The greatest story in the world, period 3 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

Farther eastward again, Russia was extending her power in Siberia and working out towards that China of which there is still little story to tell, because, of all nations of the world, she has ever changed least and most slowly. The day had not yet come for Russia's reaching southward towards Constantinople on the one side or towards India on the other. The Turk was as yet so strong that she had to fight hard to keep him out of her own borders. She was still on the defensive in that south-western corner of her empire.

But India had to suffer invasion nevertheless in this sixteenth century by a people coming down from Afghanistan and the north. They were Mongols, usually given the name of Moguls. They were a Mahommedan people, and under the reign of the Grand Mogul, Akbar, which covered nearly all the latter half of the century, they were continually extending their rule over the Hindus. It is in this Mahommedan invasion that we see the real beginning of that division and opposition in India of Hindus and Mahommedans which has played a large part in the story of that country ever since, and which is a principal cause of her troubles even to-day. There were Moslems in India before the coming of the so-called Moguls, but not in anything like the same force or number.

On the eastern side of Afghanistan lay Persia, and beyond Persia, to the west again, began the Turkish Empire. Between the Persians and these Ottoman Turks—Mahommedans both, but belonging to different sects—fighting went on with little pause, and with no result of any long duration. Persia's position was difficult, for on the eastern border she was always subject to attack from the Moguls. That she kept her independence is due in part doubtless to the valour of her soldiers, but also, in large part, to the engagements of the Moguls with India and of the Turks with their European neighbours on land and sea. Even the heavy defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto by no means put an end to their activities in the Mediterranean. In 1573, two years after that battle, they lost Tunis; but were still strong enough to regain that valuable port the very next year.

CHAPTER V
THE WARS OF RELIGION

Elizabeth died in 1603, and there was no descendant of Henry VIII. to inherit the throne. But Henry VII.'s daughter had married the King of Scotland, and a grandson of Henry VII. now held the Scottish Crown with the title of James VI. On the death of Elizabeth he became rightful hereditary King of England also, with the title of James I.

And now it might indeed seem as if the United Kingdom was about to enter upon years of peace and glory. Elizabeth's prudence and the valour of her seamen had won her military fame. Her alliance was sought by princes as far off as the Tsar of Russia and the Sophy, as the ruler was called, of Persia. She had possessions in India, far away in the East, in America far in the West. For the first time in her story she had Scotland as a second self, instead of a constant enemy on her very border. Ireland appeared to be subjugated. And she had no possessions on the Continent to draw her into troubles with France.

This hopeful prospect was soon clouded over owing, in large measure, to the folly of the Stuart kings, as that dynasty was called of which the Scottish James was the first. And yet, if it had not been for their folly, and also for their weakness, it is possible that England might have had to suffer even greater trials than did befall her, by reason of the despotic power which had been won for the Crown by Henry VIII, and his great ministers Wolsey and Cromwell. But before that power could be broken, and the people could regain the rights that legally were theirs under the provisions of Magna Carta, the country had to suffer miserably through civil war and one of the kings had to lose his head on the executioner's block.

James I. tried to govern as Henry VIII. had governed before him, that is to say, he tried to govern without summoning a Parliament. Legally it was Parliament only that could vote the money that the king required to carry on the government. James tried to extort this money by what were politely called "loans." If those from whom they were demanded paid the required contributions, well and good. If they refused to pay, the Crown had sufficient power to misuse the processes of the law so as to punish them for their refusal.