READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

INTRODUCTION

EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

THE greater part of Europe was first united by the conquests of the Romans, who imparted to it the germs of that characteristic civilization which distinguishes it from the other quarters of the globe, and which the Romans themselves had for the most part derived from the Greeks. They also transmitted to a great portion of Europe their language and their laws. Latin was long the common language of the learned in Europe, when it subsisted, as a spoken tongue, only in the corruptions of the Italian, French, Spanish, and other dialects; and Roman laws still form the basis of the codes of several European countries.

Before the close of the fifth century of our era, the Roman Empire of the West had fallen before the arms of the northern Barbarians; and thought shadow of Rome’s ancient power and name still survived at Constantinople, Europe had lost its former political unity, and was become again divided into a number of separate States. These were never again united under one dominion, and after experiencing among themselves a variety of political changes during the thousand years which elapsed from the fall of Rome till about the middle of the fifteenth century, a period commonly called the Middle Ages, had at that epoch for the most part formed themselves into those great and powerful nations which constitute modern Europe. The last great event in this process of transformation was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, by which the small remains of the Roman Empire of the East were annihilated, and a new Power was introduced into the European system.

But during the Middle Ages an influence arose which by means of religion again gave, at least to Western Europe, a certain sort of unity. It is one of the most singular facts in the history of mankind that a religion whose chief characteristic is the renouncing of this world, should have been the means of elevating its ministers, and especially its high priest and director, to a vast height of temporal wealth and power. The irruption of the barbarous nations pretty nearly destroyed the last remains of learning and culture in Europe, and steeped it in the grossest ignorance. Of such a state, superstition is the natural concomitant, and as the clergy were almost the only persons who had any degree of education, they soon discovered what a powerful instrument they possessed for acquiring worldly as well as spiritual power, by working on the superstitious fears of the people. Whether in such a state of society their influence was beneficial or otherwise we shall not inquire. It suffices for historical purposes to state the notorious fact that in every European country some of the finest lands became the property of ecclesiastics; and they further increased their revenues by the institution of tithes, by the donations and bequests of the faithful, and by numerous other devices for obtaining money. These means of wealth were partly acquired under the earlier Christian Emperors; but they were vastly increased after the invasion of the Barbarians, through the crasser state of ignorance and superstition which ensued.

But the wealth and influence of the clergy would not have sufficed to give them any political power out of their respective countries. In order to obtain a European influence, a supreme head of the Church was required, who should wield the sum of ecclesiastical power by directing and controlling his clerical subordinates in the various countries of Europe. Some degree of this power had been acquired in very early times of Christianity by the Bishops of Rome; partly from the authority which they claimed as the reputed successors of St. Peter, partly from the prestige which naturally belonged to the name of Imperial Rome. This power was vastly increased by the talents and audacious pretensions of several ambitious Pontiffs, and especially Popes Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Boniface VIII, so that at last the See of Rome even asserted its pretensions to depose monarchs and excommunicate nations.

This new moral force was more than coextensive with, though not so absolute and immediate as, the physical power of Imperial Rome; and Europe, in another manner, again became united as Christendom. This union was strikingly displayed by the Crusades—the wars of the European Christians against the Infidels of Asia.

The Imperial and the Papal dominion of Rome were respectively acquired by means of two powers which form the sum of human capability and govern the world—physical and intellectual force. But everything necessarily falls through the same means by which it was erected. The Roman Empire, founded by arms, fell before the arms of the Barbarians; the Papal dominion, established by the subjugation of the mind, has been already in great part overthrown by an intellectual revolution, and in spite of some symptoms of recovery it can hardly be doubted that in process of time its fall will be complete.

Before the termination of the dark ages, two inventions had been made which were destined to have important effects on modern Europe : gunpowder and the printing press. Of these, one revolutionized the methods of physical force or warfare, whilst the other gave now vigor to the operations of the intellect. Had gunpowder been known during the existence of the Roman Empire, it would hardly have been subdued by the Barbarians; had the press been invented, it may be doubted whether the Popes would have succeeded in establishing their power. The employment of gunpowder gave a first and fatal blow to feudalism, by rendering useless the armor and the castles of the nobles. It made warfare more extensive and more scientific, and, combined with the establishment of a professional soldiery and standing armies, introduced those new methods of fighting which were necessary to decide the quarrels between nations which had grown numerous and powerful.

In like manner in the intellectual world, the introduction of printing, and the consequent diffusion of knowledge, prepared the minds of men for that resistance to the Papal doctrines and pretensions which had already partially manifested itself among the higher and more enlightened classes. Its effects produced the Reformation, one of the first great revolutions which we shall have to contemplate in the history of modern Europe. The practical application of another great invention, the mariner's compass, and its effects on navigation and commerce, belong to a rather later period, and will be considered further on.

By the Protestant Reformation the religious bond of European unity was in a great degree broken, though not altogether destroyed. But a new bond was springing up from the very dissensions of Europe; we mean a system of international policy and law, to which the various nations submitted themselves and which was maintained through negotiations, embassies, treaties, and finally by the theory of the balance of power. During the darker ages the aggressions committed by one State upon another were viewed with indifference by the rest; and thus, for instance, the conquests of the English in France were utterly disregarded. But when, by the consolidation of the great monarchies, and the establishment of standing armies, the various European States were able to enter upon long and distant wars with one another, the aggressive ambition of one became the common concern of all. Leagues and alliances were made to check and repress the attempts of grasping sovereigns, and to preserve an equilibrium of power. Europe thus began to form one large Republic of nations, acknowledging the same system of international law, and becoming amenable to the voice of public opinion. Thus the history of modern Europe presents, in fact, as much unity as that of Greece in early times. Composed of a cluster of independent States, of which one, now Sparta, now Athens, now Thebes, aspired to the hegemony, her only rallying cry was against the Barbarians, as that of Christendom once was against the Infidels; whilst her chief bond of union was also a religious one, manifested in the Amphictyonic Council and the games at Olympia and other places, which bear some analogy to the General Councils, and the festivals, and jubilees of the Roman Church,

It is, then, the change from a unity cemented by religion to a political unity which chiefly distinguishes modern Europe from the Europe of the Middle Ages. The beginning of this change dates from the invasion of Italy by the French towards the close of the fifteenth century. But as the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and the destruction of the last vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire, have commonly been regarded, and we think with reason, as the true epoch of modern history, it has been adopted in the present work. The real importance of that event, however, and what renders it truly a epoch, lies more in the final and complete establishment in Europe of the Ottoman power than in the fall of the Byzantine Empire, which had long been effete, and must at no distant period have either perished of natural decay or been swallowed up by some of its more powerful Christian neighbors. And for a considerable period after the fall of Constantinople, the chief interest of European history centers in the progress of the Turks, and the efforts made to oppose them.

RISE OF THE OTTOMAN POWER. 

At the epoch we have chosen, Constantine Palaeologus, the last feeble heir of Grecian culture and Roman magnificence, still enjoyed at Constantinople the title of Emperor. His Empire, however, was in the last stage of decay; though the walls and suburbs of his capital comprised a great part of his dominions, he had been compelled to share even those narrow precincts with the Republics of Genoa and Venice, and, what was still worse, Constantinople existed only by sufferance of the Turks. Sultan Bajazet I, surnamed Ilderim, or the Thunderbolt (1389-1403), had compelled the Greek Emperor to pay him tribute, to admit a Turkish colony at Constantinople, having four mosques and the independent jurisdiction of a cadi, and even to permit coins with the Sultan’s superscription to be minted there.

From year to year all Europe looked forward with unavailing anxiety and compassion to the certain fall of the city in which the Christian faith had been established as the religion of the Empire; and at length, in May, 1453, Constantinople yielded to the arms of Sultan Mahomet II. With its capture the curtain falls on the nations of antiquity; and the final establishment of the Turks in Europe, the latest settlers among the various races which composed its population, forms the first great episode of modern history. The lingering vestiges of antiquity then vanished altogether; the Caesars were no longer represented, except by an unreal shadow in Germany; and the language of the Greek classical authors, which till then the scholars of Italy could acquire in Greece in tolerable purity as a living tongue, rapidly degenerated into the barbarous dialect now spoken in Greece.

The decline and fall of the Eastern Empire, as well as the rise and progress of the Ottoman Turks, who during some centuries filled Europe with the dread of their power, and now by their weakness excite either its cupidity or its solicitude, have been described by Gibbon; but as neither that historian nor Mr. Hallam, in his brief account of the Ottomans, has entered into any detailed description of their institutions and government, we shall here supply a few particulars that may serve to illustrate some parts of the following narrative.

A feat of arms gave birth to the Ottoman power and seemed to foreshow that military character which afterwards distinguished it. Towards the close of the thirteenth century a tribe of wandering Turkmans seeking new abodes in Asia Minor under the conduct of their chief Orthoghrul, or Ertoghrul, came suddenly upon a plain where two armies were contending with unequal forces. Ertoghrul, though totally unacquainted with the combatants or the merits of their cause, with that warlike ardor and haughty generosity which characterized his race, flew to the assistance of the weaker side, and determined in its favor the fortune of the day. The party whom he had thus assisted turned out to be a branch of his own race, a body of Seljukian Turks commanded by Aladdin, Sultan of Iconium, or Konia. Aladdin, one of those many small Turkish princes settled in Asia Minor that were constantly at war either with the Greeks or with one another, rewarded the welcome and disinterested services of Ertoghrul with a small dependent principality in the territory of Angora; and from this slender beginning grew up an empire which in process of time spread itself over a great part of the then known world.

Ertoghrul somewhat enlarged the bounds of the dominion which he had thus obtained; but it was Osman, or Othman (1299-1326), who, by the extent of his conquests and the virtual independence of the Iconium Sultans which he acquired, became the recognized founder and eponymous hero of the Ottoman Empire. To the territories which Othman had won by arms a permanent organization was given under his son and successor Orchan (1326-1360). This, however, was the work of Orchan’s brother, Aladdin, who acted as his Vizier. Renouncing all share in his father's inheritance, Aladdin retired to a village near Prusa, now through Orchan’s conquests the capital of the Ottoman dominions, and being a man of talent, and well skilled both in civil and military affairs, he applied himself to model, with his brother's approbation, the institutions of the State. Three subjects chiefly engaged his attention: the coinage, the people's dress, and the organization of the army. But it was also Orchan and his brother who promulgated the canonical precepts, which, as occasions arose, served as supplements to the original forms of the Mahometan constitution and government, so rigidly prescribed by the Koran, by the Sunna, or traditionary law, and by the decisions of the four great Imams, or arch-fathers.

Among the rights of Islam sovereignty, those of the Prince to coin money and to have his name mentioned in the public prayers on Friday occupy the first place. The sovereignty of Orchan was marked by gold and silver coins being struck with his superscription in 1328. His name was also inserted in the public prayers; but for a considerable period the Ottoman Princes were prayed for only as temporal sovereigns, and it was not till after the conquest of Egypt by Selim I in 1517 that they became the spiritual heads of Islam. The last remnants of the Abbasid Caliphate were then transferred to the race of Othman; Mohammed Abul Berekcath, Sheikh of Mecca, sent to the conqueror of the Mamelukes, by his son Abu Noumi, the keys of the Caaba upon a silver platter, and raised him to be the protector of the holy cities, Mecca and Medina. The Sultan, thus become, by a most singular revolution, the representative of the Prophet, the High Priest and Imam of all the Faithful, added to his temporal titles that of Zillullah, the shadow or image of God upon earth. He was now prayed for as Imam and Caliph, and his name was joined with those of the Prophet himself, his posterity, and the first Caliphs.

Janissary and Merchant in Cairo, by Émile Prisse d'Avennes

The regulations of Aladdin with regard to dress were principally intended to distinguish the different classes of the people; and a white turban was assigned, as the most honorable color, to the Court of the Sultan and to the soldiery. But of all the measures then adopted, those respecting the army were by far the most important. As the Turkish forces had hitherto principally consisted of light cavalry, which were of course wholly ineffective against towns, Aladdin applied himself to the creation of an infantry on the Byzantine model, and under his care, and that of Kara Chalil Tchendereli, another Minister of Orchan, arose the celebrated corps of the Janissaries. We shall not, however, here trace in detail the origin and progress of the Ottoman army and other institutions, but shall view them as wholes, and when they had attained, at a later period, to their full organization and development.

The Turkish army may be divided into two grand classes: those who served by obligation of their land tenure, and those who received pay. It was Aladdin who first instituted a division of all conquered lands among the Sipahis, or Spahis (horsemen), on conditions which, like the feudal tenures of Christian Europe, obliged the holders to service in the field. Here, however, ends the likeness between the Turkish Timar and the European fief. The Timarli were not, like the Christian knighthood, a proud and hereditary aristocracy, almost independent of the Sovereign, and having a voice in his councils, but the mere creatures of the Sultan's breath. The Ottoman constitution recognized no order of nobility, and was essentially a democratic despotism. The military tenures were modified by Amurath I, who divided them into large and smaller (siamet and timar), the holders of which were called Saim and Timarli. Every cavalier, or Spahi, who had helped to conquer by his bravery, was rewarded with a fief, which, whether large or small, was called a Kilidsch (sword). The symbols of his investment were a sword and banner (Kilidsch and Sandjak). The smaller fiefs were of the yearly value of 20,000 aspers and under; the larger were all that exceeded that estimate. The holder of a fief valued at 3,000 aspers was obliged to furnish one man fully armed and equipped, who in tenures of that low value could be no other than himself. The holders of larger fiefs were obliged to find a horseman for every 5,000 aspers of yearly value; so that a Timarli might have to furnish four men, and a Saim as many as nineteen.

In general the Spahi was armed with a bow and arrows, a light slender lance, a short sword or scimitar, sometimes also an iron mace, and a small round shield (la rotella). At a later period the morion and cuirass were adopted.

Algerian spahis

Among the paid troops were the “Spahis of the Porte”, who came next in rank to the Timarlis, and were more striking in their appearance, though armed much in the same way. Their horses were of the noblest race, their harness and accoutrements adorned with gold, silver, and precious stones. The rider was clad in a splendid robe of gold or silver stuff, or costly cloth of a scarlet, hyacinthine, or dark-blue color. On either side of him was a quiver of exquisite workmanship, one for his bow, the other for his painted arrows. He was girt with a short sword set with jewels, his mace hung down from his saddle-bow, and in his hand he brandished a light spear, generally of a green color. He also had a shield beautifully worked. Down to the end of the sixteenth century the bow and arrow continued to be the missile weapon of the Spahis, and it was with reluctance that they adopted the use of fire-arms. The Spahis of the Porte prided themselves on being the guard of the sultan. They were composed of Christian slaves, and were at last divided into four different corps of different degrees of honor. These, and the Spahis who served by tenure formed the most valuable portion of the Turkish cavalry. Their charge was furious, and accompanied with a war whoop that rent the air.

The Muteferrika was a small corps which formed the more immediate bodyguard of the Sultan, and never quitted his person. It was composed entirely of the sons of distinguished Turks, whose number, which was at first only 100, rose in the time of Selim II to 500. When the Sultans ceased to lead their armies in person, the Muteferrika had of course no longer any experience of actual warfare. The Chiauses, about four hundred in number, were employed more as messengers and attendants upon embassies than as soldiers.

Besides these may be enumerated the unpaid cavalry and the mounted auxiliaries. The former were the Akindshi (rovers or runners), who received neither pay nor maintenance: all they enjoyed was an exemption from taxation, and they were expected to provide for themselves by robbery and plunder. They were mostly composed of peasants on the Siamets and Timars. Their usual arms were a short sword, iron mace, coat of mail, and shield and lance; the bow was rare among them. They formed the vanguard of the army, which they generally preceded by a day or two. Woe to the land which they visited! They came and went, no one knew whither, leaving desolation in their track, and carrying off the inhabitants into slavery, for which purpose they came provided with chains. They were often, however, fatal to the Turks themselves, either by being driven in upon the main body and thus creating inextricable confusion, or by the want of fodder and provisions which their devastations occasioned. Their number was estimated at 200,000, but it was seldom that more than 25,000 or 30,000 appeared in the field at once; and by degrees, under a more regular system of warfare, they were dispensed with altogether. The auxiliaries from lands tributary to, or protected by, the Porte, such as Moldavia, Wallachia, the Crimea, Georgia., &c., ultimately became, served much in the same way as the Akindshi.

On the whole, when the Ottoman Empire had attained its highest pitch, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the Turkish cavalry was estimated at 505,000 men: viz., 200,000 Spahis who served by tenure, 40,000 Spahis of the Porte, 200,000 Akindshi, and 125,000 auxiliaries. But these of course never appeared all at once, nor, when called out, were they employed in the same direction.

The Turk, naturally a horseman, was but ill adapted to foot service. Many vain attempts were made to form a standing corps of Turkish infantry, though a light-armed militia, called Azab, was occasionally raised. These amounted to some 40,000 men, but were little esteemed as soldiers. They served as food for powder, fought in the van, and at the storming of towns formed with their bodies a bridge for the Janissaries. It was these last that were the pith of the Turkish armies, and long the most formidable troops in Europe.

The Turkish foot had been weighed and found wanting, and their commander, Kara Chalil Tchendereli, threw his eyes on the Christian subjects of his master. The experiment was first made on 1000 Christian children, who were torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islam, and trained up in all the duties of a soldier. Such was the origin of the famous corps of Janissaries, literally, “new troops”, from, jeni, new, and tscheri, a troop; a name given to them by the holy dervish Hadji Beytasch, founder of the order of the Beytaschis, still dispersed over and venerated in the Ottoman empire. At first their numbers were recruited yearly with drafts of 1000 Christian youths or with renegades; for in time many Christian youths, seeing the privileges and advantages enjoyed by the Janissaries, entered their ranks either voluntarily, or at the instance of their parents. Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Serbia were the chief countries whence the supply was drawn. When the Janissaries had become an established corps, a small body of soldiers headed by a captain proceeded every five years, or oftener if required by the necessities of the service, from place to place; the inhabitants were ordered to assemble their sons of the age of from twelve to fourteen years, from whom the captain selected the handsomest and strongest, as well as those who gave token of peculiar talent. The youths thus chosen were instructed in the seraglio at Constantinople in the Turkish language and religion, and were carefully trained in all bodily exercises: those who displayed more than ordinary abilities were destined to civil employments under the government; the rest were drafted into the Janissaries, and were condemned like monks to a life of celibacy, in order that all their energies might be devoted to the Sultan's service. By this singular institution the advantages of European talent, strength, and courage were combined with the fanatical obedience known only in the East; and one of the chief forces of the Ottomans, drawn from the very marrow of the Christians whom they had subdued, served to promote their further subjugation. Their officers took their names from the kitchen. Thus their colonel was called “first soup-maker”; the next in command, “first cook” &c.

The dress of the Janissaries was a long tight coat reaching to the ankles, the skirts of which, on the march or in action, were tucked up to the waist. Their caps were of white felt, with a strip hanging down behind, which served to resist a sabre cut. Their arms were at first a shield, bow and arrows, scimitar, and long knife or dagger. It was not till the latter part of the sixteenth century that they began to carry arquebuses. Till the time of Selim I, the commander of the Janissaries, called Segbanbaschi, was not nominated by the Sultan, but rose by seniority of service from the lowest ranks of their own officers. But in 1515, Selim having quelled the insolence of the Janissaries by the execution of their Segbanbaschi, named as their commander an Aga selected from his own household troops, and made also other alterations among the officers in the chief command. The Aga had the power of life and death over his men; he ranked higher than all other Agas, and enjoyed a seat in the Divan.

Like the Praetorian Bands of Rome, the Janissaries at length became formidable to their masters. At the accession of Mahomet II they raised a revolt, which he found it necessary to quell by a present of money; the act was converted into a precedent, and from this time forward every Sultan at his accession was obliged to court their goodwill by a donation, the amount of which went on continually increasing. Insubordination and insolence were followed by degeneracy—the consequence of the breach of ancient discipline. The first innovation was the introduction of native Turks among the Janissaries; the origin of which practice cannot be accurately ascertained, though it was certainly frequent in the middle of the sixteenth century. These Turks obtained their appointment by favor, and had not gone through the severe course of discipline to which the Christian slaves were subjected. A consequence of the introduction of the Turks was permission to marry, which first began to be partially allowed, and became general before the end of the century. Thus the bonds of discipline were insensibly relaxed; the children of the Janissaries next claimed to be admitted by hereditary right, and became a burden to the State by drawing their pay and maintenance even in their infancy; while their fathers, no longer employed in actual warfare, often degenerated into peaceable tradesmen. The custom of kidnapping Christian children for recruits seems to have fallen into disuse about the middle of the seventeenth century; while that of entrusting the high offices of state to Christian slaves educated in the Seraglio had already ceased under Selim II. Another cause of the decline of the Janissaries was the great increase in their numbers. At first they amounted to only 5,000 or 6,000 men; in the middle of the sixteenth century they numbered from 10,000 to 15,000; and in the course of the following one they gradually increased to 100,000, not a quarter of whom were employed in active service. Our own age has beheld their extinction.

The preceding description of the Turkish army will serve to explain the secret of their conquests. The whole nation formed one vast camp, liable to be called into immediate service without the tedious preliminary of raising money for their maintenance; while the Janissaries and the Spahis of the Porte constituted a standing army of the best description long before a permanent force had been organized by any modern European nation. We will now take a brief survey of the chief civil and religious institutions of the Ottoman Turks, so far as may be necessary in a general history of Europe.

CIVIL INSTITUTIONS.—THE SULTAN.

Mahomet II, though emphatically styled Al Fatih, or the Conqueror, was also eminently distinguished as a political administrator. It was he who first reduced the political usages of the Ottomans into a code by his Kanunamé, or Book of Laws. Solyman the Magnificent excelled Mahomet in this respect only by extending his regulations, whence he obtained the name of Al Kanuni, or the Lawgiver.

Bajazet I was the first of the Ottoman house who assumed the title of Sultan. His predecessors had contented themselves with that of Emir.

The Sultan, or Grand Signor, whose chief temporal title was Padishah, or Great King, possessed the entire legislative power. The Sultan promulgated his decrees in Firmans, or simple commands, and Hattisherifs, or Imperial rescripts; the collection of which forms the canons to be observed by the different branches of administration. These canons he could alter by his own arbitrary will. The union of administrative power both in spiritual and temporal affairs was the grand secret of the Sultan's power. But from this resulted two consequences : it made the fate of the Ottoman Empire to depend very much on the personal character of the Sovereign; and it obliged him, from the weight of business which it involved, to delegate to another a great share of his power.

The officer who thus relieved the Sultan of his cares was the Grand Vizier, literally “bearer of a burden”, some of which ministers became almost the virtual Sovereigns of the Empire. Aladdin, brother of Orchan already mentioned, may be regarded as the first Grand Vizier; but his power was very inferior to that wielded by such men as Ibrahim Pasha, Rustem, or Mahomet Sokolli. It was Mahomet II who, after the extension of his dominions by the conquest of Constantinople, first invested the Grand Vizier with extraordinary, and almost unlimited, authority. He conferred upon that minister an uncontrolled decision in all affairs of state, even to the power of life and death, subject only to the law and the will of the Sultan. He alone was in possession of the Sultan's seal, conferred upon him as the symbol of his office on the day that he entered on it, which, fastened by a golden chain in a small box of the same metal, he carried constantly in his bosom. The seal, which was also of gold, had engraved upon it the Tughra (name or character) of the reigning Sultan and that of his father, with the title of “Sultan Khan” and the epithet “over victorious”. The use of the seal was limited to two purposes: it was employed to secure the communications made by the Grand Vizier to the Sultan, and to seal up anew, after every sitting of the Divan, the chambers containing the treasure and the archives. This last duty was performed by the Chiaus Bashi, a kind of Imperial marshal, to whom the seal was entrusted for that purpose only. State papers were not sealed, but signed with a Tughra resembling that on the seal by a secretary, called Nishandschi Bashi. The palace of the Grand Vizier became the Sublime Porte and proper seat of the Ottoman government, from his having the right to hold Divans there, and to receive on certain fixed days of the week the homage of the highest officers of Court and State, when they waited on him with the same ceremonial and reverence as was observed towards the Grand Signor himself. From the remotest antiquity the affairs of the Oriental nations were discussed at the gate of the King’s palace. Among the Turks, the whole organization of the State was regarded as that of a house, or rather tent. There were, therefore, various Portes. Thus the Court and Harem were called the Porte of Bliss, and the fourteen different corps of the army were called Portes. On entering office the Grand Vizier was invested with a magnificent dress and two caftans of gold-stuff. When he appeared in public he was accompanied by a splendid train of officials of different callings and capacities, according to the business that he was about, he was honored with various titles, all significative of his high authority: as Vesiri Aasam, or Greatest Vizier; Vekili Muthlal, uncontrolled representative; Sahibi Develet, lord of the empire; Sadri Aala, highest dignitary; Dusturi Ekrem, most honored minister; Sahibi Muhr, master of the seal; or lastly, in his relation to the army, Serdari Eshem, or most renowned generalissimo. His vast income was augmented from indirect and extraordinary sources, such as presents from Beylerbeys, foreign ambassadors, a share of warlike spoils, &c, and went on increasing during the decline of the Empire. The Grand Vizier alone had the right of constant access to the Sultan and of speaking in his presence. Yet this mighty minister was always originally a foreigner or Christian slave; for the extraordinary qualities required for the office could rarely or never have been found among the native Turks.

The Grand Vizier, (Gianantonio Guardi)

The same reasons which induced Mahomet II to augment the power of the Grand Vizier, also led him to appoint some assistants. These were what were called the Viziers of the Cupola, or of the bench, who had the privilege of sitting in council on the same bench, and under the same cupola as the Grand Vizier. Though subordinate to him they were his constituted advisers in all affairs of importance, and were entitled like him to three horse-tails as ensigns of their rank. Their number was regulated by the necessities of business, but they were never to be more than six. Under such a man as Ibrahim they had but little influence, but they might always look forward to fill the post of Grand Vizier; they enjoyed large incomes, and the chiefs commands in the army or fleet. For the most part they were, like the Grand Vizier, converted Christians of humble birth. But the name of Vizier came in process of time to be given to all Governors of provinces who had attained to the rank of a Pasha of three tails.

The Divan, or Ottoman Council, ordinarily consisted of, besides the Viziers, 1: the two military judges (Cadiaskers) of Roumelia and Anatolia, to whom, after the conquests of Selim I in Africa and Asia, was added a third; 2: the Beylerbeys of Greece and Asia Minor; 3: the two Defterdars, or treasurers, for Europe and Asia, to whom a third was likewise added by Selim; 4: the Aga of the Janissaries; 5: the Beylerbey of the sea (Capudan Pasha), or high admiral; 6: the Nishandshi, or secretary who affixed the Sultan’s signature. When the debate concerned foreign affairs, the interpreter of the Porte was also admitted to the Divan. It sat regularly on four days of the week—Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, when, after morning prayer, the members, attended by their retinues of scribes, chiauses, &c, took their seats with great ceremony. Refreshments were served during the sittings, which lasted till the evening; when they were concluded with a meal in common, consisting of plain fare, with water as the only beverage. The business was conducted in a short and summary method; the Grand Vizier gave his decision, which was without appeal. Silence and the greatest decorum prevailed during the proceedings. In matters of law—for everybody, rich or poor, had a right to appear before the Divan and state his case—those who committed themselves by disrespectful and indecent behavior were bastinadoed on the spot. In the administration of justice, as well as in the conduct of political affairs, the singular advantage of the Turkish government was quick dispatch, subject of course to the faults which inevitably attend such a system.

Down to the time of Bajazet II the Sultan himself presided at the Divan, and pronounced the decision. After that period he ceased to appear; but there was a niche, or box, over the seat of the Grand Vizier, in which, screened by a curtain, he might, if he pleased, listen to the debate. After the Divan was concluded the Sultan held a solemn audience in his apartments, in which he was made acquainted with its decisions. The different members of the Divan appeared before him in turn; the Nishandshi Bashi read the proceedings, and the Sultan gave his assent, after sometimes requiring preliminary explanations. Yet even in these audiences it was chiefly the Grand Vizier who spoke. In affairs of the highest importance, and especially on the undertaking of a new war, the Sultan held a Divan on horseback; on which occasions he appeared mounted in the Atmeidan, or ancient Hippodrome of Constantinople, with a magnificent retinue, and asked the opinions of the Vizier and other members of the Divan, who also attended on horseback. But this kind of assembly soon degenerated into an idle ceremony, and fell at length into disuse. The Divan of the Grand Vizier (the Sublime Porte) was always the real council for the dispatch of business. This was the central seat of the subordinate boards of the three chief executive officers; namely, the Kiaja Bey, the deputy, and as it were attorney-general, of the Grand Vizier; of the Reis Effendi, or minister for foreign affairs; and of the Chiaus Bashi, or home minister.

Turkey. Constantinople. Public Gardens in At-Median (ancient hippodrome)

The provincial administration of the Ottoman empire was founded on that system of fiefs, or military tenures, to which we have already alluded. The Turkish dominions consisted of conquered territory, and by the laws of Islam the conqueror was the lord and proprietor of what his sword had won. A union of several siamets and timars constituted a district called a sandjak (banner), under command of a Sandjakbey (lord of the sandjak), to whose banner with a horse-tail the retainers of the district resorted when called out. A union again of several sandjaks formed an ejalet, or government under a Beylerbey (lord of lords), who according to the extent of his province had a standard of two or three horse-tails. The highest of those Beylerbeys were the Governors-general of Roumelia and Anatolia. But the greatest of provincial governments was the Pashalic, consisting of a union of several ejalets.

Although, as we have seen, the chief strength of the Ottoman army and the political government of the Empire lay in the hands of slaves who had originally been Christians, yet everything appertaining to the administration of justice, religion, and education was entrusted solely to the hands of native Turks. In the Ottoman polity, indeed, religion and justice were united, and the Koran formed the test-book of both. In a nation so essentially warlike even justice assumed a military character. The office of the two Cadiaskers, or judges of the army, was the highest judicial dignity, and, till the time of Mahomet II, conferred upon them a rank superior even to that of the Mufti. The jurisdiction of the Cadiaskers was not, however, confined, as their name might imply, solely to the army. They were the first links in the chain of the Great Mollas, or men of the higher judicial rank; to which belonged besides them only the judges of the following cities:—Constantinople and its three suburbs, Mecca and Medina, Adrianople, Prusa, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Aleppo, Larissa, and Salonica. Then followed the Lesser Mollas, the judges often cities of the second rank. Other judicial officers of a lower class were the Muffetish, or investigating officers; the Cadis, and their deputies the Naibs. The Cadi gave his judgment alone, and without assistance, both in civil and criminal cases, according to the precepts of the Koran. He also discharged all the functions of a notary in making wills, contracts, and the like.

The head both of spiritual and temporal law was the Sheikh-ul-Islam, or Mufti. The Mufti, however, pronounced no judgments. His power extended only to give advice in doubtful cases: his Fetwa, or response, had only a moral influence, no actual effect; but this influence was so great that no judge would have presumed to give a verdict at variance with his decision. The Mufti was consulted by those who were dissatisfied with the sentence of their judges. Mahomet II placed the Mufti at the head of the order called Ulema, or men learned in the law and in religion; the members of which in the earlier times engrossed in their families the exclusive and hereditary possession of the higher judicial offices, and thus formed the nearest approach to an aristocracy among the Ottomans. The Mufti was sometimes consulted in questions of State policy, and, like the oracles of old, was not unfrequently tuned to give a response agreeable to the wishes of the Sultan. Into a description of the various ministers appointed for the service of the mosques it is not necessary to enter.

GREECE AND THE BALKANS

The history of the Ottoman Turks in Europe before the conquest of Constantinople forms no part of our subject, and it will therefore suffice briefly to recapitulate the state at that time of their possessions in Greece and the adjacent countries.

In the reign of Mahomet I (1413-1421) the greater part of the Greek Empire was in the hands either of Turks or Italians. The Peloponnesus, indeed, still belonged to the Greeks, and was divided into small sovereignties whose rulers bore the title of Despot. This peninsula, as well as the coast from Aetolia to the extremity of Epirus, and the regions of Macedonia and Thessaly, was thickly studded with the castles of lords or knights, who committed unceasing depredations on the inhabitants, and carried on with one another continual wars.

The Venetians and Genoese, besides their colonies scattered over the Empire, had factories at Constantinople, which by their fortifications and garrisons were rendered quite independent of the Greeks. The Constantinopolitans themselves had no spirit of enterprise, and thus, almost all the trade of the Eastern Empire fell into the hands of Italians. The Venetians had their own quarter in the city, enclosed with walls and gates, as well as a separate anchorage in the port surrounded with palisades. This colony was governed by a bailo, or bailiff, who had much the same jurisdiction as the Doge at Venice. The Byzantine settlement of the Genoese was still more important. Michael Palaeologus, in reward for their services in assisting him to recover the Empire, assigned to them the suburb of Pera, or Galata, on the opposite side of the harbor; a district 4400 paces in circumference, which the Genoese surrounded with a double, and ultimately with a triple wall. The houses, rising in a succession of terraces, commanded a prospect of Constantinople and the sea. The Peratian colonists were the first Christians who entered into an alliance with the Turks, and by a treaty concluded with Amurath I in 1387 were placed on the footing of the most favored nations. Mahomet was constantly at war with the Venetians, who enjoyed a mediate jurisdiction in many of the cities and islands of Greece, through the patrician families of Venice who possessed them. They had also spread themselves along the coast of Albania, and were, with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, now settled in Rhodes, the chief obstacle to the progress of the Turks.

Under Sultan Amurath II (1421-1451) the Emperor John Palaeologus II had found it expedient to purchase peace by a disgraceful treaty (1425). He ceded all the towns and places which he still possessed on the Black Sea and Propontis, except Derkos and Selymbria; renounced the sovereignty of Lysimachia and other places on the Strymon, and agreed to pay to the Ottoman Porte a yearly tribute of 300,000 aspers. The Byzantine Empire was thus reduced to the capital with a strip of territory almost overshadowed by its walls, a few useless places on the Black Sea, and the appanages of the Imperial Princes in Peloponnesus; while the greater part of the revenues of the State flowed into the Turkish treasuries at Adrianople and Prusa. Amurath respected the treaty which he had made with John Palaeologus and turned his arms against the Venetians, Slavonians, Hungarians, and Albanians. In March, 1430, he wrested from Venice Thessalonica, or Salonika, which that Republic had purchased from the Despot Andronicus, a conquest among the most important which the Turks had yet made in Europe. Amurath’s next wars were with the Hungarians, and as the relations between that people and the Turks were for a long period of great importance in European history, it will be proper here to relate their commencement.

Amurath having invaded in 1439 the dominions of the Despot of Servia, that Prince implored the protection of Albert II, of Germany, who was also King of Bohemia and Hungary. Albert responded to the appeal and marched to Belgrade, but with an inadequate force, which was soon dissipated; and he was compelled to abandon an expedition in which he had effected nothing, and soon afterwards died at Neszmély, between Gran and Vienna (Oct. 27th, 1439). Just previously to that event Amurath had dispatched an embassy to Wladislaus III (or VI), King of Poland, offering to support the pretensions of his brother Casimir to the throne of Bohemia against Albert, provided that when Casimir should have attained the object of his ambition, Wladislaus should refrain from assisting Hungary. The negotiations were hardly concluded, and the Turkish ambassadors were still at Cracow, when a deputation arrived from Hungary to offer the Crown of that Kingdom, vacant by Albert’s death, to Wladislaus, who determined to accept it, announced his resolution to the Turkish ambassadors, and expressed to them his wish to remain at constant peace with the Sultan. Such a peace, however, was not in Amurath’s contemplation; and the civil wars which ensued between Wladislaus and the party which supported the claim of Albert's posthumous son, the infant Ladislaus, to the Hungarian throne, promised to render that Kingdom an easy prey to the Turkish arms. In the spring of 1440 Amurath marched to attack Belgrade, the only place which, after the taking of Semendria and reduction of Servia, opposed his entrance into Hungary; but after sitting seven months before the town he was compelled to relinquish the attempt, with a loss of 17,000 men.

Hunyadi Castle

It was at this period that the house of Huniades, destined for many years to be the chief bulwark of Europe against the Turks, first appeared upon the scene. John Corvinus Huniades, or John of Hunyad, the founder of it, was by birth a Wallachian, and, according to some accounts, a natural son of the Emperor Sigismund. He derived the name of Corvinus from the village of Corvinum, in which he was born; that of Huniades, from a small estate on the borders of Wallachia and Transylvania, presented to him by the Emperor Sigismund as a reward for his services in Italy. John of Hunyad had increased his possessions by marrying a wealthy lady of illustrious family; and the Emperor Albert II had made him Ban, or Count, of Szöreny. He headed the powerful party which supported the call of Wladislaus, King of Poland, to the Hungarian throne; and that Prince, in reward of his aid, made him Voyvode of Transylvania and Ban of Temesvar, and conferred on him the command in the southern provinces of Hungary. John of Hunyad fixed his headquarters at Belgrade, whence he repelled the ravages of the Turks. In these campaigns he gained several victories, of which the most decisive was that of Vasag, in 1442, which almost annihilated the Turkish army.

During those alarming wars all eyes had been turned towards Rome, as the only quarter whence help might be expected for Christendom. But the efforts of Eugenius IV, who then filled the Papal throne, proved of little avail, and Eugenius was left to complain of the poverty of the Papal treasury, the lukewarmness of Christian Princes, and the dissensions of the Church, which frustrated all efficient preparations against the Turks. In 1442 his zeal was again awakened by the representations of a Franciscan monk residing at Constantinople, who painted to him in lively colors the miseries of the young Christian slaves, chiefly Hungarians, whom he daily saw dragged through the streets of that capital to be shipped off to Asia. The call of the monk was supported by embassies from the Byzantine Emperor, the King of Cyprus, and the Despots of Peloponnesus. Touched by these appeals, Eugenius addressed a circular to all the prelates of Europe, requiring them to contribute a tenth of their incomes to the Turkish war, and promised himself to dedicate to the same object a fifth of the whole revenue of the Apostolic Chamber. At the same time he dispatched Cardinal Julian Cosarini into Hungary, to endeavor to restore peace in that distracted country and to animate the people against the Infidels. The death of Queen Elizabeth, however, the mother of the young king Ladislaus, and the recent victories of John of Hunyad, contributed more to these objects than all the exhortations of Cardinal Julian. After the demise of Elizabeth, most of the nobles who had supported her hastened to do homage to Wladislaus: and though the Emperor Frederick III, the guardian of her son, at first opposed the accession of the Polish King, yet the disturbances in his own Austrian dominions, and the imminent danger from the Turks, ultimately induced him to conclude a truce for two years.

BATTLE OF VARNA. AD 1444

by Jan Matejko

Wladislaus, being thus confirmed upon the throne of Hungary, determined on an expedition against the Infidels. The domestic troubles in which most of the European Princes were then plunged prevented their giving him any assistance; yet considerable bodies of the people, chiefly French and Germans, assumed the cross and joined his forces. The van set out from Buda in July, 1443, led by John of Hunyad and George, Despot of Servia; the main body, about 20,000 strong, under the command of Wladislaus himself, followed a day later; while Cardinal Julian was at the head of the crusaders. They penetrated to the Balkan and defeated the Ottoman force which defended the approaches; but at the pass of Slulu Derbend (Porta, Trajani) were repulsed, and being in great want of provisions, were obliged to make a precipitate though unmolested retreat to Belgrade, and thence to Buda. The expedition, however, made so great an impression upon Amurath, that he entered into negotiations, and in June, 1444, a peace of ten years was concluded at Szegedin, by which it was agreed that the Turks should retain Bulgaria but restore Servia to the Despot George, on condition of his paying half the revenue of that country to the Porte; that neither of the parties should cross the Danube; and that Wallachia should be under the protection of Hungary.

This peace was scarcely concluded when the Christians prepared to break it. The campaign of Wladislaus had excited great interest in Europe. Ambassadors from many European States appeared at Buda to congratulate him on his success, and to offer him succors for another expedition; Poland alone besought him to refrain, and to turn his attention to the domestic evils of his Kingdom. Cardinal Julian took advantage of the general feeling to urge the renewal of the war, and persuaded the Hungarian Diet assembled at Buda to adopt his advice. Even John of Hunyad and the Despot of Servia, who had just protested against so thoughtless a breach of faith, were carried away by the warlike ardor excited by the address of Julian. But perhaps the motive which chiefly weighed in the rupture of the peace of Szegedin was the news which arrived immediately after the departure of the Turkish plenipotentiaries, that Amurath with his whole army had crossed over into Asia to quell an insurrection in Caramania; and that the fleet assembled by the Pope, and now in the neighborhood of the Hellespont, would suffice to cut off his return. The Pope absolved Wladislaus from his oath; but the only pretext which the Christians could allege for their breach of faith was that the Turks had not yet evacuated some of the surrendered fortresses. The expedition terminated in the disastrous battle of Varna (Nov. 10th, 1444), in which the Christians were completely defeated, and King Wladislaus and Cardinal Julian lost their lives. This battle is memorable in a military point of view as displaying the superiority of the Janissaries over the European cavalry, although the latter soon mastered the Turkish light horse. Very few of the defeated army succeeded in

In 1446, John of Hunyad, who had now been appointed Regent and Captain-General of Hungary, overran Wallachia, captured the Voyvode Drakul and his son, caused them to be executed, and conferred the Principality on Dan, Voyvode of Moldavia. The wish that lay nearest the Regent’s heart was to retrieve his reputation against the Turks, so badly damaged by the defeat at Varna; but the war which broke out with the Emperor Frederick III, who refused to restore to the Hungarians either the person of young Ladislaus or the crown of St. Stephen, delayed till 1448 any expedition for that purpose. A peace having at length been effected, by which the guardianship of Ladislaus, till he reached eighteen years of age, was assigned to the Emperor, John of Hunyad found himself at liberty to devote all his attention to the Turkish war; and though dissuaded from the enterprise by Pope Nicholas V, he crossed the Danube with a large army and pressed on with rapid marches till, on the 17th October, 1448, he encamped within sight of the Ottoman army on the Amselfeld, or plain of Cossova—the spot where more than half a century before the Turks had gained their first great victory over the Hungarians. After a struggle of three days, Hunyad was defeated by the overwhelming force of the Turks, and compelled to save himself by an ignominious flight; but the loss on both sides had been enormous, and Amurath, instead of pursuing the routed foe, returned to Adrianople to celebrate his victory. Hunyad was captured in his flight by the Despot of Servia and detained a prisoner till the end of the year, when he was liberated at the intercession of the Hungarian Diet assembled at Szegedin. The hard conditions of his ransom, which comprised the restoration of all the places in Hungary that had ever belonged to Servia, the payment of 100,000 pieces of gold, and the delivery of his eldest son Ladislaus as a hostage, were, however, cancelled by the convenient omnipotence of Rome, and he was released from his engagements by a bull of Nicholas V. Nothing further of importance happened between the Turks and Hungarians till after the fall of Constantinople, when the exploits of John of Hunyad will again claim our attention.

The arms of Amurath were next employed by a revolt in Albania. That country was ruled in the beginning of the fifteenth century by a number of independent chieftains, among whom the families of Arianites and Castriot were distinguished by the extent of their dominion. The former were connected on the female side with the family of the Comneni, and Arianites Topia Conmenus reigned over southern Albania from the river Vojutza to the Ambracian Gulf, or Gulf of Arta; while John Castriot was Prince of the northern districts from the same river to the neighborhood of Zenta, except that the coast towns belonged to Venice. Both these Princes had been subdued by Amurath II in 1423; Kroja, John Castriot’s capital, was occupied by a Turkish garrison, and he himself and his four sons were carried into captivity. After a time the father was dismissed, but the children were retained and forcibly converted to Islam, after the Turkish fashion. How George, one of these, gained the favor of the Sultan by his talents and courage, and was raised to the rank of a Prince with the title of Scanderbeg, or Prince Alexander, and how ho revolted, recovered his capital, and returned to the Christian faith, has been related by Gibbon. The Venetians, finding great benefit from the diversion he occasioned to the Turkish arms, conferred on him the right of citizenship, enrolled him among their nobles, and made him their commander-in-chief in Albania and Illyria. In 1449 and 1400 Amurath led two immense but unsuccessful expeditions against Kroja, which were nearly the last acts of his reign, for in 1451 he died at Adrianople.

Amurath was succeeded by his son Mahomet II, the conqueror of Constantinople (1451-1481). To relate the fall of that City, and to record the history of the Imperial family in Peloponnesus, would be only to repeat the pages of Gibbon; and we shall therefore now pass on to a brief survey of the state of the other European nations at this important epoch

GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.  

At the time of which we speak, the ruler of Germany was the chief temporal sovereign in Europe, and bore the title of Roman Emperor. That title had been revived in the West when, on Christmas Day, AD 800, Pope Leo III invested Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans, with the Imperial crown and mantle in the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and saluted him Emperor of the Romans amid the applause and acclamations of the people an illegal act on the Pope’s part; for the Roman Empire still subsisted at Byzantium, although at that particular moment the throne was occupied by a woman (Irene). The real power conferred by the title was small; but it added to the glory of the German Emperors to be regarded as the temporal heads of Christendom, the superior lords of all other sovereigns, and, in a spiritual point of view, the guardians of the Holy Sepulcher. The opinion prevailed in Germany that other European sovereigns were subjects of the Emperor; nor were these sovereigns themselves quite certain that the claim was unfounded. When Sigismund visited England in 1416, several nobles rode into the water before he landed to inquire whether he pretended to exercise any authority in the land; and on his replying in the negative, he was received with all due honor. Even a century later, we find Cuthbert Tunstall gravely assuring Henry VIII that he is no subject of the Empire, but an independent king. To the Western Empire thus revived was subsequently added the epithet “Holy”. The origin of this additional title is unknown. Those inclined to magnify the Pope, ascribe it to his power of conferring the Imperial crown; but among the various causes assigned, the most probable seems to be that which derives it from the sacredness belonging to the person of the Emperor in the later ages of Rome. However this may be, during nearly all the period embraced in this work the Empire was styled “Holy” (Sacrosanctum Imperium), and to omit this title in State transactions would have been a breach of diplomatic usage. Thus it became, in a secular view, the counterpart of “Holy Catholic Church” in a spiritual one; and in their respective functions, the authority of the Emperor and that of the Pope were coextensive. In the earlier times, the German and other Princes who became Emperors did not assume that title till they had received the Imperial crown at the hands of the Pope; and this circumstance served to strengthen his claim to superiority. But this claim was often contested by the Emperors, and hence the disputes between these two potentates so frequent in the Middle Ages. The accounts of the circumstances attending the coronation of Charlemagne are so obscure and discordant as to throw but little light on the subject. None of the Emperors of whom we shall have to treat, except Frederick III and Charles V, were crowned by the Pope, though all assumed the Imperial title. And we must here admonish the reader that the dignity of Emperor had in those days an importance which it has lost since the title has become prostituted. The bearer of it was held to be the successor of the Caesars, as shown by the German name of Kaiser; and as the Caesars were the masters, or reputed masters, of the world, there could be no more than one Emperor.

Before the German King could become Emperor, it was necessary that he should previously have received two or three other crowns. Of these the chief was that of King of the Romans. This dignity was conferred by the German Electors, of whom we shall have to speak presently. By a convenient fiction, these Electors were considered to possess the rights and privileges of the Roman Senate and People; a notion expressed in so many words at the election of Conrad IV, and repeated in the fifteenth century. “Then they proceeded to choose a King of the Romans and future Emperor, they swore to elect a temporal head of the Christian people”. For regularly since the time of Henry IV the German King ceased to call himself King of the Franks and Saxons, and after his German coronation assumed the title of King of the Romans. A son, or other relative, of an Emperor was frequently made King of the Romans during the Emperor’s lifetime, and was crowned as such by the Archbishop of Mainz (Mayence), Arch-Chancellor of Germany, at Aix-la-Chapelle, the old Frankish capital. After the time of Ferdinand I (1558-1561) the King of the Romans succeeded at once on the Emperor’s death, with the title of “Emperor Elect”. Strictly, an Emperor should have received four crowns; 1: that of the Franks, or Romans, just mentioned; 2: the iron crown of Lombardy, or Italy, received in early times at Pavia, subsequently at Monza, and occasionally at Milan; 3: the crown of Burgundy, or of the Kingdom of Arles, a minor ceremony and seldom observed; and 4: at Rome, the double crown of the Roman Empire (urbis et orbis) according to some, according to others, the spiritual and the secular crown. Those who affect a pedantic niceness, and especially the sticklers for Papal authority, do not call the German sovereign “Emperor” unless and until he was crowned by the Pope; just as some writers would call the Emperor Augustus, Octavius, till he had actually received the former title. To follow such a method in this general history would only create confusion, without any compensating advantage, and we shall therefore style all the German Sovereigns, down to the time of Francis II, Emperors. And indeed from the time of Maximilian they always had that title, even officially, without any Roman coronation. To the idea of succession to the Roman Empire must be ascribed the circumstance of the Roman code forming the basis of the law of Germany.

Casimir IV by Giovanni da Capistrano

HOUSE OF HOHENZOLLERN; OF  WETTIN.

All the leading princely houses of Germany which have retained their power to the present time had already established themselves in the fifteenth century. The Hohenzollern ancestors of the royal family of Prussia had obtained the Electorate of Brandenburg, which the Emperor Sigismund conferred on Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgraf of Nuremberg, for previous services and also as a pledge for money lent. In April, 1417, Frederick, who was also made Grand Chamberlain, was confirmed in the permanent possession of Brandenburg. To the north-east of Brandenburg, Prussia was held by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, who had conquered it from its heathen inhabitants before the middle of the thirteenth century. The Grand Master of this Order had been made a Prince of the Empire by Frederick II. In March 1454, the Prussians, disgusted with the tyranny of the Knights, who had forced them to dissolve a league of their cities called the Convention of Marienburg, placed themselves under the protection of King Casimir IV of Poland, and consented to be incorporated with that kingdom on condition of retaining their own laws and form of government. A bloody war of ten years ensued, in which 350,000 men are said to have perished, and which ended unfortunately for the Teutonic Order. It was concluded by the peace of Thorn, October 19th, 1403, by which the Knights ceded great part of their dominions, and consented to hold the rest under the sovereignty of Poland.

To the southwest of Brandenburg the house of Wettin ruled in Saxony, one of the most extensive and flourishing principalities of Germany. In 1455, the two young princes, Ernest and Albert, sons of the Elector Frederick II, were carried off from the Castle of Altenburg by the robber-knight Kunz, or Conrad of Kaufungen and his companion William of Schonfels; but Kunz was arrested on the frontier of Bohemia by a collier, and Schonfels, on learning his imprisonment, voluntarily returned. The two Princes we have mentioned became celebrated as the founders of two distinguished houses. From Ernest, the elder, is derived the Ernestine line of Saxony, from which spring the present branch of Saxe-Weimar, Coburg, Cotha, Meiningen, and Altenburg. This line possessed the Saxon Electorate till 1548, when it was transferred to the Albertine line, as there will be occasion to relate in the sequel. To the latter line belong the royal family of Saxony. At first the brothers Ernest and Albert ruled jointly in Saxony, but in 1484 they divided their dominions by a treaty concluded at Leipzig. Ernest received the electoral Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg: the rest of Saxony was divided into two portions, of which one, consisting of the Margravate of Meissen, or Misnia, was retained by Albert; the other, composed of the Landgravate of Thuringia, fell to the Ernestine branch. Still further west lay the dominions of the Landgrave of Hesse. This Prince, and the Houses of Saxony and Brandenburg, concluded an agreement of confraternity and reciprocal succession at Nuremberg in 1458, which was renewed and confirmed in 1587, and again in 1614.

HOUSE OF WITTELSBACH.  

The two great duchies of Franconia and Swabia had become extinct in the thirteenth century, and the only other princely House which it will be here necessary to mention is that of Wittelsbach, which ruled in Bavaria and the Rhenish Palatinate, as we shall reserve an account of that of Austria till we come to speak of the House of Habsburg. Bavaria, at the time with which we are concerned, was divided into Upper and Lower. Upper Bavaria, again, was in 1392 partitioned into three duchies, those of Baiern-Ingolstadt, Baiern-Landshut, and Baiern-Munchen (Munich); and the lower formed another duchy, which in the early part of the fifteenth century was held by John of Straubing. John, who had formerly been Bishop of Liege, dying without issue in 1425, the Emperor Sigismund bestowed Lower Bavaria on his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, both in right of his mother Joanna, sister of the late Duke, and as a fief escheated to the Empire. But this arrangement being opposed by the Houses of Upper Bavaria, the collateral line, as well as by the German States, Albert sold his claims, and Lower Bavaria was equally divided among the three collateral Dukes. Subsequently all these branches became gradually extinct except that of Munich; and Albert II, the representative of that line, united all Bavaria under his dominion after the death of George the Rich of Baiern-Landshut in 1503. To the same family of Wittelsbach belonged since 1227 the Counts Palatine of the Rhine. In the neighborhood of these Princes a number of small lordships had been gradually united into the County of Württemberg, which in 1495 was erected into a Duchy in favor of Eberhard the Elder, called also the Bearded and the Pious. Of the other temporal Princes of Germany it is not here necessary to speak. That country also abounded with spiritual principalities, as Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Minister, Bremen, Magdeburg, &c.; which in the fifteenth century were very generally filled by the younger sons of princely families, a practice encouraged by the Court of Rome.

Church of our Lady of Nuremberg

Of the German Princes those who had a vote in the election of the King and future Emperor were the most important. In the early days of feudalism the elective privilege was enjoyed by the body of the nobles; but from the time of the Franconian Emperors the Dukes who held the great offices of the Imperial household, together with the three Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, had enjoyed a privilege called the jus prataxandi; that is, of agreeing on the choice of a King before his name was submitted to the approval of the rest of the magnates. Their choice might be rejected by the Diet, but in those disturbed times attendance on that assembly was both a difficult and dangerous task, from which the members were glad to be dispensed; and thus in process of time only the great officers appeared, who by degrees entirely appropriated the right of election. These officers were: 1: the Archbishop of Mainz, Arch chancellor of Germany; 2: the Archbishop of Cologne, Arch chancellor of Italy; 3: the Archbishop of Troves, Arch chancellor of the Kingdom of Arles; 4: the King of Bohemia, Cupbearer; 5: the Rhenish Palsgrave, Seneschal; 6: the Duke of Saxony, Marshal; 7: the Margrave of Brandenburg, Chamberlain.

It will be perceived that these Princes enjoyed the elective privilege not merely from their power and the extent of their dominions, in which most of them were equaled by the Dukes of Bavaria, Brunswick, and Austria, and by the Landgrave of Hesse, but also from their holding some office in the Imperial household. They formed what was called the “Electoral College”; and their privileges were confirmed, first by the Diet of Frankfort and Electoral Union at Rhense in 1338, and more particularly by the Diet of Nuremberg in 1355, and that of Metz in the following year, which ratified the famous Golden Bull, so called from the golden seal affixed to it. This bull, which became a fundamental law of the Empire, and which is conceived in the most despotic terms, was drawn up under the direction of the Emperor Charles IV. Its principal provisions are, that the number of Electors be seven, in conformity with the seven golden candle-slicks of the Apocalypse; that each Elector hold some high office; and that during vacancies of the Crown, or in absence of the Emperor, the Duke of Saxony and the Rhenish Count Palatine shall exercise sovereign power as Vicars of the Empire: the vicariate of the latter embracing Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhenish lands; that of the former, all the lands governed by Saxon law. By this bull the claim of Bavaria to the electoral suffrage was entirely excluded.

The want of union produced by the sovereign power of so many Princes was increased by a numerous immediate nobility who acknowledged no superior but God and Caesar. Along with the Princes were the Freiherrn, or Barons, who like them held their estates immediately of the Empire, and equally possessed the right of administering justice. Among these Barons were families so ancient that they boasted of holding their possessions only under God and the sun. The German Knight presents the image of feudalism more vividly than it can be found in any other country. In the northern parts of Germany, indeed, they had, at the period of which we treat, been brought under subjection to the civil power; the Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg destroyed many of their castles in Thuringia in 1280; but in Franconia, in Swabia, and along the banks of the Rhine, they continued even in the sixteenth century to dwell in haughty solitude in their castles, defended by deep ditches and with walls twenty feet thick, whose ruins still lend a romantic interest to those districts. Romance, however, has invested them with a charm which the sober breath of history dispels. Instead of being knights-errant, ever ready to succor the distressed, the owners of these castles were nothing but lawless robbers, prepared for every deed of violence. They formed a subordinate but tumultuary power in the State, and with the connivance of the Princes occasionally interfered in political questions. They were often at variance among themselves, and carried on their private wars in spite of ninny attempts to cheek this practice, and to establish a permanent Landfriede, or public peace. 

In this disorganized state of society recourse was had to those secret and self-constituted tribunals, which, like Lynch law in America, or the Santa Hermandad of Spain, are sometimes found in imperfectly civilized nations. Such was the Vehmgericht, or Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, whose principal seat was at Dortmund, but whose ramifications extended into the most distant parts of Germany. The judges of this mysterious tribunal, who were unknown to the people, scrutinized, either by themselves or through their emissaries, the most hidden actions, and all ranks of men trembled at their decrees, the more terrible as they admitted of no appeal; nay, the judges carried with them the sword or the fatal cord with which they at once executed their own sentences. The Vehmgericht survived till the creation of the Imperial Chamber under the Emperor Maximilian, near the end of the fifteenth century.

In the midst of all this discord and anarchy appeared one element of hope and progress. Some of the German cities, and especially those belonging to the Hanseatic League, had attained to great prosperity and civilization. Art, commerce, and manufactures flourished; and Germany supplied a great part of Europe, even to the interior of Russia, with its imports and products. Behind their walls the citizens were secure, and even in the field, by means of cannon, now coming into general use, were more than a match for the Knights and their followers, who either possessed no guns, or had no men capable of serving them. The cities also strengthened themselves, either by alliances with one another or with various princes and nobles. On the coast of the Baltic was the main strength of the Hansa, which overshadowed the power of the Scandinavian Kings, much more, therefore, that of the neighboring German Princes. Moreover, all over Germany, and especially in Franconia, Swabia, on the Upper Danube, and on the Rhine, had arisen a number of free Imperial cities, not included in the dominions of any of the Princes, and depending immediately upon the Empire. In Swabia and Franconia, these cities arose after the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the thirteenth century, which period also witnessed a vast increase of what was called the immediate nobility, or nobles subject to no superior lord but the Emperor. The liberties and privileges of the Imperial cities were fostered by the Emperors, in order that they might afford some counterpoise to the power of the prelates and nobles, whose natural enemies they were, and with whom they waged continual war. Outside their walls, but within the palisades which marked the boundaries of their territory, they afforded an asylum to the discontented and fugitive peasantry of the feudal lords, who, from being thus domiciled, were called Pfahlbürger, or burgesses of the pale.

Such a state of society as we have here described was necessarily incompatible with any strong political organization; in fact, almost the only institution which formed a bond of union among the various German States, and gave the Empire any consistency, was the Diet. Previously to the fourteenth century, the Imperial authority had been something more than a shadow, and had performed that office. But this authority had been damaged by the quarrels of the Houses of Bavaria, Luxemburg and Austria, for the throne; and as the power of the Emperor declined, that of the Diets, as well as of the Princes and Electors, increased. The authority of the Diets lasted down to the Thirty Years’ War, after which period the various principalities assumed more distinct and separate forms; and the general affairs of Germany, as an Imperial whole, became subordinate to the particular interests of its several leading States. The Diets possessed the legislative, and even in some degree the executive power; and they enjoyed the all-important privileges of imposing taxes and deciding on peace and war. The Emperor and the electoral and other princes and nobles, appeared in the Diets in person; and in the early part of the fourteenth century some of the chief cities of the Empire obtained the right of sending deputies. These, however, proved a troublesome element in the assemblies. The interests of the municipal towns were distinct from, and sometimes opposed to, those of the other Estates; their deputies often dissented from the conclusions of the Diet; and during the Hussite war in 1431, we find the cities levying their own separate army. Thus, by the power of the Princes on the one hand, and that of the Diets on the other, the authority of the Emperors was reduced almost to a nullity. Many of them spent their lives in a state of degrading poverty, and hid their misfortunes by absenting themselves from their dominions.

HOUSE OF HABSBURG.  

At the time, however, when this history opens, a family was in possession of the Imperial Crown who succeeded in rendering it hereditary, and by the wonderful increase of their power excited during a long period the jealousy and alarm of the rest of Europe. This was the House of Habsburg, or of Austria, whose importance in modern European history renders it proper to give a brief account of its origin.

In the interregnum and anarchy which ensued after the election of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, in 1257, who was no more than a nominal King of the Romans, the Electors, rejecting the pretensions of Alfonso, King of Castile, and Ottocar, King of Bohemia, conferred the Germanic crown on Rudolf, Count of Habsburg in Switzerland, who had distinguished himself as a valiant knight and captain in the private wars which then desolated Germany. The zeal of Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, was mainly instrumental in effecting the election of Rudolf, his uncle; while the slenderness of Rudolf’s possessions, and the circumstance of his having three marriageable daughters, also contributed to the same end, by disarming the fears of the Electors, and offering them the prospect of forming advantageous marriages. After his accession as King of the Romans, Rudolf conquered from Ottocar the provinces of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and the Windischmark, and in 1282 bestowed them in fief on his two sons, Albert and Rudolf. Afterwards he gave Carinthia to Count Meinhard of Tyrol, in reward for some services. Thus was founded the future greatness of the House of Habsburg, Albert alone survived his father, and, in conjunction with his nephew John, inherited all Rudolf the Great’s possessions at his death in 1291. Rudolf had in vain endeavored to procure the German crown for his son, who was, however, elected on the deposition of King Adolf of Nassau in 1298, and assumed the title of Albert I. He was assassinated in 1308 by his nephew John, from whom he had withheld some of the Habsburg possessions. Albert’s son Frederick was elected, in 1314, as a rival to Louis Duke of Bavaria, but was overthrown at the battle of Mühldorf in 1322; and from this period till the election of Albert II in 1438, the Habsburg Princes remained excluded from the German throne, and were chiefly occupied with the affairs of their Austrian dominions.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century we find these possessions, which had been considerably enlarged, shared by three members of the family, of whom one, called Frederick of the Empty Pocket, held Tyrol and the ancient territories of the House in Switzerland and Swabia. This Frederick, having, in 1415, assisted the escape of Pope John XXIII from Constance, was excommunicated by the Council then sitting in that town, and was also placed under the ban of the Empire by Sigismund. Frederick's possessions were now at the mercy of those who could seize them, and in a few days 400 towns declared against him. In this general revolt, the Swiss Confederates, with the exception of the miners of Uri, were especially active: they seized the territories so liberally bestowed upon them by the Council; and it was now that Habsburg, the cradle and hereditary castle of the family, was laid in ruins, in which condition it has ever since remained.

From the time of Albert II, who was King of the Romans, Bohemia, and Hungary, the Romano-German Crown was transmitted in the House of Austria almost as if it had been an hereditary possession; and in the course of this history we shall see the descendants of Rudolf attaining to a power and preeminence which threatened to overshadow the liberties of Europe. After the death of Albert II in 1439, the Germans elected for their King, Frederick III, elder son of Ernest surnamed the Iron, who was brother to Frederick of the Empty Pocket, and who possessed Styria, Carinthia, Istria, and other lands. Frederick III ruled Germany, if such an expression can be applied to his weak and miserable reign, till 1493, and he consequently occupied the Imperial throne at the time when this history commences. Frederick was crowned King of the Romans at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1142, and in 1451 he proceeded to Rome to receive the Imperial crown from the hands of the Pope. Nicholas V, who then filled the Papal chair, received him with great magnificence; but it was observed that Frederick, till after his coronation, yielded precedence to the Cardinals. According to the strict order of things, Frederick should have first received the iron crown of Lombardy from the Archbishop of Milan; but Frederick having for some reason declined to enter that city, the Pope with his own hands crowned him King of Lombardy. On the same day (March 10th) Nicholas married Frederick to Eleanor, daughter of the King of Portugal, who had met him at Siena, and three days afterwards both received the Roman Imperial crown. This coronation is memorable as the last performed at Rome, and the last but one in which the services of the Pope were ever required.

Frederick, having been appointed guardian of Sigismund of Tyrol, minor son of Frederick of the Empty Pocket, and also of the infant Ladislaus Postumus, son of Albert II, thus administered all the possessions of the Austrian family. Austria was erected into an Archduchy by letters-patent of Frederick III, January, 6th, 1453, with privilege to the Archdukes to create nobles, raise taxes, &c. Duke Rudolf, who died in 1365, had indeed assumed the title of Archduke, but it had not been confirmed by the Emperor.

SWITZERLAND. THE FOREST CANTONS.

The history of Switzerland, originally part of the German Kingdom, is closely connected with that of the House of Austria. In 1308, when Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden leagued together against the encroachments of the House of Habsburg, the land we now call Switzerland was divided into various small districts, with different forms of government. Among these States were four Imperial cities—namely, Zurich, Bern, Basle, and Schaffhausen; while the Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, although from time immemorial enjoying a democratic form of government, were nevertheless also immediately subject to the Empire. There were besides a number of small principalities, among the most important of which were those of the House of Habsburg and of the Counts of Savoy, besides many ecclesiastical domains and baronial fiefs. After the insurrection of 1308 Albert marched an army against the patriots; but during the expedition he was assassinated by his nephew John, as already mentioned. Some years afterwards, Albert’s son Leopold again attempted to reduce the three refractory Cantons, but was completely defeated by a much smaller force of the Confederates at the famous battle of Morgarten, November 16th, 1315. After this event the three Cantons entered into a perpetual union (1318), which was gradually joined by various other districts.

Under Albert and Otho, the two last surviving sons of Albert I, the House of Habsburg considerably extended their hereditary dominions. They obtained possession of Schaffhausen, Rheinfelden, and Breisach, as well as the town and county of Rapperschwyl; they were masters of Thurgau and nearly the whole of Aargau; they were lords paramount in Zug and Lucerne, in the district to the south of the Lake of Zurich, and of the town and Canton of Glarus; and their territories thus almost surrounded the confederated Cantons. By the death of Otho and his two sons all these possessions fell to Duke Albert II in 1344. But the example of the three Cantons had awakened the spirit of liberty in the neighboring districts; Lucerne was the first to join them, after which the union was called the four Waldstadte, or Forest Cantons. Zurich was next admitted into the Confederacy (1351); which before the end of the following year was strengthened by the accession of Glarus, Zug, and Bern. In 1385, fresh dissensions arose between the League and Duke Leopold, then head of the House of Habsburg, who endeavored to reduce Lucerne to obedience, but was completely defeated at the battle of Sempach (138G), in which he himself fell, with 2000 of his men, nearly a third of whom were nobles or knights. A desultory warfare was, however, still kept up; and in 1388 the Austrians were again defeated at the battle of Näfels. The Dukes of Austria now concluded a seven years’ truce with the Confederates, which in 1394 was prolonged for twenty years; and from this period we may date the establishment of the eight first confederated Cantons, which enjoyed some prerogatives not shared by the five admitted soon after the wars with Burgundy. This confederacy was at first called the old League of High Germany. The names of “Swiss” and “Switzerland” did not come into use till after the expedition of Charles VII of France in 1444, undertaken at the request of the Emperor Frederick III, with a view to defend the town of Zurich, which had claimed his protection, against the attacks of the other Cantons. The French King was not unwilling to employ in such an enterprise the lawless bands which swarmed in France after the conclusion of the truce with England. The French arms were directed against Basle, which, however, made an heroic defence: the Swiss died at their posts almost to a man; and though the siege of Zurich was raised, the French did not venture to pursue the retreating enemy into their mountains. It was during this expedition that the French began openly to talk of reclaiming their rights to all the territory on the left bank of the Rhine as their natural boundary; and though it was undertaken at the Emperor's request, Charles VII nevertheless summoned the Imperial cities between the Meuse and the Vosges mountains to recognize him as their lord, alleging that they had formerly belonged to France. Verdun and a few other places complied; but as the Germans menaced him with a war, Charles was for the present obliged to relinquish these absurd pretensions. Zurich renounced the connection which it had resumed with the House of Austria, and rejoined the Swiss Confederacy by the treaty of Einsiedeln in 1450.

In the course of the fifteenth century the Swiss began to adopt the singular trade of hiring themselves out to fight the battles of foreigners. Switzerland became a sort of nursery for soldiers, and the deliberations of their Diets chiefly turned upon the propositions for supplies of troops made to them by foreign Princes; just as, in other countries, might be debated the propriety of exporting corn, wine, or any other product. But these mercenary bands often proved fatal to their employers. If the price for which they sold their blood was not forthcoming at the stipulated time, they would often abandon their leader at the most critical juncture, and thus cause the loss of a campaign; instances of which will occur in the course of the following history. The peculiar arm of the Swiss infantry was a long lance, which they grasped in the middle; and the firm hold thus obtained is said to have been the chief secret of their victories.

Closely connected with the Romano-German Empire were the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, and more remotely that of Poland. Albert, afterwards the Emperor Albert II, was the first Duke of the House of Habsburg who enjoyed the Crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, which he owed to his father-in-law, the Emperor Sigismund, whose only daughter, Elizabeth, he had married. Elizabeth was the child of Barbara of Cilly, Sigismund’s second wife, whose notorious vices had procured for her the odious epithets of the “Bad” and the “German Messalina”. Barbara had determined to supplant her daughter, to claim the two Crowns as her dowry, and to give them, with her hand, to Wladislaus VI, the young King of Poland, who, though forty years her junior, she had marked out for her future husband. With this view she was courting the Hussite party in Bohemia: but Sigismund, a little before his death, caused her to be arrested; and, assembling the Hungarian and Bohemian nobles at Znaim, in Moravia, persuaded them, almost with his dying breath, to elect Duke Albert as his successor. Sigismund expired the next day (December 9th, 1437).

BOHEMIA. 

Albert was soon after recognized as King by the Hungarian Diet, and immediately released his mother-in-law Barbara, upon her agreeing to restore some fortresses which she held in Hungary. He did not so easily obtain possession of the Bohemian Crown. That country was divided into two great religious and political parties—the Catholics and the Hussites, or followers of the Bohemian reformer John Huss, who were also called “Calixtines”, because they demanded the cup in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The more violent and fanatical sects of the Hussites, as the Taborites, Orphans, &c, had been almost annihilated at the battle of Lipan in 1434, in which their two leaders, Prokop surnamed Holy, the bald, or shorn, and subsequently also called Prokop Weliky, or the Great, as well as his namesake and coadjutor Prokop the Little, were slain; and in June, 1436, a peace was concluded at Iglau between Sigismund and the Hussites. This peace was founded on what were called the Compactata of Prague, an arrangement made between the contending parties in 1433, and based on the “Articles of Prague” promulgated in 1420 by the celebrated patriot leader John Ziska. These Articles, which, however, were somewhat modified in the Compactata, were : 1. That the Lord’s Supper should be administered in both kinds; 2. That crimes of clergy should, like those of laymen, be punished by the secular arm; 3. That any Christian whatsoever should be authorized to preach the word of God; 4. That the spiritual office should not be combined with any temporal command. But although the peace of Iglau secured considerable religious privileges to the Hussites, a strong antipathy still prevailed between that sect and the Catholics, of which the “Wicked Barbara” now availed herself. Albert was elected King of Bohemia by the Catholic party in May, 1438; but the Hussites, incited by Barbara, in a great assembly which they held at Tabor, chose for their King the youthful Prince Casimir, brother of Wladislaus, King of Poland; a subject to which we have already alluded in the account of the Turks.

A civil war ensued, in which Albert’s party at first gained the advantage, and shut up the Hussites in Tabor: but George Podiebrad compelled Albert to raise the siege; and this was the first feat of arms of a man destined to play a distinguished part in history.

HUNGARY&POLAND.  

The short reign of Albert in Hungary was disastrous both to himself and to the country. Previously to his fatal expedition against the Turks in 1489, to which we have already referred, the Hungarian Diet, before it would agree to settle the succession to the throne, forced him to accept a constitution which destroyed all unity and strength of government. By the Decretum Alberti Regis he reduced himself to be the mere shadow of a King; while by exalting the Palatine, the clergy, and the nobles, he perpetuated all the evils of the feudal system. The most absurd and pernicious regulations were now adopted respecting the military system of the Kingdom, and such as rendered it almost impossible effectually to resist the Turks. By the twenty-second article in particular, it was ordained that the arrière ban, the main force of the Kingdom, should not be called out till the soldiers of the King and Prelates — for the Barons seem to have shirked the obligation of finding troops—could no longer resist the enemy; the consequence of which was that a sufficient body of troops could never be assembled in time to be of any service.

On the death of Albert, Wladislaus VI, King of Poland, was, as already said, elected to the throne of Hungary. Poland had first begun to emerge into importance in the reign of Wladislaus Loktek, in the early part of the fourteenth century. Its boundaries were enlarged by his son and successor, Casimir III, surnamed the Great, who having ceded Silesia to the Kings of Bohemia, compensated himself by adding Rod Russia, Podolia, Volhynia, and other lands to his dominions. Casimir, having no children, resolved to leave his Crown to his nephew Louis, son of his sister and of Charles Robert, King of Hungary, although some of the ancient Piast dynasty of Poland still existed in Masovia and Silesia; and with this view he summoned a national assembly at Cracow, which approved the choice he had made. This proceeding, however, enabled the Polish nobles to interfere in the succession of the Crown, and to render it elective, like that of Hungary and Bohemia; so that the Polish State became a sort of aristocratic Republic. The nobles also compelled Louis to sign an act exempting them from all taxes and impositions whatsoever. With Casimir ended the Piast dynasty (1370), which had occupied the throne of Poland several centuries. The feudal system was entirely unknown in that country. There was no such relation as lord and liegeman; the nobles were all equally independent, and all below them were serfs, or slaves.

On the death of Louis, in 1382, his daughter Hedwig was elected Queen, whose marriage with Jagellon, Grand-Duke of Lithuania, who had previously embraced Christianity, established the House of Jagellon on the Polish throne. Jagellon, who received at his baptism the name of Wladislaus, reigned till the year 1434; and it was he who, in order to obtain a subsidy from the nobles, first established a Polish Diet.

Wladislaus, or Jagellon, was succeeded in Poland by Wladislaus VI, his son. Wladislaus also aspired to the Crown of Hungary by a marriage with Elizabeth, widow of Albert, King of the Romans, Bohemia, and Hungary. Elizabeth had been left pregnant, and the Hungarians, dreading a long minority if the child should prove a male, compelled her to offer her hand to Wladislaus. After this proposal was dispatched, Elizabeth was delivered of a son, who was christened Ladislaus Postumus. Hereupon she withdrew her consent to the marriage, and being supported by a strong party of the Hungarian nobles, retired to Stuhlweissenburg (Alba Regalis), where the child was crowned by the Archbishop of Gran. But the party 0f the King of Poland, headed by John of Hunyad, proved the stronger. Elizabeth was compelled to abandon Lower Hungary and to take refuge at Vienna, carrying with her the crown of St. Stephen, which, together with her infant son, she entrusted to the care of the Emperor Frederick III (August 3rd, 1410).

Hostilities and negotiations ensued, till in November, 1442, a peace was agreed upon, the terms of which are unknown. But the sudden death of Elizabeth in the following month, not without suspicion of poison, prevented the ratification of a treaty which had never been agreeable to the great party led by John of Hunyad, whose recent victories over the Turks gave him enormous influence. The sequel of these affairs has been already related.

The minority of Ladislaus Postumus also occasioned disturbances in Bohemia. In order to avoid that inconvenience, the States offered the Crown first to Albert, Duke of Bavaria, and then to Frederick III, by both of whom it was refused. The two chief Bohemian parties, the Catholics and the Calixtines, then agreed to elect the infant Ladislaus, and to appoint two Regents during his minority. Praczeck of Lippa was chosen for that office by the Calixtines, and Meinhard of Neuhaus by the Catholics. Such an arrangement naturally led to civil discord, and after a severe struggle, Praczeck and the Calixtines obtained supreme authority. On the death of Praczeck in 1444 the Catholics attempted to restore Meinhard; but the Calixtines again prevailed, and bestowed the Regency on the celebrated George Podiebrad. In 1450, the government of Podiebrad was confirmed by the States of Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria, assembled at Vienna; and he assumed at Prague an almost regal authority. He became the idol of the Bohemians, who, in 1451, would have elected him for their King, had not Eneas Sylvius persuaded him to remain faithful to the cause of young Ladislaus.

After the death of King Wladislaus at the battle of Varna, Ladislaus Postumus, now five years of age, was unanimously elected King of Hungary by a Diet assembled at Pesth, in 1445, and envoys were sent to demand him from Frederick III, together with the crown of St. Stephen. The refusal of this demand, the war which followed the appointment of John of Hunyad as Gubernator, or Regent, and his unfortunate campaign against the Turks in 1448, have been already mentioned. On the death of Sultan Amurath II, early in 1451, John of Hunyad, like other Christian rulers, sent ambassadors to Mahomet II, and obtained from him a truce of three years. In 1453, shortly before the taking of Constantinople, Hunyad laid down his office of Gubernator, and young Ladislaus assumed the reins of government.

Such was the state of the principal nations of eastern Europe at the time when this history commences. Of Russia and the Scandinavian kingdoms there is at present no occasion to speak, as they were not yet in a condition to take part in the general affairs of Europe; and we therefore turn to the southern and western nations. Of these the history and constitution, down to the fall of the Eastern Empire, have been so fully described by Mr. Hallam, that it will only be necessary to recapitulate such particulars as are indispensable to the understanding of the following pages. Italy first claims our attention, as the nurse of modern civilization; and among the Italian Powers, principally the Roman Pontiff, not only as a temporal Prince, but also by his spiritual pretensions, as a European Power of high importance. The prestige of his authority had indeed been already grievously shaken by the schisms of the Church, and the decisions of General Councils; yet he still continued to exercise a prodigious influence on the political as well as religious concerns of Europe.

ITALY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

As temporal potentate the Pope had not yet attained to the full extent of his power; nay, he hardly sat secure on his throne at Rome. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Stefano Porcari had revived the schemes of the tribune Rienzi, a hundred years before, and endeavored to restore the image of a Roman Republic. In January, 1453, the plots of Porcari were for a third time discovered; his house was surrounded by the Papal myrmidons, and he himself, with nine confederates, captured and executed. This, down to our own days, was, however, the last attempt of the sort. At this time the dominions of the Pope included the district north of Rome known as the Patrimony of St. Peter, together with some portions of Umbria, and the March of Ancona; but the Holy See asserted a claim to many other parts of Italy, and especially to the Exarchate of Ravenna, as the donation of Pippin. The extent of the Exarchate has been disputed; but its narrowest limits comprised Ferrara, Ravenna, and Bologna with their territories, together with the country included between Rimini and Ancona, the Adriatic and the Apennines. Its name of Romagna had come down from the days when the Eastern Roman Emperors ruled it by their deputy, the Exarch, and though many of its cities were independent of the Roman Court, some of their rulers acknowledged the sovereignty of the Pope, and accepted the title of “Vicars of the Church”. The family of Este at Ferrara, of Bentivoglio at Bologna, of Manfredi at Faenza and Imola, of Malatesta at Rimini and Cesena, had established their virtual independence, though the Popes neglected no opportunity of asserting their pretensions, and often by force of arms. They also claimed Naples as a fief of the Church, by virtue of a treaty between its Norman conquerors and Pope Leo IX in 1053; and the Sovereigns of that country acknowledged themselves liegemen of the Holy See by payment of a tribute. With far less right, the Pope also asserted a feudal superiority over all the Sovereigns of Europe, claimed the States of all excommunicated princes, heretics, infidels, and schismatics, together with all newly discovered countries and islands.

The rise and progress of that enormous influence which the Roman Pontiffs acquired in Europe have been described by Mr. Hallam, and we shall here content ourselves with a brief description of the administrative system of the Papal Court, into which that writer has not entered.

The Court of Rome, commonly called the Roman Curia, consisted of a number of dignified ecclesiastics who assisted the Pope in the executive administration. The Pontiff's more intimate advisers, or, as we should say, his privy council, were the College of Cardinals, consisting of a certain number of Cardinal Bishops, Cardinal Priests, and Cardinal Deacons.

The Cardinal Deacons, at first seven and afterwards fourteen in number, were originally ecclesiastics appointed as overseers and guardians of the sick and poor in the different districts of Rome. Above them in rank were the fifty Cardinal Priests, as the chief priests of the principal Roman churches were called: who, with the Cardinal Deacons, formed, in very early times, the presbytery, or senate, of the Bishop of Rome. From these churches, with the districts attached to them, they derived their titles, as, Bonifacius, Presbyt. Tit. S. Cecilie,—the title afterwards of Cardinal Wolsey; Paulus, Presbyt. Tit. S. Laurentii, &c. According to some authorities, Cardinal Bishops were instituted in the ninth century; according to others, not till the eleventh, when seven Bishops of the dioceses nearest to Rome—Ostia, Porto, Velitraa, Tusculuni, Prasneste, Tibur, and Sabina—were adopted by the Pope partly as his assistants in the service of the Lateran, and partly in the general administration of the Church. Though the youngest of the Cardinals in point of time, Cardinal Bishops were the highest in rank, and enjoyed preeminence in the College. In process of time the appointment of Cardinal Bishops was extended not only to the rest of Italy, but also to foreign countries. Their titles were derived from their dioceses, as the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (Ostiensis), Placentinus (of Placentia), Arelatensis (of Arles), Rothomagensis (of Rouen), &c. But they were also frequently called by their own names. The number of the Cardinals was indefinite and varying. The Councils of Constance and Basle endeavored to restrict it to twenty-four; but this was not carried out, and Pope Sixtus V at length fixed the full number at seventy.

An assembly of Cardinals in presence of the Pontiff, for the transaction of business, was called a Consistory. Consistories were ordinarily private, and confined to Cardinals alone; though on extraordinary occasions, and for solemn purposes of state, as in the reception of ambassadors, the Consistories were public, and other prelates, and even distinguished laymen, might appear in them.

Besides the Cardinals and other high prelates, the Court of Rome was also formed by a great number of Papal officers, who had each his peculiar department. Such were the officers of the Roman Chancery, of whom the Protonotary, or Primicerius, was the chief. He was also called Datarius, from his affixing the date to acts of grace, grants of prebends, eve; whence the name of Dataria for that department. Under him was the Secretary of the Papal bulls (Scriptor Literarum Apostolicarum), who was also the Pope’s chamberlain. The manufacture of bulls was conducted by a college of seventy-two persons, of whom thirty-four clothed in violet, and more distinguished than the rest, drew up from petitions signed by the Pope the minutes of the bulls to be prepared from them in due and regular form. The rest of this college, who might be laymen, were called Examiners, and their office was to see that the bulls were drawn up in conformity with the minutes. The Taxator fixed the price of the bulls, which varied greatly according to their contents; the Plumbator affixed the leaden seal, or bulla, whence the instrument derived its name.

There were three Courts for the administration of justice: viz. a Court of Appeal, called in early times Capella, but afterwards better known by the name of Rota Romana; the Signatura Justitice, and the Signatura Gratice. The Rota Romana was the highest Papal tribunal. Its members, called Auditores Rotae, were fixed by Pope Sixtus IV at twelve, and although paid by the Pope, were not all Italians, but contained at least one Frenchman, Spaniard, and German. The Signatura Gratice, where the Pope presided in person, and of which only select Cardinals or eminent prelates could be members, decided cases which depended on the grace and favor of the Pope. The Signatura Justitiae, besides various other legal affairs, especially determined respecting the admissibility of appeals to the Pope.

To compliment and refresh the Pope, his Cardinals and courtiers, with presents, was a very ancient custom; but the numerous gifts of money which annually flowed to Rome were only one of the means which served to fill the Papal treasury. Another abundant source was the Papal bulls, of which a great quantity were published every year. It was not the Apostolic Chamber alone that benefited: every officer employed in preparing the bulls took his toll, from the Chief Secretary down to the Plumbator. Among other sources of revenue, besides the regular fees derived from investitures, &c., were the sale of indulgences and dispensations, the announcement of a year of grace, and what was called the Right of Reservation, by which the Popes claimed the privilege of filling a certain number of ecclesiastical offices and vacant benefices. This means had been gradually so much extended that at the time of the Papal Schism offices were publicly sold, and even the inferior ones brought large sums of money. It might be truly said with Jugurtha, Roma omnia venire—at Rome all things are venal. Never was so rich a harvest reaped from the credulity of mankind.

It remains to say a few words respecting the mode of electing the successors of St Peter. In early times, the Roman Pontiff was chosen by the people as well as by the clergy; nor was his election valid unless confirmed by the Roman Emperor; till at length, in 1179, Pope Alexander III succeeded in vesting the elective right solely in the Cardinals. In order to a valid election it was necessary that at least two-thirds of the college should agree; but as this circumstance had frequently delayed their choice, Pope Gregory X, before whose elevation there had been an interregnum of no less than three years, published, in 1274, a bull to regulate the elections, which afterwards became part of the Canon Law. This bull provided that the cardinals were to assemble within nine days after the demise of a Pope; and on the tenth they were to be closely imprisoned, each with a single domestic, in an apartment called the Conclave, their only communication with the outward world being a small window through which they received their food and other necessaries. If they were not agreed in three days, their provisions were diminished; after the eighth day they were restricted to a small allowance of bread, water, and wine; and thus they were induced by every motive of health and convenience not unnecessarily to protract their decision.

Such in outline was the Papal government. The remainder of Italy was divided by a number of independent Powers, of which it will be necessary to mention only the more considerable. These were two monarchies, the Kingdom of Naples (or Sicily) and the Duchy of Milan; and three Republics, two of which, Venice and Genoa, were maritime and commercial; the third, Florence, inland and manufacturing.

VENICE.        

Fifteenth Century Venice. The Bucintoro Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day, or the symbolic marriage of Venice with the sea (Canaletto)

Of these Republics Venice was the foremost. Her power and pretensions both by sea and land were typified in her armorial device—a lion having two feet on the sea, a third on the plains, the fourth on the mountains. Her territorial dominions, were, however, the offspring of her vast commerce and of her naval supremacy; and it is as a naval Power that she chiefly merits our attention. On the lagoon islands, formed by the alluvial deposits of the Adige and other rivers, Venice, by many ages of industry and enterprise, had grown so great that towards the end of the thirteenth century she claimed to be Queen of the Adriatic, and extorted toll and tribute from all vessels navigating that sea. Every year, on Ascension Day, the Doge repeated the ceremony of a marriage with that bride whose dowry had been wafted from every quarter, when, standing on the prow of the Bucentaur, he cast into her waters the consecrated ring, exclaiming: “Desponsamus te, Mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii”. Some rag of alleged right commonly cloaks the most extravagant pretensions, and accordingly the Venetians pleaded a donation of Pope Alexander III, who had said to the Doge:—“The sea owes you submission as the wife to her husband, for you have acquired the dominion of it by victory”. Some subsequent holders of the See of Peter were not, however, inclined to recognize this liberal gift of their predecessor; and it is related that Julius II once asked Jerome Donato, the Venetian ambassador, for the title which conferred on the Republic the dominion of the gulf. “You will find it”, replied Donato, “endorsed on the deed by which Constantine conveyed the domain of St. Peter to Pope Silvester”.

We need not trace all the steps by which the Venetians gradually won the large possessions which they held in the middle of the fifteenth century, many of which had been acquired by purchase. Thus the Island of Corfu, as well as Zara in Dalmatia, was bought from Ladislaus of Hungary, King of Naples; Lepanto and Corinth from Centurione, a Genoese, and Prince of Achaia; Salonika from Andronicus, brother of Theodore, Despot of the Morea, which, however, was wrested from their hands by the Turks in 1430. As a naval Power, the views of Venice were chiefly directed to the acquisition of maritime towns and fortresses; but in Italy the Venetians were also straining every nerve to extend their territory, and had already made themselves masters of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Ravenna, Treviso, Feltre, Belluno, the Friuli, and part of the Cremonese,

Venice presents, perhaps, the most successful instance on record of an aristocratical Republic or oligarchy. We shall not here enter into the details of its government, which have been described at length by Mr. Hallam. However unfavorable to domestic liberty, the government of Venice was admirably adapted to promote the interest of the State in its intercourse with other nations, and from a remote period its diplomatic service was admirably conducted. As early as the thirteenth century its ambassadors were instructed to note down everything worthy of observation in the countries to which they were sent; and these reports, or Relazioni, were read before the Pregadi, or Senate, and then deposited among the State archives. The practice was continued to the latest times; and there is a Relazione of the early period of the French Republic, full of striking and impartial details.

Francesco Foscari (1373 – 1 November 1457) was doge of Venice from 1423 to 1457

Under the Venetian constitution, the power of the Doge was very limited, and, indeed, he was often no more than the unwilling puppet of the Council;—a fact abundantly illustrated by the tragical story of Francesco Foscari, who was Doge from 1423 to 1457, and consequently at the time when Constantinople fell. During his reign, if such it can be called, for to himself it was little else than a source of bitterness and humiliation, Venice reached her highest pitch of prosperity and glory. Continually thwarted by the ruling oligarchy, Foscari twice tendered his resignation, which was, however, refused; and on the last occasion, in 1443, he was obliged to promise that he would hold the ducal office during life. A year or two afterwards he was compelled to pronounce sentence of banishment on his only surviving son, Jacopo, accused of receiving bribes from foreign governments. Still graver charges were brought against Jacopo, who died an exile in Crete, in January, 1456. The aged Doge himself was deposed in 1457, through the machinations of his enemy Loredano, now at the head of the Council of Ten. Ho retired with the sympathy of the Venetians, which, however, none ventured to display; and a few days afterwards he died. With short intervals of peace, he had waged war with the Turks thirty years; and it was during his administration that the treaty was concluded with them which we shall have to record in the sequel.

Before science had enlarged the bounds of navigation and opened new channels to commercial enterprise, Venice, from its position, seemed destined by nature to connect the Eastern and the Western Worlds. During many ages, accordingly, she was the chief maritime and commercial State of Europe. At the beginning of the fifteenth century more than 3,300 Venetian merchantmen, employing crews of 25,000 sailors, traversed the Mediterranean in all directions, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, coasted the shores of Spain, Portugal, and France, as the vessels of Phoenicia and Carthage had done of old, and carried on a lucrative trade with the English and the Flemings. The Venetians enjoyed almost a monopoly of the commerce of the Levant; but in that with Constantinople and the Black Sea they were long rivaled, and indeed surpassed, by the Genoese.

GENOA.

The Harbor of Genoa (William Stanley Haseltine)

Yet in the middle of the fifteenth century the commerce and power of Genoa, the second maritime Republic of Italy, were in a declining state. As the Venetians enjoyed an almost exclusive trade with India and the East, through the ports of Egypt, Syria, and Greece, so the Genoese possessed the chief share of that with the northern and eastern parts of Europe. The less costly, but perhaps more useful, products of these regions—wax, tallow, skins, and furs, together with all the materials for ship-building, as timber, pitch and tar, hemp for sails and cordage—found their way to the ports of the Black Sea, down the rivers which empty into it; and it was along these shores that the Genoese had planted their colonies. Early in the fourteenth century they had founded Caffa, in the Crimea; and this was followed by the planting of other colonies and factories, as Tana, near Azof, at the mouth of the Tanais, or Don, and others; some of which, however, were shared by the Venetians and other Italians. All the trade of this sea necessarily found its way through the Bosphorus, whore it was commanded by the Genoese and Venetian establishments at Constantinople.

Gian Maria or Giovanni Maria Visconti ( 1388 – 1412) The duke was famous for his dogs, which were trained to slaughter men.

The rival interests of their commerce occasioned, during a long period, bloody contests between the Venetians and Genoese, for supremacy at sea. Genoa had not the wonderfully organized government and self-supporting power of Venice; she lacked that admixture of the aristocratic element which gave such stability to her rival, and was frequently obliged to seek a refuge from her own dissensions by submitting herself to foreign dominion: yet such were the energy of her population and the strength derived from her commerce, that she was repeatedly able to shake off these trammels, as well as to make head against her powerful rival in the Adriatic. We find her by turns under the protection of the Empire, of Naples, of Milan, of France; but as the factious spirit of her population compelled her to submit to these Powers, so the same cause again freed her from their grasp. In 1435 the Genoese revolted from Giovanni Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, because that Prince had dismissed Alfonso V, King of Aragon and Sicily, and would be King of Naples, whom he had taken prisoner. From hereditary hatred to the Catalans the Genoese had supported the French Prince Rene of Anjou, in his claims to the Neapolitan throne, against Alfonso, and they now allied themselves with Venice and Florence against the Duke of Milan. This revolution, however, was followed by twenty years of civil broil, in which the hostile factions of the Adorni and Fregosi contended for supreme power and the office of Doge; the most important political and commercial interests of the Republic were abandoned at the critical moment of the triumph of the Turks in 1453; and at that period the name of Genoa is scarcely heard of in the affairs of Italy.

FLORENCE. THE MEDICIS 

Florence, the third great Italian Republic, presents a striking, and in some respects agreeable, contrast to those just described. Not so grasping as they, nor so entirely absorbed in the pursuit of material interests, her popular institutions favored the development of individual genius, which the wealth derived from trade and manufactures enabled her to encourage and foster. Her inland situation and the smallness of her foreign commerce rendered Florence more essentially Italian than either Venice or Genoa; and accordingly we find her taking a stronger interest in the general affairs of Italy, and in the maintenance of its political equilibrium. The Florentine government was freer than that of Venice, and more aristocratic than that of Genoa, nominally, indeed, a democracy, but at the time when this history opens led and controlled by the large-minded, liberal, and cultivated chiefs of the House of Medici. The riches of that family, acquired by commerce, enabled them to display their taste and generosity; and, under their auspices, that literature and art flourished which had already sprung up before their time, and made Florence the mother of modern European culture.

The intricate details of the Florentine constitution have been fully described by Mr. Hallam. It will suffice to recall to the reader’s memory that its basis was popular and commercial, resting on what were called the Arts (Arti), which were, in fact, much the same as the Teutonic guilds. These were twenty-one in number; namely, seven greater ones, called the Arti Maggiori, which included the professional classes and the higher kind of traders; and fourteen Arti Minori, comprehending the lesser trades. It was only from among the members of the Arti that the Priors (Priori), or chief executive magistrates of the State, could be elected. These magistrates, ultimately eight in number, were chosen every two months, and during their tenure of office lived at the public expense. After the establishment of the militia companies, the Gonfalonier of Justice, who was at the head of them, was added to the Signoria, or executive government, and, indeed, as its president. To aid the deliberations of the Signory, there was a college composed of the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the militia companies, and of twelve leading men called Buonuomini, literally, good men, to whose consideration every resolution or law was submitted before it was brought before the great Councils of the State. These Councils, which were changed every four months, were the Gonsiglio di Popolo, consisting of 300 plebeians, and the Consiglio di Comune, into which nobles also might enter. In extraordinary conjunctures the whole of the citizens could resolve themselves into a sovereign assembly of the people, which was called Farsi Popolo.

The most flourishing period of the Florentine Republic was the half century during which it was under the government of the Guelf, or aristocratic, party of Maso degli Albizzi and his son and successor Rinaldo, from 1382 to 1434. The measures of these rulers, the principal of whom, besides the Albizzi, were Gino Capponi and Niccolo da Uzzano, were in general wise and patriotic. They increased the prosperity of Florence, and at the same time upheld the liberties of Italy; and their credit was sustained by a series of brilliant conquests, which subjected Pisa, Arezzo, Cortona, in short, half Tuscany, to the Florentine dominion; and while their arms prevailed abroad, peace reigned at home. The magistrates lived in a plain, unostentatious manner, and abused not their power for their own private ends; the people, too, lived frugally, while the public magnificence was displayed in churches, palaces, and other buildings; valuable libraries were collected; and painting, statuary, and architecture flourished. At this time we are told that Florence counted 150,000 inhabitants within her walls, and enjoyed a revenue of 300,000 gold florins, or about 150,000 £ sterling. Although its situation excluded Florence from that large share of foreign commerce enjoyed by Genoa and Venice—for it had no port of its own till it acquired Pisa by conquest, and Leghorn by purchase from the Genoese—yet even previously it had not been entirely destitute of maritime trade, finding a harbor either at Pisa or in the Sienese port of Telamone.

Còsimo di Giovanni degli Mèdici (389 – 1464),

In 1434 Cosmo de' Medici succeeded in overthrowing the party of the Albizzi and seizing the reins of government. The first known member of the Medici family was Salvestro, who, in 1378, had led a successful insurrection of the Ciompi, or Florentine populace. During the supremacy of the Albizzi, Giovanni de' Medici, Cosmo’s father, who had made a large fortune by trade and banking, and was considered the richest man in Italy, had filled some of the chief offices of State; and at his death, in 1429, Cosmo took the direction of a party which had been formed for the purpose of limiting the authority of the ruling oligarchy. After his return from his travels in Germany and France, Cosmo abstained from the society of the ruling party, and associated himself with men of low condition; but both he and his brother Lorenzo were connected by marriage with some of the leading Florentine families. Incurring the suspicion of the oligarchs, he was banished, in 1433, for ten years, to Padua; but, by a revolution in the government, he and his family were recalled in October, 1434. From this time, for three centuries, the history of Florence is connected with that of the Medici. Cosmo is described by Machiavelli as of a generous and affable temper; of a demeanor at once grave and agreeable, he possessed, in addition to his father's qualities, far more talent as a statesman. The revolution by which he attained the supreme power must, however, be regarded as ushering in the fall of the Florentine Republic. It was, in fact, the establishment of a plutocracy. Cosmo continued to govern till his death in 1464; so that he was the leading man at Florence at the period chosen as our epoch. He continued to follow the trade of a merchant and banker, and during his long administration his views were constantly directed to the aggrandizement of his family, though, after his death, the Florentines honored him with the title of Pater Patriae. The preceding administration of the Albizzi, although more beneficial to their country, is almost forgotten, because, like the princes before Agamemnon, they found no bard or historian to record their praise; whilst Cosmo de’ Medici, a munificent patron of literature, had the good fortune to be the friend of many eminent writers. As his power was chiefly supported by the lower classes, he was enabled to extend it by means of his wealth; and he at length succeeded in reducing the government to a small oligarchy, having, in 1452, vested the privilege of naming to the Signory in only five persons. To support his own dominion he courted the friendship of the tyrant Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, and assisted that Prince to oppress the Milanese.

MILAN. THE VISCONTI.

Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351 – 1402)

Sforza, a condottiere, or soldier of fortune, like his father before him, obtained Milan partly by a fortunate marriage and partly by arms. The history of the Visconti, his predecessors in the duchy, is little more than a tissue of crime and treachery, of cruelty and ambition. Originally an archbishopric, John Galeazzo Visconti procured in 1396 the erection of Milan and its diocese as a duchy and Imperial fief, by a treaty with the Emperor Wenceslaus and the payment of 100,000 florins. This transaction introduced a new feature into Italian politics. The famous parties of the Guelfs and Ghibelins, whose names remained more or less in use till the end of the fifteenth century, had at first nothing specially to do with the internal affairs of the different Italian States: they were merely, in a general sense, the watchwords of Italian liberty and of Imperial and Teutonic despotism—the Guelfs supporting the cause of Rome, and the Ghibelins that of the Emperor. Thus, some Italian Republics were Ghibelin, whilst several tyrants had arisen among the Guelf cities. But after the Visconti had established themselves at Milan and acquired a preponderating influence in Italy, they began to consider their interests as indissolubly connected with monarchical principles; and from this period every Italian tyrant or usurper, if he had before been Guelf, became Ghibelin, and courted the friendship and protection of the Dukes of Milan; while, on the other hand, if a Ghibelin city succeeded in throwing off the yoke of its lord, it raised the Guelf standard, and sought the alliance of Florence, a city preeminently Guelf; and thus those party names became the symbols of domestic as well as foreign liberty or slavery.

Francesco I Sforza (July 23, 1401 – March 8, 1466)

The Duchy of Milan descended in time to Philip Maria Visconti, the younger of Gian-Galeazzo’s two sons. Philip had no children except an illegitimate daughter, Bianca; and Francis Sforza, whom Pope Eugenius IV had made lord of the March of Ancona and Gonfalonier of the Church, aspired to her hand, in the hope that by such a marriage he might eventually establish himself in the Milanese succession. His courtship was somewhat rough; in order to win the daughter he made war upon the father. After the overthrow of the Albizzi by Cosmo de' Medici, and the banishment of his rival, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, Visconti, at the instance of the latter, engaged in war with Florence and Venice, and Sforza entered the service of the Florentines. His operations were, however, unsuccessful, and he found himself entangled in a dangerous position near the castle of Martinengo, when he was unexpectedly relieved by a message from Duke Philip Maria. Disgusted with the insolence of his own captains, who, in contemplation of his death, were already demanding different portions of his dominions, the Duke offered Sforza the hand of his daughter Bianca with Cremona and Pontremoli as a dowry, and left him to name his own conditions of peace. The marriage was accordingly celebrated in October, 1441: but Visconti soon repented of his bargain, and entered into a new war in order to ruin his son-in-law, who again took the command of the Venetian and Florentine armies. Being, however, hard pressed, the Duke had again recourse to Sforza, and offered him the Milanese succession as the price of deserting his employers. The point of honor remained to be considered, on which Sforza consulted his friend, Cosmo de’ Medici, who advised him to follow no rule but his own interests, and to disregard his obligations to two States which had employed him only for their own advantage. Visconti afterwards seemed disposed to break this agreement also; but scarcely had the reappearance of danger from the further success of the Venetians again obliged him to throw himself into the arms of Sforza, when he was suddenly carried off by a dysentery, August 13th, 1447. With Philip Maria ended the dynasty of the Visconti, which, as bishops and dukes, had ruled Milan 170 years (1277-1447). As he left no male heirs, or, indeed, legitimate children of any kind, his death occasioned four claims to the succession, which must here be stated, as they formed the subject of wars and negotiations which it will be our business to relate in the following pages. These claims were:—1. That of Charles, Duke of Orleans, founded on his being the son of Valentina Visconti, eldest sister of the late Duke; 2. That of Bianca, Philip's illegitimate daughter, and of her husband Francesco Sforza, who could also plead that he had been designated by Philip as his successor; 3. That of Alfonso, King of Naples, which rested on a genuine or pretended testament of the deceased Duke; 4. That of the Emperor, who, in default of heirs, claimed the duchy as a lapsed fief.

Bianca Maria Visconti(1425 – 1468) In 1430, at the age of six, Bianca Maria was betrothed to Francesco I Sforza

The question between Bianca and the House of Orleans rests on the issue, whether a legitimate collateral succession were preferable to an illegitimate but direct one? According to the usages of those times, when bastardy was not regarded as so complete a disqualification as it is at present, and when there were numerous instances of illegitimate succession in various Italian States, this question should perhaps be answered in the negative. Sforza’s pretensions, as well as those of the King of Naples, rested on the question, whether the Duke had power to appoint in default of natural heirs; and, if so, which of the two were the more valid appointment: but it must also be recollected that Sforza’s claim was further strengthened by his marriage with Bianca. Thus far, then, we might, perhaps, be inclined to decide in favor of Sforza. But the claim of the Emperor remains to be considered. The charter to the Ducal House given by King Wenceslaus at Prague, October 13th, 1393, limited the succession to males, sons of males by a legitimate bed, or, in their default, to the natural male descendants of John Galeazzo, after they had been solemnly legitimated by the Emperor. Milan, therefore, was exclusively a male fief. But there were no male heirs of any kind, nor has it been shown that the Duke had any power of appointment by will or otherwise. This seems to make out a clear case in favor of the Emperor, according to the general usage respecting fiefs, unless his original power over the fief should be disputed. But this had been clearly acknowledged by John Galeazzo when he accepted the duchy at Wenceslaus’s hands, and had indeed been always previously recognized by the Ghibelin House of the Visconti. It is true, as a modern writer observes, that the sovereignty lay properly with the Milanese people; but they were unable effectually to assert it, and subsequently the pretensions actually contested were not those of the Emperor and the people, but of the Emperor and the claimants under the title of the Visconti.

The people, indeed, after the death of the Duke, under the leadership of four distinguished citizens, established a Republic, while the council acknowledged Alfonso King of Aragon and Naples, and hoisted the Aragonese flag. Some of the Milanese towns, as Pavia, Como, and others, also erected themselves into Republics; some submitted to Venice, others to Milan; and Asti admitted a French garrison in the name of Charles, Duke of Orleans. The Venetians refused to give up the territories which they had conquered; and, under these circumstances, the Republic of Milan engaged the services of Francesco Sforza, who thus became for a while the servant of those whom he had expected to command, though with the secret hope of reversing the position. It belongs not to our subject to detail the campaigns of the next two or three years. It will suffice to state generally that Sforza’s operations against the Venetians were eminently successful, and that particularly by the signal defeat which he inflicted on them at Caravaggio, September 15, 1448, they found it politic to induce him to enter their own service, by offering to instate him in the Duchy of Milan, but on condition of his ceding to Venice the Cremonese and the Ghiara d’Adda. The Venetians, however, soon perceived that they had committed a political blunder in handing over Milan to a warlike Prince instead of encouraging the nascent Republic; and disregarding their engagements with Sforza, they concluded at Brescia a treaty with the Milanese republicans (September 27th, 1440), and withdrew their troops from Sforza's army. But that commander had already reduced Milan to famine; and knowing that there was within its walls a former officer of his own, Gaspard da Vicomercato, on whose services he might rely, Sforza boldly ordered his soldiers to approach the city, laden with as much bread as they could carry. At a distance of six miles they were met by the starving population; the bread was distributed, and Sforza advanced without resistance to the gates. Ambrose Trivulzio and a small band of patriots would have imposed conditions before he entered, and made him swear to observe their laws and liberties: but it was too late—the populace had declared for Sforza; there were no means of resisting his entry; and when he appeared on the public place, he was saluted by the assembled multitude as their Duke and Lord.

This revolution was accomplished towards the end of February, 1450. During the next few years, however, Sforza had to contend with the Venetians for the possession of his dominions. The fall of Constantinople caused the Italian belligerents to reflect on the pernicious nature of the contest in which they were engaged; and Pope Nicholas V summoned a congress at Rome to consider of the means of making head against the common enemy. None of the Italian Powers, however, was sincere in these negotiations; not even Nicholas himself, who had learned by experience that the wars of the other Italian States assured the tranquility of the Church. The Venetians, exhausted by the length of the war, and finding that the congress would not succeed in establishing a general peace, began secretly to negotiate with Sforza for a separate one. This led to the Treaty of Lodi, April 9th, 1454. The Marquis of Montferrat, the Duke of Savoy, and other Princes, were now compelled to relinquish those portions of the Milanese which they had occupied; and in this manner, together with the cessions of the Venetians, Sforza recovered all the territories which had belonged to his predecessor.

The remaining Italian States, with the exception of the Kingdom of Naples, are not important enough to arrest our attention. The chief of them were Ferrara, then ruled by the illustrious House of Este, Mantua, under the Gonzagas, and Savoy. The Counts of Savoy traced their descent up to the tenth century. The Emperor Sigismund, in the course of his frequent travels, having come into Savoy, erected that county into a duchy in favor of Amadeus VIII, who was afterwards Pope Felix V, by letters patent granted at Chambery, February 19th, 1416. Sigismund exercised this privilege on the ground that Savoy formed part of the ancient Burgundian Kingdom of Arles, and in consideration of a paltry loan of 12,000 crowns.

NAPLES

When this history opens Naples had been more than ten years in possession of Alfonso V, King of Aragon, who had obtained the Neapolitan throne after a hard struggle with a rival claimant, the French Prince René d’Anjou. The pretensions of the House of Anjou were originally derived from the donation of Pope Urban IV in the middle of the thirteenth century. The Norman conquerors of Naples had consented to hold the County, afterwards Kingdom, of Sicily, as a fief of the Roman See, and the Norman line was represented at the time above-mentioned by Conradin, grandson of the Emperor Frederick II, whose uncle Manfred, an illegitimate son of Frederick, having usurped the Sicilian throne, Urban offered it to Charles, Count of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France. Manfred was defeated and slain in the battle of Benevento, 1266; and two years afterwards Conradin, who had been set up by the Ghibelin nobles, was also defeated at Tagliacozzo, and soon after put to death by order of Count Charles, who thus established in Naples and Sicily the first House of Anjou. The Crown was, however, disputed by Don Pedro III, King of Aragon, who had married a daughter of Manfred; a war ensued, and Pedro succeeded in seizing Sicily, and transmitting it to his posterity. The first House of Anjou continued in possession of the Kingdom of Naples down to the reign of Queen Joanna I, who was dethroned in 1381 by Charles of Durazzo her heir presumptive. She had previously, however, called in from France her cousin Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of the French King, Charles V; and his son, after the assassination of Charles of Durazzo in Hungary in 1385, actually ascended the Neapolitan throne with the title of Louis II. The reign, however, of this second House of Anjou was but short. Louis was driven out the same year by Ladislaus, son of Charles of Durazzo, who, in spite of all the efforts of Louis, succeeded in retaining the sovereignty till his death in 1444. He was succeeded by his sister, Joanna II, who, though twice married, remained childless.

Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1396 – 1458)

In these circumstances Joanna had displayed so much favor towards the Colonna family that it was expected she would bequeath her Crown to a member of it; but from this purpose she was diverted by her paramour Caraccioli. Pope Martin V, a Colonna, piqued at this change in her behavior, determined, if possible, to dethrone her in favor of Louis III, a stripling of fifteen, and son of Louis II, who had died in 1417; and with this view he engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo, a renowned condottiere, and father of Francis Sforza, whose history we have already related. Sforza Attendolo, who had been constable to Joanna II, but through the enmity of Caraccioli was now alienated from her, was to invade the Neapolitan dominions with an army, while Louis III was to attack Naples from the sea. In this desperate situation Joanna invoked the aid of Alfonso V, King of Aragon and Sicily, and promised in return for his services to adopt him as heir to her dominions (1420). These terms were accepted: Alfonso was solemnly proclaimed Joanna’s successor; the Duchy of Calabria was made over to him as security; and having frustrated the enterprise of Louis, he fixed his residence at Naples as future King.

Such was the origin of the second claim of the House of Aragon to the Neapolitan throne. To make it good, Alfonso had to undertake a struggle of many years’ duration, of which we need mark only the leading events. Perceiving that the Queen and Caraccioli meant to betray him, Alfonso endeavored to secure their persons; but having failed in the attempt, Joanna cancelled his adoption as heir to the Crown, substituted Louis III in his stead, and, having reconciled herself with Sforza, obtained the assistance of his arms. The war dragged slowly on; Sforza was accidentally drowned in the Pescara, January 4th, 1424, when his command devolved to his son Francis; and Alfonso, having been obliged to return to Aragon by a war with the Castilians, left his brothers, Don Pedro and Don Frederick, to conduct his affairs in Naples. But they were betrayed by their condottiere Caldora, and Joanna reentered Naples with her adopted son, Louis III of Anjou.

In 1432 a revolution, chiefly conducted by the Duchess of Suessa, having accomplished the death of Caraccioli, who had disgusted everybody, and at last even Joanna herself, by his insolence and brutality, the Duchess and a large party of the Neapolitan nobles invited Alfonso to return; and as he had now arranged the affairs of Aragon, he accepted the invitation. But his expedition was unsuccessful. Louis III repulsed his attacks on Calabria; and after some vain attempts to induce Joanna to recall her adoption of that prince, Alfonso concluded a peace for ten years, and retired from the Neapolitan territories early in 1433.

The death of Louis in 1434, followed by that of Queen Joanna II in February, 1435, again threw Naples into anarchy. Joanna had bequeathed her Crown to René, Duke of Lorraine, Louis III’s next brother, who had succeeded to Lorraine as son-in-law of the deceased Duke Charles; but Antony, Count of Vaudemont, brother of Charles, contested with him this succession, defeated him, and made him prisoner.

In this state of things the Neapolitan nobles again called in Alfonso; but the partisans of the House of Anjou were supported by Philip Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, who could dispose of the maritime forces of Genoa, then under his government; and, on the 5th of August, 1435, one of the bloodiest sea-fights yet seen in the Mediterranean took place between the Genoese and Catalan fleets. That of King Alfonso was entirely defeated, all his ships were either captured or destroyed, and he himself, together with his brother John, King of Navarre, and a great number of Spanish and Italian nobles, were made prisoners. But Alfonso showed his great qualities even in this extremity of misfortune. Being carried to Milan, he so worked upon Visconti by his address, and by pointing out the injurious consequences that would result to him from establishing the French in Italy, that the Duke dismissed him and the other prisoners without ransom. By this step, however, as we have already said, Visconti lost Genoa; for the Genoese, disgusted with this mark of favor towards their ancient enemies the Catalans, rose and drove out their Milanese governor.

Alfonso now renewed his attempts upon Naples, and the war dragged on five or six years; but we shall not follow its details, which are both intricate and unimportant. The Pope, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and Sforza favored the House of Anjou; the Duke of Milan hung dubious between the parties; and the Condottieri sold themselves to both sides by turns. In the absence of René, his consort Isabella displayed abilities that were of much service to his cause; and René himself, after his liberation, appeared off Naples with twelve galleys and a few other ships. But nothing important was done till 1442, when Alfonso succeeded in entering Naples through a subterranean aqueduct which in ancient times had been used for the same purpose by Belisarius. René soon after abandoned the contest and retired into France, and Alfonso speedily obtained possession of the whole kingdom. Having made peace with Eugenius IV, and recognized him as true head of the Church, that Pontiff confirmed Alfonso’s title as King of the Sicilies, under the old condition of feudal tenure; and even secretly promised to support the succession of his natural son Ferdinand, whom Alfonso had made Duke of Calabria, or, in other words, heir to the throne, to which he partly succeeded on his father's death in 1458.

René made a fruitless attempt in 1453 to recover Naples, which he never repeated. His quiet and unambitious character, testified by the name of “le bon roi René”, led him to cede his claims both to Lorraine and the Sicilies to his son, and to abandon himself in his Duchy of Provence to his love for poetry and the arts. Here he endeavored to revive the days of the Troubadours and the love-courts of Languedoc; but he had more taste than genius, and his efforts ended only in founding a school of insipid pastoral poetry. His children had more energy and ambition: Margaret, the strong-minded but unfortunate consort of our Henry VI, and John, whose efforts to recover the Neapolitan Crown there will be occasion to relate in the following pages. John, who assumed the title of Duke of Calabria, proceeded into Italy in 1454, and was for some time entertained by the Florentines, till their policy requiring the accession of Alfonso to the peace which they had concluded with Venice and Milan, John was dismissed.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The Spanish peninsula was divided, like Italy, into several independent sovereignties. During the tardy expulsion of the Moors from northern and middle Spain, various Christian States were gradually formed, as Leon, Navarre, Castile, Aragon, Barcelona, Valencia, &c.; but in the middle of the fifteenth century these had been practically reduced to the three Kingdoms of Navarre, Castile and Aragon, which now occupied the whole peninsula, with exception of the Kingdom of Portugal in the west and the Moorish Kingdom of Granada in the south. Of these Navarre comprised only a comparatively small district at the western extremity of the Pyrenees; to Aragon were attached the independent lands of Catalonia and Valencia; while Castile occupied, with the exceptions before named, the rest of Spain.

The Kingdom of Castile was founded by Don Ferdinand, second son of Sanchez, surnamed the Great, King of Navarre. Sanchez had conquered Old Castile from its Count, and at his death, in 1085, left it to Ferdinand, who assumed the title of King of Castile, and subsequently added the Kingdom of Leon to his dominions. It belongs not to our plan to trace the history of the Spanish monarchies through the middle ages. It will suffice to observe that the boundaries of Castile were gradually enlarged by successive acquisitions, and that in 1368, a revolution which drove Peter the Cruel from the throne, established on it the House of Trastamara, which continued to hold possession.

In 1406 the Crown devolved to John II, an infant little more than a twelve month old, who wore it till 1454, and was consequently King at the time when this history opens. His father, Henry III, who died at the early age of twenty-seven, had ruled with wisdom and moderation, but at the same time with energy. An armament which he had prepared against the Moors in the very year of his death will convey some idea of the strength of the Kingdom. It consisted of 1,000 lances, or harnessed knights, 4,000 light cavalry, 50,000 infantry, and 80 ships or galleys; and though Henry did not live to conduct the war, it was for some time prosecuted with vigor and success.

But the long minority of John II exposed the Kingdom to confusion and anarchy; and subsequently the weakness of his mind, though he possessed no unamiable disposition, rendered him only fit to be governed by others. During nearly the whole of his reign Don Alvaro de Luna, Constable of Castile, possessed nearly unlimited power. It was the hope of crushing this haughty favorite by force of arms that detained Alfonso V of Aragon in Spain, and prevented him from prosecuting his claims on Naples, as already related. After his return from Italy he proclaimed his determination to invade Castile, and, as he said, to release the young King from Alvaro’s tyranny; and though the matter was temporarily arranged through the mediation of Alfonso’s brother, John of Navarre, yet the unsettled state of the relations between Castile and Aragon detained Alfonso three years in the latter country. Don John, subsequently King of Navarre, and the Infant Don Henry, though Aragonese by nation, had large possessions in Castile, and being grandees of that country, considered themselves entitled to a share in the government, for which they entered into a long but unsuccessful struggle.

In 1429, John II of Castile, at the persuasion of Alvaro, invaded Aragon with a large army, and committed fearful devastations; and in the following year, Alfonso, whose views were turned towards Italy, abandoned the cause of his brother, and concluded a truce of five years with the King of Castile.

After this period the wealth and power of Alvaro went on wonderfully increasing. He obtained the greater part of the confiscated lands of the Aragonese Princes; and as he was the only man capable of inspiring the haughty Castilian grandees with awe, he was invested by the King with almost absolute authority.

He could muster 20,000 vassals at his residence at Escalona, where he held a kind of court. The extent of his power may be inferred from the circumstance, that when the King became a widower, the Constable, without any notice, contracted him to Isabella of Portugal. Alvaro had, however, to maintain a constant struggle with the Castilian grandees, with whom at length even the King himself combined against him. In 1453 he was entrapped at Burgos, his house was beleaguered, and he was forced to capitulate, after receiving security under the royal seal that his life, honor, and property should be respected. But he was no sooner secured than his vast possessions were confiscated, and he himself, after being subjected to a mock trial, was condemned to death, and executed like a common malefactor in the public place of Valladolid (July, 1453). The fortitude with which he met his fate turned in his favor the tide of popular opinion; nor does it appear that he had done anything to deserve death. John II soon found to his cost the value of Alvaro, and that he had no longer any check upon the insolence of the grandees. He survived the Constable only a year, and died in July, 1454, leaving a son, who ascended the throne with the title of Henry IV; and by his second consort, a daughter, Isabella, afterwards the famous Queen of Castile, and a son named Alfonso.

Execution of Alvaro de Luna (Federico Madrazo)

ARAGON.

Aragon, like Castile, was first elevated to the dignity of a Kingdom in favor of a younger son of Sanchez the Great of Navarre, namely, Don Ramiro. Its territories were gradually extended by conquest. In 1118, the King Alfonso I, besides other conquests, wrested Saragossa from the Moors, and made it, instead of Huesca, the capital of Aragon. In 1137 Catalonia became united to Aragon by the marriage of the Aragonese heiress, Petronilla, niece of Alfonso, with Don Raymond, Count of Barcelona. This was a most important acquisition for Aragon; for the Catalans, a bold and hardy race, and excellent sailors, enabled the Aragonese monarchs to extend their dominions by sea. Under King James I of Aragon (1213-1276), Minorca and Valencia were recovered from the Moors and added to the Kingdom, though these States, as well as Catalonia, enjoyed an independent government. James’s son, Pedro III, as already mentioned, wrested Sicily from the tyrannical hands of Charles of Anjou. On his death in 1285, Don Pedro left the Crown of Sicily to his second son, James; and from this period Sicily formed an independent kingdom under a separate branch of the House of Aragon, down to the death of Martin the Younger in 1409. That monarch dying without legitimate children, the throne of Sicily came to his father, Martin the Elder, King of Aragon; and the two Kingdoms remained henceforth united till the beginning of the eighteenth century.

On the death of Martin the Elder in 1410, the male branch of the House of Barcelona, in the direct line, became extinct, and various claimants to the Crown arose. A civil war ensued, till at length, in June, 1412, a council of arbiters, to whom the disputants had agreed to refer their claims, decided in favor of Ferdinand of Castile, nephew of Martin by his sister Eleanor, formerly Queen-Consort of that country. Ferdinand, who was uncle to the minor King John II of Castile, resigned the regency of that country on ascending the thrones of Aragon and Sicily. He was a mild and just Prince, and reigned till his death in 1413, when he was succeeded by his son, Alfonso V, surnamed the Wise, whom we have already had occasion to mention. Alfonso left Naples to his natural son Ferdinand; but he declared his brother John, King of Navarre, heir to Aragon and its dependencies; namely, Valencia, Catalonia, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily; and that Prince accordingly ascended the Aragonese and Sicilian thrones with the title of John II, in 1458.

Both Castile and Aragon while they existed under separate Kings enjoyed a very considerable share of liberty. The constitution of Castile bore a striking resemblance to the English’s in the time of the Plantagenets. Before the end of the twelfth century, the deputies of towns appear to have obtained a seat in the Cortes or national assembly, which before that period consisted only of the Clergy and Grandees. The Cortes continued pretty fairly to represent the nation down to the reign of John II and his successor Henry IV, when the deputies of many towns ceased to be summoned. The practice had, indeed, been previously irregular, but from this time it went on declining; apparently, however, not much to the regret of the burgesses, who grudged defraying the expenses of their representatives; and by the year 1480, the number of towns returning members had been reduced to seventeen. Alfonso XI (1312-1350) had previously restricted the privilege of election to the municipal magistrates, whose number rarely exceeded twenty-four in each town. The members of Cortes were summoned by a writ of much the same form as that in use for the English Parliament. The legislative power resided with the Cortes, though it was sometimes infringed by royal ordinances, as it was in the earlier periods of our own history by the King’s proclamations. The nobles, not only the higher class of them, or Ricos Hombres, but also the Hidalgos, or second order, and the Caballeros, or knights, were exempt from taxation; and this was also, in some degree, the case in Aragon.

The royal power was still more limited in Aragon than in Castile. At first the King was elective; but the right of election was vested only in a few powerful barons, called from their wealth the Ricos Hombres, or rich men. The King was inaugurated by kneeling bare-headed before the Justiciary, or chief judge, of the Kingdom, who himself sat uncovered. In later times the Cortes claimed the right, not indeed of electing the King, yet of confirming the title of the heir on his accession. The Cortes of Aragon consisted of four Orders, called Brazos, or arms:—namely, 1. The Prelates, including the commanders of military orders, who ranked as ecclesiastics; 2. The Barons, or Ricos Hombres; 3. The Infanzones, that is, the equestrian order, or knights; 4. The Deputies of the royal towns.

Traces of popular representation occur earlier in the history of Aragon than in that of Castile, or of any other country; and we find mention made of the Cortes in 1133. The towns which returned deputies were few; but some of them sent as many as ten representatives, and none fewer than four. The Cortes, both of Castile and Aragon, preserved a control over the public expenditure; and those of Aragon even appointed, during their adjournment, a committee composed of members of the four estates to manage the public revenue, and to support the Justiciary in the discharge of his functions. This last magistrate (el Justicia de Aragon) was the chief administrator of justice. He had the sole execution of the laws: appeals, even from the King himself, might be made to him, and he was responsible to nobody but the Cortes. He had, however, a court of assessors, called the Court of Inquisition, composed of seventeen persons chosen by lot from the Cortes, who frequently controlled his decisions. The Justicia was appointed by the King from among the knights, never from the barons. At first he was removable at pleasure; but in 1442 he was appointed for life, and could be deposed only by authority of the Cortes.

Catalonia and Valencia also enjoyed free and independent governments, each having its Cortes, composed of three estates. It was not till the reign of Alfonso III (1285-1291) that these two dominions were finally and inseparably united with Aragon. After this period, general Cortes of the three kingdoms were indeed sometimes held; yet they continued to assemble in separate chambers, though meeting in the same city. Of the commercial greatness of Catalonia, there will be occasion to speak in another part of this work.

THE MILITARY ORDERS.

The Military Orders form so prominent a feature of Spanish institutions, that it will be proper to say a few words respecting them. The Spaniards had three peculiar military orders, those of Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara, besides the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John, which were common to them with the rest of Europe. These orders were governed by elective Grand Masters, who enjoyed an almost regal power, and possessed their own fortified towns in different parts of Castile. The Grand Master of Santiago, especially, was reckoned next in dignity and power to the King. The order could bring into the field 1,000 men-at-arms, accompanied, it may be presumed, by the usual number of attendants, and had at its disposal eighty-four commanderies, and two hundred priories and benefices. These orders being designed against the Moors, who then held a large part of Spain, had originally a patriotic as well as a religious destination, and were at first very popular among the people. The Knights took vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity.

The turbulent nobles of Spain, like those of Germany, carried on private feuds, and sometimes levied war against the King himself. The Aragonese nobles, indeed, by the Privilege of Union, asserted their constitutional right to confederate themselves against the Sovereign in case he violated their laws and immunities, and even to depose him and elect another King if he refused redress. The Privilege of Union was granted by Alfonso III in 1287, and in 1347 it was exercised against Peter IV; but in the following year, Peter having defeated the confederates at Epila, abrogated their dangerous privilege, cut the act which granted it into pieces with his sword, and cancelled or destroyed all the records in which, it was mentioned.

It will appear from the preceding description of Spain, that, although she already possessed, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the elements of political power, she was not yet in a condition to assert that rank in Europe which she afterwards attained. Castile and Aragon were not yet under one head; the Moors still held the Kingdom of Granada in the south, and their reduction was to form one of the chief glories of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

PORTUGAL

Isabella of Portugal (1397–1472)

The Kingdom of Portugal, the remaining division of the Spanish peninsula, is not of sufficient importance in European history to claim any lengthened notice. Alfonso, or Affonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, first assumed the title of King of that country after his victory over the Moors at Ourique in 1139; and in 1147 he took Lisbon by help of some crusaders driven thither by stress of weather. The Kings of Portugal, like those of Spain, were continually engaged in combating the Moors, but their history presents little of importance. The line of Alfonso, continued to reign uninterruptedly in Portugal till 1383, when, on the death of King Ferdinand, John I of Castile, who had married his natural daughter Beatrix and obtained from him a promise of the Portuguese succession for the issue of the marriage, claimed the throne. But the Portuguese, among whom, like the Moors, the custom prevailed of giving the sons of the concubine equal rights with those of the wife, declared John the Bastard, illegitimate brother of Ferdinand, to be their King; and after a civil war of two years’ duration he was, with the assistance of England, established on the throne, with the title of John I, by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (1385). The war with Castile continued nevertheless several years, till it was concluded by the peace of 1411; by which the Castilian government engaged to abandon all pretension to Portugal. John thus became the founder of a dynasty which occupied the Portuguese throne till 1580. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1387), by whom he had a numerous issue. He was an able and energetic sovereign, and his reign was distinguished by the maritime enterprises conducted by his Constable, Nuno Alvares Pereira. In 1415, Pereira, accompanied by the King and his three surviving sons, took Ceuta in Africa from the Moors, fortified it, and filled it with a Christian population. John’s fourth son, Henry, called “the Navigator” devoted himself entirely to maritime affairs, and the sciences connected with them; thus giving an impulse to maritime discovery, for which the Portuguese became renowned, as there will be occasion to relate in the sequel. John I was succeeded in 1433 by Edward, and Edward in 1438 by Alfonso V, who reigned till 1481. John transferred to Lisbon the royal residence, which had previously been at Coimbra.

FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

It remains only to notice that group of western nations—namely, France, England, and the Netherlands—whose position brought them into close relations, which were too often of a hostile character. It is presumed that the reader has already acquired from other sources a competent knowledge of their earlier history and constitution down to the close of the Middle Ages, and therefore no more will here be said that may be necessary to acquaint him with the posture of their affairs at the period when this narrative commences.

In 1453, the same year that Constantinople fell before the Turkish arms, the English were at length finally expelled from France. The civil broils which had formerly prevailed in that country, fomented by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, surnamed “the Good”, facilitated the acquisition of the French Crown by Henry V of England.

The lunacy of Charles VI of France occasioned a struggle for supreme power between Louis Duke of Orleans, the King’s brother, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, grandfather of Philip the Good. On the death of Philip the Bold in 1404, the contest was continued by his son, John sans Peur or the Fearless, who in 1407 caused the Duke of Orleans to be assassinated at Paris, and openly avowed and justified the deed. A civil war ensued.

France was divided into two furious parties: the Armagnacs, so called from the Count of Armagnac, father-in-law of the young Charles, Duke of Orleans; and the Bourguignons, or Burgundian faction. The Armagnacs supported the imbecile King and his son the Dauphin; a dignity which, after the death of his brothers, fell to the King’s fourth son, Charles: the Bourguignons were for a regency to be conducted by the Queen, Isabel of Bavaria.

John the Fearless appeared to favor the pretensions of Henry V of England to the French throne; but more with a view to turn to his own advantage the diversion occasioned by the English arms than to make over France to foreign dominion. Offended, however, by the harshness of the terms proposed by Henry, as well as by the English King’s personal bearing towards him, the Duke of Burgundy resolved to join the party of the Dauphin, and thus to restore peace to France. Negotiations were accordingly opened, and John the Fearless was invited to discuss the matter with the Dauphin and his party; but the latter mistrusted the Duke, who was basely murdered in presence and with connivance of the Dauphin, at an interview to which he had been invited on the bridge of Montereau, Sept. 1419.

To avenge his father’s death upon the Dauphin, Philip, the new Duke, resolved to sacrifice France, and even his own family, which had eventual claims to the Crown, by making it over to the English King. A treaty was accordingly concluded at Arras, towards the end of 1419, between Philip of Burgundy and Henry V, by which Philip agreed to recognize Henry as King of France after the death of Charles VI: and in consideration of Charles’s mental imbecility, Henry was at once to assume the government of the Kingdom, after marrying Catharine, the youngest of the French King’s daughters. This treaty was definitively executed at Troyes, May 21st, 1420, by Charles VI, who knew not what he was signing, and by his Queen, Isabel of Bavaria, a vulgar, profligate woman, who was stimulated at once by hatred of her son the Dauphin and a doting affection for her daughter Catharine.

The treaty was ratified by the French States and by the Parliament of Paris; Henry V obtained possession of that capital, which was occupied by an English garrison under the command of the Duke of Clarence, and on the 1st December, 1420, the Kings of France and England, and the Duke of Burgundy, entered Paris with great pomp. Henry now helped the Duke of Burgundy to punish the murderers of his father, and kept the Dauphin Charles in check by his arms. The birth of a son, regarded as the heir both of France and England, seemed to fill up the measure of Henry’s prosperity, when he was carried off by a fistula, August 31st, 1422. Henry appointed his brother the Duke of Bedford to the Regency of France; his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to that of England; and the Earl of Warwick to be guardian of his infant son.

Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans> ( 1412 – 1431)

The imbecile Charles VI of France shortly afterwards descended to the grave (October 22), and the Dauphin, assuming the title of Charles VII, caused himself to be crowned at Poitiers. The treaty of Troyes had rallied the national feeling of the French to the Dauphin, whose manners and disposition, as well as his lawful claim to the throne of France and the popular hatred of the English usurpers, had rendered him a favorite with the majority of the French nation; and as a counterpoise to his influence, the Regent Bedford drew closer his connections both with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. It does not belong to our subject to detail the wars which followed, and the romantic story of Joan of Arc, which will be found related in the histories of England as well as of France. The great abilities of Bedford secured during his lifetime the predominance of the English in France, and the young King Henry VI was crowned in Paris December 17th, 1431. But this predominance was soon to be undermined; first by the defection of the Duke of Burgundy from the English alliance, and then by the death of Bedford, and the disputes and divisions which ensued in the English government.

The Imperial and French principalities ruled by the Duke of Burgundy made him, perhaps, a mightier Prince than the King of the French; and it will be fit, therefore, to look back a little, and shortly trace the progress of his power. The Capetian line of Burgundy, which had ruled upwards of three centuries, died out with the young Duke Philip in 1361; and a year or two afterwards, King John of France bestowed the Burgundian Duchy as an hereditary fief on his youngest and favorite son, Philip the Bold, the first Burgundian Duke of the House of Valois. 

By this impolitic gift John founded the second House of Burgundy, who were destined to be such dangerous rivals to his successors on the throne of France. The last Capetian Duke, who was only sixteen when he was carried off by the peste noire, or black death, had married Margaret, heiress of Flanders, Artois, Antwerp, Mechlin, Nevers, Bethel, and Franche-Comté, or, as it was then called, the County of Burgundy; and Philip the Bold espoused his predecessor’s widow.

 Three sons, the issue of this marriage (John the Fearless, Antony, and Philip), divided among them the Burgundian dominions; and each extended his share by marriage, or by reannexations. But all these portions, with their augmentations, fell ultimately to Philip, called “the Good”, son of John, whose accession has been already mentioned. Philip ruled from 1419 to 1467, and was consequently in possession of the Burgundian lands at the time when this history opens. Philip also obtained large additions to his dominions, chiefly by the deaths, without issue, of his relations; so that in 1440 he possessed, besides the lands already mentioned, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault, Holland, Zealand, Friesland, and Namur. To these in 1444 he added Luxemburg. Thus Philip was in fact at the head of a vast dominion, though nominally but a vassal of the Emperor and the French King.

Philip also took advantage of his connection with the English, and of the crippled state of France which it produced, to augment still further his dominions at the French King’s expense. The Regent Bedford had married Philip’s sister, Anne of Burgundy; but her death without issue in November, 1432, severed all family ties between the two Princes; and soon afterwards Bedford incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Burgundy by his marriage with Jaquette of Luxemburg. Philip had now forgotten the resentment which had dictated the treaty of Troyes; he was desirous of putting an end to the war which had so long desolated France, but, at the same time, of deriving advantage from it; and he opened negotiations with the party of Charles VII.

The terms stipulated by Philip in favor of his English allies became gradually weaker and weaker; at length he abandoned that connection altogether, and immediately after the death of Bedford, which removed all his scruples, he concluded with Charles VII the treaty of Arras (September 21st, 1435), in which only his own interests were considered. By this treaty he obtained possession of the counties of Macon, Auxerre, and Ponthieu; of the lordships or baronies of Péronne, Roye, Montdidier, St. Quentin, Corbie, Amiens, Abbeville, Dourdon; and of the towns of Dourlens, St. Riquier, Crevecoeur, Arleux, and Mortagne, with a condition, however, that the towns of Picardy might be repurchased by the French King for the sum of 400,000 crowns. Thus the territory of the Duke was extended to the neighborhood of Paris, and he became one of the most powerful Princes of Europe.

By the same treaty Charles VII absolved the Duke for his lifetime only, with regard to such of his territories as were under the French King’s suzerainty, of the vassalage which he owed to France; and Philip now styled himself “Duc par la grace de Dieu”—a formula signifying that the person using it owned no feudal superior. In fact, Philip had for some time harbored the design of erecting his lands into an independent Kingdom, and of obtaining the vicarship of all the countries under suzerainty of the Emperor on the left bank of the Rhine; and he had, in 1412, paid Frederick III a sum of money to renounce his suzerainty of the Duchies of Brabant and Limburg, the Counties of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault, and the Lordship of Friesland.

Philip’s Belgian provinces were at that time in a condition of great prosperity. Of this prosperity the woolen manufacture was the chief foundation, in commemoration of which had been instituted the Order of the Toison d'Or, or Golden Fleece. Some of the Flemish cities, and especially Ghent and Bruges, were among the richest and most populous of Europe. They enjoyed a considerable share of independence; they claimed great municipal privileges; and they were frequently involved in disputes with Philip, whose exactions they resisted. The Duke’s Court, one of the most magnificent in Europe, was distinguished by a pompous etiquette, and by a constant round of banquets, tournaments, and fetes.

The historians of the time particularly dwell on the splendor of the three months’ fetes by which Philip the Good’s third marriage, in 1430, with Isabel of Portugal, was celebrated. On that occasion the streets of Bruges were spread with Flemish carpets; wine of the finest quality flowed eight days and nights—Rhenish from a stone lion, French from a stag; while, during the banquets, jets of rosewater and malmsey spurted from a unicorn. The arms, the dresses, the furniture of the period could not be surpassed; the superbly wrought armor and iron work then manufactured have obtained for it the name of the Siècle de fer. The pictures and the rich Arras tapestry of the time may still convey to us an idea of its magnificence. Nor was the Court of Philip the Good distinguished by sumptuousness alone. He was also a patron of literature and art; many literary men, some of considerable repute, were attracted to his Court; and he formed a magnificent library, manuscripts from which still enrich the chief collections of Europe. A brilliant school of musicians, which lasted several generations, had its origin in his chapel. The painters of Bruges, whoso pictures are still as fresh as on the day they were finished, became illustrious, and especially through John van Eyck, who had been the valet, and afterwards, like Rubens, the counselor of his Sovereign.

Italy in some respects had as yet produced nothing equal to the paintings of John van Eyck and his brother Hubert, which were sought with avidity by Italian Princes and amateurs. This, however, must be attributed to the merit of their technical execution, and more especially, perhaps, to their being painted in oil,—a method which originated with the Flemings, from whom it was borrowed by the Italians. For in inventive genius and the higher qualities of art the Florentine school under Giotto and his successors had already reached a height which had not been, and indeed never was, attained by the Flemings. The sister art of architecture also flourished; and it is to this period we are indebted for most of those splendid town halls with which Belgium is adorned, particularly those of Brussels and Louvain. All this refinement, however, was alloyed with a good deal of grossness and sensuality. Intemperance in the pleasures of the table, which still in some degree marks those countries, was carried to excess, and the relations with the female sex were characterized by an un­bounded profligacy, of which the Sovereign himself set the example.

ENGLISH EXPELLED FROM FRANCE.

Charles VII(1403 – 1461) the Victorious

The death of Bedford proved a fatal blow to English power in France. We shall not dwell on the contest which ensued between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort for the disposal of the French Regency. Suffice it to say that Richard, Duke of York, the nominee of Gloucester, at length obtained it, but after a delay which occasioned the loss of Paris. The English dominion there had long been the subject of much discontent to the citizens, who, taking advantage of the neglect of the English Government during the abeyance of the Regency, opened their gates to the troops of Charles VII. The English garrison, which numbered only 1500 men, under Lord Willoughby, were compelled, after a short resistance, to capitulate, and were allowed to evacuate Paris unmolested, carrying away with them what property they could (April 17th, 1436). The war, however, dragged on for several years after the surrender of Paris, but without vigor on either side. Henry VI’s consort, Margaret of Anjou, and her favorite the Earl of Suffolk, and his party, who ruled in England, neglected to put the English possessions in France in a good posture of defence. Somerset and Talbot, who commanded in Normandy, receiving no succors either of men or money, and being pressed on one side by the Constable Richemont, on another by Charles VII in person, and Count Dunois, were forced to evacuate Normandy in 1450.

In the autumn of the same year, a division of the French army, which appeared in Guienne, made some conquests there; and in the spring of 1451 the whole French force, under Dunois, entered that duchy, and partly by arms, partly by negotiations with the inhabitants, effected its reduction. Guienne, indeed, again revolted in 1452; Bordeaux sent ambassadors to Talbot in London to invoke his aid; and that veteran commander, then upwards of eighty years of age, quickly recovered that valuable possession. But in July of the following year, Charles VII entered Guienne with a large army; Talbot was slain before the town of Castillon, and his fate decided that of the duchy. Bordeaux, the last town which held out, submitted to Charles in October, 1453; and thus, with the exception of Calais, the English were expelled from all their possessions in France. The civil dissensions in England and the wars of the two Roses, which shortly afterwards broke out, prevented any attempt to recover them, and for a long period almost entirely annihilated the influence of England in continental affairs. Before Henry’s conquests, it had been usual to consider Europe as divided into the four great nations of Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, and England as a lesser Kingdom, attached, nominally at least, to Germany. The case was formally argued at the Council of Constance, where the French deputies endeavored to exclude the English from an independent vote; and the decision by which they were admitted as a fifth nation seems to have been considerably influenced by the success of Henry’s arms.

The wars with the English, and the civil distractions by which France had been so long harassed, had prevented her from assuming that place among European nations to which she was entitled by her position, her internal resources, and the genius of her people. It was many years before she recovered from the effects of these pernicious influences. She had suffered as much from the bands raised for her defense as from the invasions of the English; and the combined effects of those two causes had almost reduced her to anarchy and utter ruin. Two bodies of her so-called defenders, particularly distinguished by their ferocity, were the Écorcheurs and Retondeurs, whose violence and brigandage were openly patronized by a large portion of the princes, nobles, and even magistrates of France. The dread of these lawless bands retarded the liberation of France, and especially the evacuation of Paris; for the citizens hesitated to call in deliverers at whose hands they were likely to suffer more damage than from the well-trained troops of England, which, under Henry V, had been subjected to a rigorous and almost puritanical discipline.

The misery of France is depicted by a writer, who, under the title of a Bourgeois de Paris, though he was in reality a doctor of the University, kept a journal of those times. He states that in 1438 5,000 persons died in the Hotel Dieu, and more than 45,000 in the city, from famine and its attendant epidemics. The wolves prowled around Paris, and even in its streets. In September, 1438, no fewer than fourteen persons were devoured by them between Montmartre and the Porte St. Martin, whilst in the open country around three or four score fell victims.

This picture presents a striking contrast to that just drawn of Belgium. In the struggle that was to ensue between the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, everything seemed to promise the success of the latter; and it will be an interesting task to trace how the wise and politic conduct of one or two French Monarchs enabled them to combat all these disadvantages and finally to turn the scale in their favor. Yet the vast domains of the House of Burgundy contained from the first the seeds of future weakness and dissolution. Their population was composed of different races speaking various languages, and alien to one another in temperament, customs, and interests; while the manner in which some of the provinces had been acquired had laid the foundation for future interminable disputes, both with France and with the Empire. In such a heterogeneous state there was no power of centralization—the principle by which France acquired, and still holds, her rank among nations.

The fearful height to which the disorders of France had risen was already beginning to work its own cure; for it was evident that the monarchy could not coexist with it. At this juncture Charles VII had the good fortune to be served by a ministry whose bold and able counsels procured for him the appellation of Charles le bien servi. Among the princes and nobles who formed it sat two roturiers, or plebeians, of distinguished merit: Jean Bureau, a Maitre des Comptes or Officer of Finance; and Jacques Coeur, the son of a furrier at Bourges, whose enterprising genius had enabled him to establish mercantile and financial relations with most parts of the then known world. Bureau, on the other hand, though a civilian, had a real military genius, and effected great improvements in the artillery. Perhaps, also, we must include in Charles’s Council a woman and a mistress—the gentle Agnes Sorel, whose reproaches are said to have piqued his honor and stimulated his exertions.

After consulting the States-General of the League d’Oil, an Ordinance was published, November 2nd, 1439, which forms an epoch in French history. A standing army was to be organized, which was not to subsist, like the bands formerly raised by the nobles, by robbery and plunder, but to receive regular pay. The design of this force, the first of the kind raised by any Christian Sovereign, originated with the Constable Richemont. Fifteen companies of gens d’armes, called from their institution compagnies d’ordonnance, were to be raised, each consisting of one hundred lances garnies, or furnished lances; that is, a mounted man-at-arms with five followers, of whom three were mounted. This would give a standing army of between 7,000 and 8,000 men. The man-at-arms was a person of some consideration. He was attended by a page, two archers, a valet d’armes, and a coutillier, making in all four combatants. The coutillier was a sort of light-horseman, also called brigandinier, from his wearing a brigandine, or quilted jacket covered with plates of iron. Thus the man-at-arms in some sort represented the ancient Knight; and we discern in the whole institution the image of Feudality in its transition to the modern military system. It was not, however, till 1445, after the dispersion, by the Swiss campaign in the preceding year, of the old bands which used to annoy France, that an opportunity presented itself for carrying out this military reform. In 1448 Charles VII issued another Ordinance for the raising of an infantry force, which, however, was not to be a standing one like the cavalry, but merely a sort of royal militia, raised in the different communes. They wore a uniform, wore armed with bows and arrows, and were called francs archers, or free bowmen, because they were exempted from all taxes except the gabelle, or tax on salt. On the other hand, they received no pay except in time of war. The franc archer wore a light casque, and a brigandine, and besides his bow and arrows carried a sword and dagger. All this was a decided advance in the military system; yet still how far behind the organization of the Turkish army a century before!

These measures were received with universal joy except by those who profited by the old system; that is, the nobles. The people, regarding only the immediate benefit of being delivered from the fangs of the Écorcheurs, did not perceive that by consenting to establish this new force they were bartering away their own liberties. For its maintenance the States granted to the King 1,200,000 francs per annum for ever, and thus deprived themselves of the power of the purse, the origin and safeguard of liberty in England. A few reflecting heads indeed saw further. Thomas Basin, Bishop of Lisieux, a contemporary writer of bold and almost republican opinions, predicted and denounced1 the abuse that might be made, of standing armies for the purposes of tyranny. But the people had no conception of self-government. Attendance at the national assemblies was regarded only as a troublesome and expensive duty, from which they were glad to be relieved. On the other hand, by this measure, the nobility were deprived of all military command except through the authority of the King; the important principle was established that none, of whatsoever rank, should impose a tax on his vassals without authority of the King’s letters patent; and all lordships where this should be done were declared ipso facto confiscated.

Thus the contest was now vigorously entered on between the French King and his feudal nobility, which being continued in the next and some following reigns, ended in making France a powerful and absolute monarchy. In England, the great power of the Norman and Angevin Sovereigns induced the barons to unite with the people in the acquirement and defense of their common liberties; in France, the weakness of the Prince and the extravagant privileges of the nobles, formidable alike to crown and people, produced a strange but not unexampled combination between those two extreme orders of the State: and when the subjugation of the aristocracy was completed it was not difficult for the Prince to hold the people in subjection.

It was impossible, however, that a measure which so vitally affected the interests of the French nobles should pass without opposition. In 1440 the Dukes of Bourbon and Alençon, the Counts of Vendome and Dunois, and others, suddenly quitted the Court and retired into Poitou, after enticing the Dauphin Louis, then only eighteen years of age, into their plot. But the unusual vigor and activity displayed by the King, and the favor everywhere declared by the people towards his government, disconcerted the measures of the conspirators, who at length found it advisable to return to their obedience; the Dauphin made his submission to his father at Cuset, and was sent away to govern Dauphiné; and this revolt, contemptuously called the Praguerie, from the Hussite risings in Bohemia, terminated without any serious consequences.

Much, however, still remained to be done in order to centralize the Power of the Crown of France. Normandy and Guienne had been long held by the English, after whose expulsion it was some time before the effectual authority of the French Crown could be established in those duchies.

Brittany, though less powerful than Burgundy, pretended to an independence still more absolute; Provence was not yet united to the French Crown, but was held of the Emperor as part of the old Burgundian Kingdom of Arles; Dauphine, the appanage of the Dauphin of Vienne, was in a great degree beyond the control of the French King, and was moreover still traditionally regarded as appertaining to the Empire. The history of the next few reigns is the history of the consolidation of the French monarchy by the reduction of its great and almost independent vassals: an undertaking which, though not finally completed till the time of Cardinal Richelieu, had already made progress enough in the reign of Charles VIII to allow France to play a great part in the affairs of Europe. At the same period England had also emerged from its domestic troubles by the union of the two Houses of York and Lancaster in the person of Henry VII; but the pacific policy of that Sovereign delayed till the reign of his successor any important interference on the part of England in the affairs of the Continent.

CHAPTER I

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TURKS IN EUROPE AND THEIR WARS WITH THE HUNGARIANS, VENETIANS, &C, TILL THE DEATH OF MOHAMET II. AFFAIRS OF ITALY DOWN TO THE TURKISH INVASION OF 1481