Francis Johnson

“ He did not shrink even from murder, and committed it openly and defiantly. As soon as the conviction had been established in his mind that Rizzio stood in the way of his ambition, he resolved upon his assassination, which was not only to lead to his own aggrandizement, but also to punish Mary for having preferred the Italian to him. He did not wait long to carry his plan into execution; and the brutality and reckless ferocity with which the murder was committed were even more atrocious and repulsive than the crime itself. Only a brute and cowardly knave could have planned it. ”

“ We address ourselves to the newly crowned Alexander the Third, reminding him that he must be just. Russia, exhausted by famine, worn out by the arbitrary proceedings of the administration, continually losing its sons on the gallows, in the mines, in exile, or in wearisome inactivity caused by the present régime,—Russia cannot longer live thus. She demands liberty. She must live in conformity with her demands, her wishes, and her will. We remind Alexander the Third that every violator of the will of the people is the nation’s enemy and tyrant. ”

“ It may be taken as a convincing proof of the sincerity of the wrath and the depth of the contempt which the people of Servia felt for Alexander I and Draga, that of the immense multitude which came to inspect the lacerated bodies of those who but the day before had been their King and their Queen, not one expressed a word of regret, or shed a tear of sorrow. Many, on the contrary, spat on the mangled remains, or mumbled words of execration as they passed by the plain coffins. Death itself had not been able to wipe out the misdeeds of these two persons. ”

“ The imperial era, beginning with a display of magnificence and splendor, both in military achievements and literary production, soon degenerated into an era of crime, which, at least in the highest classes of society, has never been equalled in history. Its worst feature was, perhaps, the utter degradation and depravity of the women even of the highest classes, and their readiness to sacrifice everything—chastity, shame, name, and reputation—to the gratification of their passions. Soon the women excelled the men in assassinating, by poison or dagger, their victims or rivals. ”

“ The assassination of Marat created a rage, a frenzy among the lowest classes of the population of Paris which it is impossible to describe. That the courageous young woman who had slain the demon of blood was not torn to pieces is a wonder. Charlotte, in thinking of the fate which might befall her after her task was performed, had not forgotten the possibility or even probability of falling a victim to the fury of the people, but even this terrible prospect did not deter her. ”

“ Popular excitement is a flame which feeds itself by the electric current emanating from thousands of impassioned and excited minds. It is ready on slight provocation to burst forth in all-devouring violence. But a few minutes had passed from the moment the procession reached Hypatia’s carriage until the infuriated mob, holding the victim firmly in their grasp, had torn the garments from her body and hurried her with wild cheers and laughter to the Cæsarium, the great Christian church. ”

“ Never before in human history had human depravity and human lust displayed themselves more shamelessly; never before had the beast in man shown its innate cruelty so boldly and so openly as during the reigns of these five Roman Emperors. It is almost a consolation for the sorrowing mind to read that Tiberius was choked to death; that Caligula was beaten down and stabbed; that Claudius was killed by a dish of poisonous mushrooms; and that Nero, the last of Cæsar’s dynasty, was helped to his untimely death by the poniard of a freedman. ”

“ AS one of the most cruel and heart-rending tragedies of the middle ages, the love-story and the assassination of Iñez de Castro has lived in song and story for five hundred and fifty years, and still awakens echoes of pity and sorrow whenever read or heard.
Constancia, the wife of Pedro, son of Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal, and heir-presumptive to the crown of that kingdom, died in 1344, and left to her husband a son of tender age, named Ferdinand. ”

“ More regretted and admired for her misfortunes and accomplishments than condemned for her sins and crimes, Mary Stuart, the beautiful Queen of Scots, lives in the recollections of posterity as a vision of incomparable grace, beauty, and loveliness, hallowed by the genius of great poets and redeemed by a tragic and cruel death. To no historical memory poetry and tradition have been more kind and more idealizing than to Mary Stuart ”

“ But there was one class of citizens which had hailed the promises of the sovereigns with unbounded enthusiasm, for they had hoped from their realization a political renaissance for the whole Fatherland and a new era of greatness and world-wide influence recalling the days of the Hohenstaufen,—the glorious days when the German Empire was the first power in the world, and when all civilized nations from the Baltic Sea to the southern shores of the Mediterranean bowed their necks in obedience to the demands of its rulers. ”

“ No wonder that on the twenty-fifth of October, 1555, when the act of abdication was consummated at Brussels, and when the infirm Emperor, leaning upon the shoulder of Prince William of Orange, appeared before the representatives and high dignitaries of all the provinces constituting the Netherlands, and ceded the government to his son, who stood on his right side, a shudder passed through the high assembly. Many eyes passed apprehensively from the open and kindly countenance of the Emperor, then bathed in tears, to the sinister and cruel features of King Philip. ”

“ It is the darkest chapter in the history of Peter the Great, a monarch whose achievements as a civil administrator, reformer, and general entitle him to a high rank among the really great rulers of Europe; but these achievements should not be made a cloak or excuse for a crime from which not only modern civilization, but human nature itself, shrinks back in horror. ”

“ Thinking of Jeanne d’Arc, who had saved France and immortalized herself by her self-sacrificing devotion, she felt convinced that God often chooses woman as his instrument for interposition in the history of nations. If she deceived herself in the nature of the act by which she hoped to restore the happiness of France and to terminate the era of bloody hecatombs sacrificed to the fury of sanguinary monsters, is it the duty of the historian to judge her severely? ”

“ But truth or fiction, history or legend, the heroic act and name of Tell will live on, immortal and inspiring, as they have lived during the last six hundred years. Poets and novelists have immortalized the great national hero of Switzerland in song and story. Frederick Schiller, Germany’s greatest dramatist, has made him the central hero of his greatest drama, and has given his name to that great hymn of liberty and patriotism, which stirred up the German nation to its glorious struggle against Napoleon the First. ”

“ As if nothing was to be wanting to make this gigantic Civil War a tragedy to both sides, the man whose very name was the embodiment of liberty and the symbol of emancipation, and who more than any other man had contributed to the great triumph, had to succumb at the moment of victory. ”

“ The Swedish King’s piety, and the strict discipline which he maintained in his army, stood in such glaring contrast to the excesses and outrages committed by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein that the King was welcomed by the sovereigns of northern Germany as a savior and liberator. It is not our purpose to describe the glorious and victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus in the Empire. ”

“ THE assassination of Philip of Macedon, which occurred in the year 336 B.C., was one of the most important in ancient history, not only because it terminated the glorious career of one of the most remarkable men of his times, but also because it led immediately to the accession of Alexander, one of the supremely great men of history,—an event which would very likely not have taken place at all if Philip had continued to live for a number of years and had himself selected the successor to his throne. ”

“ During all these years he had ruled his gigantic empire with an iron hand and had stood before the world as the most brilliant as well as the most imperious ruler who had sat upon the throne of the Czars since the death of Peter the Great. He was the model for the other sovereigns of Europe, and his policy was adopted with almost servile humility by the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the former of whom he reinstated on his throne by overthrowing the Hungarian revolution, while the latter was allied to him by ties of marriage. ”

“ It was this pride and her great wealth which pointed out Novgorod as a victim for Ivan’s wrath and cupidity, and the manner in which he planned and executed his evil designs on the city shows his diabolical genius at its height. Never has tyrant or despot conceived a more sinister and treacherous plot for the ruin of a great city and for the assassination of its inhabitants. ”

“ In the whole annals of crime not a more heart-rending and more brutal scene can be found than the murder of Hypatia. The assassination of the beautiful young Princess de Lamballe, the friend of Marie Antoinette, during the worst days of the French Revolution, bears some resemblance to it; but, after all, political fanaticism is never equal in its intensity and cruelty to religious fanaticism. ”

“ The assassination did a great deal for Mr. Lincoln’s standing in history. It added the halo of martyrdom to his renown as a statesman, and it has made him a national hero, who, next to Washington—or with Washington—holds the highest place in the estimation of the American people. It is doubtful whether Abraham Lincoln, if he had not crowned his career with a martyr’s death, would have held this place. ”

“ These liberal-minded men and true patriots—professors of the universities, literary men, and a very small number of young noblemen—lived mostly at Moscow, where the distance from the observing eye of the ruler and his court saved them from detection, although their secret influence pervaded the whole empire, and kept the flame of liberalism burning in the hearts of the intellectual élite. While Nicholas had thus succeeded in building up an Eastern despotism on the banks of the Neva, he endeavored at the same time to impress Europe with the idea of his unrivalled power. ”

“ Alexander’s mental condition, on this discovery, would form an interesting subject for the psychologist. From the day when he began to reign as an enthusiastic, well-intentioned man of thirty-seven, to the days of his disappointments as a ruler and reformer, ending with one of the most terrible catastrophes of modern times, his career challenges, for adequate treatment, the genius of a Shakespeare. No wonder that he became despondent and thought of abdication,—a thought which reappeared with ever increasing force to the end of his reign. ”

“ IT was said by one of the wild revolutionists of France, in extenuation of his incessant demands for the execution of a larger number of the nobility, that the tree of liberty, to grow vigorously, should be watered with plenty of blood. Alas! The history of the republics of the world, not only since the great French Revolution of 1789, but at all times, both ancient and modern, proves the justice of this assertion, but none furnishes a more convincing proof of it than the history of the Dutch Republic in its heroic struggle against the gigantic power of Spain and other monarchical nations. ”

“ Elizabeth hated Frederick the Great with the passion of a woman offended in her vanity. He had said of her: “She is as ugly as a cat and as treacherous; the very thought of her makes me sick.” The hatred of the Empress did not prevent the Crown Prince from openly expressing his unbounded admiration for the Prussian King. True, Peter was mentally too insignificant to comprehend the real greatness and genius of Frederick ”

“ We have reached the period when Mary—blinded by passion and infatuated with love for a man utterly unworthy of her, or to speak more correctly, of the exalted position she occupied in the world—surrendered not only herself, but also the dignity of the crown and the honor and the interests of the realm to the Earl of Bothwell, known to the entire court as a profligate and libertine of the worst sort and as a most unscrupulous and reckless adventurer. ”

“ The sensation which the assassination of the Duc de Berry created not only in Paris, but throughout France and Europe, was enormous. All parties equally condemned and lamented the crime. While the ultra-Royalists deplored in the murder the extinction of all their hopes for the establishment of the old Bourbon dynasty on a sure foundation, the liberal parties foresaw that it would put an end to the liberal tendencies of the government of Louis the Eighteenth. The sinister forebodings of the liberals were only too well founded. ”