Lobengula

“ He always felt secretly sorry for them, and often gave Lobengula loopholes of escape that he did not permit to Nelson, Gordon, and Marlborough, who, with small-boy enthusiasm, he had placed in command of his British forces. ”

“ The natives here claim that she was his chief wife and the mother of Lobengula, the king. We think that, however, is very doubtful, although the husband of the woman where she stays was one of Lobengula's most trusted men.
Mrs. Cress Giving a Lesson in Cleanliness.
This poor queen in her younger days had no doubt plenty, with slaves to wait upon her and do her bidding. Now, in her old age, she tries to work for a living by cultivating the soil, and growing her own food. If her change of fortune is instrumental in leading her to Christ, she is richer than she knows. ”

“ I have news that Lobengula the usurper, who is king of the Matabele, has taken offence against me for certain reasons, among them that I did not send him a sufficient tribute. It is reported to me that he purposes next summer to despatch an impi to wipe me and my people out, and to make my kraal black as the burnt veld. I have little strength to resist him who is mighty, and my people are not warlike. From generation to generation they have been traders, cultivators of the land, workers in metal, and men of peace, who desire not to kill or be killed. ”

“ Here he found a fellow Scotchman and another white man, and expressed himself as much astonished to see them safe and sound among a people so bent on war. Strange to say, they knew nothing about a war till Jameson arrived. He learned from them, that Lobengula was not in old Buluwayo, so having nothing to fear, he proceeded to slaughter about 800 old men, women and children.
Now they hoisted the British flag on top of a tree, to wave in peace and love over the many hundred women and children whom they had murdered, in the name of humanity. ”

“ The people believed that it was the voice of a god speaking to them, so they used to come and pray to him for advice, and the old villain told them that they must rise up and murder all the white people, and their chief, Lobengula, who had long been dead, would come to life and lead them against their enemies once more. ”

“ Again on August 10, Lobengula wrote to the Queen to the effect that:
The white people are troubling me much about gold. If the Queen hears that I have given away the whole country it is not so. But these pathetic appeals from an untutored African ruler, victim of trickery, or guilty of misjudgment, had no effect upon the course of events. No scruples as to taking prompt advantage of what was manifestly an action repented of directly its significance became apparent, appear to have been entertained. ”

“ It would have been better for you to have postponed your journey until a little later.”
“Au contraire,” said I. “It is far more interesting to be in a country while history is being made than to arrive afterwards when everything is settled and dull. But why are we going to war with Lobengula?”
He laughed at the “we” which slipped in unconsciously.
“Ah! I see you are one of us already, so I can tell you all about it. Well, Loben has been behaving very badly for a long while. Ever since the Chartered Company took possession of Mashonaland he has been harassing us in various ways. ”

“ On this occasion I believe Gungunyana and his Shangans were to blame, who, finding that Lobengula was cut off by the Chartered Company from this part of his district, had made bold to cross the Sabi and raid on the western side, bringing destruction into the Makalanga homes, which in former years had here been thought very secure, being, as they were, far from Lobengula and just out of Gungunyana’s recognised district.
The Makalangas have the greatest horror of the Shangans, who dwell across the Sabi, and do Gungunyana’s bidding. ”

“ When I knew him this fear must have worn off, and I have never since seen his equal as a foot hunter." Selous did very well with Cigar, getting 450 lbs. of ivory which he had shot himself, and [79] another 1200 lbs. which he had traded with the natives, thus making a clear profit of £300. When he saw the king, he told him that the elephants had not driven him out of the country, but that he had killed several, to which Lobengula replied, "Why, you're a man; when are you going to take a wife?" ”

“ They not only failed to encourage art, but they disliked it and fought against it. It took as much pressure of public opinion from rival cities and continents to get anything of value into the town as would have been required to turn Lobengula into a St. ”

“ The Lombards were still to the Italians a “foul and horrid” race. At length, invited by Pope Adrian I., Pippin’s son Charlemagne once more descended into Italy. As the Lombard kingdom began, so it ended, with a siege of Pavia. Desiderius, the last king, became a prisoner (774) , and the Lombard power perished. Charlemagne, with the title of king of the Franks and Lombards, became master of Italy, and in 800 the pope, who had crowned Pippin king of the Franks, claimed to bestow the Roman empire, and crowned his greater son emperor of the Romans (800) . ”

“ I doubt not to gain the garland, if it is to be won by exceeding love. I will obtain your father's promise, said Beltenebros, that nothing shall be demanded from me against my own consent, and will go completely armed; and you, Lady, shall have a cloak fastened round you, and your face muffled, so that you shall see all, yet no one see you. Let us call Mabilia, cried Oriana, without her counsel I must not adventure. So they called her and Gandalin, and the Damsel of Denmark, and they, albeit they saw great peril, did not gainsay their inclination ”

“ Lombardy remained the name of the finest province of Italy, and for a time was the name for Italy itself. But what was specially Lombard could not stand in the long run against the Italian atmosphere which surrounded it. Generation after generation passed more and more into real Italians. Antipathies, indeed, survived, and men even in the 10th century called each other Roman or Langobard as terms of reproach. But the altered name of Lombard also denoted henceforth some of the proudest of Italians ”

“ But though the speech was Latin, the Lombard kept his old Teutonic name—Adelgiso, Astolfo, or the like, and handed it on to his son, softened, indeed, but with its northern form clearly traceable. Time went on, and the Lombardic kingdom was fused into the Holy Roman Empire. The towns remained self-governing, self-protecting old Roman municipalities; the Lombardic nobles, if they had a strong mountain fastness, lived like eagles in their nests and were the terror of all ”

“ His vanguard scaled the Julian Alps. All the roving warriors of Gaul and Germany, with a column of twenty thousand Saxons, instantly joined the Lombard banner. Italy, exhausted by a long continuance of disease and famine, and now accustomed to yield, had lain at the mercy of the first invader, and Alboin, with his sword in the sheath, marched through a fugitive population, and finished his bloodless triumph within the impregnable ramparts and patrician palaces of Verona. From the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome, all was the easy prize of Lombard victory. ”

“ From the peace of Constance the history of the Lombards is merely part of the history of Italy. Their cities went through the ordinary fortunes of most Italian cities. They quarrelled and fought with one another. They took opposite sides in the great strife of the time between pope and emperor, and were Guelf and Ghibelline by old tradition, or as one or other faction prevailed in them. They swayed backwards and forwards between the power of the people and the power of the few ”

“ It is a striking illustration of the superiority of institutions to climate, that the Lombard, even in Italy, continued [735] the same bold, restless, and resistless man of iron, which he had been in the barren plains of Prussia, or on the stormy shores of the Baltic. With all the luxuries of Italy to soften him, and even with all the fervours of an Italian sun to subdue him into indolence, he was still the warrior, the hunter, and the falconer. Leaving tillage to the degraded caste of the Italian, he trained horses for war and the chase, in the famous pastures bordering the Adriatic. ”

“ It is morning in Rome, and the bronze horses on the Arch of Nero trot quietly forward without moving, but no one can see them, they are only a dazzle, a shock of stronger light against the white-blue sky.
Morning in Rome; and the whole city foams out to meet it, seething, simmering, surging, seeping. All between the Janiculum and the Palatine is undulating with people. Scarlet, violet, and purple togas pattern the mass of black and brown. Murex-dyed silk dresses flow beside raw woollen fabrics. ”

“ I do not say this because I will not make thee a Knight, but to advise thee to undertake lighter adventures first. My good Master, quoth Enil, where can I adventure so well? if I come from the field alive it will always be to my praise and honour, and if I die it will be dying well, and my memory will be joined with all those good Knights who must perish there. But then an affectionate pity was felt at the heart of Beltenebros, and he said within himself, thou dost well show thyself to be of the lineage of Gandales, my excellent and true fosterer! ”

“ But Rome does not thrill one from the start. It takes time for its ancient hands to get that clutch which at last never loosens, and Lowell at first seemed somewhat unaffected. “I like,” he wrote to his father, just before Christmas,{321} “to walk about in the fine sunshine and get unexpected and unguide-booked glimpses of fine scenery, but systematic sight-seeing is very irksome to me. Though we have been in Rome now nearly as long as we were in Florence, I have not learned to like it as well. ”

“ When the cloths were removed the King said, Knight of the Green Sword and my good friend, know that against my will I am at war with the mightiest of all the Christians, El Patin, Emperor of Rome, who in his great power and great pride would have this kingdom, which God gave free into my hands, tributary to him. Hitherto by the good faith and strength of my vassals and friends I have well defended myself, and will continue so to do while life shall last ”

“ King Cildadan in like manner requested the Romans to state their opinion; and upon that the good Knight Arquisil arose and said, if my Lord the Emperor were living, his opinion ought to be followed, because this quarrel was his; but he being dead, we may say that what he was bound to do died with him, and we, who are his kinsmen and vassals, are now no more a part, than as we are bound to follow you, King Lisuarte, which we will do while a man of us remains alive ”

“ Long crushed between the Lombards and Byzantines, between the unsoftened ferocity of the barbarians and the vexatious decrepitude of despotism, Gregory, with that instinctive perception of future events which God sometimes grants to pure souls, sought elsewhere a support for the Roman Church. His eyes were directed to the new races, who were scarcely less ferocious than the Lombards, but who did not, like them, weigh upon Italy and Rome, and who already exhibited elements of strength and continuance. ”

“ On the morrow the Emperor and Floyan were carried to the monastery, and Lisuarte and King Cildadan went to the Emperor's tent, and called together Arquisil and Flamineo and the chief Knights among the Romans, and said to them, My good friends, God only can tell the grief I feel for this loss, and the desire I have to revenge it; but the past is without remedy, and we must show that the death of a Prince is not the destruction of all his people. ”

“ But in two ways especially the energetic race which grew out of the fusion of Langobards and Italians between the 9th and the 12th centuries has left the memory of itself. In England, at least, the enterprising traders and bankers who found their way to the West, from the 13th to the 16th centuries, though they certainly did not all come from Lombardy, bore the name of Lombards. ”

“ Yet he did not refuse to recognize his nephew as co-ruler; and when he at last died, Hildeprand succeeded him.310.1 Of another king of the Lombards, Desiderius, a contemporary of Charles the Great, the story is told that the Lombard nobles were meeting to choose a king at Pavia, and Desiderius, a pious man of noble lineage who dwelt at Brescia, journeyed thither to be present, accompanied by a serving man. At Leno, between Brescia and Cremona, being weary, he lay down under a tree to sleep. As he slept his servant beheld a snake crawl forth and wind itself round his head like a crown. ”

“ Lodovico particularly wished to honour.
'What can you invent, Messer Leonardo?' Lodovico asked the painter. 'I want something no one has ever seen before; the king must be tired of grand shows, and he can get them at home. Of course we shall be obliged to give [293] him a splendid reception for the sake of our own credit, but I should like something besides, which he can remember.'
So Messer Leonardo thought and thought, and the end of his thinking was that when the King of France entered Milan, a lion, life size, advanced to meet him, and touched the king's breast with his own. ”

“ The last Lombard king, Desiderius (died about 780) , cultivated the society of scholars, and his daughter learned by heart "the golden maxims of philosophy and the gems of poetry." Each advance of the Lombards in civilization was a gain to the Latins, who, especially in the country where they worked on farms, were little better than serfs. The two races drew together slowly. The conversion of the Lombards from Arian to Catholic Christianity (600-700) diminished the distance between them. Intermarriage must soon have begun ”