Chapter X: Part 10

When Charles reached the Dnieper, he unexpectedly marched to unite with Mazeppa in the Ukraine, instead of continuing his advance on Moscow. Menzikoff intercepted Lewenhaupt on the march with a great convoy to join Charles, and that general was only able to cut his way through with 5,000 of his force. Mazeppa's own movement was crushed, and he only joined Charles as a fugitive, not an ally. Charles's desperate operations need not be followed. It suffices to say that in May 1709, he had opened the siege of Pultawa, by the capture of which he counted that the road to Moscow would lie open to him.

Here the decisive battle was fought on July 12. The dogged patience with which Peter had turned every defeat into a lesson in the art of war met with its reward. The Swedish army was shattered; Charles, prostrated by a wound, was himself carried into safety across the Turkish frontier. Peter's victory was absolutely decisive and overwhelming; and what it meant was the civilising of a territory till then barbarian. Its effects in other European countries, including the recovery of the Polish crown by Augustus, are pointed out in the history of Charles XII. The year 1710 witnessed the capture of a series of Swedish provinces in the Baltic provinces; and the Swedish forces in Pomerania were neutralised.

_IV.--The Expansion of Russia_

Now the Sultan Ahmed III. declared war on Peter; not for the sake of his guest, Charles XII., but because of Peter's successes in Azov, his new port of Taganrog, and his ships on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. He outraged international law by throwing the Russian envoy and his suite into prison. Peter at once left his Swedish campaign to advance his armies against Turkey.

Before leaving Moscow he announced his marriage with the Livonian captive, Catherine, whom he had secretly made his wife in 1707. Apraksin was sent to take the supreme command by land and sea. Cantemir, the hospodar of Moldavia, promised support, for his own ends.

The Turkish vizier, Baltagi Mehemet, had already crossed the Danube, and was marching up the Pruth with 100,000 men. Peter's general Sheremetof was in danger of being completely hemmed in when Peter crossed the Dnieper, Catherine stoutly refusing to leave the army. No help came from Cantemir, and supplies were running short. The Tsar was too late to prevent the passage of the Pruth by the Turks, who were now on his lines of communication; and he found himself in a trap, without supplies, and under the Turkish guns. When he attempted to withdraw, the Turkish force attacked, but were brilliantly held at bay by the Russian rear-guard.

Nevertheless, the situation was desperate. It was Catherine who saved it. At her instigation, terms--accompanied by the usual gifts--were proposed to the vizier; and, for whatever reason, the vizier was satisfied to conclude a peace then and there. He was probably unconscious of the extremities to which Peter was reduced. Azov was to be retroceded, Taganrog, and other forts, dismantled; the Tsar was not to interfere in Poland, and Charles was to be allowed a free return to his own dominions. The hopes of Charles were destroyed, and he was reduced to intriguing at the Ottoman court.

Peter carried out some of the conditions of the Pruth treaty. The more important of them he successfully evaded for some time. The treaty, however, was confirmed six months later. But the Pruth affair was a more serious check to the Tsar than even Narva had been, for it forced him to renounce the dominion of the Black Sea. He turned his attention to Pomerania, though the injuries his health had suffered drove him to take the waters at Carlsbad.

His object was to drive the Swedes out of their German territories, and confine them to Scandinavia; and to this end he sought alliance with Hanover, Brandenburg, and Denmark. About this time he married his son Alexis (born to him by his first wife) to the sister of the German Emperor; and proceeded to ratify by formal solemnities his own espousal to Catherine.

Charles might have saved himself by coming out of Turkey, buying the support of Brandenburg by recognising her claim on Stettin, and accepting the sacrifice of his own claim to Poland, which Stanislaus was ready to make for his sake. He would not. Russians, Saxons, and Danes were now acting in concert against the Swedes in Pomerania. A Swedish victory over the Danes and Gadebesck and the burning of Altona were of no real avail. The victorious general not long after was forced to surrender with his whole army. Stettin capitulated on condition of being transferred to Prussia. Stralsund was being besieged by Russians and Saxons; Hanover was in possession of Bremen and Verden; and Peter was conquering Finland, when, at last, Charles suddenly reappeared at Stralsund, in November 1715. But the brilliant naval operation by which Peter captured the Isle of Aland had already secured Finland.

During the last three years a new figure had risen to prominence, the ingenious, ambitious and intriguing Baron Gortz, who was now to become the chief minister and guide of the Swedes. Under his influence, Charles's hostility was now turned in other directions than against Russia, and Peter was favourably inclined towards the opening of a new chapter in his relations with Sweden, since he had made himself master of Ingria, Finland, Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia. The practical suspension of hostilities enabled Peter to start on a second European tour, while Charles, driven at last from Weimar and Stralsund--all that was left him south of the Baltic--was planning the invasion of Norway.

During this tour the Tsar passed three months in Holland, his old school in the art of naval construction; and while he was there intrigues were on foot which threatened to revolutionise Europe. Gortz had conceived the design of allying Russia and Sweden, restoring Stanislaus in Poland, recovering Bremen and Verden from Hanover, and finally of rejecting the Hanoverian Elector from his newly acquired sovereignty in Great Britain by restoring the Stuarts. Spain, now controlled by Alberoni, was to be the third power concerned in effecting this _bouleversement_, which involved the overthrow of the regency of Orleans in France.

The discovery of this plot, through the interception of some letters from Gortz, led to the arrest of Gortz in Holland, and of the Swedish ambassador, Gyllemborg, in London. Peter declined to commit himself. His reception when he went to Paris was eminently flattering; but an attempt to utilise it for a reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches was a complete failure. The Gortz plot had entirely collapsed before Peter returned to Russia.

_V.--Peter the Great_

Peter had been married in his youth to Eudoxia Feodorovna Lapoukin. With every national prejudice, she had stood persistently in the way of his reforms. In 1696 he had found it necessary to divorce her, and seclude her in a convent. Alexis, the son born of this marriage in 1690, inherited his mother's character, and fell under the influence of the most reactionary ecclesiastics. Politically and morally the young man was a reactionary. He was embittered, too, by his father's second marriage; and his own marriage, in 1711, was a hideous failure. His wife, ill-treated, deserted, and despised, died of wretchedness in 1715. She left a son.

Peter wrote to Alexis warning him to reform, since he would sooner transfer the succession to one worthy of it than to his own son if unworthy. Alexis replied by renouncing all claim to the succession. Renunciation, Peter answered, was useless. Alexis must either reform, or give the renunciation reality by becoming a monk. Alexis promised; but when Peter left Russia, he betook himself to his brother-in-law's court at Vienna, and then to Naples, which at the time belonged to Austria. Peter ordered him to return; if he did, he should not be punished; if not, the Tsar would assuredly find means.

Alexis obeyed, returned, threw himself at his father's feet. A reconciliation was reported. But next day Peter arraigned his son before a council, and struck him out of the succession in favour of Catherine's infant son Peter. Alexis was then subjected to a series of incredible interrogations as to what he would or would not have done under circumstances which had never arisen.

At the strange trial, prolonged over many months, the 144 judges unanimously pronounced sentence of death. Catherine herself is said by Peter to have pleaded for the stepson, whose accession would certainly have meant her own destruction. Nevertheless, the unhappy prince was executed. That Peter slew him with his own hand, and that Catherine poisoned him, are both fables. The real source of the tragedy is to be found in the monks who perverted the mind of the prince.

This same year, 1718, witnessed the greatest benefits to Peter's subjects--in general improvements, in the establishment and perfecting of manufactures, in the construction of canals, and in the development of commerce. An extensive commerce was established with China through Siberia, and with Persia through Astrakan. The new city of Petersburg replaced Archangel as the seat of maritime intercourse with Europe.

Peter was now the arbiter of Northern Europe. In May 1724, he had Catherine crowned and anointed as empress. But he was suffering from a mental disease, and of this he died, in Catherine's arms, in the following January, without having definitely nominated a successor. Whether or not it was his intention, it was upon his wife Catherine that the throne devolved.

* * * * *

W.H. PRESCOTT

The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella

William Hickling Prescott was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on
May 4, 1796. His first great historical work, "The History of
the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," published in 1838, was
compiled under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty.
During most of the time of its composition the author was
deprived of sight, and was dependent on having all documents
read to him. Before it was completed he recovered the use of
his eyes, and was able to correct and verify. Nevertheless,
the changes required were few. The "Conquest of Mexico" and
"Conquest of Peru" (see _ante_) followed at intervals of five
and four years, and ten years later the uncompleted "Philip
II." He died in New York on January 28, 1859. The subjects of
this work, Ferdinand and Isabella, were the monarchs who
united the Spanish kingdoms into one nation, ended the Moorish
dominion in Europe, and annexed the New World to Spain, which
during the ensuing century threatened to dominate the states
of Christendom.

_I.--Castile and Aragon_

After the great Saracen invasion, at the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states. At the close of the fifteenth century, these were blended into one great nation. Before this, the numbers had been reduced to four--Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada.

The civil feuds of Castile in the fourteenth century were as fatal to the nobility as were the English Wars of the Roses. At the close, the power of the commons was at its zenith. In the long reign of John II., the king abandoned the government to the control of favourites. The constable, Alvaro de Luna, sought to appropriate taxing and legislative powers to the crown. Representation in the cortes was withdrawn from all but eighteen privileged cities. Politically disastrous, the reign was conspicuous for John's encouragement of literature, the general intellectual movement, and the birth of Isabella, three years before John's death.

The immediate heir to the throne was Isabella's elder half-brother Henry. Her mother was the Princess of Portugal, so that on both sides she was descended from John of Gaunt, the father of our Lancastrian line. Both her childhood and that of Ferdinand of Aragon, a year her junior, were passed amidst tumultuous scenes of civil war. Henry, good-natured, incompetent, and debauched, yielded himself to favourites, hence he was more than once almost rejected from his throne. Old King John II. of Aragon was similarly engaged in a long civil war, mainly owing to his tyrannous treatment of his eldest son, Carlos.

But by 1468 Isabella and Ferdinand were respectively recognised as the heirs of Castile and Aragon. In spite of her brother, Isabella made contract of marriage with the heir of Aragon, the instrument securing her own sovereign rights in Castile, though Henry thereupon nominated another successor in her place. The marriage was effected under romantic conditions in October 1469, one circumstance being that the bull of dispensation permitting the union of cousins within the forbidden degrees was a forgery, though the fact was unknown at the time to Isabella. The reason of the forgery was the hostility of the then pope; a dispensation was afterwards obtained from Sixtus IV. The death of Henry, in December 1474, placed Isabella and Ferdinand on the throne of Castile.

_II.--Overthrow of the Moorish Dominion_

Isabella's claim to Castile rested on her recognition by the Cortes; the rival claimant was a daughter of the deceased king, or at any rate, of his wife, a Portuguese princess. Alfonso of Portugal supported his niece Joanna's claim. In March 1476 Ferdinand won the decisive victory of Toro; but the war of the succession was not definitely terminated by treaty till 1479, some months after Ferdinand had succeeded John on the throne of Aragon.

Isabella was already engaged in reorganising the administration of Castile; first, in respect of justice, and codification of the law; secondly, by depressing the nobles. A sort of military police, known as the _hermandad_, was established. These reforms were carried out with excellent effect; instead of birth, merit became the primary qualification for honourable offices. Papal usurpations on ecclesiastical rights were resisted, trade was regulated, and the standard of coinage restored. The whole result was to strengthen the crown in a consolidated constitution.

Restrained by her natural benevolence and magnanimity, urged forward by her strong piety and the influence of the Dominican Torquemada, Isabella assented to the introduction of the Inquisition--aimed primarily at the Jews--with its corollary of the _Auto da fé_, of which the actual meaning is "Act of Faith." Probably 10,220 persons were burnt at the stake during the eighteen years of Torquemada's ministry.

Now, however, we come to the great war for the ejection of the Moorish rule in southern Spain. The Saracen power of Granada was magnificent; the population was industrious, sober, and had far exceeded the Christian powers in culture, in research, and in scientific and philosophical inquiry.

So soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had established their government in their joint dominion, they turned to the project of destroying the Saracen power and conquering its territory. But the attack came from Muley Abul Hacen, the ruler of Granada, in 1481. Zahara, on the frontier, was captured and its population carried into slavery. A Spanish force replied by surprising Alhama. The Moors besieged it in force; it was relieved, but the siege was renewed. In an unsuccessful attack on Loja, Ferdinand displayed extreme coolness and courage. A palace intrigue led to the expulsion from Granada of Abdul Hacen, in favour of his son, Abu Abdallah, or Boabdil. The war continued with numerous picturesque episodes. A rout of the Spaniards in the Axarquia was followed by the capture of Boabdil in a rout of the Moors; he was ransomed, accepting an ignominious treaty, while the war was maintained against Abdul Hacen.

In the summer of 1487, Malaja fell, after a siege in which signal heroism was displayed by the Moorish defenders. Since they had refused the first offers, they now had to surrender at discretion. The entire population, male and female, were made slaves. The capture of Baza, in December, after a long and stubborn resistance, was followed by the surrender of Almeria and the whole province appertaining to it.

It was not till 1491 that Granada itself was besieged; at the close of the year it surrendered, on liberal terms. The treaty promised the Moors liberty to exercise their own religion, customs, and laws, as subjects of the Spanish monarchy. The Mohammedan power in Western Europe was extinguished.

Already Christopher Columbus had been unsuccessfully seeking support for his great enterprise. At last, in 1492, Isabella was won over. In August, the expedition sailed--a few months after the cruel edict for the expulsion of the Jews. In the spring of 1493 came news of his discovery. In May the bull of Alexander VI. divided the New World and all new lands between Spain and Portugal.

_III.--The Italian Wars_

In the foreign policy, the relations with Europe, which now becomes prominent, Ferdinand is the moving figure, as Isabella had been within Spain. In Spain, Portugal, France, and England, the monarchy had now dominated the old feudalism. Consolidated states had emerged. Italy was a congeries of principalities and republics. In 1494 Charles VIII. of France crossed the Alps to assert his title to Naples, where a branch of the royal family of Aragon ruled. His successor raised up against him the League of Venice, of which Ferdinand was a member. Charles withdrew, leaving a viceroy, in 1495. Ferdinand forthwith invaded Calabria.

The Spanish commander was Gonsalvo de Cordova; who, after a reverse in his first conflict, for which he was not responsible, never lost a battle. He had learnt his art in the Moorish war, and the French were demoralised by his novel tactics. In a year he had earned the title of "The Great Captain." Calabria submitted in the summer of 1496. The French being expelled from Naples, a truce was signed early in 1498, which ripened into a definitive treaty.

On the death of Cardinal Mendoza, for twenty years the monarchs' chief minister, his place was taken by Ximenes, whose character presented a rare combination of talent and virtue; who proceeded to energetic and much-needed reforms in church discipline.

Not with the same approbation can we view the zeal with which he devoted himself to the extermination of heresy. The conversion of the Moors to Christianity under the régime of the virtuous Archbishop of Granada was not rapid enough. Ximenes, in 1500, began with great success a propaganda fortified by liberal presents. Next he made a holocaust of Arabian MSS. The alarm and excitement caused by measures in clear violation of treaty produced insurrection; which was calmed down, but was followed by the virtually compulsory conversion of some fifty thousand Moors.

This stirred to revolt the Moors of the Alpuxarras hill-country; crushed with no little difficulty, but great severity, the insurrection broke out anew on the west of Granada. This time the struggle was savage. When it was ended the rebels were allowed the alternative of baptism or exile.

Columbus had returned to the New World in 1493 with great powers; but administrative skill was not his strong point, and the first batch of colonists were without discipline. He returned and went out again, this time with a number of convicts. Matters became worse. A very incompetent special commissioner, Bobadilla, was sent with extraordinary powers to set matters right, and he sent Columbus home in chains, to the indignation of the king and queen. The management of affairs was then entrusted to Ovando, Columbus following later. It must be observed that the economic results of the great discovery were not immediately remarkable; but the moral effect on Europe at large was incalculable.

On succeeding to the French throne, Louis XII. was prompt to revive the French claims in Italy (1498); but he agreed with Ferdinand on a partition of the kingdom of Naples, a remarkable project of robbery. The Great Captain was despatched to Sicily, and was soon engaged in conquering Calabria. It was not long, however, before France and Aragon were quarrelling over the division of the spoil. In July 1502 war was declared between them in Italy. The war was varied by set combats in the lists between champions of the opposed nations.

In 1503 a treaty was negotiated by Ferdinand's son-in-law, the Archduke Philip. Gonsalvo, however, not recognising instructions received from Philip, gave battle to the French at Cerignola, and won a brilliant victory. A few days earlier another victory had been won by a second column; and Gonsalvo marched on Naples, which welcomed him. The two French fortresses commanding it were reduced. Since Ferdinand refused to ratify Philip's treaty, a French force entered Roussillon; but retired on Ferdinand's approach. The practical effect of the invasion was a demonstration of the new unity of the Spanish kingdom.

In Italy, Louis threw fresh energy into the war; and Gonsalvo found his own forces greatly out-numbered. In the late autumn there was a sharp but indecisive contest at the Garigliano Bridge. Gonsalvo held to his position, despite the destitution of his troops, until he received reinforcements. Then, on December 28, he suddenly and unexpectedly crossed the river; the French retired rapidly, gallantly covered by the rear-guard, hotly attacked by the Spanish advance guard. The retreat being checked at a bridge, the Spanish rear was enabled to come up, and the French were driven in route. Gaeta surrendered on January 4; no further resistance was offered. South Italy was in the hands of Gonsalvo.

_IV.--After Isabella_

Throughout 1503 and 1504 Queen Isabella's strength was failing. In November 1504 she died, leaving the succession to the Castilian crown to her daughter Joanna, and naming Ferdinand regent. Magnanimity, unselfishness, openness, piety had been her most marked moral traits; justice, loyalty, practical good sense her political characteristics--a most rare and virtuous lady.

Her death gives a new complexion to our history. Joanna was proclaimed Queen of Castile; Ferdinand was governor of that kingdom in her name, but his regency was not accepted without demur. To secure his brief authority he made alliance with Louis, including a marriage contract with Louis' niece, Germaine de Ford. Six weeks after the wedding, the Archduke Philip landed in Spain. Ferdinand's action had ruined his popularity, and he saw security only in a compact assuring Philip the complete sovereignty--Joanna being insane.

Philip's rule was very unpopular and very brief. A sudden illness, in which for once poison was not suspected of playing a part, carried him off. Ferdinand, absent at the time in Italy, was restored to the regency of Castile, which he held undisputed--except for futile claims of the Emperor Maximilian--for the rest of his life.

The years of Ferdinand's sole rule displayed his worst characteristics, which had been restrained during his noble consort's life. He was involved in the utterly unscrupulous and immoral wars issuing out of the League of Cambray for the partition of Venice. The suspicion and ingratitude with which he treated Gonsalvo de Cordova drove the Great Captain into a privacy not less honourable than his glorious public career. Within a twelvemonth of Gonsalvo's death, Ferdinand followed him to the grave in January 1516--lamented in Aragon, but not in Castile.

During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the overgrown powers and factious spirit of the nobility had been restrained. That genuine piety of the queen which had won for the monarchs the title of "The Catholic" had not prevented them from firmly resisting the encroachments of ecclesiastical authority. The condition of the commons had been greatly advanced, but political power had been concentrated in the crown, and the crowns of Castile and Aragon were permanently united on the accession of Charles--afterwards Charles V.--to both the thrones.

Under these great rulers we have beheld Spain emerging from chaos into a new existence; unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of the feudal age in the requirements of an intellectual and moral culture. We have seen her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory both in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters.

* * * * *

VOLTAIRE

History of Charles XII

Voltaire's "History of Charles XII." was his earliest notable
essay in history, written during his sojourn in England in
1726-9, when he was acquiring the materials for his "Letters
on the English," eleven years after the death of the Swedish
monarch. The prince who "left a name at which the world grew
pale, to point a moral and adorn a tale," was killed by a
cannon-ball when thirty-six years old, after a career
extraordinarily brilliant, extraordinarily disastrous, and in
result extraordinarily ineffective. A tremendous contrast to
the career, equally unique, of his great antagonist, Peter the
Great of Russia, whose history Voltaire wrote thirty years
later (see _ante_). Naturally the two works in a marked degree
illustrate each other. In both cases Voltaire claims to have
had first-hand information from the principal actors in the
drama.

_I.--The Meteor Blazes_

The house of Vasa was established on the throne of Sweden in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, Christina, daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated in favour of her cousin, who ascended the throne as Charles X. He and his vigorous son, Charles XI., established a powerful absolute monarchy. To the latter was born, on June 27, 1682, the infant who became Charles XII.--perhaps the most extraordinary man who ever lived, who in his own person united all the great qualities of his ancestors, whose one defect and one misfortune was that he possessed all those qualities in excess.

In childhood he developed exceptional physical powers, and remarkable linguistic facility. He succeeded to the throne at the age of fifteen, in 1697. Within the year he declared himself of age, and asserted his position as king; and the neighbouring powers at once resolved to take advantage of the Swedish monarch's youth--the kings Christian of Denmark, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, and the very remarkable Tsar Peter the Great of Russia. Among them, the three proposed to appropriate all the then Swedish territories on the Russian and Polish side of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic.

Danes and Saxons, joined by the forces of other German principalities, were already attacking Holstein, whose duke was Charles's cousin; the Saxons, too, were pouring into Livonia. On May 8, 1700, Charles sailed from Stockholm with 8,000 men to the succour of Holstein, which he effected with complete and immediate success by swooping on Copenhagen. On August 6, Denmark concluded a treaty, withdrawing her claims in Holstein and paying the duke an indemnity. Three months later, the Tsar, who was besieging Narva, in Ingria, with 80,000 Muscovites, learnt that Charles had landed, and was advancing with 20,000 Swedes. Another 30,000 were being hurried up by the Tsar when Charles, with only 8,000 men, came in contact with 25,000 Russians at Revel. In two days he had swept them before him, and with his 8,000 men fell upon the Russian force of ten times that number in its entrenchments at Narva. Prodigies of valour were performed, the Muscovites were totally routed. Peter, with 40,000 reinforcements, had no inclination to renew battle, but he very promptly made up his mind that his armies must be taught how to fight. They should learn from the victorious Swedes how to conquer the Swedes.

With the spring, Charles fell upon the Saxon forces in Livonia, before a fresh league between Augustus and Peter had had time to develop advantageously. After one decisive victory, the Duchy of Courland made submission, and he marched into Lithuania. In Poland, neither the war nor the rule of Augustus was popular, and in the divided state of the country Charles advanced triumphantly. A Polish diet was summoned, and Charles awaited events; he was at war, he said, not with Poland, but with Augustus. He had, in fact, resolved to dethrone the King of Poland by the instrumentality of the Poles themselves--a process made the easier by the normal antagonism between the diet and the king, an elective, not a hereditary ruler.

Augustus endeavoured, quite fruitlessly, to negotiate with Charles on his own account, while the diet was much more zealous to curtail his powers than to resist the Swedish monarch, and was determined that, at any price, the Saxon troops should leave Poland. Intrigues were going on on all sides. Presently Charles set his forces in motion. When Augustus learned that there was to be no peace till Poland had a new king, he resolved to fight. Charles's star did not desert him. He won a complete victory. Pressing in pursuit of Augustus, he captured Cracow, but his advance was delayed for some weeks by a broken leg; and in the interval there was a considerable rally to the support of Augustus. But the moment Charles could again move, he routed the enemy at Pultusk. The terror of his invincibility was universal. Success followed upon success. The anti-Saxon party in the diet succeeded in declaring the throne vacant. Charles might certainly have claimed the crown for himself, but chose instead to maintain the title of the Sobieski princes. The kidnapping of James Sobieski, however, caused Charles to insist on the election of Stanislaus Lekzinsky.

_II.--From Triumph to Disaster_

Charles left Warsaw to complete the subjugation of Poland, leaving the new king in the capital. Stanislaus and his court were put to sudden flight by the appearance of Augustus with 20,000 men. Warsaw fell at once; but when Charles turned on the Saxon army, only the wonderful skill of Schulembourg saved it from destruction. Augustus withdrew to Saxony, and began repairing the fortifications of Dresden.

By this time, wherever the Swedes appeared, they were confident of victory if they were but twenty to a hundred. Charles had made nothing for himself out of his victories, but all his enemies were scattered--except Peter, who had been sedulously training his people in the military arts. On August 21, 1704, Peter captured Narva. Now he made a new alliance with Augustus. Seventy thousand Russians were soon ravaging Polish territory. Within two months, Charles and Stanislaus had cut them up in detail, or driven them over the border. Schulembourg crossed the Oder, but his battalions were shattered at Frawenstad by Reuschild. On September 1, 1706, Charles himself was invading Saxony.

The invading troops were held under an iron discipline; no violence was permitted. In effect, Augustus had lost both his kingdom and his electorate. His prayers for peace were met by the demand for formal and permanent resignation of the Polish crown, repudiation of the treaties with Russia, restoration of the Sobieskies, and the surrender of Patkul, a Livonian "rebel" who was now Tsar Peter's plenipotentiary at Dresden. Augustus accepted, at Altranstad, the terms offered by Charles. Patkul was broken on the wheel; Peter determined on vengeance; again the Russians overran Lithuania, but retired before Stanislaus.

In September 1707, Charles left Saxony at the head of 43,000 men, enriched with the spoils of Poland and Saxony. Another 20,000 met him in Poland; 15,000 more were ready in Finland. He had no doubts of his power to dethrone the Tsar. In January 1708 he was on the march for Grodow. Peter retreated before him, and in June was entrenched beyond the Beresina. Driven thence by a flank movement, the Russians engaged Charles at Hollosin, where he gained one of his most brilliant victories. Retreat and pursuit continued towards Moscow.

Charles now pushed on towards the Ukraine, where he was secretly in treaty with the governor, Mazeppa. But when he reached the Ukraine, Mazeppa joined him not as an ally, but as a fugitive. Meanwhile, Lewenhaupt, marching to effect a junction with him, was intercepted by Peter with thrice his force, and finally cut his way through to Charles with only 5,000 men.

So severe was the winter that both Peter and Charles, contrary to their custom, agreed to a suspension of arms. Isolated as he was, towards the end of May, Charles laid siege to Pultawa, the capture of which would have opened the way to Moscow. Thither Peter marched against him, while Charles himself was unable to move owing to a serious wound in the foot, endured with heroic fortitude. On July 8, the decisive battle was fought. The victory lay with the Russians, and Charles was forced to fly for his life. His best officers were prisoners. A column under Lewenhaupt succeeded in joining the king, now prostrated by his wound and by fever. At the Dnieper, Charles was carried over in a boat; the force, overtaken by the Russians, was compelled to capitulate. Peter treated the captured Swedish generals with distinction. Charles himself escaped to Bender, in Turkey.

Virtually a captive in the Turkish dominions, Charles conceived the project of persuading the sultan to attack Russia. At the outset, the grand vizier, Chourlouly Ali, favoured his ideas; but Peter, by lavish and judicious bribery, soon won him over. The grand vizier, however, was overthrown by a palace intrigue, and was replaced by an incorruptible successor, Numa Chourgourly, who was equally determined to treat the fugitive king in becoming fashion and to decline to make war on the Tsar.

Meanwhile, Charles's enemies were taking advantage of his enforced absence. Peter again overran Livonia. Augustus repudiated the treaty of Altranstad, and recovered the Polish crown. The King of Denmark repudiated the treaty of Travendal, and invaded Sweden, but his troops were totally routed by the raw levies of the Swedish militia at Helsimburg.

The Vizier Chourgourly, being too honourable for his post, was displaced by Baltaji Mehemet, who took up the schemes of Charles. War was declared against Russia. The Prince of Moldavia, Cantemir, supported Peter. The Turks seemed doomed to destruction; but first the advancing Tsar found himself deserted by the Moldavians, and allowed himself to be hemmed in by greatly superior forces on the Pruth. With Peter himself and his army entirely at his mercy, Baltaji Mehemet--to the furious indignation of Charles--was content to extort a treaty advantageous to Turkey but useless to the Swede; and Peter was allowed to retire with the honours of war.

_III.--The Meteor Quenched_

The great desire of the Porte was, in fact, to get rid of its inconvenient guest; to dispatch him to his own dominions in safety with an escort to defend him, but no army for aggression. Charles conceived that the sultan was pledged to give him an army. The downfall of the vizier--owing to the sultan's wrath on learning that Peter was not carrying out the pledges of the Pruth treaty--did not help matters; for the favourite, Ali Cournourgi, now intended Russia to aid his own ambitions, and the favourite controlled the new vizier. Within six months of Pruth, war had been declared and a fresh peace again patched up, Peter promising to withdraw all his forces from Poland, and the Turks to eject Charles.

But Charles was determined not to budge. He demanded as a preliminary half a million to pay his debts. A larger sum was provided; still he would not move. The sultan felt that he had now discharged all that the laws of hospitality could possibly demand. Threats only made the king more obstinate. His supplies were cut off and his guards withdrawn, except his own 300 Swedes; whereupon Charles fortified the house he had built himself. All efforts to bring him to reason were of no avail. A force of Janissaries was despatched to cut the Swedes to pieces; but the men listened to Baron Grothusen's appeal for a delay of three days, and flatly refused to attack. But when they sent Charles a deputation of veterans, he refused to see them, and sent them an insulting message. They returned to their quarters, now resolved to obey the pasha.

The 300 Swedes could do nothing but surrender; yet Charles, with twenty companions, held his house, defended it with a valour and temporary success which were almost miraculous, and were only overwhelmed by numbers when they sallied forth and charged the Turkish army with swords and pistols. Once captured, the king displayed a calm as imperturbable as his rage before had been tempestuous.

Charles was now conveyed to the neighbourhood of Adrianople, where he was joined by another royal prisoner--Stanislaus, who had attempted to enter Turkey in disguise in order to see him, but had been discovered and arrested. Charles was allowed to remain at Demotica. Here he abode for ten months, feigning illness; both he and his little court being obliged to live frugally and practically without attendants, the chancellor, Mullern, being the cook of the establishment.

The hopes which Charles obstinately clung to, of Turkish support, were finally destroyed when Cournourgi at last became grand vizier. His sister Ulrica warned him that the council of regency at Stockholm would make peace with Russia and Denmark. At length he demanded to be allowed to depart. In October 1714 he set out in disguise for the frontier, and having reached Stralsund on November 21, not having rested in a bed for sixteen days, on the same day he was already issuing from Stralsund instructions for the vigorous prosecution of the war in every direction. But meanwhile the northern powers, without exception, had been making partition of all the cis-Baltic territories of the Swedish crown. Tsar Peter, master of the Baltic, held that ascendancy which had once belonged to Charles. But the hopes of Sweden revived with the knowledge that the king had reappeared at Stralsund.

Even Charles could not make head against the hosts of his foes. Misfortune pursued him now, as successes had once crowded upon him. Before long he was himself practically cooped up in Stralsund, while the enemies' ships controlled the Baltic. In October, Stralsund was resolutely besieged. His attempt to hold the commanding island of Rugen failed after a desperate battle. The besiegers forced their way into Stralsund itself. Exactly two months after the trenches had been opened against Stralsund, Charles slipped out to sea--the ice in the harbour had first to be broken up--ran the gauntlet of the enemy's forts and fleets, and reached the Swedish coast at Carlscrona.

Charles now subjected his people to a merciless taxation in order to raise troops and a navy. Suddenly, at the moment when all the powers at once seemed on the point of descending on Sweden, Charles flung himself upon Norway, at that time subject to Denmark. This was in accordance with a vast design proposed by his minister, Gortz, in which Charles was to be leagued with his old enemy Peter, and with Spain, primarily against England, Hanover, and Augustus of Poland and Saxony. Gortz's designs became known to the regent Orleans; he was arrested in Holland, but promptly released.

Gortz, released, continued to work out his intriguing policy with increased determination. Affairs seemed to be progressing favourably. Charles, who had been obliged to fall back from Norway, again invaded that country, and laid siege to Fredericshall. Here he was inspecting a part of the siege works, when his career was brought to a sudden close by a cannon shot. So finished, at thirty-six, the one king who never displayed a single weakness, but in whom the heroic virtues were so exaggerated as to be no less dangerous than the vices with which they are contrasted.

* * * * *

HENRY MILMAN, D.D.

History of Latin Christianity

The "History of Latin Christianity, to the Pontificate of
Nicholas V.," which is here presented, was published in
1854-56. It covers the religious or ecclesiastical history of
Western Europe from the fall of paganism to the pontificate of
Nicholas V., a period of eleven centuries, corresponding
practically with what are commonly called the Middle Ages, and
is written from the point of view of a large-minded Anglican
who is not seeking to maintain any thesis, but simply to set
forth a veracious account of an important phase of history.
(Milman, see vol. xi, p. 68.)

_I.--Development of the Church of Rome_

For ten centuries after the extinction of paganism, Latin Christianity was the religion of Western Europe. It became gradually a monarchy, with all the power of a concentrated dominion. The clergy formed a second universal magistracy, exercising always equal, asserting, and for a long time possessing, superior power to the civil government. Western monasticism rent from the world the most powerful minds, and having trained them by its stern discipline, sent them back to rule the world. Its characteristic was adherence to legal form; strong assertion of, and severe subordination to, authority. It maintained its dominion unshaken till, at the Reformation, Teutonic Christianity asserted its independence.

The Church of Rome was at first, so to speak, a Greek religious colony; its language, organisation, scriptures, liturgy, were Greek. It was from Africa, Tertullian, and Cyprian that Latin Christianity arose. As the Church of the capital--before Constantinople--the Roman Church necessarily acquired predominance; but no pope appears among the distinguished "Fathers" of the Church until Leo.

The division between Greek and Latin Christianity developed with the division between the Eastern and the Western Empire; Rome gained an increased authority by her resolute support of Athanasius in the Arian controversy.

The first period closes with Pope Damasus and his two successors. The Christian bishop has become important enough for his election to count in profane history. Paganism is writhing in death pangs; Christianity is growing haughty and wanton in its triumph.

Innocent I., at the opening of the fifth century, seems the first pope who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion. The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of her bishop throughout the West.

To this period, the time of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, belongs the establishment in Western Christendom of the doctrine of predestination, and that of the inherent evil of matter which is at the root of asceticism and monasticism. It was a few years later that the Nestorian controversy had the effect of giving fixity to that conception of the "Mother of God" which is held by Roman Catholics.

The pontificate of Leo is an epoch in the history of Christianity. He had utter faith in himself and in his office, and asserted his authority uncompromisingly. The Metropolitan of Constantinople was becoming a helpless instrument in the hands of the Byzantine emperor; the Bishop of Rome was becoming an independent potentate. He took an authoritative and decisive part in the controversy formally ended at the Council of Chalcedon; it was he who stayed the advance of Attila. Leo and his predecessor, Innocent, laid the foundations of the spiritual monarchy of the West.

In the latter half of the fifth century, the disintegration of the Western Empire by the hosts of Teutonic invaders was being completed. These races assimilated certain aspects of Christian morals and assumed Christianity without assimilating the intellectual subtleties of the Eastern Church, and for the most part in consequence adopted the Arian form. But when the Frankish horde descended, Clovis accepted the orthodox theology, thereby in effect giving it permanence and obliterating Arianism in the West. Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy, in nominal subjection to the emperor, was the last effective upholder of toleration for his own Arian creed. Almost simultaneous with his death was the accession of Justinian to the empire. The re-establishment of effective imperial sway in Italy reduced the papacy to a subordinate position. The recovery was the work of Gregory I., the Great; but papal opposition to Gothic or Lombard dominion in Italy destroyed the prospect of political unification for the peninsula.

Western monasticism had been greatly extended and organised by Benedict of Nursia and his rule--comprised in silence, humility, and obedience. Monasticism became possessed of the papal chair in the person of Gregory the Great. Of noble descent and of great wealth, which he devoted to religious uses as soon as he became master of it, he had also the characteristics which were held to denote the highest holiness. In austerity, devotion, and imaginative superstition, he, whose known virtue and capacity caused him to be forced into the papal chair, remained a monk to the end of his days.

But he became at once an exceedingly vigorous man of affairs. He reorganised the Roman liturgy; he converted the Lombards and Saxons. And he proved himself virtual sovereign of Rome. His administration was admirable. He exercised his disciplinary authority without fear or favour. And his rule marks the epoch at which all that we regard as specially characteristic of mediæval Christianity--its ethics, its asceticism, its sacerdotalism, and its superstitions--had reached its lasting shape.

Gregory the Great had not long passed away when there arose in the East that new religion which was to shake the world, and to bring East and West once more into a prolonged conflict. Mohammedanism, born in Arabia, hurled itself first against Asia, then swept North Africa. By the end of the seventh century it was threatening the Byzantine Empire on one side of Europe, and the Gothic dominion in Spain on the other. On the other hand, in the same period, Latin Christianity had decisively taken possession of England, driving back that Celtic or Irish Christianity which had been beforehand with it in making entry to the North. Similarly, it was the Irish missionaries who began the conversion of the outer Teutonic barbarians; but the work was carried out by the Saxon Winfrid (Boniface) of the Latin Church.

The popes, however, during this century between Gregory I. and Gregory II. again sank into a position of subordination to the imperial power. Under the second Gregory, the papacy reasserted itself in resistance to the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, the "Iconoclast," the "Image-breaker," who strove to impose on Christendom his own zeal against images. To Leo, images meant image-worship. To his opponents, images were useful symbols. Rome defied the emperor's attempt to claim spiritual dictatorship. East and West were rent in twain at the moment when Islam was assaulting both West and East. Leo rolled back the advancing torrent before Constantinople, as Charles Martel rolled it back almost simultaneously in the great battle of Tours; but the Empire and the West, Byzantium and Rome, never presented a united front to the Moslem.

The Iconoclastic controversy threw Italy against its will into the hands of the image-worshipping Lombards; and hate of Lombard ascendancy turned the eyes of Gregory's successors to the Franks, to Charles Martel; to Pepin, who obtained from Pope Stephen sanction for his seizure of the Frankish crown, and in return repressed the Lombards; and finally to Charles the Great, otherwise Charlemagne, who on the last Christmas Day of the eighth century was crowned (Western) emperor and successor of the Caesars.

_II.--The Western Empire and Theocracy_

Charlemagne, the first emperor of the restored or Holy Roman Empire, by his conquests brought into a single dominion practically all Western Europe from the Elbe and the Danube to the Ebro. He stood the champion and the head of Western Christendom, palpably the master, and not even in theory the subordinate, of the Pontiff from whom he received the imperial crown. But he established ecclesiastics as a territorial nobility, counteracting the feudal nobility; and when the mighty emperor was gone, and the unity of what was nominally one empire passed away, this ecclesiastical nobility became an instrument for the elevation of the spiritual above the temporal head of Christendom. The change was already taking place under his son Louis the Pious, whose character facilitated it.

The disintegration of the empire was followed by a hideous degradation of the papacy. But the Saxon line of emperors, the Ottos, sprung from Henry the Fowler, once more revived the empire; the third of them established a worthy pope in Silvester II. But both emperor and pope died just after the eleventh century opened. Elections of popes and anti-popes continued to be accompanied by the gravest scandals, until the Emperor Henry III. (Franconian dynasty) set a succession of Germans on the papal throne.

The high character of the pontificate was revived in the persons of Leo IX. and Victor II. (Gebhard of Eichstadt); many abuses were put down or at least checked with a firm hand. But Henry's death weakened the empire, and Stephen IX. added to the rigid enforcement of orthodoxy more peremptory claims for the supremacy of the Holy See. His successor, Nicholas II., strengthened the position as against the empire by securing the support of the fleshly arm--the Normans. His election was an assertion of the right of the cardinals to make their own choice. Alexander II. was chosen in disregard of the Germans and the empire, and the Germans chose an anti-pope. At the back of the Italian papal party was the great Hildebrand. In 1073 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII. With Hildebrand, the great struggle for supremacy between the empire and the papacy was decisively opened.

Gregory's aim was to establish a theocracy through an organised dominant priesthood separated from the world, but no less powerful than the secular forces; with the pope, God's mouthpiece, and vice-regent, at its head. The temporal powers were to be instruments in his hand, subject to his supreme authority. Clerical celibacy acquired a political value; the clergy would concentrate on the glory of the Church those ambitions which made laymen seek to aggrandise their families.

The collision between Rome and the emperor came quickly. The victory at the outset fell to the pope, and Henry IV. was compelled to humble himself and entreat pardon as a penitent at Canossa. Superficially, the tables were turned later; when Gregory died, Henry was ostensibly victor.

But Gregory's successor, Urban, as resolute and more subtle, retrieved what had only been a check. The Crusades, essentially of ecclesiastical inspiration, were given their great impulse by him; they were a movement of Christendom against the Paynim, of the Church against Islam; they centred in the pope, not the emperor, and they made the pope, not the emperor, conspicuously the head of Christendom.

The twelfth century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of investitures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the suppression of the intellectual movement from within against the authority of the Church, connected with Abelard's name.

Arnold of Brescia's movement was orthodox, but, would have transformed the Church from a monarchial into a republican organisation, and demanded that the clergy should devote themselves to apostolical and pastoral functions with corresponding habits of life. He was a forerunner of the school of reformers which culminated in Zwingli.

In the middle of the century the one English pope, Hadrian IV., was a courageous and capable occupant of the papal throne, and upheld its dignity against Frederick Barbarossa; though he could not maintain the claim that the empire was held as a fief of the papacy. But the strife between the spiritual and temporal powers issued on his death in a double election, and an imperial anti-pope divided the allegiance of Christendom with Alexander III. It was not till after Frederick had been well beaten by the Lombard League at Legnano that emperor and pope were reconciled, and the reconciliation was the pope's victory.

_III.--Triumph and Decline of the Papacy_

Innocent III., mightiest of all popes, was elected in 1198. He made the papacy what it remained for a hundred years, the greatest power in Christendom. The future Emperor Frederick II. was a child entrusted to Innocent's guardianship. The pope began by making himself virtually sovereign of Italy and Sicily, overthrowing the German baronage therein. A contest for the imperial throne enabled the pope to assume the right of arbitration. Germany repudiated his right. Innocent was saved from the menace of defeat by the assassination of the opposition emperor. But the successful Otho proved at once a danger.

Germany called young Frederick to the throne, and now Innocent sided with Germany; but he did not live to see the death of Otho and the establishment of the Hohenstaufen. More decisive was his intervention elsewhere. Both France and England were laid under interdicts on account of the misdoings of Philip Augustus and John; both kings were forced to submission. John received back his kingdom as a papal fief. But Langton, whom Innocent had made archbishop, guided the barons in their continued resistance to the king, whose submission made him Rome's most cherished son. England and the English clergy held to their independence. Pedro of Aragon voluntarily received his crown from the pope. In every one of the lesser kingdoms of Europe, Innocent asserted his authority.

Innocent's efforts for a fresh crusade begot not the overthrow of the Saracen, but the substitution of a Latin kingdom under the Roman obedience for the Greek empire of Byzantium. In effect it gave Venice her Mediterranean supremacy. The great pope was not more zealous against Islam than against the heterogeneous sects which were revolting against sacerdotalism; whereof the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses are the painful witness.

Not the least momentous event in the rule of this mightiest of the popes was his authorisation of the two orders of mendicant friars, the disciples of St. Dominic, and of St. Francis of Assisi, with their vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and their principle of human brotherhood. And in both cases Innocent's consent was given with reluctance.