Chapter XVIII: Part 18

It seems a characteristic of literature that it becomes pure in proportion as it becomes powerful. While it is the mere vehicle for amusement or the exercise of wit and fancy, it does not care in what degrading quarters its materials are found. But when it feels that its voice is influential and its lessons attended to by a wider audience, it rises to the height of the great office to which it is called, and is dignified because it is conscious of its authority. In the incontestable amendment visible in the writings of the period of Anne and the Georges, we find a proof that the vices of the busy politicians and gambling speculators were not shared by the general public. The papers of the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_, the writings of Pope and Arbuthnot, were not addressed to a depraved or sensualized people, as the works of Rochester and Sedley had been. When we talk, therefore, of the Augustan age of Anne, we are to remember that its freedom from grossness and immorality is still more remarkable than its advance in literary merit, and we are to look on the conduct of intriguing directors and bribed members of Parliament as the relics of a time about to pass away and to give place to truer ideas of commercial honesty and public duty. The country, in spite of coarseness of manners and language, was still sound at heart. The jolly squire swore at inconvenient seasons and drank beyond what was right, but he kept open house to friend and tenant, administered justice to the best of his ability, had his children Christianly and virtuously brought up, and was a connecting link in his own neighbourhood between the great nobles who affected almost a princely state, and the snug merchant in the country town, or retired citizen from London, whom he met at the weekly club. The glimpses we get of the social status of the country gentlemen of Queen Anne make us enamoured of their simple ways and patriarchal position. For the argument to be drawn from the character and friends of Sir Roger de Coverly and the delightful Lady Lizard and her daughters, is that the great British nation was still the home of the domestic affections, that the behaviour was pure though the grammar was a little faulty, and the ideas modest and becoming though the expression might be somewhat unadorned. Hence it was that, when the trial came, the heart of all the people turned to the uninviting but honest man who filled the British throne. George the Second became a hero, because the country was healthy at the core.

A son of the old Pretender, relying on the lax morality of the statesmen and the venality of the courtiers, forgot the unshaken firmness and dogged love of the right which was yet a living principle among the populations of both the nations, and landed in the North of Scotland in 1745, to recover the kingdom of his ancestors by force of arms. The kingdoms, however, had got entirely out of the habit of being recovered by any such means. The law had become so powerful, and was so guarded by forms and precedents, that Prince Charles Edward would have had a better chance of obtaining his object by an action of ejectment, or a suit of recovery, than by the aid of sword and bayonet. Everybody knows the main incidents of this romantic campaign,--the successful battles which gave the insurgents the apparent command of the Lowlands,--the advance into England,--the retreat from Derby,--the disasters of the rebel army, and its final extinction at Culloden. But, although to us it appears a very serious state of affairs,--a crown placed on the arbitrament of war, battles in open field, surprise on the part of the Hanoverians, and loud talking on the part of their rivals,--the tranquillity of all ranks and in all quarters is the most inexplicable thing in the whole proceeding. When the landing was first announced, alarm was of course felt, as at a fair when it is reported that a tiger has broken loose from the menagerie. But in a little time every thing resumed its ordinary appearance. George himself cried, "Pooh! pooh! Don't talk to me of such nonsense." His ministers, who probably knew the state of public feeling, were equally unconcerned. A few troops were brought over from the Continent, to show that force was not wanting if the application of it was required. But in other respects no one appeared to believe that the assumed fears of the disaffected, and the no less assumed exultation of the Jacobites, had any foundation in fact. Trade, law, buying and selling, writing and publishing, went on exactly as before. The march of the Pretender was little attended to, except perhaps in the political circles in London. In the great towns it passed almost unheeded. Quiet families within a few miles of the invaders' march posted or walked across to see the uncouth battalions pass. Their strange appearance furnished subjects of conversation for a month; but nowhere does there seem to have been the terror of a real state of war,--the anxious waiting for intelligence, "the pang, the agony, the doubt:" no one felt uneasy as to the result. England had determined to have no more Stuart kings, and Scotland was beginning to feel the benefit of the Union, and left the defence of the true inheritor to the uninformed, discontented, disunited inhabitants of the hills. When the tribes emerged from their mountains, they seemed to melt like their winter snows. No squadrons of stout-armed cavaliers came to join them from holt and farm, as in the days of the Great Rebellion, when the royal flag was raised at Nottingham. Puritans and Independents took no heed, and cried no cries about "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." They had turned cutlers at Sheffield and fustian-makers at Manchester. The Prince found not only that he created no enthusiasm, but no alarm,--a most painful thing for an invading chief; and, in fact, when they had reached the great central plains of England they felt lost in the immensity of the solitude that surrounded them. If they had met enemies they would have fought; if they had found friends they would have hoped; but they positively wasted away for lack of either confederate or opponent. The expedition disappeared like a small river in sand. What was the use of going on? If they reached London itself, they would be swallowed up in the vastness of the population, and, instead of meeting an army, they would be in danger of being taken up by the police. So they reversed their steps. Donald had stolen considerably in the course of the foray, and was anxious to go and invest his fortune in his native vale. An English guinea--a coin hitherto as fabulous as the _Bodach glas_--would pay the rent of his holding for twenty years; five pounds would make him a cousin of the Laird. But Donald never got back to display the spoils of Carlisle or Derby. He loitered by the road, and was stripped of all his booty. [A.D. 1746.] He was imprisoned, and hanged, and starved, and beaten, and finally, after the strange tragi-comedy of his fight at Falkirk, had the good fortune, on that bare expanse of Drummossie Moor, to hide some of the ludicrous features of his retreat in the glory of a warrior's death. Justice became revenge by its severity after the insurrection was quelled. The followers of the Prince were punished as traitors; but treason means rebellion against an acknowledged government, which extends to its subjects the securities of law. These did not exist in the Highlands. All those distant populations knew of law was the edge of its sword, not the balance of its scales. They saw their chiefs depressed, they remembered the dismal massacre of Glencoe in William's time, and the legal massacres of George the First's. They spoke another language, were different in blood, and manners, and religion, and should have been treated as prisoners of war fighting under a legal banner, and not drawn and quartered as revolted subjects. It is doubtful if one man in the hundred knew the name of the king he was trying to displace, or the position of the prince who summoned him to his camp. Poor, gallant, warm-hearted, ignorant, trusting Gael! His chieftain told him to follow and slay the Saxons, and he required no further instruction. He was not cruel or bloodthirsty in his strange advance. He had no personal enmity to Scot or Englishman, and, with the simple awe of childhood, soon looked with reverence on the proofs of wealth and skill which met him in the crowded cities and cultivated plains. He was subdued by the solemn cathedrals and grand old gentlemen's seats that studded all the road, as some of his ancestors, the ancient Gauls, had been at the sight of the Roman civilization. And, for all these causes, the incursion of the Jacobites left no lasting bitterness among the British peoples. Pity began before long to take the place of opposition; and when all was quite secure, and the Highlanders were fairly subdued, and the Pretender himself was sunk in sloth and drunkenness, a sort of morbid sympathy with the gallant adventurers arose among the new generation. Tender and romantic ballads, purporting to be "Laments for Charlie," and declarations of attachment to the "Young Chevalier," were composed by comfortable ladies and gentlemen, and sung in polished drawing-rooms in Edinburgh and London with immense applause. Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," or Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," have as much right to be called the contemporary expression of the sacrifice of Virginia or the burial of Dundee as the Jacobite songs to be the living voice of the Forty-Five. Who was there in the Forty-Five, or Forty-Six, or for many years after that date, to write such charming verses? The Highlanders themselves knew not a word of English; the blue bonnets in Scotland were not addicted to the graces of poetry and music. The citizens of England were too busy, the gentlemen of England too little concerned in the rising, to immortalize the landing at Kinloch-Moidart or the procession to Holyrood. The earliest song which commemorates the Pretender's arrival, or laments his fall, was not written within twenty years of his attempt. By that time George the Third was on the safest throne in Europe, and Great Britain was mistress of the trade of India and the illimitable regions of America. It was easy to sing about having our "rightful King," when we were in undisputed possession of the Ganges and the Hudson and had just planted the British colours on Quebec and Montreal.

This rebellion of Forty-Five, therefore, is remarkable as a feature in this century, not for the greatness of the interest it excited, but for the small effect it had upon either government or people. It showed on what firm foundations the liberties and religion of the nations rested, that the appearance of armed enemies upon our soil never shook our justly-balanced state. The courts sat at Westminster, and the bells rang for church. People read Thomson's "Seasons," and wondered at Garrick in "Hamlet" at Drury Lane.

Meantime, a great contest was going on abroad, which, after being hushed for a while by the peace of 1748, broke out with fiercer vehemence than ever in what is called the Seven Years' War. [A.D. 1756-1763.] The military hero of this period was Frederick the Second of Prussia, by whose genius and skill the kingdom he succeeded to--a match for Saxony or Bavaria--rapidly assumed its position as a first-rate power. A combination of all the old despotisms was formed against him,--not, however, without cause; for a more unprincipled remover of his neighbour's landmarks, and despiser of generosity and justice, never appeared in history. But when he was pressed on one side by Russia and Austria, and on the other by France, and all the little German potentates were on the watch to pounce on the unprotected State and get their respective shares in the general pillage, Frederick placed his life upon the cast, and stood the hazard of the die in many tremendous combats, crushed the belligerents one by one, made forced marches which caught them unawares, and, though often defeated, conducted his retreats so that they yielded him all the fruits of victory. In his extremity he sought and found alliances in the most unlikely quarters. Though a self-willed despot in his own domains, he won the earnest support and liberal subsidies of the freedom-loving English; and though a philosopher of the most amazing powers of unbelief, he awakened the sympathy of all the religious Protestants in our land. All his faults were forgiven--his unchivalrous treatment of the heroic _King_ of Hungary, Maria-Theresa, the Empress-Queen, his assaults upon her territory, and general faithlessness and ambition--on the one strong ground that he opposed Catholics and tyrants, and, though irreligious and even scoffing himself, was at the head of a true-hearted Protestant people.

It is not unlikely the instincts of a free nation led us at that time to throw our moral weight, if nothing more, into the scale against the intrusion of a new and untried power which began to take part in the conflicts of Europe; for at this period we find the ill-omened announcement that the Russians have issued from their deserts a hundred thousand strong, and made themselves masters of most of the Prussian provinces. [A.D. 1758.] Though defeated in the great battle of Zorndorf, they never lost the hope of renewing the march they had made eleven years before, when thirty-five thousand of them had rested on the Rhine. But Britain was not blind either to the past or future. At the head of our affairs was a man whose fame continues as fresh at the present hour as in the day of his greatness. William Pitt had been a cornet of horse, and even in his youth had attracted the admiration and hatred of old Sir Robert Walpole by an eloquence and a character which the world has agreed in honouring with the epithet of majestic; and when war was again perplexing the nations, and Britain, as usual, had sunk to the lowest point in the military estimate of the Continent, the Great Commoner, as he was called, took the government into his hands, and the glories of the noblest periods of our annals were immediately renewed or cast into the shade. Wherever the Great Commoner pointed with his finger, success was certain. His fleets swept the seas. Howe and Hawke and Boscawen executed his plans. In the East he was answered by the congenial energy of Clive, and in the West by the heroic bravery of Wolfe. For, though the war in which we were now engaged had commenced nominally for European interests, the crash of arms between France and England extended to all quarters of the world. In India and America equally their troops and policies were opposed, and, in fact, the battle of the two nations was fought out in those distant realms. Our triumph at Plassey and on the Heights of Abraham had an immense reaction on both the peoples at home. And a very cursory glance at those regions, from the middle of the century, will be a fitting introduction to the crowning event of the period we have now reached,--namely, the French Revolution of 1789. The rise of the British Empire in the East, no less than the loss of our dominion in the West, will be found to contribute to that grand catastrophe, of which the results for good and evil will be felt "to the last syllable of recorded time."

The first commercial adventure to India was in the bold days of Elizabeth, in 1591. In the course of a hundred years from that time various companies had been established by royal charter, and a regular trade had sprung up. In 1702 all previous charters were consolidated into one, and the East India Company began its career. Its beginning was very quiet and humble. It was a trader, and nothing more; but when it saw a convenient harbour, a favourable landing-place, and an industrious population, it bent as lowly as any Oriental slave at the footstool of the unsuspecting Rajah, and obtained permission to build a storehouse, to widen the wharf, and, finally, to erect a small tower, merely for the defence of its property from the dangerous inhabitants of the town. The storehouses became barracks, the towers became citadels; and by the year 1750 the recognised possessions of the inoffensive and unambitious merchants comprised mighty states, and were dotted at intervals along the coast from Surat and Bombay on the west to Madras and Calcutta on the east and far north. The French also had not been idle, and looked out ill pleased, from their domains at Pondicherry and Chandernagore, on the widely-diffused settlements and stealthy progress of their silent rivals. They might have made as rapid progress, and secured as extensive settlements, if they had imitated their rivals' stealthiness and silence. But power is nothing in the estimation of a Frenchman unless he can wear it like a court suit and display it to all the world. The governors, therefore, of their factories, obtained honours and ornaments from the native princes. One went so far as to forge a gift of almost regal power from the Great Mogul, and sat on a musnud, and was addressed with prostration by his countrymen and the workmen in the warerooms. Wherever the British wormed their way, the French put obstacles in their path. Whether there was peace between Paris and London or not, made no difference to the rival companies on the Coromandel shore. They were always at war, and only cloaked their national hatred under the guise of supporters of opposite pretenders to some Indian throne. Great men arose on both sides. The climate or policies of Hindostan, which weaken the native inhabitant, only call forth the energies and manly virtues of the intrusive settler. No kingdom has such a bead-roll of illustrious names as the British occupation. That one century of "work and will" has called forth more self-reliant heroism and statesmanlike sagacity than any period of three times the extent since the Norman Conquest. From Clive, the first of the line, to the Lawrences and Havelocks of the present day, there has been no pause in the patriotic and chivalrous procession. Clive came just at the proper time. A born general, though sent out in an humble mercantile situation, he retrieved the affairs of his employers and laid the foundation of a new empire for the British crown. Calcutta had been seized by a native ruler, instigated by the French, in 1756. The British residents, to the number of one hundred and forty-six, were packed in a frightful dungeon without a sufficiency of light or air, and, after a night which transcends all nights of suffering and despair, when the prison-doors were thrown open, but twenty-two of the whole number survived. But these were twenty-two living witnesses to the tyranny and cruelty of Surajah Dowlat. Clive was on his track ere many months had passed. Calcutta was recovered, other places were taken, and the battle of Plassey fought. In this unparalleled exploit, Clive, with three thousand soldiers, principally Sepoys, revenged the victims of the Black Hole, by defeating their murderer at the head of sixty thousand men. This was on the 23d of June, 1757; and when in that same year the news of the great European war between the nations came thundering up the Ganges, the victors enlarged their plans. They determined to expel the French from all their possessions in the East; and Admiral Pococke and Colonel Coote were worthy rivals of the gallant Clive. Great fleets encountered in the Indian seas, and victory was always with the British flag. Battles took place by land, and uniformly with the same result. Closer and closer the invading lines converged upon the French; and at last, in 1761, Pondicherry, the last remaining of all their establishments, was taken, after a vigorous defence, and the French influence was at an end in India. These four years, from 1757 to 1761, had been scarcely less prolific of distinguished men on the French side than our own. The last known of these was Lally Tollendal, a man of a furious courage and headstrong disposition, against whom his enemies at home had no ground of accusation except his want of success and savageness of manner. Yet when he returned, after the loss of Pondicherry and a long imprisonment in England, he was attacked with all the vehemence of personal hatred. He was tried for betraying the interests of the king, tortured, and executed. The prosecution lasted many years, and the public rage seemed rather to increase. [A.D. 1766.] Long after peace was concluded between France and England, the tragedy of the French expulsion from India received its final scene in the death of the unfortunate Count Lally.

Quebec and its dependencies, during the same glorious administration, were conquered and annexed by Wolfe; and already the throes of the great Revolution were felt, though the causes remained obscure. Cut off from the money-making regions of Hindostan and the patriarchal settlements of Canada, the Frenchman, oppressed at home, had no outlet either for his ambition or discontent. The feeling of his misery was further aggravated by the sight of British prosperity. The race of men called Nabobs, mercantile adventurers who had gone out to India poor and came back loaded with almost incredible wealth, brought the ostentatious habits of their Oriental experience with them to Europe, and offended French and English alike by the tasteless profusion of their expense. Money wrung by extortion from native princes was lavished without enjoyment by the denationalized _parvenu_. A French duke found himself outglittered by the equipage of the over-enriched clove-dealer,--and hated him for his presumption. The Frenchman of lower rank must have looked on him as the lucky and dishonourable rival who had usurped his place, and hated him for the opportunity he had possessed of winning all that wealth. Ground to the earth by taxes and toil, without a chance of rising in the social scale or of escaping from the ever-growing burden of his griefs, the French peasant and small farmer must have listened with indignation to the accounts of British families of their own rank emerging from a twenty years' residence in Madras or Calcutta with more riches than half the hereditary nobles. It was therefore with a feeling of unanimous satisfaction that all classes of Frenchmen heard, in 1773, that the old English colonies in America were filled with disaffection,--that Boston had risen in insurrection, and that a spirit of resistance to the mother-country was rife in all the provinces.

The quarrel came to a crisis between the Crown and the colonies within fourteen years of the conquest of Canada. It seemed as if the British had provided themselves with a new territory to compensate for the approaching loss of the old; and bitter must have been the reflection of the French when they perceived that the loyalty of that recent acquisition remained undisturbed throughout the succeeding troubles. Taxation, the root of all strength and the cause of all weakness, had been pushed to excess, not in the amount of its exaction, but in the principle of its imposition; and the British blood had not been so colonialized as to submit to what struck the inhabitants of all the towns as an unjustifiable exercise of power. The cry at first, therefore, was, No tax without representation; but the cry waxed louder and took other forms of expression. The cry was despised, whether gentle or loud,--then listened to,--then resented. The passions of both countries became raised. America would not submit to dictation; Britain would not be silenced by threats. Feelings which would have found vent at home in angry speeches in Parliament, and riots at a new election, took a far more serious shape when existing between populations separated indeed by a wide ocean, but identical in most of their qualities and aspirations. The king has been blamed. "George the Third lost us the colonies by his obstinacy: he would not yield an inch of his royal dignity, and behold the United States our rivals and enemies,--perhaps some day our conquerors and oppressors!" Now, we should remember that the Great Britain of 1774 was a very narrow-minded, self-opinionated, pig-headed Great Britain, compared to the cosmopolitan, philanthropical, and altogether disinterested Great Britain we call it now. If the king had bated his breath for a moment, or even spoken respectfully and kindly of the traitors and rebels who were firing upon his flags, he would have been the most unpopular man in his dominions. Many, no doubt, held aloof, and found excuses for the colonists' behaviour; but the influence of those meditative spirits was small; their voice was drowned in the chorus of indignation at what appeared revolt and mutiny more than resistance to injustice. And when other elements came into the question,--when the French monarch, ostensibly at peace with Britain, permitted his nobles and generals and soldiers to volunteer in the patriot cause,--the sentiments of this nation became embittered with its hereditary dislike to its ancient foe. We turned them out of India: were they going to turn us out of America? We had taken Canada: are they going to take New York? We might have offered terms to our own countrymen, made concessions, granted exemptions from imperial burdens, or even a share in imperial legislation; but with Lafayette haranguing about abstract freedom, and all the young counts and marquises of his expedition declaring against the House of Lords, the thing was impossible. [A.D. 1778-1780.] War was declared upon France, and upon Spain, and upon Holland. We fought everywhere, and lavished blood and treasure in this great quarrel. And yet the nation had gradually accustomed itself to the new view of American wrongs. The Ministry, by going so far in their efforts at accommodation, had confessed the original injustice of their cause. So we fought with a blunted sword, and hailed even our victories with misgivings as to our right to win them. But it was the season of vast changes in the political distribution of all the world. Prussia was a foremost kingdom. Russia was a European Empire. India had risen into a compact dominion under the shield of Britain. Why should not America take a substantive place in the great family of nations, and play a part hereafter in the old game of statesmen, called the Balance of Power? In 1783 this opinion prevailed. France, Spain, and Holland sheathed their swords. The Independence of the United States was acknowledged at the Peace of Versailles, and everybody believed that the struggle against established governments was over.

France seemed elevated by the results of the American War, and Great Britain humiliated. Prophecies were frequent about our rapid fall and final extinction. Our own orators were, as usual, the loudest in confessions of our powerlessness and decay. Our institutions were held up to dislike; and if you had believed the speeches and pamphlets of discontented patriots, you would have thought we were the most spiritless and down-trodden, the most unmerciful and dishonest, nation in the world. The whole land was in a fury of self-abasement at the degradation brought upon our name and standing by the treachery and iniquities of Warren Hastings in India; our European glory was crushed by the surrender at Paris. It must be satisfactory to all lovers of their country to know that John Bull has no such satisfaction as in proving that he is utterly exhausted,--always deceived by his friends, always overreached by his enemies, always disappointed in his aims. In this self-depreciating spirit he conducts all his wars and all his treaties; yet somehow it always happens that he gets what he wanted, and the overreaching and deceiving antagonist gives it up. His power is over a sixth of the human race, and he began a hundred years ago with a population of less than fourteen millions; and all the time he has been singing the most doleful ditties of the ill success that always attends him,--of his ruinous losses and heart-breaking disappointments. The men at the head of affairs in the trying years from the Peace of Versailles to 1793 were therefore quite right not to be taken in by the querulous lamentations of the nation. We had lost three millions of colonists, and gained three million independent customers. We were trading to India, and building up and putting down the oldest dynasties of Hindostan. Ships and commerce increased in a remarkable degree; the losses of the war were compensated by the gains of those peaceful pursuits in a very few years; and we were contented to leave to Paris the reputation of the gayest city in the world, and to the French the reputation of the happiest and best-ruled people. But Paris was the wretchedest of towns, and the French the most miserable of peoples. When anybody asks us in future what was the cause of the French Revolution, we need not waste time to discuss the writings of Voltaire, or the unbelief of the clergy, or the immorality of the nobles. We must answer at once by naming the one great cause by which all revolutions are produced,--over-taxation. The French peasant, sighing for liberty, had no higher object than an escape from the intolerable burden of his payments. He cared no more for the rights of man, or the happiness of the human race, than for the quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon. He wanted to get rid of the "taille," the "corvée," and twenty other imposts which robbed him of his last penny. If he had had a chicken in his pot, and could do as he liked with his own spade and pick-axe, he never would have troubled his head about codes and constitutions. But life had become a burden to him. Everybody had turned against him. The grand old feudal noble, who would have protected and cherished him under the shadow of his castle-wall, was a lord-chamberlain at court. The kind old priest, who would have attended to his wants and fed him, if required, at the church-door, was dancing attendance in the antechamber of a great lady in Paris, or singing improper songs at a jolly supper-party at Versailles. There were intendants and commissaries visiting his wretched hovel at rapidly-decreasing intervals of time, to collect his contributions to the revenue. These men farmed the taxes, and squeezed out the last farthing like a Turkish pasha. But while the small land-owner--and they were already immensely numerous--and the serf--for he was no better--were oppressed by these exactions, the gentry were exempt. The seigneur visited his castle for a month or two in the year, but it was to embitter the countryman's lot by the contrast. His property had many rights, but no duties. In ancient times in France, and at all times in England, those two qualities went together. Our upper classes lived among their tenants and dependants. They had no alleviation of burdens in consequence of their wealth, but they took care that their poorer neighbours should have alleviation in consequence of their poverty. Cottages had no window-tax. The pressure of the public burdens increased with the power to bear them. But in France the reverse was the case. Poverty paid the money, and wealth and luxury spent it. The evil was too deep-rooted to be remedied without pulling up the tree. The wretched millions were starving, toiling, despairing, and the thousands were rioting in extravagance and show. The same thing occurred in 1789 as had occurred in the last glimmer of the Roman civilization in the time of Clovis. The Roman Emperor issued edicts for the collection of his revenue. Commissioners spread over the land; the miserable Gaul saw the last sheaf of his corn torn away, and the last lamb of his flock. But when the last property of the poorest was taken away, the imperial exchequer could not remain unfilled. You remember the unhappy men called Curials,--holders of small estates in the vicinity of towns. They were also endowed with rank, and appointed to office. Their office was to make up from their own resources, or by extra severity among their neighbours, for any deficiency in the sum assessed. Peasant, land-owner, curial,--all sank into hopeless misery by the crushing of this gold-producing machinery. They looked across the Rhine to Clovis and the Franks, and hailed the ferocious warriors as their deliverers from an intolerable woe. They could not be worse off by the sword of the stranger than by the ledger of the tax-collector. In 1789 the system of the old Roman extortion was revived. The village or district was made a curial, and became responsible in its aggregate character for the individual payments. If the number of payers diminished, the increase fell upon the few who were not yet stripped. The Clovis of the present day who was to do away with their oppressors, though perhaps to immolate themselves, was a Revolution,--a levelling of all distinctions, ranks, rights, exemptions, privileges. This was the "liberty, equality, fraternity" that were to overflow the worn-out world and fertilize it as the Nile does Egypt.

Great pity has naturally been expressed for the nobility (or gentry) and clergy of France; but, properly considered, France had at that time neither a nobility nor a clergy. A nobility with no status independent of the king--with no connection with its estates beyond the reception of their rents--with no weight in the legislature; with ridiculously exaggerated rank, and ridiculously contracted influence; with no interest in local expenditure or voice in public management; a gentry, in short, debarred from active life, except as officers of the army--shut out by monarchic jealousy from interference in affairs, and by the pride of birth from the pursuits of commerce--is not a gentry at all. A clergy, in the same way, is a priesthood only in right of its belief in the doctrines it professes to hold, and the attention it bestows on its parishioners. Except in some few instances, the Christianity both of faith and practice had disappeared from France. It was time, therefore, that nobility and clergy should also disappear. The excesses of the Revolution which broke out in 1789, and reached their climax in the murder of the king in 1793, showed the excesses of the misgovernment of former years. If there had been one redeeming feature of the ancient system, it would have produced its fruits in the milder treatment of the victims of the reaction. In one or two provinces, indeed, we are told that hereditary attachment still bound the people to their superiors, and in those provinces, the philosophic chronicler of the fact informs us, the centralizing system had not completed its authority. The gentry still performed some of the duties of their station, and the priests, of their profession. Everywhere else blind hatred, unreasoning hope, and bloody revenge. The century, which began with the vainglorious egotism of Louis the Fourteenth and the war of the Spanish Succession,--which progressed through the British masterdom of India and the self-sustaining republicanism of America,--died out in the convulsive strugglings of thirty-one millions of souls on the soil of France to breathe a purer political air and shake off the trammels which had gradually been riveted upon them for three hundred years. Great Britain had preceded them by a century, and has ever since shown the bloodless and legal origin of her freedom by the bloodless and legal use she has made of it. We emerged from the darkness of 1688 with all the great landmarks of our country not only erect, but strengthened. We had king, lords, and commons, and a respect for law, and veneration for precedents, which led the great Duke of Wellington to say, in answer to some question about the chance of a British revolution, that "no man could foresee whether such a thing might occur or not, but, when it did, he was sure it would be done by Act of Parliament."

War with France began in 1793. Our military reputation was at the lowest, for Wolfe and Clive had had time to be forgotten; and even our navy was looked on without dismay, for the laurels of Howe and Boscawen were sere from age. But in the remaining years of the century great things were done, and Britannia had the trident firmly in her hand. Jervis, and Duncan, and Nelson, were answering with victories at sea the triumphs of Napoleon in Italy. And while fame was blowing the names of those champions far and wide, a blast came across also from India, where Wellesley had begun his wondrous career. [A.D. 1798.] Equally matched the belligerents, and equally favoured with mighty men of valour to conduct their forces, the feverish energy of the newly-emancipated France being met by the healthful vigour of the matured and self-respecting Britain, the world was uncertain how the great drama would close. But the last year of the century seemed to incline the scale to the British side. [A.D. 1799.] Napoleon, after a dash at Egypt, had been checked by the guns of Nelson in the great battle of the Nile. He secretly withdrew from his dispirited army, and made his appearance in Paris as much in the character of a fugitive as of a candidate for power. But all the fruits of his former battles had been torn from his countrymen in his absence. Italy was delivered from their grasp; Russia was pouring her hordes into the South; confusion was reigning everywhere, and the fleets of Great Britain were blocking up every harbour in France.

Napoleon was created First Consul, and the Century went down upon the final preparations of the embittered rivals. Both parties felt now that the struggle was for life or death, and "the boldest held his breath for a time," when he thought of what awful events the Nineteenth Century would be the scene.

FOOTNOTES.

[A] The following is a carefully compiled table of the forces of
Europe in the year 1854-55. Since that time the Russian fleet
has been destroyed, but the diminution has been more than
counterbalanced by the increased navies of the other powers.

Military Forces of Europe in 1855.

Men. Ships. Guns.

Austria 650,000 102 752
Bavaria 239,886 ... ...
Belgium 100,000 ... ...
Denmark 75,169 120 880
France 650,000 407 11,773
Germany 452,473 ... ...
Great Britain 265,000[1] 591 17,291
Greece 10,226 25 143
Ionian Isles 3,000 4 ...
Modena and Parma 6,302 ... ...
Netherlands 58,647 84 2,000
Papal States 11,274 ... ...
Portugal 33,000 44 404
Prussia 525,000 50 250
Russia 699,000 207 9,000
Sardinia 48,088 40 900
Sicilies 106,264 29 444
Spain 75,000 410 1530
Sweden 167,000 ... ...
Switzerland 108,000 ... ...
Tuscany 16,930 ... ...
Turkey 310,970 ... ...
---------- ---- -------
4,611,229 2113 45,367[2]

[1] Indian army 250,000, and militia 145,000, not included; making
a total of 660,000

[2] Taking an average of ten men to each gun, the sailors will be
453,670; which gives a total of fighting-men, 5,064,899!!!

[B] He was called Le Grand Bâtisseur.

[C] Wickliff's English Bible, 1383.

[D] Popular History--Henry VI.

[E] Dr. Robertson.

INDEX.

Abdelmalek the caliph, 167.

À-Beckett, the elevation and career of, 290 _et seq._

Abelard, rise of free inquiry with, 280.

Abou Beker, the exploits, &c. of, 157, 158
--chosen Mohammed's successor, 160
--his exploits, 161.

Absolutism, rise of, in France under Louis XIV., 475 _et seq._

Abu Taleb, uncle of Mohammed, 138.

Academies, establishment of, by Charlemagne, 196.

Adrian, the emperor, accession and reign of, 45 _et seq._
--his death, 48.

Adrian IV., Pope, 289.

Africa, progress of the Saracens in, 166
--trading-company to, 452.

Agincourt, battle of, 381.

Agriculture, state of, in seventh century, 142.

Agrippina, the empress, 22.

Alans, the, 100.

Alaric the Goth, first appearance of, 98
--hostilities with, 101
--sack of Rome, 106
--his death and burial, 107.

Albigenses, tenets, &c. of the, 299
--the crusade against them, 302 _et seq._

Albinus, a candidate for the empire, 60.

Alboin, King of the Lombards, 129.

Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne, 194
--as Abbot of Tours, 195.

Aleppo taken by the Saracens, 163.

Alexander VI., character, &c. of, 389, 406.

Alexandria, the monks of, 115
--taken by the Saracens, and destruction of the library, 163.

Alexis, the emperor, and the Crusaders, 263.

Alfred, rise and exploits of, 215.

Ali becomes caliph, 167
--the exploits &c. of, 157, 158, 160.

Alva, the Duke of, the St. Bartholomew massacre planned with, 441
--his cruelties in the Netherlands, 441.

Amadis de Gaul, the romance of, 349.

America, the discovery of, 396
--growing importance of its discovery, 402
--progress of British power in, 517.

Amru, the Saracen conqueror, 163.

Anagni, the arrest of Boniface VIII. at, 329.

Anglican Church, the, under Henry II., 289 _et seq._

Anglo-Saxons, establishment of the, 120.

Anne, the literature of the reign of, 506.

Anselm, learning, &c. of, 247.

Antharis, conquest of Italy by, 130.

Antioch, the capture of, by the Crusaders, 264
--the battle of, 265.

Antoninus Pius, the emperor, his character and reign, 49.

Aquileia, siege of, by Maximin, 70
--taken by Attila, 110.

Aquitaine, power of the Dukes of, 204, 232.

Arcadius, the emperor, 101.

Architecture, advancement of, during the eleventh century, 242, 243.

Argentine, Sir Giles d', death of, 353.

Arians, enmity between, and the orthodox, 94
--quarrels between, and the Athanasians, 117.

Aristocracy, the Roman, their decay, 32 _et seq._

Aristotle, supremacy given to, 297.

Armagnac, the Count of, 364
--struggle between, and Burgundy, 377.

Armies, the modern, of Europe, 57.

Arnold of Brescia, the revolt of, 278
--his death, 279.

Arteveldt, James Van, 355.

Asia, stationary condition of, 14.

Asti, siege of, by Alaric, 105

Ataulf the Goth, career of, 108.

Athanasians, division between the, and the Arians, 117.

Attila the Hun, career of, 109 _et seq._

Augustin, influence of, on Luther, 424.

Augustus, the supremacy of, 17
--his reign, 18.

Aulus Plautius, landing of, in England, 21.

Aurelian, the emperor, 72
--his triumph, 79.

Austrasia, kingdom of, 155.

Austria, the power of, in the seventeenth century, 463
--the seven years' war, 512.

Auvergne, the Marquises of, 205.

Avars, junction of the Lombards with the, 129.

Avignon, acquired by the Pope, 306
--the residence of the Popes at, 342.

Azores, discovery of the, 395.

Bacon, Roger, gunpowder known to, 372.

Badby, John, martyrdom of, 367.

Bahuchet, a French admiral, 355.

Balbinus, appointment of, 69
--his death, 70.

Baldwyn, Count of Flanders, 263
--habits of, in the East, 270.

Baliol, maintained by Edward I., 319.

Ballads, influence of, on the common people, 372.

Bannockburn, the battle of, 352.

Barbarians, first appearance of the, 25
--their increased incursions, 51
--their continued progress, 71
--their increasing strength, 79 _et seq._

Barbavara, a Genoese admiral, 355.

Barcho-chebas, the rebellion of the Jews under, 47.

Bedford, the Duke of, in France, 384.

Belisarius, exploits of, 124
--disgraced, 125.

Bells, the invention of, 196.

Benedict. _See_ St. Benedict.

Benedict XI. poisoned, 331.

Benedictine monks, industry, &c. of the, 142.

Berenger, transubstantiation assailed by, 247.

Bernard de Goth, elevated to the papacy as Clement V., 331 _et seq._

Beziers, massacre of Albigenses in, 305.

Bible, Wickliff's translation of the, 342
--the first book printed by Guttenberg, 422.

Bishops, increasing alarm of the, in the ninth century, 205
--warlike, of the eleventh century, 251.

Black Hole of Calcutta, the tragedy of the, 515.

Blanche, mother of Louis IX., urges the persecution of the
Albigenses, 304.

Blenheim, the battle of, 500.

Boccaccio, the works of, 344.

Bohemund, the Crusader, 265.

Boniface VII., Pope, 236.

Boniface VIII., bull against Edward I. by, 315
--jubilee celebrated by, 325
--contest with Philip le Bel, 326 _et seq._
--his arrest, 329 _et seq._
--his death, 330.

Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, 175.

Books, early value of, 372
--multiplied by printing, 373.

Borgia, elevation of, to the Papacy, 369.

Brantôme, the memoirs of, 447.

Bribery, prevalence of, under Walpole, 505.

Brittany, power of the Dukes of, 204
--acquired by Rollo the Norman, 226.

Bruce, the victory of, at Bannockburn, 352.

Bruges, defeat of the townsmen of, at Cassel, 353.

Brunehild, cruelties and career of, 150
--her death, 150.

Brunissende de Périgord, mistress of Clement V., 332.

Buccaneers, rise of the, 452.

Burghers, increasing importance of the, 279.

Burgundians, conquest of Gaul by the, 108.

Burgundy, kingdom of, 155.

Busentino, burial of Alaric in the, 107.

Cade, the insurrection of, 374.

Cadijah, wife of Mohammed, 138.

Calais, taken by Edward III., 356.

Caligula, the character, &c. of, 19.

Caliphs, habits of the, 165.

Calvinists and Lutherans, hatred between, 460.

Cambrai, the league of, 409 _et seq._

Canada, the conquest of, by the British, 517.

Cannon, first employment of, 342.

Capetian line, commencement of the, 231.

Caracalla, character of, 62
--his accession and reign, 65.

Carausius, the revolt of, 75.

Carlovingian line, close of the, 231.

Carthage, subdued by the Saracens, 166.

Cassel, the battle of, 353.

Cassius, the rebellion of, 52.

Cathedrals, building of, during the eleventh century, 242.

Catherine de Medicis, the massacre of St. Bartholomew planned by,
441.

Catholicism, resemblances between, and Mohammedanism, 271.

Cavendish, the naval exploits of, 451.

Caxton, books printed by, 393.

Celibacy, priestly, neglect of, during the eleventh century, 252
--enforced by Hildebrand, 256.

Centuries, characters of different, 13, 15, _et seq._

Chæreas, assassination of Caligula by, 20.

Châlons, the battle of, 110.

Change, prevalence of, during eighteenth century, 491.

Charlemagne, accession and reign of, 186 _et seq._
--his conquests, 187
--crowned Emperor of the West, 188
--his era, 188 _et seq._
--his polity, &c., 189
--his court, &c., 193, 194 _et seq._
--his encouragement of literature, &c., 195 _et seq._
--his death, and disruption of his empire, 198, 201 _et seq._

Charles, son of Louis the Debonnaire, 201
--character and reign of, 206.

Charles the Simple and Rollo the Norman, 225, 226, 227.

Charles VI., decline of the French nobility under, 360 _et seq._
--death of, 384.

Charles VII., accession of, 384
--the Maid of Orleans, 386 _et seq._
--his desertion of her, 389.

Charles IX., the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 442.

Charles V., the emperor, extent of his dominions, 404
--and Luther, 427
--close of his career, 431, 432.

Charles I., unpopularity of, 465
--the execution of, 470.

Charles II., England under, 472 _et seq._

Charles II. of Spain, death of, and his will, 497.

Charles Edward, the rising under, 507.

Charles Martel, the defeat of the Saracens by, 176, 179, _et seq._

Chatham, the ministry of, 513.

Chaucer, the works of, 344.

Childeric III., the last of the Merovingians, 182.

Chivalry, rise of the orders of, 344
--principles inculcated by, 349.

Chosroes, King of Persia, 158.

Christ, the birth of and its influence, 17.

Christian Church, progressive development of the, 76
--its organization, 78
--corruption of the, 114
--divisions in it, 116
--persecutions, 118.

Christians, persecution of the, by Nero, 23
--policy of Adrian towards, 49.

Christianity, influence of, 17
--the first effects of, 36
--progress of, 55
--establishment of, by Constantine, 85
--commencing struggle of, with Mohammedanism, 141.

Church, the privileges conferred on, and its advantages, 145
--corruptions, 147, 148
--at variance with the nobility, 153
--its unity, 155
--state of, in England during eighth century, 172, 173
--monarchical principle established in the, 183
--effects of the Crusades on, 273
--increasing pretensions and power of, 206, 207
--possessions, &c. of, in France in the tenth century, 228
--resistance to it, 230
--policy of Hugh Capet, 231
--state of, during the tenth century, 219
--during the eleventh century, 253
--in England under Henry II., 292 _et seq._
--conditions of Magna Charta regarding, 308
--changed position of, 342
--state of, in the fifteenth century, 368 _et seq._
--before the Reformation, 419 _et seq._

Church of England, the, and its influence and tendencies, 457.

Churches, schism between the Eastern and Western, 133
--rebuilding, &c. of the, in the eleventh century, 242
--their objects, &c., 244 _et seq._

Churchmen, warlike, during the eleventh century, 251.

Citeaux, the Abbot of, 305.

Claudius, reign and character of, 20
--his death, 22.

Clement V., election of, 331, 332
--his rapacity, &c., 332
--the persecution of the Templars, 337 _et seq._

Clergy, the, privileges conferred on, 145
--corruption of the higher, 148
--increasing claims of, in the ninth century, 204 _et seq._
--claims of, in the tenth century, and resistance to them, 229
--policy of Hugh Capet, 232
--the higher character of, during the twelfth century, 274
--character of, in Provence, 300
--taxed in England by Edward I., 315
--support Henry IV. in England, 365
--the French at the time of the Revolution, 523.

Clive, the exploits of, 515.

Clotaire, overthrow of Brunehild by, 150.

Clothilde, anecdote of, 153.

Clovis, accession of, in France, 119
--the descendants of, 175
--set aside, 182.

Cobham, Lord, martyrdom of, 367.

Colonies, the first English and Dutch, 454.

Colonna, the arrest of Boniface VIII. by, 329.

Columbus, the career of, and his discovery of America, 395.

Commerce, progress of, in England under Elizabeth, 449 _et seq._

Commodus, accession and character of, 58 _et seq._

Commons, rise of the, in England, 306
--House of, first constituted in England, 311.

Condé, the Great, 478, 481.

Conrad, the emperor, heads the second Crusade, 284.

Conservatism, strength of, in England during eighteenth century, 494.

Constantine, accession of, and removal to Constantinople, 84
--his character, 85
--establishes Christianity, 85
--his system of government, 86
--nobility founded by him, 87
--his system of taxation, 89
--death, 92.

Constantinople, removal of the seat of empire to, 84
--subordination of the Bishop of, 125
--supremacy claimed for the Bishop of, 132, 133
--assailed by the Saracens, 166
--early subordination of the Popes to, 174
--pretensions of the emperors, 176, 177
--the Crusaders at, 262, 263
--diffusion of learning by capture of, 422.

Convents, state of the, during the tenth century, 221.

Coote, Sir Eyre, 516.

Cornelius and Novatian, the schism between, 78.

Council of Toledo, the, 151.

Count, origin of the title of, 88.

Courtrai, the battle of, 335.

Covenanters, persecutions of the, in Scotland, 473.

Crecy, battle of, 356.

Cromwell, the rise &c. of, 470
--England under, 471.

Crown, position of the, in England and France during the tenth
century, 230
--new position given to the, under Hugh Capet, 233 _et seq._
--its increasing power, 359 _et seq._

Crusades, first suggestion of the, 242
--the first, 260 _et seq._
--losses in it, and its effects on Europe, 269
--of children, 269
--the second, 284
--the third, 285
--influence of, on the distribution of wealth, &c., 272
--end of, 316.

Crusading spirit, first rise of the, 250

Cuba, the buccaneers at, 453.

Culloden, the battle of, 507, 509.

Cunimond, defeat and death of, 129.

Curials, the, under the Roman emperors, 90, 523.

Cyrene, conquest of, by the Saracens, 166.

Dagobert, King, 151.

Dance of Death, the, 374.

Danes, the invasions of the, 209, 210
--their invasions of England, 212 _et seq._
--their settlements, 214, 215
--continued incursions into England, 234.

Dante, the works of, 325, 344.

Democracy, early alliance of the Church with, 154.

Dettingen, the battle of, 502.

Diaz, Bartholomew, discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by, 395.

Didius, purchase of the empire by, 59
--his death, 60.

Diocletian, accession and reign of, 74
--abdicates, 76
--system introduced by him, 83.

Dominic, originates the crusade against the Albigenses, 301 _et seq._
--establishment of the Inquisition under, 304.

Domitian, the reign of, 28, 34.

Dorylæum, the battle of, 264.

Drake, the expeditions of, 451.

Dress, distinctions from, among the Franks, 152.

Dudley, the informer, 404.

Duncan, the victories of, 525.

Dunois, bastard of Orleans, 387.

Dutch, the maritime settlements of the, 452.

East India Company, founding of the, 450.

Eastern Church, schism of the, 133.

Eastern empire, falling supremacy of the, 185.

Ecclesiastical power, decay of, in the thirteenth century, 313.

Edessa, the Crusaders at, 264.

Education, measures of Charlemagne for, 195.

Edward I., taxation of the clergy by, 315
--character of the reign of, 318
--his attempts on Scotland, 319 _et seq._

Edward II., the defeat of, at Bannockburn, 352.

Edward III., the Garter instituted by, 344
--policy of, his alliance with Flanders, &c., 354 _et seq._
--war with France, 355 _et seq._
--battles of Helvoet Sluys and Crecy, 355
--of Poictiers, 356.

Edward the Black Prince, his treatment of John, 349
--his character, 349
--his victory at Poictiers, 356.

Egbert, subjugation of the Heptarchy by, 193, 194.

Eginhart, the life of Charlemagne by, 195.

Egypt, surrender of Louis IX. in, 317.

Eleanor, wife of Louis VII., 286.

Elizabeth, policy of, with regard to the Reformation, 428
--the policy and measures of, and their results, 436 _et seq._
--the Armada, 444
--papal bull against, 448
--changes in England under, 449.

Elizabeth, daughter of James I., married to the Elector of Palatine,
462.

Ella, King of Northumberland, 214.

Eloisa, influence of, 282.

Empire of the West, restoration of, under Charlemagne, 188.

Empson, the creature of Henry VII., 404.