Horace G. Hutchinson

“ And then there was another custom common in the Roman and Gothic society which helped to form the relationship between the vassal and the feudal lord. If a free man were landless he was in a very poor position. It was beneath his dignity to serve as a slave, or even as a "villein," which was a position in society between that of a slave and a free man. But if he were without land, he had no means of livelihood ”

“ Art and culture have nearly been destroyed under the barbarian invasions and the years of fighting. Now the Renaissance, the new birth of learning and of art, is at hand. Already we have seen hints of it and hopes of it, like flowers coming out in early spring, only to be nipped by late frost. There was that wonderful music of the troubadours of the Langue d'oc in the thirteenth century, with the ruder and less accomplished art of the trouvères in Northern France, of the minnesingers in Germany, and of the English minstrels. ”

“ England, no longer hampered by the possession of any territory on the Continent except the single city of Calais, which will be lost to her in the course of the century to follow, is more fortunate than France in that her nobles have won from the king a more liberal constitution, based upon Magna Carta. She will attain a freedom equal to that of France by less terrible means, though not without wars of Royalists and Puritans and the beheading of a king. ”

“ But after Charlemagne's death, when his great possessions fell into hands less able to hold them, Hungary is yet again invaded and conquered by a people from the north-east, called Magyars, and what makes that conquest so notable for us is that the Magyars are the dominating race in Hungary to-day. On every side, and in every corner, of the world picture, in fact, we are now beginning to see States and kingdoms and populations settling down into the places and conditions in which we are able to recognise them as we look at a modern map. ”

“ In the early days of Rome, when it was a Republic, the privileges of a Roman citizen were very important. The "citizen" alone had the right to a vote for the election of the officials by whom he and the whole Republic and its dependencies were to be governed. But this right of voting was given more and more freely as the years went on and as other parts of the Empire increased in importance. To all the free men—all who were not slaves—of certain states that had loyally helped Rome when she was hard pressed by her enemies, the right was given first; then to all Italian free men ”

“ The big landowners grew more and more independent of the king. He might be their feudal lord, in name, but for all this century and a half the King of France had no more power than several of the great lords themselves. More and more then it became necessary for the poorer class, if they would live safely, to live under the protection of one or other of the big men. This led to the clustering of the houses of the poor people round about the castle, the strong place, of their lord. He organised them as a fighting force, when fighting had to be done, and stood for them in place of the king. ”

“ All through this great story we have seen how wonderfully Rome, in spite of perpetual changes in her government and continual fighting between the various parties trying to get the upper hand, led the world, at one time dominating all by the organisation of her Empire, at another bending the spirits of men and directing their actions by the influence of the Church. ”

“ I do not think that there is any form of government, or even of anarchy—which is absence of all government—under which mankind ever has tried to live that was not put upon its trial in Italy during these years. Yet, through all the shifting scene, so unsettled that even the Pope himself had to fly from the Holy City, the power of the Church still increased and increased. ”

“ While the Empire was being created, and the nations were being subdued, there was frequent occasion for this movement of large bodies of troops; but you must realise that we have now come to a point in the story at which the Empire—especially under the wise Emperor Hadrian—is concerned more with making good the conquests it has already won, than in adding to them. The boundaries, the limits, have been set, as we have just been tracing them—or somewhat like that. The Romans are within the boundaries; the barbarians are without. ”

“ Some of the goldsmith's and silversmith's work of the day was very finely executed, and many of the finest painters and sculptors themselves did not scorn to work at the jeweller's craft. But the real glory which lightens the general darkness of the Middle Ages, is the splendour of the architecture—the cathedrals and churches, the public buildings and the palaces of the great nobles. ”

“ Within thirty years after the death of Egbert they became so strong that they took the towns of York and Nottingham. The English kingdom was again, at this time, disunited. This was partly owing to the custom—which proved fatal to the union, of the continental empire also—for a king, at his death, to divide up his kingdom, by will, and give portions to two or more of his sons. But in a fortunate hour for England, Alfred, who won the name of "the Great," came to the throne of Wessex in 871.
He fought the Danes on land, uniting the people of Kent and Essex with his own Wessex men. ”

“ THE CAMPS OF THE LEGIONS
It never was any part of the Empire's plan to drive out the native people from lands that it subdued. What it wanted of these people was that they should stay where they were and follow their own customs and provide the necessities and the luxuries of life for their conquerors. The Romans were what we should call a very practical nation. Roman laws, of course, had to prevail in the lands so conquered, but otherwise it does not seem that there was much upsetting of the national habits of the people. ”

“ But all that feeling had long passed from the armies of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Saracens had, in their religion, a sentiment which gave them union, and inspired them with the idea that they were all fighting for the same cause. We have seen how the prospect of joy in Paradise, if they should die in battle, gave them courage. ”

“ And when we say "all Europe," it includes even Ireland, out in the north-west. When the Angles and the Saxons came invading Britain and driving the Britons westward, they destroyed Christianity and brought in their own northern religion with its gods, Odin, god of War, and Thor, god of the Hammer, and the rest of them. But their invasion and their disturbance never reached as far west as Ireland. There, the Christian religion continued, while it was destroyed in England.
The Anglo-Saxon conquerors were constantly fighting with each other, as well as with the Britons, in England. ”

“ The Crusade was preached first by a religious zealot called Peter the Hermit, and attracted the poor people who were so wretched in Europe that any change must have seemed likely to be for the better health of their bodies, quite apart from the saving of their souls. This call of the Hermit's seems to have been the summons of a man full of zeal, but of little wisdom. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, whence the prayer for help had come, was named as the place in which the Crusaders were to collect for the attack on Palestine. ”

“ France has unified herself, and so has England, but we have to notice this difference between the conditions of the one and of the other, that in France the king has made himself despotic over his nobles and all his people. ”

“ In Diocletian's time we find that any claim of power by the people, the democracy, was entirely given up. The government was an autocracy; though there might be more than one autocrat. There was no longer any value in being a citizen of Rome. Rome and Italy had no privileges above the rest of the Empire. ”

“ But now the new naval power in the Mediterranean, the power of the Turks, was limiting and diminishing her strength, and shortly before the end of the fifteenth century two Portuguese navigators made a discovery of which the effect was to limit and diminish her wealth. If you will look at the map of the world you will see how far the Continent of Africa extends southwards, and you must understand that at the time about which our story is telling us now, no one knew how far southward this Continent stretched. ”

“ And the discoveries to which men's minds were turned were not only those about the geography of the world they lived in, and the way in which its continents and its seas were shaped. Their minds began to turn with a new interest to art, to learning and to the beauty of the world. ”

“ The story of the rise of Mahomet and the spread of the religion that he preached and the success of the armies by whose victories it was so dispersed is one of the most wonderful, perhaps it is actually the most astonishing, of all those that go to make up the great story.
The maker and preacher of the religion that we call, after him, Mahommedanism, or Mohammedanism, began his preaching early in the seventh century. He was a poor man, of no eminent family in Arabia. Arabia had already come under Jewish influence in some parts, and under Christian influence in others. ”

“ After the Hundred Years' War had been in progress less than a quarter of a century, it seemed as if Edward III. had won all that he could possibly claim—peace and sovereignty over all the outlying parts of his dominion at home, and over more than he had set out to gain on the Continent. But the war was renewed by the action of Edward's vassal lords in France, only nine years later, and before his death, which happened in 1377, scarce a possession on the Continent was left to England except the city of Calais and a narrow strip of coast south of Bordeaux, in Guienne. ”

“ Henry's successor on the English throne was his eldest surviving son Richard, surnamed Cœur-de-Lion for his gallantry in war.
We have come now to the years of which the great story has been told to us in very picturesque language. It seems to be an age of heroes, and of heroes inspired by the highest motives. It is the time of that third Crusade in which the kings of England and of France combined with the emperor to try to win back Jerusalem from Saladin, that great Moslem ruler who held Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Mediterranean shore of Africa nearly as far west as Tunis. ”

“ The Normans who conquered England were far more different from the English whom they conquered than the Danes, under Canute, had been. And yet Danes and Normans, both being "Northmen," were closely akin. But we have to note that the conquering Normans came, not from the north, but from the south from Normandy; and some years of residence there, among the Franks or French, had changed them. Moreover, we have to remember that, according to the estimates of historians, only about one-third of the force with which Duke William came to England was really Norman. ”

“ Colchester, in Essex, was the chief city of Britain when the first serious Roman invasion came, and under Claudius the legions crossed the Thames, took Colchester and mastered all the south-east of Britain. Wherever the Romans came, it was their custom to make military roads if they had any intention of settling in the country. Julius Cæsar's expedition we have to regard as little more than one of discovery—to see what the island was like, and whether its products would pay the Empire for the cost of conquest. ”

“ Now a great part of the reason why the Vandals in Spain were so very ready to respond to the invitation of the Count of Africa was that the Visigoths with some allied tribes were pressing upon them there very much more severely than was pleasant. Spain is a country, as you should know, very much cut up and divided by mountain ranges, so that it was difficult for any conqueror to conquer the whole of the country, because those who were defeated could retreat into the mountainous places from which it was hard to hunt them out. ”