The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 by Various

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THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS

VOLUME IV

A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS

NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL

ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

With a staff of specialists

VOLUME IV

The National Alumni

1905

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV

An Outline Narrative of the Great Events,
CHARLES F. HORNE

Visigoths Pillage Rome (A.D. 410),
EDWARD GIBBON

Huns Invade the Eastern Roman Empire
Attila Dictates a Treaty of Peace (A.D. 441),
EDWARD GIBBON

The English Conquest of Britain (A.D. 449-579),
JOHN R. GREEN
CHARLES KNIGHT

Attila Invades Western Europe
Battle of Chalons (A.D. 451),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
EDWARD GIBBON

Foundation of Venice (A.D. 452),
THOMAS HODGKIN
JOHN RUSKIN

Clovis Founds the Kingdom of the Franks
It Becomes Christian (A.D. 486-511),
FRANCOIS P.G. GUIZOT

Publication of the Justinian Code (A.D. 529-534),
EDWARD GIBBON

Augustine's Missionary Work in England (A.D. 597),
THE VENERABLE BEDE
JOHN R. GREEN

The Hegira: Career of Mahomet
The Koran: and Mahometan Creed (A.D. 622),
WASHINGTON IRVING
SIMON OCKLEY

The Saracen Conquest of Syria (A.D. 636),
SIMON OCKLEY

Saracens Conquer Egypt
Destruction of the Library at Alexandria (A.D. 640),
WASHINGTON IRVING

Evolution of the Dogeship in Venice (A.D. 697),
WILLIAM C. HAZLITT

Saracens in Spain
Battle of the Guadalete (A.D. 711),
AHMED IBN MAHOMET AL-MAKKARI

Battle of Tours (A.D. 732),
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

Founding of the Carlovingian Dynasty
Pepin the Short Usurps the Frankish Crown (A.D. 751),
FRANCOIS P.G. GUIZOT

Career of Charlemagne (A.D. 772-814),
FRANCOIS P.G. GUIZOT

Egbert Becomes King of the Anglo-Saxon
Heptarchy (A.D. 827),
DAVID HUME

Universal Chronology (A.D. 410-842),
JOHN RUDD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME IV

A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for
the life of her husband, Frontispiece
Painting by R. Peacock.

Mahomet, preaching the unity of God, enters Mecca
at the head of his victorious followers,
Painting by A. Mueller.

[Illustration: A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the
life of her husband

Painting by R. Peacock.]

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT
EVENTS

(FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE)

CHARLES F. HORNE

Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three
inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Graeco-Roman
civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of
intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea,
which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two
thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons gave us a healthy,
sturdy, uncontaminated physique, honest bodies and clean minds, the lack
of which had made further progress impossible to the ancient world.

This last is what made necessary the barbarian overthrow of Rome, if the
world was still to advance. The slowly progressing knowledge of the arts
and handicrafts which we have seen passed down from Egypt to Babylonia,
to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss.
The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many
were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the
heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the
past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the
type. Man had become wise, but worthless.

As though on purpose to prove to future generations how utterly
worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted
in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years
the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in
the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in
emphasizing how futile their culture had become.

The entire ten centuries that followed the overthrow of Rome have long
been spoken of as the "Dark Ages," but, considering how infinitely
darker those same ages must have become without the intervention of the
Teutons, present criticism begins to protest against the term. All that
was lost with the ancient world was something of intellectual keenness,
something of artistic culture, quickly regained when man was once more
ripe for them. What the Teutons had to offer of infinitely greater
worth, what they had developed in their cold, northern forests, was
their sense of liberty and equality, their love of honesty, their
respect for womankind. It is not too much to say that, without these,
any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible.

In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit.
The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race,
for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way.

Who were these Teutons? Rome knew them only vaguely as wild tribes
dwelling in the gloom of the great forest wilderness. In reality they
were but the vanguard of vast races of human beings who through ages had
been slowly populating all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Beyond the
Teutons were other Aryans, the Slavs. Beyond these were vague non-Aryan
races like the Huns, content to direct their careers of slaughter
against one another, and only occasionally and for a moment flaring with
red-fire beacons of ruin along the edge of the Aryan world.

Some at least of the Teutonic tribes had grown partly civilized. The
Germans along the Rhine, and the Goths along the Danube, had been from
the time of Augustus in more or less close contact with Rome. Germanicus
had once subdued almost the whole of Germany; later emperors had held
temporarily the broad province of Dacia, beyond the Danube. The
barbarians were eagerly enlisted in the Roman army. During the closing
centuries of decadence they became its main support; they rose to high
commands; there were even barbarian emperors at last. The intermingling
of the two worlds thus became extensive, and the Teutons learned much of
Rome. The Goths whom Theodosius permitted to settle within its dominions
were already partly Christian.

THE PERIOD OF INVASION

It was these same Goths who became the immediate cause of Rome's
downfall. Theodosius had kept them in restraint; his feeble sons scarce
even attempted it. The intruders found a famous leader in Alaric, and,
after plundering most of the Grecian peninsula, they ravaged Italy,
ending in 410 with the sack of Rome itself.[1]

This seems to us, perhaps, a greater event than it did to its own
generation. The "Emperor of the West," the degenerate son of Theodosius,
was not within the city when it fell; and the story is told that, on
hearing the news, he expressed relief, because he had at first
understood that the evil tidings referred to the death of a favorite hen
named Rome. The tale emphasizes the disgrace of the famous capital; it
had sunk to be but one city among many. Alaric's Goths had been
nominally an army belonging to the Emperor of the East; their invasion
was regarded as only one more civil war.

Besides, the Roman world might yet have proved itself big enough to
assimilate and engulf the entire mass of this already half-civilized
people. Its name was still a spell on them. Ataulf, the successor of
Alaric, was proud to accept a Roman title and become a defender of the
Empire. He marched his followers into Gaul under a commission to
chastise the "barbarians" who were desolating it.

These later comers were the instruments of that more overwhelming
destruction for which the Goths had but prepared the way. To resist
Alaric, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from all the western
frontiers, and thus more distant and far more savage tribes of the
Teutons beheld the glittering empire unprotected, its pathways most
alluringly left open. They began streaming across the undefended Rhine
and Danube. Their bands were often small and feeble, such as earlier
emperors would have turned back with ease; but now all this fascinating
world of wealth, so dimly known and doubtless fiercely coveted, lay
helpless, open to their plundering. The Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain,
and, being defeated by the Goths, passed on into Africa. The Saxons and
Angles penetrated England[2] and fought there for centuries against the
desperate Britons, whom the Roman legions had perforce abandoned to
their fate. The Franks and Burgundians plundered Gaul.

Fortunately the invading tribes were on the whole a kindly race. When
they joyously whirled their huge battle-axes against iron helmets,
smashing down through bone and brain beneath, their delight was not in
the scream of the unlucky wretch within, but in their own vigorous sweep
of muscle, in the conscious power of the blow. Fierce they were, but not
coldly cruel like the ancients. The condition of the lower classes
certainly became no worse for their invasion; it probably improved. Much
the new-comers undoubtedly destroyed in pure wantonness. But there was
much more that they admired, half understood, and sought to save.

Behind them, however, came a conqueror of far more terrible mood. We
have seen that when the Goths first entered Roman territory they were
driven on by a vast migration of the Asiatic Huns. These wild and
hideous tribes then spent half a century roaming through central Europe,
ere they were gathered into one huge body by their great chief, Attila,
and in their turn approached the shattered regions of the
Mediterranean.[3] Their invasion, if we are to trust the tales of their
enemies, from whom alone we know of them, was incalculably more
destructive than all those of the Teutons combined. The Huns delighted
in suffering; they slew for the sake of slaughter. Where they passed
they left naught but an empty desert, burned and blackened and devoid of
life.

Crossing the Danube, they ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost
without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople
resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared
upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had
yet understood them, none had even checked their career. The white races
seemed helpless against this "yellow peril," this "Scourge of God," as
Attila was called.

Goths and Romans and all the varied tribes which were ranging in
perturbed whirl through unhappy Gaul laid aside their lesser enmities
and met in common cause against this terrible invader. The battle of
Chalons, 451,[4] was the most tremendous struggle in which Turanian was
ever matched against Aryan, the one huge bid of the stagnant,
unprogressive races, for earth's mastery.

Old chronicles rise into poetry at thought of that immeasurable battle.
They figure the slain by hundred thousands; they describe the souls of
the dead as rising above the bodies and continuing their furious
struggle in the air. Attila was checked and drew back. Defeated we can
scarce call him, for only a year or so later we find him ravaging Italy.
Fugitives fleeing before him to the marshes lay the first stones of
Venice.[5] Leo, the great Pope, pleads with him for Rome. His forces,
however, are obviously weaker than they were. He retreats; and after his
death his irresponsible followers disappear forever in the wilderness.

THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT

Toward the close of this tumultuous fifth century, the various Teutonic
tribes show distinct tendencies toward settling down and forming
kingdoms amid the various lands they have overrun. The Vandals build a
state in Africa, and from the old site of Carthage send their ships to
the second sack of Rome. The Visigoths form a Spanish kingdom, which
lasts over two hundred years. The Ostrogoths construct an empire in
Italy (493-554), and, under the wise rule of their chieftain Theodoric,
men joyfully proclaim that peace and happiness and prosperity have
returned to earth. Most important of all in its bearing upon later
history, the Franks under Clovis begin the building of France.[6]

Encouraged by these milder days, the Roman emperors of Constantinople
attempt to reclaim their old domain. The reign of Justinian begins
(527-565), and his great general Belisarius temporarily wins back for
him both Africa and Italy. This was a comparatively unimportant detail,
a mere momentary reversal of the historic tide. Justinian did for the
future a far more noted service.

If there was one subject which Roman officials had learned thoroughly
through their many generations of rule, it was the set of principles by
which judges must be guided in their endeavor to do justice. Long
practical experience of administration made the Romans the great
law-givers of antiquity. And now Justinian set his lawyers to work to
gather into a single code, or "digest," all the scattered and elaborate
rules and decisions which had place in their gigantic system.[7]

It is this Code of Justinian which, handed down through the ages, stands
as the basis of much of our law to-day. It shapes our social world, it
governs the fundamental relations between man and man. There are not
wanting those who believe its principles are wrong, who aver that man's
true attitude toward his fellows should be wholly different from its
present artificial pose. But whether for better or for worse we live
to-day by Roman law.

This law the Teutons were slowly absorbing. They accepted the general
structure of the world into which they had thrust themselves; they
continued its style of building and many of its rougher arts; they even
adopted its language, though in such confused and awkward fashion that
Italy, France, and Spain grew each to have a dialect of its own. And
most important of all, they accepted the religion, the Christian
religion of Rome. Missionaries venture forth again. Augustine preaches
in England.[8] Boniface penetrates the German wilds.

It must not be supposed that the moment a Teuton accepted baptism he
became filled with a pure Christian spirit of meekness and of love. On
the contrary, he probably remained much the same drunken, roistering
heathen as before. But he was brought in contact with noble examples in
the lives of some of the Christian bishops around him; great truths
began to touch his mobile nature; he was impressed, softened; he began
to think and feel.

Given a couple of centuries of this, we really begin to see some very
encouraging results. We realize that for once we are being allowed to
study a civilization in its earlier stages, to be present almost at its
birth, to watch the methods of the Master-builder in the making of a
race. Gazing at similar developments in the days of Egypt and Babylon,
we guessed vaguely that they must have been of slowest growth. Here at
last one takes place under our eyes, and it does not need so many ages
after all. There is no study more fascinating than to trace the slow
changes stamping themselves ineradicably upon the Teutonic mind and soul
during these misty far-off centuries of turmoil.

On the whole, of course, the sixth, seventh, and even the eighth
centuries form a period of strife. The Teutons had spent too many ages
warring against one another in petty strife to abandon the pleasure in a
single generation. Men fought because they liked fighting, much as they
play football to-day. Then, too, there came another great outburst of
Semite religious enthusiasm. Mahomet[9] started the Arabs on their
remarkable career of conquest.

THE MAHOMETAN OUTBURST

Mahomet himself died (632) before he had fully established his influence
even over Arabia: his successors had practically to reconquer it. Yet
within five years of his death the Arabs had mastered Syria.[10] They
spread like some sudden, unexpected, immeasurable whirlwind. Ancient
Persia went down before them. By 640 they had trampled Egypt under foot,
and destroyed the celebrated Alexandrian library.[11] They swept over
all Africa, completely obliterating every trace of Vandal or of Roman.
Their dominion reached farther east than that of Alexander. They wrested
most of its Asiatic possessions from the pretentious Empire at
Constantinople, and reduced that exhausted State to a condition of
weakness from which it never arose. Then, passing on through their
African possessions, they entered Spain and overthrew the kingdom of
the Visigoths.[12] It was a storm whose end no man could measure, whose
coming none could have foreseen. And then, just a century after
Mahomet's death, the Arabs, pressing on through Spain, encountered the
Franks on the plains of France.

A thousand years had passed since Semitic Carthage had fallen before
Aryan Rome. Now once again the Semites, far more dangerous because in
the full tide of the religious frenzy of their race, threatened to
engulf the Aryan world. They were repulsed by the still sturdy Franks
under their great leader, Charles Martel, at Tours. The battle of
Tours[13] was only less momentous to the human race than that of
Chalons. What the Arab domination of Europe would have meant we can
partly guess by looking at the lax and lawless states of Northern Africa
to-day. These fair lands, under both Roman and Vandal, had long been
sharing the lot of Aryan Europe; they seemed destined to follow in its
growth and fortune. But the Arab conquest restored them to Semitism,
made Asia the seat from which they were to have their training, attached
them to the chariot of sloth instead of that of effort. What they are
to-day, all Europe might have been.

Yet with the picture of these fifth and sixth and seventh centuries of
battle full before us, we are not tempted to glory overmuch even in such
victories as Tours and Chalons. We see war for what it has ever
been--the curse of man, the hugest hinderance to our civilization. While
men fight they have small time for thought or art or any soft or kindly
sentiment. The survivors may with good luck develop into a stronger
breed; they are inevitably more brutal.

We thus begin to recognize just how necessary for human progress was the
work Rome had been engaged in. By holding the world at peace, she had
given humankind at least the opportunity to grow. The moment her
restraining hand was shaken off, war sprang up everywhere. Not only do
we find the inheritors of her territory fighting among themselves, they
are exposed to the savagery of Attila, the fury of the Arabs. New bands
of more distant Teutons come, ever pushing in amid their half-settled
brethren, overthrowing them in turn. The Lombards capture Northern
Italy, only Venice remaining safe amid her marshes.[14] The
East-Franks--that is, the semi-barbarians still remaining in the
wilderness--master the more cultured West-Franks, who hold Gaul. No
sooner does civilization start up than it is trodden on.

THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE

At length there arose among the Franks a series of stalwart rulers,
keen-eyed, penetrating somewhat at least into the meaning of their
world, determined to have peace if they must fight for it. Charles
Martel was one of these. Then came his son Pepin,[15] who held out his
hand to the bishops of Rome, acknowledged their vast civilizing
influence, saved them from the Lombards, and joined church and state
once more in harmony. After Pepin came his son, Charlemagne, whose reign
marks an epoch of the world. The peace his fathers had striven for, he
won at last, though only, as they had done, by constant fighting. He
attacked the Arabs and reduced them to permanent feebleness in Spain. He
turned backward the Teutonic movement, marching his Franks into the
German forests, and in campaign after campaign defeating the wild tribes
that still remained there. The strongest of them, the Saxons, accepted
an enforced Christianity. Even the vague races beyond the German borders
were so harried, so weakened, that they ceased to be a serious menace.

Charlemagne[16] had thus in very truth created a new empire. He had
established at least one central spot, so hedged round by border
dependencies that no later wave of barbarians ever quite succeeded in
submerging it. The bones of the great Emperor, in their cathedral
sepulchre at Aix, have never been disturbed by an unfriendly hand, Paris
submitted to no new conquest until over a thousand years later, when the
nineteenth century had stolen the barbarity from war. It was then no
more than a just acknowledgment of Charlemagne's work when, on Christmas
Day of the year 800, as he rose from kneeling at the cathedral altar in
Rome, he was crowned by the Pope whom he had defended, and hailed by an
enthusiastic people as lord of a re-created "Holy Roman Empire."

In England, also, the centuries of warfare among the Britons and the
various antagonistic Teutonic tribes seemed drawing to an end. Egbert
established the "heptarchy";[17] that is, became overlord of all the
lesser kings. Truly for a moment civilization seemed reestablished. The
arts returned to prominence. England could send so noteworthy a scholar
as Alcuin to the aid of the great Emperor. Charlemagne encouraged
learning; Alcuin established schools. Once more men sowed and reaped in
security. The "Roman peace" seemed come again.

[FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME V.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See _Visigoths Pillage Rome_, page 1.

[2] See _The English Conquest of Britain_, page 55.

[3] See _Huns Invade the Eastern Roman Empire_, page 28.

[4] See _Attila Invades Western Europe_, page 72.

[5] See _Foundation of Venice_, page 95.

[6] See _Clovis Founds the Kingdom of the Franks_, page 113.

[7] See _Publication of the Justinian Code_, page 138.

[8] See _Augustine's Missionary Work in England_, page 182.

[9] See _The Hegira_, page 198.

[10] See _The Saracen Conquest of Syria_, page 247.

[11] See _Saracens Conquer Egypt_, page 278.

[12] See _Saracens in Spain_, page 301.

[13] See _Battle of Tours_, page 313.

[14] See _Evolution of the Dogeship in Venice_, page 292.

[15] See _Founding of the Carlovingian Dynasty_, page 324.

[16] See _Career of Charlemagne_, page 334.

[17] See _Egbert Becomes King of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy_, page 372.

VISIGOTHS PILLAGE ROME

A.D. 410

EDWARD GIBBON

Of the two great historical divisions of the Gothic race the
Visigoths or West Goths were admitted into the Roman Empire in A.D.
376, when they sought protection from the pursuing Huns, and were
transported across the Danube to the Moesian shore. The story of
their gradual progress in civilization and growth in military
power, which at last enabled them to descend with overwhelming
force upon Rome itself, forms one of the romances of history.

From their first reception into Lower Moesia the Visigoths were
subjected to the most contemptuous and oppressive treatment by the
Romans who had admitted them into their domains. At last the
outraged colonists were provoked to revolt, and a stubborn war
ensued, which was ended at Adrianople, August 9, A.D. 378, by the
defeat of the emperor Valens and the destruction of his army,
two-thirds of his soldiers perishing with Valens himself, whose
body was never found.

In 382 a treaty was made which restored peace to the Eastern
Empire, the Visigoths nominally owning the sovereignty of Rome, but
living in virtual independence. They continued to increase in
numbers and in power, and in A.D. 395, under Alaric, their King,
they invaded Greece, but were compelled by Stilicho, in 397, to
retire into Epirus. Stilicho was the commander-in-chief of the
Roman army, and the guardian of the young emperor Honorius. Alaric
soon afterward became commander-in-chief of the Roman forces in
Eastern Illyricum and held that office for four years. During that
time he remained quiet, arming and drilling his followers, and
waiting for the opportunity to make a bold stroke for a wider and
more secure dominion.

In the autumn of A.D. 400, while Stilicho was campaigning in Gaul,
Alaric made his first invasion of Italy, and for more than a year
he ranged at will over the northern part of the peninsula. Rome was
made ready for defence, and Honorius, the weak Emperor of the
Western Empire, prepared for flight into Gaul; but on March 19th of
the year 402, Stilicho surprised the camp of Alaric, near
Pollentia, while most of his followers were at worship, and after a
desperate battle they were beaten. Alaric made a safe retreat, and
soon afterward crossed the Po, intending to march against Rome, but
desertions from his ranks caused him to abandon that purpose. In
403 he was overtaken and again defeated by Stilicho at Verona,
Alaric himself barely escaping capture. Stilicho, however,
permitted him--some historians say, bribed him--to withdraw to
Illyricum, and he was made prefect of Western Illyricum by
Honorius. Such is the prelude, followed in history by the amazing
exploits of Alaric's second invasion of Italy.

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