Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

NATURAL FEATURES OF RUSSIA.—Russia in Europe comprises at present more than half the territory of that entire continent. Yet it has but a small share of seaboard, and of this a large part is frozen in winter. The surface of Russia is of a piece with the boundless plateaus of Northern and Central Asia. It has been defined as the "Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains." The mountains of Russia are chiefly on its boundaries. It is a country subject to extremes of heat and cold. From the scarcity of stone, all buildings were formerly of wood, and hence its towns were all combustible. The rivers of Russia have been of immense importance in its history. "The whole history of this country is the history of its three great rivers, and is divided into three periods,—that of the Dnieper with Kiev, that of the Volga with Moscow, and that of the Neva with Novgorod in the eighth century, and St. Petersburg in the eighteenth."

RUSSIANS AND POLES.—The Russian Slaves in the ninth century occupied but a small part of what is now Russia. There was probably little difference then between them and the Poles; but the one people were molded by the Greek Church and Greek civilization, the other by the Latin Church and by the collective influences of Western Europe.

RUSSIAN HISTORY.—The Northmen under Rurik had founded their dominion in Russia. Novgorod was their center. Thence they pushed their conquests to the south. Their descendants made Kiev, on the Dnieper, their capital. In Russia, as elsewhere, the Scandinavians quickly blended with their native subjects. Under Vladimir I. (980-1015), who was converted to Greek Christianity, with his people, and Iaroslaf I. (1019-1051), they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the Mongols, who destroyed the principality of Kiev, and made that of Vladimir tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which the Mongols established on the Volga. They were obliged to pay tribute, and the Russian princes at their accession had to swear fealty to the khan on the banks of the river Amoor. At the time of the Mongol conquest, Novgorod was the center of Russian dominion. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moscow became a new center of Russian power. From Moscow comes the name Muscovy. "Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name." In the fourteenth century, while Lithuania and Poland were absorbing by conquest the territories of earlier or Western Russia, the Duchy of Moscow was building up a new Russia in the East, out of which grew the Russia of to-day. Ivan I., regarded as the founder of the Russian monarchy, made Moscow his capital in 1328. Most of the other princes were subject to him. Demetrius (or Dimtri) I. gained two great victories over the Mongol horde (1378 and 1380); but in 1382 they burned Moscow, and slew twenty-four thousand of its inhabitants. It was not until the reign of Ivan III., Ivan the Great (1462-1505), that Novgorod submitted to Moscow, and Russia was wholly delivered from the control and influence of the Mongols.

VI. HUNGARY.

THE ARPAD DYNASTY.—The chiefs of the Turanian Magyars, about 889, elected Arpad as successor of the leader under whom they had crossed the Carpathian Mountains. They overran Hungary and Transylvania, and terrified Europe by their invasions (p. 249). After their defeats by the emperors Henry I. and Otto the Great (p. 261), they confined themselves to their own country. The first king, Stephen,—St. Stephen,—was crowned, with the consent of Pope Sylvester II., in the year 1000. He divided the land into counties, organized the Church, and founded convents and schools. He conferred on the bishops high offices. He established a national council, composed of the lords temporal and spiritual, and of the knights, out of which sprung the diets. Ladislaus I. conquered Croatia (1089), and a part of the "Red Russian" land of Galicia (1093). Coloman, "the Learned," a brave and able man, annexed Dalmatia, which he wrested from the Venetians (1102). In the reign of Andrew II. (1205-1235), the "Golden Bull" was extorted by the nobles, which conferred on them extraordinary rights and privileges, including exemption from arrest prior to trial and conviction, and the control of the diet over appointments to office. It even authorized armed resistance on their part to tyrannical measures of the king,—a right that was not abrogated until 1687. Hungary was devastated by the great Tartar invasion (1241-42) (p. 283). The kings of Hungary supported the cause of Rudolph of Austria against Ottocar of Bohemia (p. 332).

INVASIONS OF THE TURKS.—The last king of the Arpad dynasty died in 1301. There was a division of parties in the choice of a successor. Pope Boniface VIII. and the clergy supported the claims of Count Charles Robert of Anjou, who was related to the former reigning family. Under the son of Charles Robert, Louis, who also succeeded Casimir III. as king of Poland (1370), Hungary became a very powerful state. Galicia was regained, Moldavia and Bulgaria were conquered. After the death of Louis, his daughter Maria reigned from 1386 conjointly with Sigismund, afterwards emperor, and king of Bohemia. He established his supremacy over Bosnia. From this time the invasions of the Turks begin. There had been a party in favor of raising to the throne Vladislaus, king of Poland; and after the death of Sigismund's successor, Albert II. of Austria (1437), and the death of the queen, he gained the crown (1442). He was slain at Varna, in the great battle in which the Hungarians were vanquished by the Turks (1444). John Hunyady, who had several times defeated the Turks, and who escaped on the field of Varna, was made for the time "governor;" but on the release of the son of Albert, Ladislaus Posthumus, who had been kept from the throne by the Emperor Frederick III., he was recognized as king (1452). Hun-yady was made general-in-chief. Frederick had also retained in his hands the crown, which had been intrusted to his care, and which Hungarians have always regarded with extreme veneration. A little later, great advantages were gained over the Turks, to be lost again in the sixteenth century.

VII. THE OTTOMAN TURKS.

OSMAN: MURAD I.—Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Osman (or Ottoman) Turks, warlike nomad hordes, in order to escape from the Mongols, moved from the region east of the Caspian Sea, and conquered in Asia Minor the remnant of the kingdom of the Seljukians (p. 270). Impelled by fanaticism and the desire of booty, Ottoman (or Osman), their leader, advanced into Bithynia, and took Pruse, or Broussa, one of the most important cities of Asia Minor. The Greeks, with their Catalonian auxiliaries, were not able to dislodge him from his new possession. The Byzantine court was disabled from making an energetic effort for this end, by the partisan rancor, and mingled lethargy and cruelty, which characterized the old age of the Greek Empire. Nicomedia, Nicoea, and Ilium were conquered by the Sultan (or Padishah). Murad I. (1361-1389) founded the corps of janizaries, composed of select Christian youth chosen from the captives for their beauty and vigor. These became the most effective soldiers,—sometimes dangerous, however, to the sultans themselves. Adrianople was taken by Murad, and made the seat of his authority. The Christian principalities of Thrace, and the ancient but depopulated cities founded by the Greeks and Romans, were overrun. The Servians and Bulgarians made a stand against the fierce Ottoman warriors, but were beaten in the battle of Kosovo, where _Murad_was slain.

BAJAZET.—Bajazet, the son and successor of Murad, outdid his predecessor in his martial prowess. He conquered Macedonia and Thessaly, and Greece to the southern end of Peloponnesus. The Emperor Sigismund and John of Burgundy, with one hundred thousand men, were utterly defeated in the sanguinary battle of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund escaped by sea; the French counts and knights had to be redeemed from captivity with a large ransom; and ten thousand prisoners of lower rank were slaughtered by Bajazet. Bosnia was now in the hands of the victor. Constantinople had to pay tribute, and seemed likely to become his prey, when a temporary respite was obtained for it by the coming of a host even more powerful than that of Bajazet.

MONGOLIAN INVASION.—Timur, or Tamerlane, a descendant of Genghis Khan (p. 283), revived the fallen Tartar kingdom. At the head of his wandering Tartars, which grew into an army, he left Samarcand, where he had caused himself to be proclaimed sovereign, and, in a rapid career of conquest, made himself master of the countries from the Wall of China to the Mediterranean, and from the boundaries of Egypt to Moscow. Everywhere his path was marked with blood and with the ruins of the places which he destroyed. At Ispahan, in Persia, seventy thousand persons were killed. At Delhi, one hundred thousand captives were slain, that his relative, the "Great Mogul," might reign in security. It was his delight to pile up at the gates of cities pyramids of twenty or thirty thousand heads. Later (1401), at Bagdad, he erected such a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He gained a great victory over the "Golden Horde" in Russia (p. 283), conquered the unsubdued parts of Persia, entered Bagdad, Bassorah, and Mosul, vanquished the khan of Kaptchak, and penetrated Russia in his devastating progress, as far as Moscow (1396). Then followed the conquest of Hindustan.