prepared to carry ravage and desolation over the wide and defenseless Scottish coast; while a hundred thousand men armed in the magnificent array of feudal war and led on by the ambition of a feudal nobility poured into a country which seemed destined only to be their prey.

But, most of all, in the ranks of this army were found the intrepid yeomanry of England--that peculiar and valuable body of men which has in every age contributed as much to the stability of English character as the celebrity of the English arms, and which then composed those terrible archers whose prowess rendered them so formidable to all the armies of Europe. These men, whose valor was warmed by the consciousness of personal freedom and whose strength was nursed among the inclosed fields and green pastures of English liberty, conferred, till the discovery of firearms rendered personal accomplishments of no avail, a matchless advantage on the English armies. The troops of no other nation could produce a body of men in the least comparable to them, either in strength, discipline, or individual valor; and such was the dreadful efficacy with which they used their weapons that not only did they mainly contribute to the subsequent triumphs of Cressy and Azincourt, but at Poitiers and Hamildon Hill they alone gained the victory, with hardly any assistance from the feudal tenantry.

These troops were well known to the Scottish soldiers, and had established their superiority over them in many bloody battles, in which the utmost efforts of undisciplined valor had been found unavailing against their practiced discipline and superior equipment. The very names of the barons who headed them were associated with an unbroken career of conquest and renown, and can hardly be read yet without a feeling of exultation.

Names that to fear were never known,
Bold Norfolk’s Earl de Brotherton
And Oxford’s famed De Vere;
Ross, Montague, and Manly came,
And Courtney’s pride and Percy’s fame,
Names known too well in Scotland’s war
At Falkirk, Methoven, and Dunbar,
Blazed broader yet in after years
At Cressy red and fell Poitiers.

Against this terrible force, before which in the succeeding reign the military power of France was compelled to bow, Bruce had to array the scanty troops of a barren land and the divided force of a turbulent nobility. Scotland was in his time fallen low, indeed, from that state of peace and prosperity in which she was found at the first invasion of Edward I, and on which so much light has been thrown by the ingenious research of our own times. The disputed succession had sowed the seeds of inextinguishable jealousies among the nobles. The gold of England had corrupted many to betray their country’s cause; and the fatal ravages of English invasion had desolated the whole plains, from which resources for carrying on the war could be drawn.

All the heroic valor, the devoted patriotism, and the personal prowess of Wallace had been unable to stem the torrent of English invasion; and when he died the whole nation seemed to sink under the load against which his unexampled fortitude had long enabled it to struggle. These unhappy jealousies among the nobles, to which his downfall was owing, still continued and almost rendered hopeless any attempt to combine their forces; while the thinned population and ruined husbandry of the country seemed to prognosticate nothing but utter extirpation from a continuance of the war. Nor was the prospect less melancholy from a consideration of the combats which had taken place. The short spear and light shield of the Scotch had been found utterly unavailing against the iron panoply and powerful horses of the English barons, while the hardy and courageous mountaineers perished in vain under the dreadful tempest of the English archery.

What, then, must have been the courage of the youthful prince, who, after having been driven for shelter to an island on the north of Ireland, could venture with only forty followers to raise the standard of independence in Scotland against the accumulated force of this mighty power! What the resources of that understanding, which, though intimately acquainted from personal service with the tried superiority of the English arms, could foresee in his barren and exhausted country the means of combatting them! What the ability of that political conduct which could reunite the jarring interests and smother the deadly feuds of the Scottish nobles! And what the capacity of that noble warrior who, in the words of the contemporary historian,[22] could “unite the prowess of the first knight to the conduct of the greatest general of his age,” and was able in the space of six years to raise the Scottish arms from the lowest point of depression to such a pitch of glory that even the redoubted archers and haughty chivalry of England fled at the sight of the Scottish banner!

Nor was it only in the field that the great and patriotic conduct of Robert Bruce was displayed. In endeavor to restore the almost ruined fortunes of his country and to heal the wounds which a war of unparalleled severity had brought upon this people he exhibited the same wise and beneficent policy. Under his auspicious rule, husbandry revived, arts were encouraged, and the turbulent barons were awed into subjection. Scotland recovered during his administration in a great measure from the devastation that had preceded it; and the peasants, forgetting the stern warrior in the beneficent monarch, long remembered his sway under the name of the “good King Robert’s reign.”

But the greatness of his character appeared most of all from the events that occurred after his death. When the capacity with which he and his worthy associates Randolph and Douglas had counterbalanced the superiority of English arms was withdrawn, the fabric which they had supported fell to the ground. In the very first battle which was fought after his death at Hamildon Hill, a larger army than that which conquered at Bannockburn was overthrown by the archers of England, without a single knight couching his spear. Never at any subsequent period was Scotland able to stand the more powerful arms of the English yeomanry. Thenceforward her military history is little more than a melancholy catalogue of continued defeats, occasioned rather by treachery on the part of her nobles or incapacity in her generals than any defect of valor in her soldiers; and the independence of the monarchy was maintained rather by the terror which the name of Bruce and the remembrance of Bannockburn had inspired than by the achievements of any of the successors to his throne.

The merits of Robert Bruce as a warrior are very generally acknowledged; and the eyes of Scottish patriotism turn with the greater exultation to his triumphs from the contrast which their splendor affords to the barren annals of the subsequent reigns. But the important consequences of his victories are not sufficiently appreciated. But for his bold and unconquerable spirit, Scotland might have shared with Ireland the severity of English conquest; and instead of exulting now in the prosperity of our country, the energy of our peasantry, and the patriotic spirit of our resident landed proprietors, we might have been deploring with her an absent nobility, an oppressive tenantry, a bigoted and ruined people.

EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND.

BY DAVID HUME.

[Son of Edward II of England and Isabella of France, born 1312,
crowned 1327, died 1377. Edward achieved the highest renown by his
Scotch and French wars, the latter of which he undertook as
claimant of the French throne through his mother. Though the latter
part of his life was marked by many misfortunes, the achievements
of his reign stamp it as among the most important in the earlier
English annals. It was not until this period that the English
language became universally recognized as the national speech, and
the various race elements were thoroughly welded and made
homogeneous.]

The English are apt to consider with peculiar fondness the history of Edward III, and to esteem his reign, as it was one of the longest, the most glorious, also, that occurs in the annals of their nation. The ascendant which they then began to acquire over France, their rival and supposed national enemy, makes them cast their eyes on this period with great complacency, and sanctifies every measure which Edward embraced for that end. But the domestic government of this prince is really more admirable than his foreign victories; and England enjoyed, by the prudence and vigor of his administration, a longer interval of domestic peace and tranquillity than she had been blessed with in any former period, or than she experienced for many ages after. He gained the affections of the great, yet curbed their licentiousness; he made them feel his power, without their daring, or even being inclined, to murmur at it; his affable and obliging behavior, his munificence and generosity, made them submit with pleasure to his dominion; his valor and conduct made them successful in most of their enterprises; and their unquiet spirits, directed against a public enemy, had no leisure to breed those disturbances to which they were naturally so much inclined, and which the frame of the government seemed so much to authorize.

This was the chief benefit which resulted from Edward’s victories and conquests. His foreign wars were in other respects neither founded in justice nor directed to any salutary purpose. His attempt against the King of Scotland, a minor and a brother-in-law, and the revival of his grandfather’s claim of superiority over that kingdom were both unreasonable and ungenerous; and he allowed himself to be too easily seduced, by the glaring prospect of French conquests, from the acquisition of a point which was practicable, and which, if attained, might really have been of lasting utility to his country and his successors. The success which he met with in France, though chiefly owing to his eminent talents, was unexpected; and yet from the very nature of things, not from any unforeseen accidents, was found, even during his lifetime, to have procured him no solid advantages. But the glory of a conqueror is so dazzling to the vulgar, the animosity of nations is so violent, that the fruitless desolation of so fine a part of Europe as France is totally disregarded by us, and is never considered as a blemish in the character or conduct of this prince; and, indeed, from the unfortunate state of human nature, it will commonly happen that a sovereign of genius, such as Edward, who usually finds everything easy in his domestic government, will turn himself toward military enterprises, where alone he meets with opposition, and where he has full exercise for his industry and capacity.

It is remarked by an elegant historian that conquerors, though usually the bane of human kind, proved often, in those feudal times, the most indulgent of sovereigns. They stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some compensation by equitable laws and popular concessions. This remark is, in some measure, though imperfectly, justified by the conduct of Edward III. He took no steps of moment without consulting his Parliament and obtaining their approbation, which he afterward pleaded as a reason for their supporting his measures. The Parliament, therefore, rose into greater consideration during his reign, and acquired more regular authority than in any former time; and even the House of Commons, which during turbulent and factious periods, was naturally depressed by the greater power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some weight in the constitution. In the later years of Edward, the king’s ministers were impeached in Parliament, particularly Lord Latimer, who fell a sacrifice to the authority of the Commons; and they even obliged the king to banish his mistress by their remonstrances. Some attention was also paid to the election of their members; and lawyers, in particular, who were at that time men of character somewhat inferior, were totally excluded from the House during several Parliaments.

Edward granted about twenty parliamentary confirmations of the great charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the great charter had not been frequently violated, the Parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor. Hence, likewise, that general clause, so frequent in old acts of Parliament, that the statutes enacted by the king’s progenitors should be observed--a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent confirmations of the privileges of the Church proceeded from the same cause.

There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III, nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government which was then established in England. The struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the great charter were now over; the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations; Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, not led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interest than to keep on good terms with his people; yet, on the whole, it appears, that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims nor bounded by any certain undisputed rights which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the Commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible; each of them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it; a great prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy: a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But the Commons, little obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while the storm was brewing were courted on all sides, and thus received still some accession to their privileges, or at worst some confirmation of them.

RIENZI.

BY EDWARD GIBBON.

[Cola Gabrini Rienzi, the “last of the Roman tribunes,” born about
1312, died by assassination during a popular _emeute_, 1354.
Inspired by his patriotic enthusiasm and made powerful by his
eloquence, Rienzi, during the troubles in Rome ensuing on the
removal of the Papal See to Avignon, organized an insurrection
against the turbulent and factious nobles. The latter were crushed
and driven from Rome, and Rienzi rose to supreme power under the
title of “tribune.” Success, however, corrupted the republican
virtues of the _parvenu_ tribune of the new republic; and his
arrogance and splendor soon laid heavy burdens of taxation on the
people, which provoked a reaction. He was finally driven from power
and compelled to seek safety in flight. The return of the barons
and their iron oppression, however, paved the way for the
successful return of Rienzi to the chief magistracy in 1354.
Unwarned by experience he again resumed the pomp and pride of
royalty, and was shortly after killed in an insurrection of the
citizens of Rome.]

In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the marriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman produced the future deliverer of Rome. From such parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and untimely end. The study of history and eloquence, the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cæsar, and Valerius Maximus elevated above his equals and contemporaries the genius of the young plebeian; he perused with indefatigable diligence the manuscripts and marbles of antiquity; loved to dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often provoked to exclaim: “Where are now these Romans? their virtue, their justice, their power? Why was I not born in those happy times?” When the republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an embassy of the three orders, the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi recommended him to a place among the thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honor of haranguing Pope Clement VI, and the satisfaction of conversing with Petrarch, a congenial mind; but his aspiring hopes were chilled by disgrace and poverty, and the patriot was reduced to a single garment and the charity of the hospital. From this misery he was relieved by the sense of merit or smile of favor; and the employment of apostolic notary afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honorable and extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and actions, his own integrity with the vices of the state. The eloquence of Rienzi was prompt and persuasive; the multitude is always prone to envy and censure; he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity of the assassins; nor was it possible to excuse or exaggerate the public calamities.

A prophecy, or rather a summons, affixed on the church door of St. George, was the first public evidence of his designs; a nocturnal (May 20, A.D. 1347) assembly of a hundred citizens on Mount Aventine, the first step to their execution. After an oath of secrecy and aid, he represented to the conspirators the importance and facility of their enterprise; that the nobles, without union or resources, were strong only in the fear of their imaginary strength; that all power, as well as right, was in the hands of the people; that the revenues of the apostolical chamber might relieve the public distress; and that the Pope himself would approve their victory over the common enemies of government and freedom. After securing a faithful band to protect his first declaration, he proclaimed through the city, by sound of trumpet, that on the evening of the following day all persons should assemble without arms before the church of St. Angelo to provide for the re-establishment of the good estate. The whole night was employed in the celebration of thirty masses of the Holy Ghost, and in the morning, Rienzi, bareheaded, but in complete armor, issued from the church, encompassed by the hundred conspirators.

The Pope’s vicar, the simple Bishop of Orvieto, who had been persuaded to sustain a part in this singular ceremony, marched on his right hand, and three great standards were borne aloft as the emblems of their design. In the first, the banner of _liberty_, Rome was seated on two lions, with a palm in one hand and a globe in the other; St. Paul, with a drawn sword, was delineated in the banner of _justice_; and in the third, St. Peter held the keys of _concord_ and _peace_. Rienzi was encouraged by the presence and applause of an innumerable crowd, who understood little and hoped much; and the procession slowly rolled forward from the castle of St. Angelo to the Capitol. His triumph was disturbed by some secret emotions which he labored to suppress; he ascended without opposition, and with seeming confidence, the citadel of the republic, harangued the people from the balcony, and received the most flattering confirmation of his acts and laws. The nobles, as if destitute of arms and counsels, beheld in silent consternation this strange revolution; and the moment had been prudently chosen, when the most formidable, Stephen Colonna, was absent from the city. On the first rumor, he returned to his palace, affected to despise this plebeian tumult, and declared to the messenger of Rienzi that at his leisure he would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The great bell instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was the danger, that Colonna escaped with precipitation to the suburb of St. Laurence; from thence, after a moment’s refreshment, he continued the same speedy career till he reached in safety his castle of Palestrina, lamenting his own imprudence, which had not trampled the spark of this mighty conflagration. A general and peremptory order was issued from the Capitol to all the nobles that they should peaceably retire to their estates; they obeyed, and their departure secured the tranquillity of the free and obedient citizens of Rome.

Never, perhaps, has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably felt than in the sudden though transient reformation of Rome by the tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a camp or convent; patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and stranger; nor could birth or dignity or the immunities of the Church protect the offender or his accomplices. The privileged houses, the private sanctuaries in Rome, on which no officer of justice would presume to trespass, were abolished; and he applied the timber and iron of their barricades in the fortifications of the Capitol. The venerable father of the Colonna was exposed in his own palace to the double shame of being desirous and of being unable to protect a criminal. A mule, with a jar of oil, had been stolen near Capranica, and the lord of the Ursini family was condemned to restore the damage and to discharge a fine of four hundred florins for his negligence in guarding the highways. Nor were the persons of the barons more inviolate than their lands or houses, and, either from accident or design, the same impartial rigor was exercised against the heads of the adverse factions.

Peter Agapet Colonna, who had himself been senator of Rome, was arrested in the street for injury or debt; and justice was appeased by the tardy execution of Martin Ursini, who, among his various acts of violence and rapine, had pillaged a shipwrecked vessel at the mouth of the Tiber. His name, the purple of two cardinals, his uncles, a recent marriage, and a mortal disease were disregarded by the inflexible tribune, who had chosen his victim. The public officers dragged him from his palace and nuptial bed; his trial was short and satisfactory; the bell of the Capitol convened the people. Stripped of his mantle, on his knees, with his hands bound behind his back, he heard the sentence of death, and, after a brief confession, Ursini was led away to the gallows. After such an example, none who were conscious of guilt could hope for impunity, and the flight of the wicked, the licentious, and the idle soon purified the city and territory of Rome. In this time (says the historian) the woods began to rejoice that they were no longer infested with robbers; the oxen began to plow; the pilgrims visited the sanctuaries; the roads and inns were replenished with travelers; trade, plenty, and good faith were restored in the markets; and a purse of gold might be exposed without danger in the midst of the highway. As soon as the life and property of the subject are secure, the labors and rewards of industry spontaneously revive. Rome was still the metropolis of the Christian world, and the fame and fortunes of the tribune were diffused in every country by the strangers who had enjoyed the blessings of his government.

The deliverance of his country inspired Rienzi with a vast and perhaps visionary idea of uniting Italy in a great federative republic, of which Rome should be the ancient and lawful head, and the free cities and princes the members and associates. His pen was not less eloquent than his tongue, and his numerous epistles were delivered to swift and trusty messengers. On foot, with a white wand in their hand, they traversed the forests and mountains; enjoyed, in the most hostile states, the sacred security of ambassadors; and reported, in the style of flattery or truth, that the highways along their passage were lined with kneeling multitudes, who implored Heaven for the success of their undertaking. Beyond the Alps, more especially at Avignon, the revolution was the theme of curiosity, wonder, and applause. Petrarch had been the private friend, perhaps the secret counselor, of Rienzi; his writings breathe the most ardent spirit of patriotism and joy; and all respect for the Pope, all gratitude for the Colonna, was lost in the superior duties of a Roman citizen. The poet-laureate of the Capitol maintains the act, applauds the hero, and mingles with some apprehension and advice the most lofty hopes of the permanent and rising greatness of the republic.

While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor began to mark the irregularity of its course and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced by cool and commanding reason; he magnified in a tenfold proportion the objects of hope and fear; and prudence, which could not have erected, did not presume to fortify his throne. In the blaze of prosperity his virtues were insensibly tinctured with the adjacent vices--justice with cruelty, liberality with profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and ostentatious vanity. He might have learned that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in the public opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or appearance from an ordinary plebeian; and that as often as they visited the city on foot a single _viator_, or beadle, attended the exercise of their office. The Gracchi would have frowned or smiled could they have read the sonorous titles and epithets of their successor, “NICHOLAS, SEVERE AND MERCIFUL; DELIVERER OF ROME; DEFENDER OF ITALY; FRIEND OF MANKIND, AND OF LIBERTY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE; TRIBUNE AUGUST.” His theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi abused, in luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes as well as the understanding of the multitude. From nature he had received the gift of a handsome person till it was swelled and disfigured by intemperance; and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the magistrate by the affectation of gravity and sternness. He was clothed, at least on public occasions, in a party-colored robe of velvet or satin lined with fur and embroidered with gold. The rod of justice, which he carried in his hand, was a scepter of polished steel, crowned with a globe and cross of gold, and inclosing a small fragment of the true and holy wood. In his civil and religious processions through the city he rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty. The great banner of the republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive-branch, was displayed over his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among the populace; fifty guards with halberds encompassed his person; a troop of horse preceded his march, and their cymbals and trumpets were of massy silver.

These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son, his uncle (a barber in name and profession), exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and princely expense; and without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king.

TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE.

BY EDWARD GIBBON.

[Tamerlane, corruption of Timour Lenk (“the lame”), born 1336, died
1405. One of the greatest conquerors of history, he was a second
Genghis Khan, whom he resembled much in character. His descendants
speedily lost the greater part of his conquests, and the last of
his family fell before the power of the English East India Company
in India, of which he had become a mere pensioner, though nominally
the “Great Mogul” and Emperor of Delhi.]

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of his secretaries; the authentic narrative was revised by the persons best informed of each particular transaction, and it is believed in the empire and family of Timour that the monarch himself composed the “Commentaries” of his life and the “Institutions” of his government. But these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these precious memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or at least from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has long repeated the tale of calumny which had disfigured the birth and character, the person, and even the name of _Tamerlane_. Yet his real merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a peasant to the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps an honorable, infirmity.

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he sprang from the noble tribe of Berlass; his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had been the vizier of Zagatai in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in the ascent of some generations the branch of Timour is confounded, at least by the females, with the imperial stem. He was born forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. His birth was cast on one of those periods of anarchy which announce the fall of the Asiatic dynasties, and opened a new field to adventurous ambition. The khans of Zagatai were extinct, the emirs aspired to independence, and their domestic feuds could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks, invaded the Transoxian kingdom.

From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the field of action; in the twenty-fifth he stood forth as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and wishes of the people were turned toward a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law and of the army had pledged their salvation to support him with their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were silent and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine favor are with him.” But in this bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which was soon diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. He wandered in the desert with his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, whence he escaped by his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid stream of the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their advantage, and above all for his own. On his return to his native country, Timour was successively joined by the parties of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of their fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the head of seventy horse. “When their eyes fell upon me,” says Timour, “they were overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from their horses; and they came and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse, and took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and the third, I clothed in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our horses, and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a feast.”

His trusty hands were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them against a superior foe, and after some vicissitudes of war, the Getes were finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own glory, but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood to be spilled, before he could teach his equals to obey him as their master. The birth and power of Emir Houssein compelled him to accept a vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous; but the policy of Timour in their frequent quarrels exposed his rival to the reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a small defeat, Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to disobey the commands of their lord.

At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet or _couroultai_, he was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the Emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world, and before his death the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head.

The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. In his religion he was a zealous though not perhaps an orthodox Mussulman; but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe, that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy.

In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that, whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed that the commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive subjects; and whenever they deviated from their duty they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastinado, and afterward restored to honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on the public interest, and it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveler and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes--are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast that at his accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the east to the west. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion.

The following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities, was often marked by his abominable trophies--by columns or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkistan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. Thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits.

The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor of inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the “Institutions” of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren--the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after _his_ decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood, and, before the end of a century, Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbecks from the north, and the Turkomans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbeck arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved, the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber, and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the northern ocean.[23]

JEANNE D’ARC.

BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

[A French heroine, otherwise known as La Pucelle and the Maid of
Orleans, date of birth uncertain, burned at the stake by English
influence as a sorceress at Rouen in 1431. Her enthusiasm and the
belief in the supernatural mission so inspired the French and
daunted the English as to turn the tide of war against the latter,
and was a main cause of ending that series of English invasions
which had imperiled the national existence of France.]

Jeanne d’Arc was the child of a laborer of Domrémy, a little village in the neighborhood of Vaucouleurs on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domrémy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees, and sang songs to the “good people,” who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but “a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways,” spinning and sewing by her mother’s side while the other girls went to the fields, attended to the poor and sick, fond of church, and listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of delight which never left her. The quiet life was soon broken by the storm of war as it at last came home to Domrémy. As the outcasts and wounded passed by the young peasant-girl gave them her bed and nursed them in their sickness. Her whole nature summed itself up in one absorbing passion: she “had pity,” to use the phrase forever on her lip, “on the fair realm of France.”

As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the help of the king and restore to him his realm. “Messire,” answered the girl, “I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to lead men-at-arms.” The archangel returned to give her courage, and to tell her of “the pity” that there was in heaven for the fair realm of France. The girl wept, and longed that the angels who appeared to her would carry her away, but her mission was clear. It was in vain that her father, when he heard her purpose, swore to drown her ere she should go to the field with men-at-arms. It was in vain that the priest, the wise people of the village, the captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused to aid her. “I must go to the king,” persisted the peasant-girl, “even if I wear my limbs to the very knees.... I had far rather rest and spin by my mother’s side,” she pleaded, with a touching pathos, “for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it.” “And who,” they asked, “is your Lord?” “He is God.” Words such as these touched the rough captain at last; he took Jeanne by the hand and swore to lead her to the king. When she reached Chinon she found hesitation and doubt. The theologians proved from their books that they ought not to believe her. “There is more in God’s book than in yours,” Jeanne answered, simply. At last Charles received her in the midst of a throng of nobles and soldiers. “Gentle Dauphin,” said the girl, “my name is Jeanne the Maid. The heavenly King sends me to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the heavenly King who is the King of France.”

The girl was in her eighteenth year, tall, finely formed, with all the vigor and activity of her peasant rearing, able to stay from dawn to nightfall on horseback without meat or drink. As she mounted her charger, clad in white armor from head to foot, with the great white banner studded with _fleur-de-lis_ waving over her head, she seemed “a thing wholly divine, whether to see or hear.” The ten thousand men-at-arms who followed her from Blois, rough plunderers whose only prayer was that of La Hire, “Sire Dieu, I pray you to do for La Hire what La Hire would do for you were you captain-at-arms and he God,” left off their oaths and foul living at her word and gathered round the altars on their march. Her shrewd peasant humor helped her to manage the wild soldiery, and her followers laughed over their camp-fires at the old warrior who had been so puzzled by her prohibition of oaths that she suffered him still to swear by his _bâton_. In the midst of her enthusiasm her good sense never left her. The people crowded round her as she rode along, praying her to work miracles, and bringing crosses and chaplets to be blessed by her touch. “Touch them yourself,” she said to an old Dame Margaret; “your touch will be just as good as mine.” But her faith in her mission remained as firm as ever. “The Maid prays and requires you,” she wrote to Bedford, “to work no more distraction in France, but to come in her company to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the Turk.”--“I bring you,” she told Dunois when he sallied out of Orleans to meet her, “the best aid ever sent to any one, the aid of the King of Heaven.”