VALOIS, BURGUNDY, HAPSBURG, BOURBON.
(The italics mark the line of descent.)
Charles-le-temeraire, Charles-the-rash, miscalled by the English, Charles-the-bold, was the last Valois duke of Burgundy. He left an only child Mary of Burgundy who married Maximilian of Hapsburg, afterward emperor. Their son was the Archduke Philip who is counted as Philip the first of Spain though he never reigned. Philip married Joanna daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and sister of Catharine of Aragon wife of Henry VIII. The son of Philip and Joanna was the great emperor Charles-the-fifth who was Charles the first of Spain. The crown of Spain then fell from father to son, to Philip II., Philip III., Philip IV. and Charles II. where the male line of the elder branch of Hapsburg ended. The crown then fell to Philip V. (Bourbon), grandson of Louis XIV. and Maria Teresa eldest daughter of Philip IV.
The younger, the Austrian branch of the House of Hapsburg, is descended from the emperor Ferdinand brother of Charles-the-fifth.
Hoche
MANY years ago I knew a Frenchman whose father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La Vendée fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him.
There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.
The French themselves hold that next to Napoleon Bonaparte, the most brilliant soldier thrown to the surface by the revolution, was Lazarus Hoche. This seems too to be the opinion of a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica who says that the death of Hoche deprived the French people of the only man capable of making head against the ambition of the Corsican. And it still adds force to that view to bear in mind how short a time was allotted him to win immortality: he never lived to be thirty. Indeed I remember but one general in history who died so young with so high a reputation; and that was that wondrous boy Gaston de Foix nephew of Louis XII., who fell at the age of twenty-three at Ravenna after having there as elsewhere totally overthrown the famous Spanish infantry.
Perhaps some honest reader still callow from the study of John Richard Green, may remind me that that unique historian not only makes the Spanish infantry triumphant at Ravenna, but cites it as their typical exploit. Well, we must be thankful that Mr. Green does not cite the Caudine Forks as the typical exploit of the Roman legions.
Lazarus Hoche was born near Versailles in June 1768. He was the son, not of a common workman as some of the encyclopedias do vainly talk, but of a common soldier, or rather of an uncommon soldier; for his father on account of his uncommonness, was taken from the line and made keeper of the royal kennels at Versailles; and the first useful occupation of the boy, if useful it were, was to help his father in the care of the king’s hounds.
Nature had endowed him with a handsome and vigorous body and a precocious intellect. He had a maternal uncle who was curé of Saint Germain-en-laye and a man of some learning. This good priest interested himself in the education of his clever nephew, and taught him the elements of latin and mathematics; and thus he received instruction beyond what was common in his station in life. And you academical gentlemen will insist I suppose, that his subsequent advancement was all owing to this latin and mathematics.
But his instincts were military and he resolved to be a soldier, and with a boyish longing at the same time, to see the world, he enlisted when he was sixteen in what he supposed to be a regiment bound for the Indies; but his friends had played a trick on him, and he found himself enrolled in a home regiment. He made the best of it however, and soon attracted the attention of his superiors by his prompt and intelligent observance of duty.
But there were some exceptions to his good behavior. On one occasion a soldier of his regiment had been killed in a pot-house brawl. Hoche joined with some of his comrades in razing to the ground the house of the assassin. For his share in this riot he was condemned to three months imprisonment. Another act of violence which cost the life of a fellow being, brought him no punishment whatever, as it was within the tolerance of the service. A corporal was noted for his skill in handling the sabre. He had already slain two opponents in his duels. He insulted Hoche who instantly challenged him. Hoche received a cut across the forehead, which nearly split his skull, and left a long deep scar there the rest of his days; but he put an end to the duelling of his antagonist by running him through the body.
Of his personal comeliness it is related that once, on parade, a noble lady pointed him out to her companion and exclaimed: What a splendid looking general that would make! She little knew she was playing the part of a prophetess.
And it was not long before his fine bearing stood him in still better stead. Near by was a regiment of grenadiers of the king’s guard. These superb fellows had noticed the soldier-like qualities of Hoche, and they petitioned that he might be enrolled among them. The petition was granted.
These men when in barracks, were allowed to earn money by any honest industry that did not interfere with their duty, and Hoche addicted himself to embroidery. If you think this an effeminate occupation for a soldier, I would remind those of you who have been to sea in a sailing ship, that you must have observed that sailors who are certainly as rough as soldiers, are often skillful in needle work useful and ornamental.
With the money Hoche earned in this manner, he bought books, especially books of history; and as he dwelt upon the renown of Hannibal and of Caesar, of Turenne and Condé, of Marlborough and of Frederic, it was his dream to write his own name some day on that immortal list, I say dream, for it could be nothing more then, under the old régime when the command of armies was the prerogative of the nobility alone.
In 1789 occurred the first overt act of the French revolution—the storming of the Bastille. It was the same year that George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States. The end of our revolution was the beginning of that of the people of France, and ours precipitated theirs. It was high time perhaps that the old régime came to an end; but we Americans ought none the less look back upon it with gratitude. Without its aid we could not have compassed our independence. It was the troops sent us by Louis XVI. that offset the German forces that came here in aid of our enemies.
Hoche was too well informed not to understand the issue between the government and the people, and he believed in his heart that the people were right; but he was the sworn soldier of the king and he was determined to defend him so long as defence was possible. He was present at Versailles when the Parisian mob worthily led by that frail beauty Théroigne de Méricourt broke into the chateau and made the king come out on the balcony with the cap of liberty on his head. Hoche stood there shoulder to shoulder with his comrades ready to charge upon the rabble the moment the signal was given. But the signal was never given: Louis XVI. was the best of men and the worst of kings: He had not the heart to shed the blood of his subjects, so they shed his blood.
Legend says there was also there on that occasion another young man of still rarer qualities, who whispered to a companion that the king was an imbecile not to order those fine guards to slaughter the vagabonds and put an end to the disturbance. The anecdote may not be true, but it is none the less characteristic: it is perhaps the reflex of what that young man himself did a few years later.
The king was led to Paris and kept virtually a captive in the Tuileries, and Hoche with his regiment passed under the command of La Fayette whose purpose was not to overthrow the monarchy but to reform it on a constitutional basis. But the French revolution was different from ours: ours was aristocratic, a change at the head only, still retaining remnants of feudal tyranny—such for example as the divine right of sovereigns not to pay their debts—which we are not yet emancipated enough to throw off. Theirs on the contrary was democratic, or rather volcanic, the very dregs from the bottom thrown to the top.
La Fayette was obliged to fly for his life; and the army went over and fraternised as it was called, with the populace. The rise of Hoche was now rapid. Beside courage he was gifted with a thoughtful self-possession which never failed him. The display of this virtue on an occasion when he covered the retreat of a beaten army, attracted the notice of Carnot the minister of war—“the organiser of victory” as he was called—and he made Hoche a brigadier general.
In 1792 the supreme authority of France was usurped by a body known as the Convention. In 1793 the king was brought to the block, and all Europe rose to avenge his death. The English government had fitted out an army under the command of the duke of York, son of George III., to cooperate with the allied enemies of the new republic. York was a methodical soldier, and minding the old rule not to leave a hostile stronghold in the rear, he turned aside to besiege Dunkirk in the north-east corner of France, instead of hastening south. Carnot caught at the fault of the Englishman and put it to profit. He ordered Hoche to throw himself into Dunkirk with a few battallions and hold it to the last extremity. Hoche found the defences in bad condition and the inhabitants who were a conglomeration of various nationalities, not in the least disposed to aid him in repairing them. He seized the chief magistrate and threw him into prison, and warned the other functionaries that they would be sent to join him, if they did not come up to his help against the English. They came; and by the time the duke had established his lines of circumvallation with scientific skill, Hoche and his men were prepared to do all that was expected of them, namely, to keep the duke of York out of mischief for some time to come. One day the sound of cannon was heard off south, and soon the English were observed to be preparing to quit. Hoche though shut in from outward news, penetrated the situation. An allied army under Freytag coming up from the south-east, and a French army under Houchard coming up from the south-west, had intercepted each other and given battle. The English had received a message from Freytag, notifying them to come to the aid of their friends. Hoche resolved that they should do nothing of the sort. He sallied out upon them, threw them into some disorder and thus detained them till the battle of Hondschoote was lost and won. Houchard victorious pushed for Dunkirk. The English, hindered by this fresh sortie of Hoche, came tardily and faultily into order of battle, and after a short struggle, broke and fled leaving their artillery and their baggage.
Hoche shared with Houchard the glory of this double victory. The conduct of the duke of York was the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in which he was duly whitewashed as became a prince of the blood. Had he been a commoner he might have shared the fate of Admiral Byng.[16]
Carnot showed anew his appreciation of Hoche by giving him the command of the army of the Moselle—a grave responsibility for a youth of twenty-five; and Carnot made the mistake of not letting the responsibility rest squarely upon his shoulders: he sent commissioners to direct him.
An allied army superior in force and in a strong position, under the duke of Brunswick, lay at Keyserslautern. The commissioners counselled an attack. Hoche though daring was not rash, and the born instinct of the soldier within him whispered that the risk was too great; so he hesitated. The commissioners insisted, and he led forward his troops. The battle lasted two days, and never perhaps was the genius of the young general more conspicuous. Repulsed, he marched his men off the field as he had marched them on—shoulder to shoulder, beaten but not demoralized, and the enemy did not follow him up.
Carnot was sufficiently just not to blame him for this failure. On the contrary he sent him reënforcements, and he sent him also what he would willingly have dispensed with—fresh commissioners to advise him. Hoche had pondered deeply the cause of his defeat, and had resolved that that cause should not again operate. He refused to consult with the commissioners: he would neither tell them his own plans nor listen to theirs. Taking off his cap and shaking it in their faces in that dramatic style so very French, he exclaimed: If that cap knew my thoughts I would throw it in the fire! Finding him obdurate they went back to Paris and made no favorable report of him.
Hoche had under him at this time several officers of about his own age who afterwards made their mark in history: Moreau the victor of Hohenlinden, who fell at last at Dresden fighting against France; Ney the bravest of the brave. Desaix who came late but not too late on the field of Marengo, and died at the head of his column; Le Fèvre the hero of the 18. Brumaire when he scattered the council of the five hundred with his grenadiers, and saved Bonaparte; Soult who won his baton of marshal by piercing the Russian centre at Austerlitz. He distinguished himself afterwards in Spain; and what is a more interesting distinction for you esthetic gentlemen, he sold to the French government for 615,000 francs—the highest price ever paid for a picture—the sublime Murillo of the Louvre. And I am sorry I cannot tell you how he came by it: there was scandal thereunto anent.
It is probable that Hoche imparted his plans to these able lieutenants, for it is otherwise inexplicable that they should have acquiesced in the strange measures he adopted. Instead of seeking the enemy, he took every pains to avoid him. He blew up the bridges and tore up the roads; and the allies seeing him bent on defensive measures only, failed to watch him as he deserved. And there were disquieting rumors in Paris. Hoche was certainly not a coward, but was he not a traitor? Had he not sold himself for Austrian gold? Such things had been.
One day the news came that he and his army had disappeared in the night. Perhaps they had gone over to the enemy; for the atmosphere was charged with treachery, and men were daily changing their politics with the changing fortune of war. The next news of Hoche was that he had fallen as if from the clouds, upon a strong Austrian position the other side of the Vosges mountains. And the position was so strong too that for a moment he was in danger of a second repulse. A battery on a height made such havoc with his men that they quailed. Six hundred francs a piece for those cannon! cried he, pointing with his sword. It is a bargain replied one of his officers. You shall judge between us added another as they clambered up. The battery was taken; and the Austrians fell back on the Prussian position at Sultz where their joint forces awaited the coming of the French. They did not wait long and their defeat was total.
The victory was as important as decisive. The purpose of the allied army there was to prevent the junction of Hoche and Pichegru, the latter commanding the army of the Rhine. That junction now took place. According to military rule Pichegru the older man and the older officer outranked Hoche and was entitled to the chief command; but the Convention, dazzled by the brilliancy with which Hoche had redeemed his reputation decreed that he should have the precedence, and Pichegru after some protest consented to serve under his boy superior.
The allies had withdrawn behind the fortifications of Landau and Wissembourg, and so long as they were there the French frontier was infested and nothing permanent accomplished. Hoche resolved to dislodge them. He told his troops he had a bloody task for them: They must storm Landau! They responded by waving their caps and shouting Landau ou la mort, Landau or death! And it was no idle boast: Amid a scene of sickening carnage Landau was taken and the allies disheartened did not wait for that terrible forlorn hope to mount to the breach at Wissembourg.
The frontier was thus cleared of enemies, and the Republic set free to follow up that spasmodic career of conquest which brought for a moment the continent to her feet.
Hoche now took it into his head to get married, though we cannot imagine how he could stop fighting long enough to attend to anything so sentimental. Perhaps he did not object to variety in his fighting. He had met at Thionville a graceful girl who had strongly attracted him. On inquiry he learned that her character was as commendable as her manners, and he offered her his hand. Her family though respectable was not wealthy, and through diffidence she hesitated. What was she that the first soldier of France should pick her out! But her friends would not let her miss such a chance, and they were married; and I leave you to the chronicles which aver that she made him a good wife.
At any other epoch of the history of France, and at any epoch whatever of the history of any other people, a young general who had encircled his name with so much glory, would have been the idol of the nation; but France had fallen upon strange lines. The Reign of Terror was at its height; the Convention had turned upon itself; the Girondists, republicans all, had gone to the scaffold; Danton the rival of Robespierre, had fallen; and that sanguinary triumvirate Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon were the arbiters of life and death to all so unfortunate as to live under the aegis of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
It is necessary to consider a moment the state of things under the Terror, in order to make the rest of this story credible. Lamartine, a republican himself, says: “More than eight thousand suspects encumbered the prisons. In one night three hundred families the most notable in France, historical, military, parliamentary, episcopal, were arrested. No crimes were invented for them: they were guilty by the quarter they lived in, by their rank, their fortune, their relations, their religion, their opinions, their presumed opinions. One died for having said what he thought; another for having held his tongue; one for having emigrated and come back; another for having staid at home; one for having increased the public distress by not spending his income; another for having insulted the public distress by spending it too lavishly. In a word there were no longer any innocent or any guilty: there were only the proscribers and the proscribed.”
Under this fearful régime many of the truest and bravest soldiers of France had perished: the duke of Lauzun and Biron who had fought for us under Washington and La Fayette; the count d’Estaing who at the same time commanded the French fleet off our coast; Custine the victor of Mayence, and strangest of all, Houchard the victor of Honschoote. La Fayette had saved himself by flight; so had Dumouriez the victor of Jemappes. Some of these were proscribed because they were of noble birth; others because, though plebeian and republican, they did not fully come up to the standard of fanaticism then in vogue.
Robespierre and Saint Just are two of the monsters of history; yet we cannot doubt that they were animated by what they regarded as devoted and unselfish patriotism. They were as ready to lay down their own lives as to take the lives of others, and they did lay them down.
They were among the best illustrations of that saying of Gibbon that fanaticism can turn the noblest natures into beasts of prey.
Hoche had lost much of the friendship of Carnot by flouting his authority in the matter of the commissioners, and by setting up on his own account as an “organiser of victory.” Robespierre looked upon all great warriors as a menace to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; and since the campaign of Wissembourg, Hoche was regarded as the first of living generals. He had moreover been approached by the royalists with the same temptation that was afterwards spread before Bonaparte, namely, that he should undertake the rôle of General Monk, and if he succeeded, the lofty function of Constable of France was to be revived for him. He had scorned these offers; yet with the perversity of human nature especially of human nature under the Terror, he was held accountable for their having been made.
The Convention resolved to arrest him before he became too strong for them. But did they dare seize him at the head of the troops he had led and who adored him? The Terrorists had not only General Monk to reflect upon but the case at their own doors of Dumouriez. When they had sent commissioners to arrest that officer in his camp, he had ordered a file of soldiers to seize them and deliver them over to the enemy.[17]
Hoche was a spirit of higher stamp than Dumouriez. Might he not improve on the methods of that captain, and march at once on Paris? So they thought best to use indirection: they lavished eulogies upon him, and invited him to lay down his present command and accept that of the army of Italy—a force just levied for the invasion of the Italian provinces of the House of Austria. He readily consented to the change, for that invasion was a favorite idea of his own. The Convention named to succeed him in the place he was vacating, Jourdan who justified their choice the next year by gaining the victory of Fleurus.
Hoche was completing the preparations for the campaign which another and a greater was to lead, when a warrant came for his arrest. He made no resistance. Perhaps resistance was useless; perhaps he considered obedience a paramount duty; perhaps he trusted in his star and believed they would not dare put him to death, and his star did not mislead him. He was taken to Paris. Robespierre and Saint Just were in favor of his immediate execution, but Couthon either from prudence or a worthy purpose to save Hoche, pleaded that it might not be well to sacrifice that young hero with such laurels on his brow—the people might not take it in good part; and that it would be safer to keep him in custody till time and the victories of others had dimmed the lustre of his reputation. So he was put into the prison of the Concièrgerie.
To do the Terrorists justice they were not disposed to treat their prisoners with any other cruelty than to cut their heads off; and Hoche was allowed the consolation of writing to his wife and of receiving her letters. He was soon joined by a young man named Thoiras of whose imprisonment he was the innocent cause. Thoiras was a friend of the family of Madame Hoche, and had expressed indignation at Hoche’s arrest.
To be imprisoned was to be condemned to die. No trial, no examination; but every evening the Committee of Public Safety went over the list, and marked off chiefly at random, as many as could be guillotined on the morrow; and this fatal roll was read aloud each morning, in the different prisons.
One day the name of Thoiras was called. He bade farewell to Hoche, and drew from his pocket a watch which he begged him to keep for his sake. That watch is still in the family of Hoche. That is to say, the last I know of it, it belonged to the Marchioness of Roye, Hoche’s daughter; but that lady was born about a century ago.
Among other interesting prisoners whose acquaintance Hoche made in the Concièrgerie, were two young and charming widows whose fate proved different from what was then threatened. One of them, instead of having her head cut off by the guillotine, was to have it encircled by a diadem. It was Josephine de Beauharnais. The other was already a passive agent in a plot for the overthrow of the Terror. We shall say more about her presently.
As fast as prisoners were led out to execution others were brought in to take their places; and who might be the new comers was a daily subject of mournful curiosity to those already incarcerated. One day there were ushered into the Concièrgerie three men who caused great amazement. Two were recognized as Saint Just and Couthon. The third had his face bound up with a bloody napkin, but it was soon whispered about that it was none other than the terrible Robespierre himself.
The tale has been told a thousand times: perhaps you will listen to it the thousand and first time. One of the youngest and ablest members of the Convention was Jean Lambert Tallien. He was not a good man: his hand was as blood-stained as the rest. He had clamored for the death of the king, and for the death of his co-republicans the Girondists. He had seconded Danton in the massacres of September. He had recently been sent to Bordeaux to see that the Terror was duly administered there, and that an adequate number of heads fell daily in the market-place, and he had fulfilled his mission with diabolical fidelity.
There lived in Bordeaux at that time one Madame de Fontenay whose beauty Balzac says was one of Nature’s masterpieces. This was the second of the two young widows whom Hoche had met in prison. I have called her a widow but she was not quite that: she was a divorced woman. Her husband who was a nobleman and a royalist had emigrated, that is, had fled from the guillotine and from such fellows as Tallien. The republic had decreed that a wife who was patriotic enough to stay behind under such circumstances, should be entitled to a divorce; and Madame de Fontenay who loved her country better than she loved her husband, had availed herself of this law, and was now free. But her name was aristocratic and her friends respectable, and in the daily increasing barbarity of the Terror she was in great danger. As fearless and capable as she was beautiful she resolved to meet the peril half way. She paid a visit to Tallien and pleaded her cause so eloquently that he assured her of his protection. He went back to Paris, but he could not get out of his head the vision of that appealing, resistless woman. He wrote to her and she wrote back. He urged her to come to Paris so that he might befriend her more effectually, and she came.
This virtuous passion seemed to work a change in that bad man. He determined to shed no more blood; he began to hang back in the hellish path of the Convention. Robespierre looked askance at him and soon became an unfriend. Thinking to provoke Tallien to some rash act that would afford a pretext for sending him to the guillotine, Robespierre seized Madame de Fontenay and threw her in prison. Well, it did provoke Tallien to a rash act, but it was not he who went to the guillotine. He became the chief of a conspiracy for the destruction of the triumvirate. He was urged forward by two of the strongest of motives: to save his own life and to save the life of the woman he loved. The plot spread, for every member of the Convention who differed in opinion even unwittingly from Robespierre, was in danger of the scaffold.
On the evening of the 8th. Thermidor a month that embraced a part of July and August, the conspirators held council. It was resolved that in the session of the morrow Tallien should lead the attack on Robespierre; and the rest swore by all they held sacred which was not much, to back him to the death.
The ninth Thermidor—day big with fate—epoch in the history of the revolution—dawned. The Convention assembled. Tallien gained the tribune. He was an impressive speaker, and when he had fixed the attention of the assembly he proceeded first to comment on the acts of the triumvirate, then to criticise, then to call in question, then to condemn, then to denounce. It was now his life or theirs and he hurled defiance at them.
When he had done, Robespierre rose. He was evidently taken aback by this unexpected arraignment. He made a feeble reply in which he dilated on his own devotion to the public cause and on the heinousness of the traitors who were turning against him. He then looked around for the usual response: Vive la République! Vive Robespierre! Not a word. There was dead silence. Presently a voice was heard: A bas les tyrans, down with the tyrants! The cry was echoed and reëchoed. Tallien saw the hour was come. He ordered the guards to arrest Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon. The soldiers seeing the triumvirs still calmly seated could not believe that three men just now all powerful could be condemned, and they hesitated. The order was repeated not only by Tallien but by an outcry of his backers who were now a multitude; and the guards led them forth. They took them first to the palace of the Luxembourg where Robespierre seeing that all was lost, drew a pistol and attempted to kill himself, but he took aim so badly that the ball merely broke his jaw and went out at the opposite cheek. Hence the bloody napkin.
They were condemned to death by the same Committee of Public Safety which a few days before was their pliant tool of assassination.
It was the end. The Reign of Terror was over, and all political prisoners were set free. It was thus that Hoche and Josephine and Madame de Fontenay recovered their liberty.
I suppose you ladies will not let me off from the rest of the love affairs of that fascinating dame and Tallien. Well, they were married, and Madame Tallien was one of the queens of beauty and fashion under the Directory the Consulate and the Empire. It was in her drawing room that Bonaparte first met Josephine. After he became emperor he quarrelled with Madame Tallien. She was too witty and had too little reverence for the demi-god; so he would no longer let Josephine associate with her old friend and fellow prisoner.
Tallien lived to be old. In his last years he was supported by a small pension granted him by Louis XVIII. whose brother Tallien had done to death. Such was the vengeance of the House of Bourbon. And it was another prince of that house who brought from Saint Helena the remains of the arch-enemy of his race, and placed them in that superb tomb under the dome of the Invalids. Contrast this with what the English restoration did with the Regicides and with the remains of Cromwell.
The greatest of French rulers sleeps in the most gorgeous mausoleum of modern times: the greatest of English rulers—Where is his grave?
Hoche was no sooner out of prison than the Committee of Public Safety who had been asking themselves day after day whether the time had come to send him to the guillotine, gave him a new command. This time it was one he would fain have shrunk from; for he was to draw his sword against Frenchmen. In the west of France was the new Department of La Vendée. The inhabitants were rural in their occupations and primitive in their manners. They were devoted Roman Catholics and consequently devoted royalists. Many priests flying for their lives from Liberty, Equality and Fraternity had taken refuge among them, and had strengthened their fealty to the old régime. The Vendéeans had risen in arms against the Republic, and the insurrection had extended to neighboring Departments. Such was the valor of the men and the skill of their leaders that they had thus far repulsed every force sent against them. Even Kléber afterwards the victor of Heliopolis, had been defeated and driven back. France face to face with Europe in arms, could hardly survive with this ulcer in her bosom: it was therefore her best soldier that she now chose to deal with it. Hoche set about the task with characteristic energy. He made no mistakes, he suffered no defeats and at the end of a sanguinary campaign La Vendée was pacificated, that is, was turned into a desert.
It is illustrative of the imbecility with which this European war upon France was for some years carried on, that no adequate effort was made to take advantage of this revolt of the Vendéeans. The only important attempt to second them was the expedition to Quiberon Bay. A small force of emigrants, that is of French royalists were conveyed to that bay by an English fleet. They landed and fortified their position; and as it was commanded by the English guns, they felt themselves safe till they could form junction with the insurgents. But they had counted without their host, that is without Hoche; and almost before they thought he could be aware of their coming, his troops were scaling their defenses. The affair was soon over, and but few of the invaders escaped. What added to the carnage was that the guns of the English fleet played the while upon the scene of action, mowing down with cynical impartiality friend and foe alike. The English commander no doubt felt that every man laid low was one Frenchman the less, and how could he send ashore first to ascertain his politics?
It was toward the close of Hoche’s campaign in La Vendée that another campaign more notable was in progress on the eastern frontier. Let us take a glance at the chain of events that caused this campaign to be so remarkable.
The Convention was not an adequate government for a great people, but it was better than none. Such however was not the opinion of the socialists and communists and anarchists who swarmed in Paris, and had gained control of the Sections, that is of the ward-meetings. These philosophers held that the best government was the one that governed the least, and therefore an ideal government was one that did not govern at all. They rose to suppress the Convention, so that every man might be a law unto himself, and Liberty, Equality and Fraternity do their perfect work. The crisis was alarming: the Convention appealed for protection to General Barras the military head of Paris. Barras had under him an artillery officer full of original ideas. This was the young man already referred to as having been at Versailles when the mob broke into the palace, and as having called the king an imbecile for not ordering his guards to use their bayonets. Among his other excellences this young gentleman was handsome. We have said that Hoche was handsome, but their respective success in the path of beauty, was different. Hoche was tall and of martial aspect. This other Apollo was small of stature and had the features and the hands and the feet of a good-looking girl. Nevertheless he was not a favorite with the ladies. He had ways they did not like. When they talked he would not listen as he ought, and as we all ought, but would look off into vacancy as if rapt in thought; and they were malicious enough to say that he was rapt in thought—the thought of his own attractions; and considering the complex character of the man it is not impossible the ladies were right. With men however he stood better. Few could come in contact with him without feeling his influence, and Barras was often led by him. To him then he had recourse in the threatened peril. The young officer planted cannon in different parts of the town under lieutenants of his own mettle, and himself took charge of a few pieces in the street Saint Honoré at the corner where stands the church Saint Roch. The insurgents came swarming up. He gave them no warning of what was in store for them but waited till they were within range, and then let drive into them a pitiless storm of grape-shot. The pavement was strewed with the dead and dying. Revolt had met its match: the Convention was saved.
A few weeks later, in October 1795, the Convention laid down its functions and was replaced by the Directory which body in the following February, conferred upon this remorseless gunner the command of the army of Italy, the army from which Hoche had been withdrawn to be thrown into prison. Behold then this new apostle of grape-shot red-handed from the slaughter of his fellow republicans, at the head of the best and worst army of the Republic! His men as it proved, were fully gifted with that fanatical valor which made the revolutionary soldier so formidable; but their clothes were in rags and their shoes full of holes, and as for food Thiers intimates that it was a choice between stealing and starving. Their young commander told them what was perfectly true—for he had contracted the habit of telling the truth when it would serve—that he was as poor as they; silver and gold had he none; but their bayonets were in good order, and he was going to lead them to a land of promise flowing with food and raiment and money to boot. And at the head of these marauders he passed into Italy.
I need not remind you how he made short work of all opposition; how three allied armies each superior to his own, went down one after another before his ragamuffins as if three earthquakes had yawned for them. History had never before and has never since recorded so rapid a succession of decisive victories.
Hoche read with mingled admiration and envy the bulletins that came from this astonishing campaign. He was loud in his applause of the new hero, but he was at no pains to conceal his chagrin that he himself had not been permitted to lead those troops to that field of glory. Had he been so permitted would the result have been the same? We may easily believe that his energy and soldiership would have borne him through triumphant; but that the Italian campaign would then have stood out the great masterpiece of modern warfare may be doubted. We may claim that Hoche was a great general without claiming for him the genius of Bonaparte.
La Vendée pacificated, Hoche fell into the delusion still common on the continent of Europe and in this country, that the Irish need only a little outside aid and coöperation to revolt against the domination of the English. He headed an expedition to Ireland. His fleet was scattered by a storm, and driven back; and as his services were needed elsewhere, he did not renew the attempt.
He took command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse and advanced to the left bank of the Rhine with eighty thousand men. On the right bank was the enemy in still greater force but much scattered to prevent him from crossing. The bridges and fords for miles bristled with cannon. But he outmanoevred his opponent and repeated the noted feat of Condé by crossing the Rhine in face of the enemy. A series of battles followed in which Hoche was victorious. He was pursuing the beaten allies, and had written to the Directory that he expected to bring them to bay on the banks of the Danube, when he received news of the armistice of Léoben signed by Bonaparte and the archduke Charles; and he had nothing to do but to lead back his troops foiled of their prey.
All misgiving as to the fidelity of Hoche to the Republic had vanished, while Bonaparte had already betrayed qualities which excited the distrust of the Directory just as Cromwell had excited the distrust and more of the Rump and of the Barebones parliament. The army of the Rhine was added to the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and the joint command given to Hoche, placed him in effect at the head of the military force of the nation. He was soon called to Paris to overawe the same uneasy spirits who had tried to overturn the Convention, and it is noteworthy that it was Hoche and not Bonaparte who was thus summoned, although it was the latter who had demonstrated as we have seen, the true method of arguing with those philanthropists.
The approach of Hoche to the Capital exposed him to a curious accusation which illustrates the taste of the revolutionists for mimicking the ancient Romans. The Directory had decreed a line of circumference around Paris within which no armed force must pass without special permission. Hoche had mistaken the boundary of this new Rubicon and had crossed it at the head of his men. He was arraigned before the Directory, but his explanation was accepted and he was more popular than ever.
This preference for Hoche over Bonaparte gave rise to jealousy which had no time to develop into action. Hoche returned to his camp at Wetzlar only to die. He who had faced death in so many pitched battles, was reserved to yield up his soul in peace, his wife and child kneeling at his bed-side. He was twenty-nine years old.
His death was so sudden that there was talk of poison, to which the autopsy it seems lent some color. Alexander Dumas makes no doubt that he was poisoned, and that it was done at the instigation of Bonaparte. But Dumas is not to be trusted. He had inherited the prejudices of his father a general of division who had served under Bonaparte and had had a bitter quarrel with him. Hoche had gone back to Wetzlar with a cough, and he probably died of pneumonia.
Had he lived would he too have bent the knee around the imperial throne? Probably not. Would he like Moreau have lent his sword to the enemies of France? That is still less probable. The French are apt to say that if Hoche had survived there would have been no empire, no emperor; but might there not have been something worse: France divided into two hostile camps under two great captains?
The renown of Hoche pales necessarily in the presence of that of his great rival, just as the renown of Hampden pales in presence of that of Cromwell; but as men and as patriots Hampden and Hoche were purer and nobler than their rivals. The former were ambitious for their country, the latter for themselves.
It is a satisfaction to add in conclusion, that in those impious years of the revolution, when Christian worship was neglected and at times proscribed, and a mummery in honor or dishonor of Reason and Human Nature substituted, Hoche did not share in the prevailing misbelief. He writes to a friend that he had been piously taught in his childhood, and that he still believes and reveres the religion of Jesus Christ.
One of the large war-steamers recently built by the French, is named the Hoche.
An Interesting Ancestor of Queen Victoria
IN the fourteenth century the Spanish peninsula was divided into five kingdoms: four Christian and one Mahometan or Mohametan or Mohamedan. The reader will take his choice. Wars were constant between the two faiths. This was a blessing, at least for the Christians, for if they had not been kept always shoulder to shoulder against the Moor, they would have been less usefully busy cutting each other’s throats.
Nobody in the middle ages abstained from the vice of fighting. Bishops in panoply led their flocks to battle, and even a century later than the epoch of my story, one pope Julius II., whenever spiritual weapons failed him, which was often, seized the carnal, and showed himself one of the stoutest combatants in Europe.
On the throne of Castile sat Alphonzo XI. an able monarch. He was at the head of the Christian confederacy and commanded at the battle of the Rio Salado where the Moors suffered a great defeat. Alphonzo had married Dona Maria of Portugal a woman of harsh and gloomy temper whom he did not love. His affections were wholly bestowed upon Leonora de Gusman a lady of beauty and intelligence, belonging to the higher nobility. His queen nevertheless brought him one son, Don Pedro who is known in history as Pedro-the-cruel or Peter-the-cruel. It is he who is the chief subject of this paper.
By Leonora, Alphonzo had several children of whom the eldest or rather the first born, for he had a twin brother, was Don Enrique or Henry. Henry was his father’s favorite. He conferred upon him the estates of Trastamara with the title of count, and he is known as Henry of Trastamara. These two princes Don Pedro and Don Henry both grew up brave, energetic and capable.
It is easy to believe that the queen Dona Maria hated with all the bitterness of her sombre nature her more brilliant and beautiful rival Leonora; but so long as Alphonzo lived, there was peace in the family, because, different from some cases we hear of, it was he who was master of the house. But king Alphonzo died in the flower of his age, and then the trouble began.
Don Henry and his twin brother Don Frederic and their next brother Don Tello fled from the court. They were justly suspicious of the designs of their brother Pedro who was now king and of the queen-mother. Leonora was more confiding. She suffered herself to be drawn within the power of Dona Maria, and was seized and put to death; and soon after, the same fate overtook the younger children of Leonora.
These assassinations caused of course a deadly feud between the two branches of the family; and Don Henry and his brothers raised the standard of revolt. They were defeated. Don Frederic fell in battle. Henry and Tello fled to France where they entered the service of king John II., and fought under the famous captain Bertrand Du Guesclin at the battle of Poictiers. They were still unfortunate. The French were routed at Poictiers by the English and Gascons under Edward Prince of Wales called the Black Prince.
Pedro had been affianced to a sister of the Black Prince, Joanna Plantagenet daughter of Edward III. but she had died. Pedro then married Blanche de Bourbon of the younger branch of the blood royal of France. He lived with her, the chronicles say, just three days. His affections too had gone astray. He had had the good sense to keep in his service his father’s prime minister, Albuquerque who it seems was an able statesman. Albuquerque had a beautiful cousin known in history as Maria de Padilla. Pedro fell in love with her, and his passion was as lasting as it was sudden. Indeed the only redeeming trait in that man’s character seems to have been his undying fondness for a woman he had no right to love.
Before going further let us finish the story of queen Blanche. Some years afterwards she died in prison at Medina Sidonia. The average historian despatches her by poison given by her husband’s orders; but there really seems to be no other reason to believe he poisoned her than the habit he had fallen into of dismissing in that manner those of whom he was weary. All that is certain is that she fell sick and a physician was called in. That of itself commonly sufficed in those days. Even later, in the reign of Philip III. we are told by Le Sage that whenever the fashionable physician of Valladolid was seen to enter a house, the family undertaker immediately arranged the obsequies without further notice. And the same conscientious historian relates as corroborative, that Don Alphonzo de Leyva was once taken ill at a remote country tavern. His attendants scoured the neighborhood in every direction to find a doctor but without success. The consequence was Don Alphonzo de Leyva in a day or two got well and pursued his journey.
There were assassinations enough to lay at the door of Pedro without that one, and it is bad economy to put there more than are needed.
While Blanche was still living Pedro took it into his head to have another wife. He forced one of his bishops to marry him to Dona Joanna de Castro daughter of a noble Castilian. He had lived with Blanche three days; he lived with Joanna one, and then went back to Maria de Padilla.
It was in this same family of De Castro that had happened a few years previous, a tragic event which has ever since been the theme of song and story.
The father of Joanna for some offence real or pretended, had been obliged to take refuge in Portugal. He took with him his daughter Iñez half sister of Joanna. Portugal was then under the rule of Alphonzo IV. a severe master. His son and heir Pedro of Portugal was a prince of marked capacity. He was married and lived in peace if not in happiness, with his wife Constance who was valetudinary and petulant. Iñez de Castro was beautiful and to her beauty was added grace of manner and the accomplishments of that age. Pedro was attracted by her and she was drawn towards him. Their intimacy however did not go beyond the limits of friendship: the chronicles agree that the rights of Constance were respected. She was nevertheless jealous and suspicious; she was haunted with the idea that Pedro was only waiting for her to die in order to marry Iñez, and she resolved to prevent it. She obtained from the old king an order commanding Iñez to stand god-mother to one of her children. This, according to the canons of the Church, was an effectual bar to a marriage between Iñez and the father of the child. That matter arranged to her satisfaction, Constance died.
The real barrier between Pedro and Iñez being thus removed they made short work of the artificial one. Pedro induced the bishop of Guarda to marry them privately. Iñez was established at Coimbra on the banks of the Mondego where she become the mother of children. As the marriage was not known her reputation of course suffered.
King Alphonzo was tolerant enough of this liaison such as he imagined it to be; but the enemies of Pedro and of the de Castros penetrated the secret, and betrayed it to the king. He was furious, the more so that it was whispered in his ear that Iñez was practising against the life of Ferdinand son of Constance, so as to make way to the throne for her own son.
Alphonzo determined to put a stop to the thing in the way things were put a stop to in those days. Accompanied by three of his informers he flew to Coimbra. Iñez threw herself at his feet and pleaded so piteously for her life that the old king relented. He had not the heart to kill her. He turned away and as he withdrew, he let fall some expressions of impatience at his own weakness, which proved enough for the ruffians who were with him. They went back and plunged their daggers in the bosom of Iñez.
The rage of Pedro knew no bounds. He revolted against his father, and Portugal was devastated by civil war. At last, reflecting that he was heir to that kingdom, he made peace and became so calm that it was thought he had forgotten Iñez.
His father died and Pedro ascended the throne of Portugal. His first purpose was to lay hand on the murderers of Iñez. They had fled into Castile. He sent an envoy to Pedro-the-cruel claiming them; and the latter, not hindered by the obvious justice of the claim, gave them up, that is two of them; the third had escaped into Aragon beyond the reach of either Pedro. The two surrendered were put to death. Then to rehabilitate the memory of Iñez Pedro, with the bishop of Guarda by his side, publicly proclaimed the marriage. The body of Iñez was exhumed and the ceremony of coronation performed. A crown was placed upon her brow, and the whole court with Ferdinand son of Constance at the head, passed before her and kneeled and made obeisance as to a living queen. A gorgeous funeral followed, and the remains of Iñez were conveyed to the royal sepulchre of Alcobaca. Often, say the chronicles, did Pedro go there to weep at the tomb of his beloved wife; and he lies by her side now.
Such is the history of Iñez de Castro.
To return to Pedro of Castile.
The battle of Poictiers brought about a lull in the war between England and France, and Bertrand Du Guesclin was out of employment. He afterwards rose to be constable of France, but at this time he was a sort of contractor for military work to be paid for in silver and gold; and we shall see that he was not the only knight of high renown who bargained for pay. The implements he used were chiefly the Free-Companions, a class of combatants half soldier half robber that I have already described in my essay on the Captivity.
Henry of Trastamara proposed to Bertrand to unite their resources, march into Castile and dethrone Pedro. The knight accepted the offer. He hung his banner on the outward wall, and the Free-Companions came flocking to it like crows to a carcass. But where was the money to come from? the Free-Companions would not fight without pay. So Bertrand made a speech to them. He told them they were soldiers not thieves, and that it was more respectable to aid their brother-in-arms Henry of Trastamara to conquer a kingdom than to be robbing on the highway. He appealed too to their religious sensibilities, for in the middle ages religion mingled with everything, and was invoked to sanction all purposes good or bad. He bade them trust in Providence for their pay, and reminded them that they must now and then do some good work in order to give the devil the slip in the end.
The wholesome creed of good works prevailed at that epoch: justification by faith was hanging back, waiting for Luther; and there was none of this modern nonsense about there being no devil. These fellows knew there was one, and that he had cloven hoofs, a pronged tail and horns. Some of them had seen him, and if you called the fact in question, were ready to vouch for it with broad-sword or halberd at your choice. It is an historical error that Saint Dunstan and some other gentlemen of the cloth were the only persons who saw the devil in the dark ages.
Du Guesclin’s eloquence prevailed. The men caught the spirit of their chieftain, and flung up their caps and shouted Long live Henry of Trastamara! Glory be to God on high! The hosanna was in token of their repentance and of their resolution to do their marauding for the present as soldiers. The knave of hearts himself was not more contrite when he brought back those tarts and vowed he’d steal no more.
They set out for Spain. It occurred to them on the way, that it would be a pious duty to stop at Avignon and ask the blessing of the pope.
I must refer the reader to the essay on the Captivity for an account of this visit to his Holiness. It was successful beyond their hopes, so that now with money in both pockets and the benediction of the pontiff upon their enterprise, they felt they could ransack Castile with a clear conscience.
Pedro was not able to hold his own against them. He was driven from Castile, and Henry of Trastamara was crowned at Burgos.
Pedro fled into Guienne. That province then belonged to the English. It was a portion of the inheritance of Eleanor wife of Henry II. the first king of the House of Plantagenet. Edward the Black Prince governed it as viceroy and held his court at Bordeaux. Edward had been on the point of becoming brother-in-law to Pedro who had been affianced to Edward’s sister Joan as I have already related, and Pedro induced him to undertake to recover for him the throne of Castile. Edward insisted on a preliminary contract by which Pedro was to pay the cost of the expedition if successful. He then put his legions in motion. Henry called Du Guesclin to his side. The knight, probably the best soldier in Europe after Edward, was averse to a battle. He warned Henry that their Free-Companions would not stand against the disciplined veterans of the Black Prince; but Henry was rash as well as brave. He put too much trust in his Spanish contingent who had fought against the Moors and never yet turned their backs to an enemy. The result was the battle of Najara where Henry and Bertrand were defeated; and Pedro was restored to the throne.
Edward in taking leave, admonished him to be clement to his people, and not massacre quiet folks who during the short reign of Henry, had shown respect for the king de facto; and also to pay promptly the money he owed him. Pedro promised to do both; but Edward’s back was no sooner turned than the dagger, the bowl and the cord were in full play again. Pedro seemed to think he had too many subjects and that it was well to thin them out. One night a gentleman was set upon and killed in the streets of Toledo. A woman who had witnessed the fray, testified that one of the murderers made a crackling noise with his legs in walking. This was a known peculiarity of the king: he was the assassin. He ordered a wooden effigy of himself to be made and to be beheaded in the market-place. This expiation procured for him the name of Pedro-the-just.
As to the other point of his promise, he sent to Edward a small sum and then suspended payment. Edward demanded the remainder. Pedro, after having gone through the whole litany of excuses so well known to debtors, sent him word that if he wanted his money he had better come and get it. He could now do this with impunity. The prince had contracted in the Najara campaign, a dysentery which proved fatal. He lived long enough however to know that he had served an ingrate and to foretell that the service would do him no good.
The prediction was verified. Henry no sooner learned the death of the Black Prince than he hastened to concert new measures with Du Guesclin. Once more did the knight muster his tramps. They burst into Castile this time without visiting the pope and getting his blessing: perhaps the former benediction was still of force, though they had doubtless spent the money. Pedro was besieged in one of his towns and taken prisoner. He was brought into the presence of Henry. The two brothers had not met in fifteen years. They drew their swords and flew at each other with desperate fury, and Pedro fell by the hand of Henry.
Henry of Trastamara once more mounted the throne of Castile, and this time he transmitted it to his descendants. Through a succession of Henrys and Johns and Isabellas and Joannas which I spare you, the crown of Castile fell to Isabella wife of Ferdinand of Aragon. Their grandson was the great emperor Charles V. From him is descended the present House of Spain and also the House of Bourbon.
But I have intimated that the queen of England is descended from the cruel Pedro.
Isabella daughter of Peter and Maria de Padilla, married Edmund duke of York fifth son of Edward III. Their son Richard earl of Cambridge married Anne Mortimer a marriage which tied a knot in English pedigree that it took thirty years of civil war to untie, or rather to cut with the sword. And who was Anne Mortimer to set all England together by the ears?
In the several lulls in that civil war, when a Lancastrian and a Yorkist met by chance and talked politics, the former would say: John of Gaunt was the fourth son of Edward III. while your Edmund of York was the fifth, and thus Lancaster takes precedence. Softly my good Sir, replies the Yorkist: Richard of Cambridge married Anne Mortimer. The Lancastrian responds with the hyperbole that it is not worth while to go back to king Arthur. They touch their hats and bid each other good morning, or what is quite as likely, draw their swords and fight.
But who was Anne Mortimer that no honest Lancastrian could hear her name with patience?
In Shakspeare’s Henry IV. when the Percies revolt against Henry of Lancaster, Hotspur says he will find the king asleep and holla Mortimer in his ear; he will have a starling taught to say nothing but Mortimer and give it to the king.
What was there in the name of Mortimer to startle so rough a soldier as Henry IV.?
Lionel duke of Clarence was the third son of Edward III. older therefore than John of Gaunt. Lionel married an Irish girl named Burke. They had a daughter Philippa who married Edmund Mortimer earl of March. The grand-children of Edmund and Philippa were a second Edmund Mortimer and Anne. It was this Edmund whose name Hotspur threatened to holla in the ear of the sleeping king. Edmund Mortimer was at that moment king by right, according to the laws of succession to the crown then as now. The House of Mortimer however could not vindicate its right against two such powerful usurpers as Henry IV. and Henry V. But their successor Henry VI. was one of the weakest of monarchs, and under him the Mortimers began to hold up their heads. By that time they had become Plantagenets again. Edmund had died without issue; and Anne was the last of her family. She married as I have said, Richard Plantagenet earl of Cambridge. Their son was Richard duke of York who won the first battle of Saint Albans, and came near seizing the crown. His son Edward IV. did seize it. He married that charming widow Lady Grey daughter of Jaqueline of Luxembourg. (See Two Jaquelines.) The daughter of that marriage was Elizabeth Plantagenet who married Henry Tudor, Henry VII. It is there that Plantagenet becomes Tudor. Their daughter, Margaret Tudor married James Stuart, James IV. of Scotland, and it is there that Tudor becomes Stuart. The son of James and Margaret, was another James Stuart, James V. who married Mary of Guise of that famous House of Lorraine the upshoot of which is a remarkable event in French history. It took two assassinations to save the last of the Valois from having the crown snatched from his head by that able and unscrupulous family. The daughter of James V. and Mary of Guise was Mary Stuart, queen of Scots. She married her half-cousin Henry Stuart lord Darnley who like herself was grandchild of Margaret Tudor, and next to herself, heir to the English crown. The son of Mary and Henry Stuart was James VI. of Scotland and first of England. He married Anne of Denmark, and their daughter Elizabeth Stuart married Frederic count Palatine. The daughter of Elizabeth and Frederic was Sophia who married Ernest Augustus, elector of Hanover, and became the mother of George I. George III. was great-grandson of George I. and Victoria is granddaughter of George III.
Thus have we traced the pedigree of the Queen from Peter-the-cruel.
After so fatiguing a stretch, it is a comfort to take breath and reflect that thus far the Queen has not developed the objectionable traits of her ancestor. She has never been known to poison anybody, nor has a single case of midnight assassination been made out against her.
John Wiclif
IT has been said that three men struck telling blows at the Roman hierarchy: Philip the fourth, John Wiclif and Martin Luther: a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German. The first opened the way for the other two. Philip IV. called the fair, that is the handsome, was the greatest of the Capetien kings, but his greatness was intellectual only. If he contributed largely to lead mankind out of the bog of superstition in which they were swamped, he did it simply to gratify his own rapacity and ambition. He was the first monarch to challenge the Church to a combat à outrance; and he succeeded in leading her captive literally as well as figuratively.
It is useless to try, as some quasi historians do, to explain the career of Wiclif without taking into consideration the state of the Church at that epoch; and if the reader is not informed on that point, he will not profit much by this essay till he has read, marked, learned and inwardly digested the previous one on the Captivity of Babylon.
Cotemporary with Philip IV. was Edward I. of England. The two were pretty evenly matched. Edward was probably the better soldier; but in his negotiations with Philip, the advantage remained to the latter. Edward married for his second wife Philip’s sister; and Edward’s son married Philip’s daughter. It was this last marriage that caused the hundred years war.
Edward’s grandfather king John, one of the basest of monarchs, had been compelled by his barons, to accept the Great Charter and solemnly to swear to observe it. He appealed to the pope Innocent III. to release him from that oath, and the pontiff consented on condition that John should cede to him in fee the kingdom of England and receive it back in tenancy as a fief of the Holy See, subject to an annual tribute of money as token of vassalage. The bargain was consummated: John was empowered to violate his oath, and his Holiness became Lord paramount of England. He received the tribute in silver and gold during the life of John and during the long reign of his son Henry III. the father of Edward. But when he, Edward, came to the throne he resolved not to be outdone by his incomparable brother-in-law, and refused to continue the tribute. The pope, Boniface VIII., did not follow up the claim with his usual tenacity. Perhaps because he already had his hands full with Philip; and perhaps because there supervened between him and Edward a negotiation of a different character. Edward at the head of an army, was pursuing his claim to the crown of Scotland. The Scotch appealed to the pope giving him a correct history of the transactions between the two kingdoms, by which the independence of Scotland was fully recognised. Boniface ordered Edward to withdraw his troops, alleging that Scotland belonged to him, Boniface—a new pretence little to the taste of the Scotch themselves. Edward denied the Scotch version, and told the pope that the English monarchy was founded by Brutus the Trojan in the time of the prophet Samuel, and that Scotland was subjugated and annexed by his Edward’s ancestor king Arthur, a prince for whose existence there was the same authority then as now, namely the rhymes of the nursery. Boniface was struck with the antiquity of the English monarchy and the deeds of the valorous Arthur, and he changed sides: he commanded the Scotch no longer to resist his beloved son in the Lord, king Edward.
Some years later we find Edward brought by his subjects to the verge of dethronement for his tyranny, and forced to ratify anew the Great Charter and swear to observe it; and then applying to Clement V. the French pope, Philip’s pope, first pope of the Captivity, for a dispensation from his oath. Great as Edward is made to appear to us in English histories, it is clear he was not the man to redeem his kingdom from the thraldom into which his grandsire had sold it. It was the paralysis of the political power of the Church effected by Philip IV., which gave scope to the innovations of Wiclif and led towards the emancipation of England.
We pass over the reign of Edward’s worthless son, and come to that of his grandson in the early part of whose reign Wiclif was born. The day of his birth is not known. The third Edward came honestly by his qualities moral and immoral. He was the grandson not only of Edward I. but of the terrible Philip. He was not an Englishman—the English blood in his veins was just a two hundred and fifty-sixth part. He was a French Spaniard with a taint of the Moor. He ground his subjects to powder by unprecedented taxation. He put the crown itself in pawn and left it there eight years. But he had inherited the unfailing sagacity of his maternal grandsire, and his people never brought him to terms by threatening to dethrone him.
If he himself did not turn upon the Church and rend her like Philip, he was ready to see others do it. For aught he cared, Wiclif and the other neologists of the day, might have gone over to the faith of his Saracenic ancestors, and translated into English the Koran instead of the Bible. Nor were his subjects much more true to the hierarchy: loyalty to the pope was no longer the vogue. Now-a-days not one Roman Catholic in a thousand knows that the see of Rome was ever anywhere else than in Rome: the Church has been remiss in disseminating information on that point; but at that time every Englishman not idiotic, knew that the pope was a Frenchman seated down on the Rhone; that the cardinals were French; that it was a Frenchman in London who received the tribute of king John when he could get it; that in fine the Church was a French industry which every honest Briton was bound to look upon with distrust.
In the previous century begging had been proclaimed as a means of grace, and this new road to heaven was eagerly seized upon by the religious orders. Even men of rank and wealth turned Franciscan or Dominican and worked out their own salvation by standing barefoot, a rope around the waist, at the corners of the streets, holding out a box for the contributions of the devout. The widow’s mite entitled her only to the formal and general prayers of the convent; but those who would make a handsome gift, were presented with a document on vellum called a letter of fraternity which gained for them special masses for the success of their schemes in this world, and for the tempering of purgatorial fires in the next. This traffic was profitable enough to attract a brisk competition among the different orders, for the monopoly; and each succeeding pontiff granted it to those who by their faith or works—chiefly the latter—had risen highest in his esteem.
England swarmed with these sturdy beggars, and this gave handle to Wiclif’s attacks not only upon them but upon monks in general. He himself was a secular priest, that is a priest belonging to no monastic order; and Roman Catholic writers aver that Wiclif’s hostility to the monks arose from party spirit; and even protestant historians do not wholly exculpate him in that regard. We know that feelings quite mundane went for something occasionally in the measures of Luther and of Calvin; and it is not improbable that Wiclif had a touch of human nature as well as they. He had been made warden of Canterbury in the place of a monk named Woodhall. The archbishop from whom Wiclif had received this appointment died, and his successor dismissed him and reinstated the monk. Wiclif appealed to the pope at Avignon, who decided against him, saying that none but monks were entitled to such preferment. Wiclif sounded the charge. He denied the pope’s infallibility; he denied his right to excommunicate except for crime; his right to extend absolution except to the penitent; his right to any temporal power, especially his claim to be Lord paramount of England by the cession of king John. He admitted that the pontiff was Christ’s vicar on earth so far as he conformed to Christ’s precept and example and no farther. As for the monks, not only their begging but some other of their short-comings more questionable were the subject of his invective; and to show them what they ought to be and to do he sent forth his poor priests as he called them, who clad in monkish garb, went into the streets and highways, not to beg but to preach the gospel and to read it to the people in English in the translation he was already making.
I have sketched the events which prepared the way for Wiclif, and it is proof of how well they had worked together for him that this opposition to the Church instead of losing for him the favor of the king, gained it. The tribute of John was in arrears, and pope Urban summoned Edward to appear before him at Avignon as his vassal, and give an account of himself. Edward was not disposed to make so long a journey for so little profit; but he agreed to send commissioners to meet those of his Holiness, at Bruges in Flanders. Wiclif had the honor of being appointed on this commission. A compromise was the result. Wiclif was rewarded for the skill he had shown as a diplomat, by being made rector of Lutterworth, and in that incumbency he spent the rest of his days.
William of Wykeham bishop of Winchester was a prelate of learning, talent and excellence. He deplored as earnestly as Wiclif the ecclesiastical abuses which reigned, and the objectionable ways of the monks. He was of a broad spirit: nice theological points never troubled him. He recked as little as Wiclif whether the Frenchman Grimoard, Urban V. was infallible or not, or whether he was entitled to the tribute of king John so long as he did not get it.[18]
But he idolised the Church and to maintain her dignity, her prerogative and even her wealth was what he lived for. Both these men were in advance of their age: the one by indifference to the prevailing superstitions, the other by a desire to blot them out. They ought have been friends; but one was a high churchman, the other a low churchman.
William of Wykeham had been chancellor of England and had resigned. In the next reign, that of Richard II., he was once more raised to that high office. In the meantime he had fallen out with John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster uncle of Richard, and that quarrel brought about an alliance between the duke and Wiclif. John was the fourth son of Edward III. and possessed the qualities of his race. He is supposed to have aimed to succeed his father on the throne, in contempt of the rights of his nephew, son of his illustrious brother the Black prince; but the boy had not yet displayed the unworthy traits which finally cost him his crown; and the memory of his father proved sufficient to guarantee the succession of one of England’s weakest sovereigns.
Finding the English throne impracticable, John attempted that of Castile, but here he met a rival whose claim was but little more valid than his, but who had got the start of him. Later the progeny of John of Gaunt and of Henry of Trastamara intermarried; and the present Houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon are descended from both of these adventurers.
Foiled in Castile duke John returned to England and plunged into politics. What the contention was between him and William of Wykeham, is not clear. It is probable that duke John was out of money, and remembering him of the manner in which his great-grandfather Philip had replenished his coffers, he was trying to defraud the Church, and that the chancellor frustrated those designs. Wiclif who was of the opinion of Agur, with a leaning towards poverty, considered the wealth of the Church as one of its abuses, and he sided with the duke. He did not serve an ingrate, for when at length he was arraigned before the bishop of London to explain his opinions, he walked into court accompanied by John of Gaunt on one side, and John’s friend Percy earl marshal of England on the other. Wiclif was feeble in body, and lord Percy told him to sit down. Not with my permission, said the bishop. Then without it, growled John of Gaunt, and he added that if the bishop put on airs he would drag him from his seat by the hair of his head. The session broke up in disorder; and one of the many inexplicable circumstances connected with Wiclif’s history, is that the populace who took the part of the bishop, vented their discontent not on Wiclif but on his lordly abettors.
Later, duke John abandoned Wiclif but not wantonly or without an effort to fetch him round to what he regarded a common sense view of the case. Politics had shifted, and the duke was on the side of the Church. He suggested to Wiclif that it was time for him to turn his coat also, and finding him obstinate he left him to his own devices for a pragmatical disturber of the public peace. It was inconceivable to John of Gaunt that a man of genius could be in earnest about what he considered as nothing more than the futilities of the schools.
Wiclif’s greatest work was his translation of the scriptures into English; but his version was not one that we would accept to-day for our guidance. It was the translation of the translation of a translation. Let us look a little into its pedigree: Some years before the birth of Christ, the old testament was translated into Greek. This version is called the Septuagint, because, according to the legend, seventy-two learned doctors were shut up in seventy-two separate cells and set to making seventy-two separate translations of the Hebrew scriptures. They accomplished the task in seventy-two days, and when they came to compare notes their seventy-two versions all agreed word for word letter for letter. There could be no doubt of the inspiration of a work so miraculous; and such was the authority of the Septuagint that the citations of the old testament in the new, are taken from it. The Church of Rome at an early day translated the Septuagint and the Apocrypha into its adopted tongue the latin, and this version is known as the old Vulgate. In the course of ages, and they were dark ages, by careless transcription and by the foisting in of strange theological ideas, the Vulgate had become corrupt, and such was its condition when Wiclif translated it. Two hundred years later the Council of Trent revised it and brought it into its present form. It is now the ultimate Bible of the Church Catholic Apostolic and Roman, from which there is no appeal: the original Hebrew and Greek go for nothing when they differ from it. Do you ask why? I answer that the Church is inspired as well as the Bible, and inspiration for inspiration, the later must supercede the earlier. You protestants have merely gone back and picked up the exhausted material of the Church, and made out of it a sort of Bible of your own, instead of accepting the better provision she offers you; and it distresses me to add that the Council of Trent has consigned you all to perdition for rejecting the Apocrypha.
Scripture in Wiclif’s day was a new revelation for the people, and the reading of his Bible was eagerly listened to; but some enthusiastic writers dilate upon its wide spread circulation, forgetting that the art of printing was then unknown, and that every copy was in manuscript, and that too not in the facile running hand of the present era, but in black-letter printed out, so to speak, with the pen. Le Bas estimates that a New Testament alone cost the equivalent of thirty pounds sterling money of his day which was early in this century—say two hundred dollars of our time, at which rate the whole Bible would cost say one thousand dollars. There were but few persons in the fourteenth century who could buy such books and but few who could read them.
The style of Wiclif’s Bible is simpler and clearer than the rest of his English. Green says that Wiclif’s style is a model, and that he was the father of our modern vernacular; but this is disposed of by better authority. Sharon Turner says that Wiclif’s style was inferior to that of some of his cotemporaries. Vaughn[19] whose biography of Wiclif is an almost continuous panegyric, says his style is repulsive and unintelligible. Le Bas says it is barbarous. Knight’s history says it is so obscure as to defy interpretation. The truth is, Wiclif like many another man of genius, had not the minor gift of phrase-making; and the better English of his Bible was owing to his collaborators who possessed that gift. Wiclif with the rest of his knowledge, had self-knowledge: he knew his own defects and how to obviate them.
As for his opinions they were fluctuating; and different writers give different accounts of them. His eulogists say they were progressive; his enemies that he recanted. Hume says he had not the spirit of a martyr, and was ready to explain away his doctrines whenever they put him in danger; but it is probable that such was the unpopularity of the French hierarchy that he ran no risk of martyrdom. He was not only left undisturbed in his cure of Lutterworth, but in spite of his opinions he was made one of the royal chaplains at the accession of Richard II.
We find him at one time appealing to the pope against the archbishop of Canterbury; at another, calling his Holiness a purse-kerver that is a pick pocket. Some of his expressions seem to call in doubt the existence of purgatory; but he upholds masses for the dead. He adheres to the seven sacraments, but he not only condemns the restrictions of the Church on the marriage of relatives, he approves of that connection between those more nearly allied in blood than is now sanctioned by modern legislation. He was no doubt betrayed at times by the sharpness of his own dialectics. His was the logic of the schools, the logic of the nominalists and the realists, of Abelard, Aquinus and Dun Scotus, a logic by which anything might be proved or disproved at choice.
The most important and most difficult question is what were his opinions of the Eucharist. It is commonly said that he denied Transubstantiation. But how far did he deny it?
The term transubstantiation was not known till the twelfth century. For eleven hundred years, Christian theology had subsisted without it; and when it came, it came as all words come—the product of evolution. It is not known at what time the idea was first formulated that when Christ said this is my body; this is the blood of the new testament, he taught that there was no longer any distinction of entity or identity between himself and the bread and wine he held in his hand—that he was they, and they were he. This dogma, shadowy at first, grew more and more palpable till it developed into a word to express itself. But the theologians still imagined a difference. Did Christ on that occasion annihilate the bread and the wine, and substitute for them himself so utterly that the physical qualities of bread and wine still apparent to the senses, were a delusion? If he did, it was unqualified or major transubstantiation; if he did not, it was qualified or minor transubstantiation which after a time took the name of Consubstantiation. The latter was the creed of Wiclif. He admitted the Real presence; he declared that the bread after consecration, was the very body that hung upon the cross; but he held that the inner somethingness of bread, as he expressed it, still remained. Thus far and no farther did he deny transubstantiation. Archbishop Trench says Wiclif escaped one danger only to fall into another equally great. The distinction between the two was a mere logomachy which had no practical effect on his conduct. He cleaved to the Mass; and it was at the celebration of that rite in his own church at Lutterworth that he received his death shock.
Can the Mass exist without transubstantiation major or minor? Let us see. The Mass is not a mere church service, it is a sacrifice, a renewal of the Atonement, a rehearsal of Calvary. The consecrated Bread is the body and blood which suffered crucifixion; it is the Host, the victim. The priest raises it on high, and the people fall and worship it; Wiclif worshipped it. Is this idolatry? Not if God himself lies on that silver paten.
Had Wiclif been born sixty years later, we never should have heard of him: such a career as his would have been impossible. The House of Lancaster had then usurped the throne, and sought to strengthen its claim by subservience to the see of Rome. I say Rome in italics because the Captivity had lapsed into the Great Schism—a pope at Rome and a pope at Avignon—England was of the obedience of the former, France of the latter. The odium theologicum was reënforced by the odium politicum; and while any English priest might vent one or both, with impunity and applause, upon his Holiness at Avignon, he would risk his life if he tried it upon his rival Holiness at Rome.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note: Green throws light on the fall of James’s father Charles I. He says it was Villiers, duke of Buckingham, “who was destined to drag down in his fatal career the throne of the Stuarts.” His fatal career was posthumous: he had been assassinated twenty-one years previous.
[2] Note: Such is Berwick’s own story. See his memoirs. Macaulay’s account of the matter is one of his boldest perversions, inasmuch as he cites Berwick at the head of the list of his authorities. See Macaulay, Lippincott edition, Vol. IV, pages 325, 326, 327.
[3] One of the largest pictures in the museum in Central Park, New York, represents or rather misrepresents this scene.
[4] The papal crown was not originally a tiara: it was single like any other crown. Boniface VIII. added the second crown. It is not known who added the third: it has been attributed to John XXII., to Urban V., and to Benedict XIII.
[5] Capet was a nickname given to Hugh the founder of the dynasty, and was not borne by any of his descendants, excepting that the line is called the capetien. The meaning of Capet is uncertain.
[6] We shall throw some light upon this want of credit in princes of the blood, when we come to speak of Louis of Orleans.
[7] Of the two grandmothers of Edward III., one, Eleanor of Castile, was pure Spanish, and the other, Joanna of Navarre, was half or more.
[8] Had the male line of Burgundy survived, it would have inherited the crown instead of the House of Bourbon.
[9] This low opinion of Scotch valor was still rife in Shakspeare’s time. The poet in describing the lovers of Portia, makes the German a drunkard, the Frenchman a montebank and the Scotchman a coward.
[10] Green calls this prelate sometimes bishop of Winchester and sometimes bishop of Chichester. He was so swept along by his own rhetoric that he forgot men’s names like the Bastard in King John.
[11] Malone whose researches had been standard authority fifty years when Green wrote, says that two lines only of that incomparable scene were thus taken. But let us be just to Green; his incapacity to discern the touch of Shakspeare, and his inadequate knowledge of Shaksperean literature, are after all, among the least defects of his histories.
[12] The order of the Golden Fleece is still extant. The emperor of Austria and the king of Spain, both descendants of Philip, share between them the Grandmastership of the order.
[13] Philip’s third wife was Isabella of Portugal, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and therefore niece of the cardinal and cousin of Bedford. Isabella was the mother of Charles-the-rash, and it is thus that the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons trace descent from the Plantagenets.
[14] Louis XII. was grandson of Louis of Valentina. Their great-grand-daughter; grand-mother hyphenated below Margaret of Valois was grand-mother of Henry IV. from whom have descended all the branches of the House of Bourbon.
[15] Dunois took his title, count of Dunois, from an estate given him by his half-brother the duke of Orleans, one of those who had stood by his side at the dying bed of Valentina.
[16] Byng was defeated by a French fleet in the Mediterranean. There was no question of his courage or loyalty, but he was none the less condemned to be shot; and the barbarous sentence was carried into effect, Voltaire said it was “pour encourager les autres.”
[17] Dumouriez did not wait for a second embassy; he fled and there fled with him a young prince who had fought by his side for republican France—the duke of Chartres, afterwards duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe king of the French.
[18] Infallibility of the pope and Immaculate conception of the Virgin were in that age and long after, points in dispute. The Church had not yet erected them into cardinal doctrines which we may question only at the peril of our salvation. Those additional burthens upon our faith were reserved for the present century.
[19] Green cites Vaughn for his authority. The recurrence of such cases justifies E. A. Freeman in saying that Green was not in the habit of reading the authors he quotes; and that he should be judged rather by his essays than by his histories.