Chapter I: Preface: To Period II

I have taken up our "Greatest Story" from the point at which we dropped it at the end of the first volume; that is about the year A.D. 100, when the Roman Empire was a solidly established institution.

Throughout that first volume our own land of Britain scarcely had a place. In the latter part of the period--A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500--which this second volume covers, men of Britain played a great role. For centuries, kings of England were rulers of large domains on the Continent of Europe also, and at one time their Continental territories were more extensive and richer than their insular possessions. The world story thus becomes, in some measure, England's also. Moreover, when there have seemed to be two or more ways open for the telling of the story, I have always tried to adopt what I may call the English way, the way which seemed likely to bring it most warmly and intimately home to English hearts and minds. Thus, for example, when the course of history brought us to the point at which we were to consider the manner of life of those Gothic or Germanic tribes which came flooding in from the eastern side of the Rhine, I have chosen, for a type of their lives in general, what we partly know and partly surmise of those lives as they were lived in our own island. Again, where I have endeavoured to give an idea of the manner in which the Northmen, the sea-rovers, made their settlements, I have taken their incursions on England as a type {x} of the rest. In both instances it would have been equally possible to tell the story of some of the people of Charlemagne's great empire and the Continental settlements of the Northmen as typical examples, but the other appeared to me the way far more likely to make the picture real and the story appealing to the eye of an Anglo-Saxon reader.

The period is one of dissolution, in the first place, as the Roman Empire broke to pieces under its own dissensions and the inroads of the barbarians. The break-up was followed by a certain reconstruction under the later empire of Charlemagne. But this again was followed by a second dissolution, less complete than the former. The feudal system then plays its temporary part as a means of holding society together in some sort of cohesion. And finally we see the kings asserting the central authority in their kingdoms more and more at the cost of the local authority of the feudal lords.

Throughout these centuries of successive change there is one power which works all the while to prevent humanity from falling back into a state of barbarism and complete lawlessness--the power of the Church exercised through the person of the Pope and of his officials who covered Christendom. The Crusades, with all that they brought of good and ill, are an episode in the story's course.

By the end of the period the Moor has finally been expelled from the south-western corner of the scene, but the Turk has established himself largely on its eastern side.

The year A.D. 1500 brings the story down to the dawn of a new day, when the darkness of the Middle Ages shall be dispelled by the light which is spreading out from Italy to illuminate Europe. We are at the point when the new story of America in the West and the very ancient stories of India and China in the {xi} East are just about to be brought in and woven up with our own story. But they have not been brought in yet.

In this second volume I have followed the plan adopted for the first--avoiding, as far as possible, names and dates that are not of the highest importance, for the sake of simplification and in order to give their true value to those which are the most important. Only the large outlines are laid down, so that the reader may know, when he comes to the study of any one particular section of history, the place which that section occupies in relation to the whole.

I have again aimed at telling the narrative in very simple language; but in this second volume I have tried to adapt it for scholars perhaps a year or so older than those for whom the first was specially written. I have made this slight difference presuming that the scholar was likely to read the earlier part of the story first and then to pass on to this latter.

And once more, as in the Preface to Period I, I have to thank Mr. R. B. Lattimer for much valuable correction and advice.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. Britain
II. The Camps of the Legions
III. The Barbarian at the Walls
IV. The Division of the Empire
V. The Barbarian breaking through
VI. How Britain became England
VII. The Passing of the Barbarian
VIII. The Pope
IX. How England became Christian
X. The Saracens
XI. The Franks and the Feudal System
XII. How the People Lived
XIII. How the People Lived--_continued_
XIV. The Settlements Of The Sea-Rovers
XV. The Crusades
XVI. The Slavs in Eastern Europe
XVII. Normans and Angevins
XVIII. The Strength and the Weakness of Rome
XIX. The Moslems in Spain
XX. The Plantagenets in France and England
XXI. England, France, and Burgundy
XXII. The Teuton and the Slav
XXIII. The Turks in Europe
XXIV. The New Dawn
Index

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Hadrian's Wall To-Day .... _Frontispiece_
Stonehenge
The Iron Crown of the Lombards
Rome and St. Peter's
Whitby Abbey
Charlemagne's Sword
Canterbury
An Anglo-Saxon Mansion
An Anglo-Saxon Dinner Party
A Viking Ship
Norman Gateway
A Crusader
A Knight Templar
A Norman Household
A Joust between Knights
Cœur-de-Lion's Prison
Knight in Chain Armour
The Giralda, Seville
Byzantine Architecture
Gothic Architecture
Constantinople
Genoa
Columbus
Ship of Columbus' Time

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THE GREATEST STORY IN THE WORLD