History for ready reference, Volume 1, A-Elba

by J. N. Larned

See ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1742 (January-May).
Frederick breaks faith again.
Battle of Chotusitz.
"The Queen of Hungary had assembled in the beginning of the
year two considerable armies in Moravia and Bohemia, the one
under Prince Lobkowitz, to defend the former province, and the
other commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine, her
brother-in-law. This young Prince possessed as much bravery
and activity as Frederick, and had equally with him the talent
of inspiring attachment and confidence. ... Frederick, alarmed
at these preparations and the progress of the Austrians in
Bavaria, abruptly broke off the convention of
Ober-Schnellendorf, and recommenced hostilities. ... The King
of Prussia became apprehensive that the Queen of Hungary would
again turn her arms to recover Silesia. He therefore
dispatched Marshal Schwerin to seize Olmutz and lay siege to
Glatz, which surrendered after a desperate resistance on the
9th of January. Soon after this event, the King rejoined his
army, and endeavoured to drive the Austrians from their
advantageous position in the southern parts of Bohemia, which
would have delivered the French troops in the neighbourhood
and checked the progress of Khevenhüller in Bavaria.
{217}
The king advanced to Iglau, on the frontiers of Bohemia, and,
occupying the banks of the Taya, made irruptions into Upper
Austria, his hussars spreading terror even to the gates of
Vienna. The Austrians drew from Bavaria a corps of 10,000 men
to cover the capital, while Prince Charles of Lorraine, at the
head of 50,000 men, threatened the Prussian magazines in Upper
Silesia, and by this movement compelled Frederick to detach a
considerable force for their protection, and to evacuate
Moravia, which he had invaded. Broglie, who commanded the
French forces in that country, must now have fallen a
sacrifice, had not the ever-active King of Prussia brought up
30,000 men, which, under the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, entering
Bohemia, came up with Prince Charles at Czaslau, about
thirty-five miles from Prague, before he could form a junction
with Prince Lobkowitz. Upon this ensued [May 17, 1742] what is
known in history as the battle of Czaslau [also, and more
commonly, called the battle of Chotusitz]. ... The numbers in
the two armies were nearly equal, and the action was warmly
contested on both sides. ... The Prussians remained masters of
the field, with 18 cannon, two pairs of colours and 1,200
prisoners; but they indeed paid dearly for the honour, for it
was computed that their loss was equal to that of their enemy,
which amounted to 7,000 men on either side; while the Prussian
cavalry, under Field-Marshal Buddenbroch, was nearly ruined.
... Although in this battle the victory was, without doubt, on
the side of the Prussians, yet the immediate consequences were
highly favourable to the Queen of Hungary. The King was
disappointed of his expected advantages, and conceived a
disgust to the war. He now lowered his demands and made
overtures of accommodation, which, on the 11th of June,
resulted in a treaty of peace between the two crowns, which
was signed at Breslau under the mediation of the British
Ambassador."
Sir E. Cust, Annals of the Wars of the 18th Century,
volume 2, page 19.
ALSO IN: T. Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of
Prussia, book 13, chapter 13 (volume 5).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1742 (June).
Treaty of Breslau with the King of Prussia.
"The following are the preliminary articles which were signed
at Breslau: 1. The queen of Hungary ceded to the king of
Prussia Upper and Lower Silesia, with the principality of
Glatz; except the towns of Troppau, Jaegendorff and the high
mountains situated beyond the Oppa. 2. The Prussians undertook
to repay the English 1,700,000 crowns; which sum was a
mortgage loan on Silesia. The remaining articles related to a
suspension of arms, an exchange of prisoners, and the freedom
of religion and trade. Thus was Silesia united to the Prussian
States. Two years were sufficient for the conquest of that
important province. The treasures which the late king had left
were almost expended; but provinces that do not cost more than
seven or eight millions are cheaply purchased."
Frederic II., History of My Own Times (Posthumous Works,
volume 1), chapter 6.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1742 (June-December).
Expulsion of the French from Bohemia.
Belleisle's retreat from Prague.
"The Austrian arms began now to be successful in all quarters.
Just before the signature of the preliminaries, Prince
Lobcowitz, who was stationed at Budweiss with 10,000 men, made
an attack on Frauenberg; Broglio and Belleisle advanced from
Piseck to relieve the town, and a combat took place at Sahay,
in which the Austrians were repulsed with the loss of 500 men.
This trifling affair was magnified into a decisive victory.
... Marshal Broglio, elated with this advantage, and relying
on the immediate junction of the King of Prussia, remained at
Frauenberg in perfect security. But his expectations were
disappointed; Frederic had already commenced his secret
negotiations, and Prince Charles was enabled to turn his
forces against the French. Being joined by Prince Lobcowitz,
they attacked Broglio, and compelled him to quit Frauenberg
with such precipitation that his baggage fell into the hands
of the light troops, and the French retreated towards Branau,
harassed by the Croats and other irregulars. ... The
Austrians, pursuing their success against the French, drove
Broglio from Branau, and followed him to the walls of Prague,
where he found Belleisle. ... After several consultations, the
two generals called in their posts, and secured their army
partly within the walls and partly within a peninsula of the
Moldau. ... Soon afterwards the duke of Lorraine joined the
army [of Prince Charles], which now amounted to 70 70,000 men,
and the arrival of the heavy artillery enabled the Austrians to
commence the siege."
W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria,
chapter 102 (volume 3).
"To relieve the French at Prague, Marshal Maillebois was
directed to advance with his army from Westphalia. At these
tidings Prince Charles changed the siege of Prague to a
blockade, and marching against his new opponents, checked
their progress on the Bohemian frontier; the French, however,
still occupying the town of Egra. It was under these
circumstances that Belleisle made his masterly and renowned
retreat from Prague. In the night of the 16th of December, he
secretly left the city at the head of 11,000 foot and 3,000
horse, having deceived the Austrians' vigilance by the feint
of a general forage in the opposite quarter; and pushed for
Egra through a hostile country, destitute of resources and
surrounded by superior enemies. His soldiers, with no other
food than frozen bread, and compelled to sleep without
covering on the snow and ice, perished in great numbers; but
the gallant spirit of Belleisle triumphed over every obstacle;
he struck through morasses almost untrodden before, offered
battle to Prince Lobkowitz, who, however, declined engaging,
and at length succeeded in reaching the other French army with
the flower of his own. The remnant left at Prague, and
amounting only to 6,000 men, seemed an easy prey; yet their
threat of firing the city, and perishing beneath its ruins,
and the recent proof of what despair can do, obtained for them
honourable terms, and the permission of rejoining their
comrades at Egra. But in spite of all this skill and courage
in the French invaders, the final result to them was failure;
nor had they attained a single permanent advantage beyond
their own safety in retreat. Maillebois and De Broglie took up
winter quarters in Bavaria, while Belleisle led back his
division across the Rhine; and it was computed that, of the
35,000 men whom he had first conducted into Germany, not more
than 8,000 returned beneath his banner."
Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England,
1713-1783, chapter 24 (volume 3).
"Thus, at the termination of the campaign, all Bohemia was
regained, except Egra; and on the 12th of May, 1743, Maria
Theresa was soon afterwards crowned at Prague, to the recovery
of which, says her great rival, her firmness had more
contributed than the force of her arms. The only reverse which
the Austrians experienced in the midst of their successes was
the temporary loss of Bavaria, which, on the retreat of
Kevenhuller, was occupied by marshal Seckendorf; and the
Emperor made his entry into Munich on the 2d of October."
W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria,
chapter 103 (volume 3).
{218}
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743.
England drawn into the conflict.
The Pragmatic Army.
The Battle of Dettingen.
"The cause of Maria Theresa had begun to excite a remarkable
enthusiasm in England. ... The convention of neutrality
entered into by George II. in September 1741, and the
extortion of his vote for the Elector of Bavaria, properly
concerned that prince only as Elector of Hanover; yet, as he
was also King of England, they were felt as a disgrace by the
English people. The elections of that year went against
Walpole, and in February 1742 he found himself compelled to
resign. He was succeeded in the administration by Pulteney,
Earl of Bath, though Lord Carteret was virtually prime
minister. Carteret was an ardent supporter of the cause of
Maria Theresa. His accession to office was immediately
followed by a large increase of the army and navy; five
millions were voted for carrying on the war, and a subsidy of
£500,000 for the Queen of Hungary. The Earl of Stair, with an
army of 16,000 men, afterwards reinforced by a large body of
Hanoverians and Hessians in British pay, was despatched into
the Netherlands to cooperate with the Dutch. But though the
States-General, at the instance of the British Cabinet, voted
Maria Theresa a subsidy, they were not yet prepared to take an
active part in a war which might ultimately involve them in
hostilities with France. The exertions of the English ministry
in favour of the Queen of Hungary had therefore been confined
during the year 1742 to diplomacy, and they had helped to
bring about ... the Peace of Breslau. In 1743 they were able
to do more," In April, 1743, the Emperor, Charles VII.,
regained possession of Bavaria and returned to Munich, but
only to be driven out again by the Austrians in June. The
Bavarians were badly beaten at Simpach (May 9), and Munich was
taken (June 12) after a short bombardment. "Charles VII. was
now again obliged to fly, and took refuge at Augsburg. At his
command, Seckendorf [his general] made a convention with the
Austrians at the village of Niederschönfeld, by which he
agreed to abandon to them Bavaria, on condition that Charles's
troops should be allowed to occupy unmolested quarters between
Franconia and Suabia. Maria Theresa seemed at first indisposed
to ratify even terms so humiliating to the Emperor. She had
become perhaps a little too much exalted by the rapid turn of
fortune. She had caused herself to be crowned in Prague. She
had received the homage of the Austrians, and entered Vienna
in a sort of triumph. She now dreamt of nothing less than
conquering Lorraine for herself, Alsace for the Empire; of
hurling Charles VII. from the Imperial throne, and placing on
it her own consort." She was persuaded, however, to consent at
length to the terms of the Niederschönfeld convention.
"Meanwhile the allied army of English and Germans, under the
Earl of Stair, nearly 40,000 strong, which, from its destined
object, had assumed the name of the 'Pragmatic Army,' had
crossed the Meuse and the Rhine in March and April, with a
view to cut off the army of Bavaria from France. George II.
had not concealed his intention of breaking the Treaty of
Hanover of 1741, alleging as a ground that the duration of the
neutrality stipulated in it had not been determined; and on
June 19th he had joined the army in person. He found it in a
most critical position. Lord Stair, who had never
distinguished himself as a general, and was now falling into
dotage, had led it into a narrow valley near Aschaffenburg,
between Mount Spessart and the river Main; while Marshal
Noailles [commanding the French], who had crossed the Rhine
towards the end of April, by seizing the principal fords of
the Main, both above and below the British position, had cut
him off both from his magazines at Hanau, and from the
supplies which he had expected to procure in Franconia.
Nothing remained but for him to fight his way back to Hanau."
In the battle of Dettingen, which followed (June 27), all the
advantages of the French in position were thrown away by the
ignorant impetuosity of the king's nephew, the Duke of
Grammont, who commanded one division, and they suffered a
severe defeat. "The French are said to have lost 6,000 men and
the British half that number. It is the last action in which a
king of England has fought in person. But George II., or
rather Lord Stair, did not know how to profit by his victory.
Although the Pragmatic Army was joined after the battle of
Dettingen by 15,000 Dutch troops, under Prince Maurice of
Nassau, nothing of importance was done during the remainder of
the campaign."
T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe,
book 6, chapter 4 (volume 3).
ALSO IN:
W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria,
chapter 104 (volume 3).
Sir E. Cust, Annals of the Wars of the 18th Century,
volume 2, pages 30-36.
Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England,
1713-1783, chapter 25 (volume 3).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743.
Treaty of Worms with Sardinia and England.
See ITALY: A. D. 1743.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743 (October).
The Second Bourbon Family Compact.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743-1744.
The Prussian King strikes in again.
The Union of Frankfort.
Siege and capture of Prague.
"Everywhere Austria was successful, and Frederick had reason
to fear for himself unless the tide of conquest could be
stayed. He explains in the 'Histoire de Mon Temps' that he
feared lest France should abandon the cause of the Emperor,
which would mean that the Austrians, who now boldly spoke of
compensation for the war, would turn their arms against
himself. ... France was trembling, not for her conquests, but
for her own territory. After the battle of Dettingen, the
victorious Anglo-Hanoverian force was to cross the Rhine above
Mayence and march into Alsace, while Prince Charles of
Lorraine, with a strong Austrian army, was to pass near Basle
and occupy Lorraine, taking up his winter quarters in Burgundy
and Champagne. The English crossed without any check and moved
on to Worms, but the Austrians failed in their attempt. Worms
became a centre of intrigue, which Frederick afterwards called
'Cette abyme de mauvaisc fol.' The Dutch were persuaded by
Lord Carteret to join the English, and they did at last send
14,000 men, who were never of the least use.
{219}
Lord Carteret also detached Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia,
from his French leanings, and persuaded him to enter into the
Austro-English alliance [by the treaty of Worms, Sept. 13,
1743, which conceded to the King of Sardinia Finale, the city
of Placentia, with some other small districts and gave him
command of the allied forces in Italy]. It was clear that
action could not be long postponed, and Frederick began to
recognize the necessity of a new war. His first anxiety was to
guard himself against interference from his northern and
eastern neighbours. He secured, as he hoped, the neutrality of
Russia by marrying the young princess of Anhalt-Zerbst,
afterwards the notorious Empress Catherine, with the
Grand-Duke Peter of Russia, nephew and heir to the reigning
Empress Elizabeth. ... Thus strengthened, as he hoped, in his
rear and flank, and having made the commencement of a German
league called the Union of Frankfurt, by which Hesse and the
Palatinate agreed to join Frederick and the Kaiser, he
concluded on the 5th of June, 1744, a treaty which brought
France also into this alliance. It was secretly agreed that
Frederick was to invade Bohemia, conquer it for the Kaiser,
and have the districts of Königgrätz, Bunzlau, and Leitmeritz
to repay him for his trouble and costs; while France, which
was all this time at war with Austria and England, should send
an army against Prince Charles and the English. ... The first
stroke of the coming war was delivered by France. Louis XV.
sent a large army into the Netherlands under two good leaders,
Noailles and Maurice de Saxe. Urged by his mistress, the
Duchesse de Châteauroux, he joined it himself early, and took
the nominal command early in June. ... The towns [Menin,
Ypres, Fort Knoque, Furnes] rapidly fell before him, and
Marshal Wade, with the Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army, sat still
and looked at the success of the French. But on the night of
the 30th June--1st July, Prince Charles crossed the Rhine by
an operation which is worth the study of military students,
and invaded Alsace, the French army of observation falling
back before him. Louis XV. hurried back to interpose between
the Austrians and Paris. ... Maurice de Saxe was left in the
Netherlands with 45,000 men. Thus the French army was
paralysed, and the Austrian army in its turn was actually
invading France. At this time Frederick struck in. He sent
word to the King that, though all the terms of their
arrangement had not yet been fulfilled, he would at once
invade Bohemia, and deliver a stroke against Prague which
would certainly cause the retreat of Prince Charles with his
70,000 men. If the French army would follow Prince Charles in
his retreat, Frederick would attack him, and between France
and Prussia the Austrian army would certainly be crushed, and
Vienna be at their mercy. This was no doubt an excellent plan
of campaign, but, like the previous operations concerted with
Broglio, it depended for success upon the good faith of the
French, and this turned out to be a broken reed. On the 7th of
August the Prussian ambassador at Vienna gave notice of the
Union of Frankfurt and withdrew from the court of Austria; and
on the 15th the Prussian army was put in march upon Prague
[opening what is called the Second Silesian War]. Frederick's
forces moved in three columns, the total strength being over
80,000. ... Maria Theresa was now again in great danger, but
as usual retained her high courage, and once more called forth
the enthusiasm of her Hungarian subjects, who sent swarms of
wild troops, horse and foot, to the seat of war. ... On the
1st of September the three columns met before Prague, which
had better defences than in the last campaign, and a garrison
of some 16,000 men. ... During the night of the 9th the
bombardment commenced ... and on the 16th the garrison
surrendered. Thus, one month after the commencement of the
march Prague was captured, and the campaign opened with a
brilliant feat of arms."
Colonel C. B. Brackenbury, Frederick the Great, chapter 7.
ALSO IN:
W. Russell, History of Modern Europe, part 2, letter 28.
F. Von Raumer, Contributions to Modern History:
Frederick II. and his Times, chapter 17-19.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1744-1745.
Frederick's retreat and fresh triumph.
Austria recovers the imperial crown.
Saxony subdued.
The Peace of Dresden.
After the reduction of Prague, Frederick, "in deference to the
opinion of Marshal Belleisle, but against his own judgment,
advanced into the south of Bohemia with the view of
threatening Vienna. He thus exposed himself to the risk of
being cut off from Prague. Yet even so he would probably have
been able to maintain himself if the French had fulfilled
their engagements. But while he was conquering the districts
of the Upper Moldau, the Austrian army returned unimpaired
from Alsace. The French had allowed it to cross the Rhine
unmolested, and had not made the slightest attempt to harass
its retreat [but applied themselves to the siege and capture
of Freiburg]. They were only too glad to get rid of it
themselves. In the ensuing operations Frederick was completely
outmanoeuvred. Traun [the Austrian general], without risking a
battle, forced him back towards the Silesian frontier. He had
to choose between abandoning Prague and abandoning his
communications with Silesia, and as the Saxons had cut off his
retreat through the Electorate, there was really no choice in
the matter. So he fell back on Silesia, abandoning Prague and
his heavy artillery. The retreat was attended with
considerable loss. Frederick was much struck with the skill
displayed by Traun, and says, in his 'Histoire de mon Temps,'
that he regarded this campaign as his school in the art of war
and M. de Traun as his teacher. The campaign may have been an
excellent lesson in the art of war, but in other respects it
was very disastrous to Frederick. He had drawn upon himself
the whole power of Austria, and had learnt how little the
French were to be depended upon. His prestige was dimmed by
failure, and even in his own army doubts were entertained of
his capacity. But, bad as his position already was, it became
far worse when the unhappy Emperor died [January 20, 1745], worn
out with disease and calamity. This event put an end to the
Union of Frankfort. Frederick could no longer claim to be
acting in defence of his oppressed sovereign; the ground was
cut from under his feet. Nor was there any longer much hope of
preventing the Imperial Crown from reverting to Austria. The
new Elector of Bavaria was a mere boy. In this altered state
of affairs he sought to make peace. But Maria Theresa would
not let him off so easily.
{220}
In order that she might use all her forces against him, she
granted peace to Bavaria, and gave back to the young elector
his hereditary dominions, on condition of his resigning all
claim to hers and promising to vote for her husband as
Emperor. While Frederick thus lost a friend in Bavaria, Saxony
threw herself completely into the arms of his enemy, and
united with Austria in a treaty [May 18] which had for its
object, not the reconquest of Silesia merely, but the
partition of Prussia and the reduction of the king to his
ancient limits as Margrave of Brandenburg. Saxony was then
much larger than it is now, but it was not only the number of
troops it could send into the field that made its hostility
dangerous. It was partly the geographical position of the
country, which made it an excellent base for operations
against Prussia, but still more the alliance that was known to
subsist between the Elector (King Augustus III. of Poland) and
the Russian Court. It was probable that a Prussian invasion of
Saxony would be followed by a Russian invasion of Prussia.
Towards the end of May, the Austrian and Saxon army, 75,000
strong, crossed the Giant Mountains and descended upon
Silesia. The Austrians were again commanded by Prince Charles,
but the wise head of Traun was no longer there to guide him.
... The encounter took place at Hohenfriedberg [June 5], and
resulted in a complete victory for Prussia. The Austrians and
Saxons lost 9,000 killed and wounded, and 7,000 prisoners,
besides 66 cannons and 73 flags and standards. Four days after
the battle they were back again in Bohemia. Frederick
followed, not with the intention of attacking them again, but
in order to eat the country bare, so that it might afford no
sustenance to the enemy during the winter. For his own part he
was really anxious for peace. His resources were all but
exhausted, while Austria was fed by a constant stream of
English subsidies. As in the former war, England interposed
with her good offices, but without effect; Maria Theresa was
by no means disheartened by her defeat, and refused to hear of
peace till she had tried the chances of battle once more. On
Sept. 13 her husband was elected Emperor by seven votes out of
nine, the dissentients being the King of Prussia and the
Elector Palatine. This event raised the spirits of the
Empress-Queen, as Maria Theresa was henceforward called, and
opened a wider field for her ambition. She sent peremptory
orders to Prince Charles to attack Frederick before he retired
from Bohemia. A battle was accordingly fought at Sohr [Sept.
30], and again victory rested with the Prussians. The season
was now far advanced, and Frederick returned home expecting
that there would be no more fighting till after the winter.
Such however, was far from being the intention of his
enemies." A plan for the invasion of Brandenburg by three
Austrian and Saxon armies simultaneously, was secretly
concerted; but Frederick had timely warning of it and it was
frustrated by his activity and energy. On the 23d of November
he surprised and defeated Prince Charles at Hennersdorf. "Some
three weeks afterwards [Dec. 15] the Prince of Dessau defeated
a second Saxon and Austrian army at Kesselsdorf, a few miles
from Dresden. This victory completed the subjugation of Saxony
and put an end to the war. Three days after Kesselsdorf,
Frederick entered Dresden, and astonished everyone by the
graciousness of his behaviour and by the moderation of his
terms. From Saxony he exacted no cession of territory, but
merely a contribution of 1,000,000 thalers (£150,000) towards
the expenses of the war. From Austria he demanded a guarantee
of the treaty of Breslau, in return for which he agreed to
recognize Francis as Emperor. Peace was signed [at Dresden] on
Christmas Day."
F. W. Longman, Frederick the Great and the Seven Years
War, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
T. Carlyle, History of Frederick II.,
book 15, chapter 3-15 (volume 4).
Lord Dover, Life of Frederick II.,
book 2, chapter 3-5 (volume 1).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1745.
Overwhelming disasters in Italy.
See ITALY: A. D. 1745.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1745 (May).
Reverses in the Netherlands.
Battle of Fontenoy.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1745.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1745 (September-October).
The Consort of Maria Theresa elected and crowned Emperor.
Rise of the new House of Hapsburg-Lorraine.
Francis of Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany and husband of
Maria Theresa, was elected Emperor, at Frankfort, Sept. 13,
1745, and crowned Oct. 1, with the title of Francis I. "Thus
the Empire returned to the New House of Austria, that of
Hapsburg-Lorraine, and France had missed the principal object
for which she had gone to war." By the treaties signed at
Dresden, Dec. 25, between Prussia, Austria and Saxony,
Frederick, as Elector of Brandenburg, assented to and
recognized the election of Francis, against which he and the
Elector Palatine had previously protested.
T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe,
book 6, chapter 4 (volume 3).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1746-1747.
Further French conquests in the Netherlands.
Lombardy recovered.
Genoa won and lost.
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1746-1747;
and ITALY; A. D. 1746-1747.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1748 (October).
Termination and results of the War of the Succession.
See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, THE CONGRESS OF.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1755-1763.
The Seven Years War.
Since the conquest of Silesia by Frederick the Great of
Prussia, "he had cast off all reserve. In his extraordinary
Court at Potsdam this man of wit and war laughed at God, and
at his brother philosophers and sovereigns; he ill-treated
Voltaire, the chief organ of the new opinions; he wounded
kings and queens with his epigrams; he believed neither in the
beauty of Madam de Pompadour nor in the poetical genius of
the Abbé Bernis, Prime Minister of France. The Empress thought
the moment favourable for the recovery of Silesia; she stirred
up Europe, especially the queens; she persuaded the Queen of
Poland and the Empress of Russia; she paid court to the
mistress of Louis XV. The monstrous alliance of France with
the ancient state of Austria against a sovereign who
maintained the equilibrium of Germany united all Europe
against him. England alone supported him and gave him
subsidies. She was governed at that time by a gouty lawyer,
the famous William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, who raised
himself by his eloquence and by his hatred of the French.
England wanted two things; the maintenance of the balance of power
in Europe, and the destruction of the French and Spanish colonies.
{221}
Her griefs were serious; the Spaniards had ill-treated her
smugglers and the French wanted to prevent her from settling
on their territory in Canada. In India, La Bourdonnaie and his
successor Dupleix threatened to found a great empire in the
face of the English. As a declaration of war the English
confiscated 300 French ships (1756). The marvel of the war was
to see this little kingdom of Prussia, interposed between the
huge powers of Austria, France, and Russia, run from one to
the other, and defy them all. This was the second period of
the art of war. The unskillful adversaries of Frederick
thought that he owed all his success to the precision of the
manœuvres of the Prussian soldiers, to their excellent drill
and rapid firing. Frederick had certainly carried the soldier
machine to perfection. This was capable of imitation: the Czar
Peter III. and the Count of St. Germin created military
automatons by means of the lash. But they could not imitate
the quickness of his manœuvres; the happy arrangement of his
marches, which gave him great facility for moving and
concentrating large masses, and directing them on the weak
points of the enemy. In this terrible chase given by the large
unwieldy armies of the allies to the agile Prussians, one
cannot help noticing the amusing circumspection of the
Austrian tacticians and the stupid folly of the fine gentlemen
who led the armies of France. The Fabius of Austria, the sage
and heavy Daun, was satisfied with a war of positions; he
could not find encampments strong enough or mountains
sufficiently inaccessible; his stationary troops were always
beaten by Frederick. To begin with, he freed himself from the
enmity of Saxony. He did not hurt, he only disarmed her. He
struck his next blow in Bohemia. Repulsed by the Austrians,
and abandoned by the English army, which determined at
Kloster-seven to fight no more, threatened by the Russians,
who were victorious at Joegerndorf, he passed into Saxony and
found the French and Imperialists combined there. Prussia was
surrounded by four armies. Frederick fancied himself lost and
determined on suicide. He wrote to his sister and to d'Argens
announcing his intention. There was only one thing which
frightened him: it was, that when once he was dead the great
distributor of glory--Voltaire--might make free with his
name: he wrote an epistle to disarm him. ... Having written
this epistle he defeated the enemy at Rosbach. The Prince of
Soubise, who thought that he fled, set off rashly in pursuit;
then the Prussians unmasked their batteries, killed 3,000 men,
and took 7,000 prisoners. In the French camp were found an
army of cooks, actors, hair-dressers; a number of parrots,
parasols, and huge cases of lavender-water, &c. (1757). None
but a tactician could follow the King of Prussia in this
series of brilliant and skillful battles. The Seven Years'
War, however varied its incidents, was a political and
strategical war: it has not the interest of the wars for
ideas, the struggles for religion and for freedom of the 16th
century and of our own time. The defeat of Rosbach was
followed by another at Crevelt, and by great reverses balanced
by small advantages; the total ruin of the French navy and
colonies; the English masters of the ocean and conquerors of
India; the exhaustion and humiliation of old Europe in the
presence of young Prussia. This is the history of the Seven
Years War. It was terminated under the ministry of the Duke of
Choiseul," by the Peace of Hubertsburg and the Peace of Paris.
J. Michelet, A Summary of Modern History, pages 300-302.
See
GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756, to 1763;
and, also, SEVEN YEARS' WAR.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1772-1773.
The First Partition of Poland.
See POLAND: A. D. 1763-1773.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1777-1779.
The question of the Bavarian Succession.
See BAVARIA: A. D. 1777-1779.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1782-1811.
Abolition of Serfdom.
See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1787-1791.
War with the Turks.
Treaty of Sistova.
Slight Acquisitions of Territory.
See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1790-1797.
Death of Joseph II. and Leopold II.
Accession of Francis II.
The Coalition against and war with revolutionary France, to
the Peace of Campo Formio.
"It is a mistake to imagine that the European Powers attacked
the Revolution in France. It was the Revolution which attacked
them. The diplomatists of the 18th century viewed at first
with cynical indifference the meeting of the States-General at
Versailles. ... The two points which occupied the attention of
Europe in 1789 were the condition of Poland and the troubles
in the East. The ambitious designs of Catherine and the
assistance lent to them by Joseph threatened the existence of
the Turkish Empire, irritated the Prussian Court, and awakened
English apprehensions, always sensitive about the safety of
Stamboul. Poland, the battle-field of cynical diplomacy, torn
by long dissensions and mined by a miserable constitution, was
vainly endeavouring, under the jealous eyes of her great
neighbours, to avert the doom impending, and to reassert her
ancient claim to a place among the nations of the world. But
Russia had long since determined that Poland must be a vassal
State to her or cease to be a State at all, while Prussia,
driven to face a hard necessity, realised that a strong Poland
and a strong Prussia could not exist together, and that if
Poland ever rose again to power, Prussia must bid good-bye to
unity and greatness. These two questions to the States
involved seemed to be of far more moment than any political
reform in France, and engrossed the diplomatists of Europe
until the summer of 1791. In February, 1790, a new influence
was introduced into European politics by the death of the
Emperor Joseph and the accession of his brother, Leopold II.
Leopold was a man of remarkable ability, no enthusiast and no
dreamer, thoroughly versed in the selfish traditions of
Austrian policy and in some of the subtleties of Italian
statecraft, discerning, temperate, resolute and clear-headed,
quietly determined to have his own way, and generally skilful
enough to secure it. Leopold found his new dominions in a
state of the utmost confusion, with war and rebellion
threatening him on every side. He speedily set about restoring
order. He repealed the unpopular decrees of Joseph. He
conciliated or repressed his discontented subjects. He
gradually re-established the authority of the Crown. ...
Accordingly, the first eighteen months of Leopold's reign were
occupied with his own immediate interests, and at the end of
that time his success was marked.
{222}
Catherine's vast schemes in Turkey had been checked. War had
been averted. Poland had been strengthened by internal
changes. Prussia had been conciliated and outmanœuvred, and
her influence had been impaired. At last, at the end of
August, 1791, the Emperor was free to face the French problem,
and he set out for the Castle of Pillnitz to meet the King of
Prussia and the Emigrant leaders at the Saxon Elector's Court.
For some time past the restlessness of the French Emigrants
had been causing great perplexity in Europe. Received with
open arms by the ecclesiastical princes of the Rhine, by the
Electors of Mayence and Trèves, they proceeded to agitate
busily for their own restoration. ... The object of the
Emigrants was to bring pressure to bear at the European
Courts, with the view of inducing the Powers to intervene
actively in their behalf. ... After his escape from France, in
June, 1790, the Comte de Provence established his Court at
Coblentz, where he was joined by his brother the Comte
d'Artois, and where, on the plea that Louis was a prisoner, he
claimed the title of Regent, and assumed the authority of
King. The Court of the two French princes at Coblentz
represented faithfully the faults and follies of the Emigrant
party. But a more satisfactory spectacle was offered by the
camp at Worms, where Condé was bravely trying to organise an
army to fight against the Revolution in France. To Condé's
standard flocked the more patriotic Emigrants. ... But the
German Princes in the neighbourhood looked with disfavour on
the Emigrant army. It caused confusion in their dominions, and
it drew down on them the hostility of the French Government.
The Emperor joined them in protesting against it. In February,
1792, Condé's army was compelled to abandon its camp at Worms,
and to retire further into Germany. The Emperor was well aware
of the reckless selfishness of the Emigrant princes. He had as
little sympathy with them as his sister. He did not intend to
listen to their demands. If he interfered in France at all, it
would only be in a cautious and tentative manner, and in order
to save Marie Antoinette and her husband. Certainly he would
not undertake a war for the restoration of the Ancien Régime.
... Accordingly, the interviews at Pillnitz came to nothing.
... Early in March, 1792, Leopold suddenly died. His heir
Francis, unrestrained by his father's tact and moderation,
assumed a different tone and showed less patience. The chances
of any effective pressure from the Powers declined, as the
prospect of war rose on the horizon. Francis' language was
sufficiently sharp to give the Assembly the pretext which it
longed for, and on the 20th April, Louis, amid general
enthusiasm, came down to the Assembly and declared war against
Austria. The effects of that momentous step no comment can
exaggerate. It ruined the best hopes of the Revolution, and
prepared the way for a military despotism in the future."
C. E. Mallet, The French Revolution, chapter 7.
See
FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791;
1791 (JULY-DECEMBER);
1791-1792; 1792 (APRIL-JULY), and (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER);
1792-1793 (DECEMBER-FEBRUARY);
1793 (FEBRUARY-APRIL), and (JULY-DECEMBER);
1794 (MARCH-JULY);
1794-1795 (OCTOBER-MAY);
1795 (JUNE-DECEMBER);
1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER);
and 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1794-1796.
The Third partition of Poland.
Austrian share of the spoils.
See POLAND: A. D. 1793-1796.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1797 (October).
Treaty of Campo-Formio with France.
Cession of the Netherlands and Lombard provinces.
Acquisition of Venice and Venetian territories.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1798-1806.
Congress of Rastadt.
Second Coalition against France.
Peace of Luneville.
Third Coalition.
Ulm and Austerlitz.
Peace of Presburg.
Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire.
Birth of the Empire of Austria.
"When Bonaparte sailed for Egypt he had left a congress at
Rastadt discussing means for the execution of certain articles
in the treaty of Campo Formio which were to establish peace
between France and the Empire. ... Though openly undertaking
to invite the Germans to a congress in order to settle a
general peace on the basis of the integrity of the Empire, the
Emperor agreed in secret articles to use his influence to
procure for the Republic the left bank of the Rhine with the
exception of the Prussian provinces, to join with France in
obtaining compensation in Germany for those injured by this
change, and to contribute no more than his necessary
contingent if the war were prolonged. The ratification of
these secret provisions had been extorted from the Congress by
threats before Bonaparte had left; but the question of
indemnification had progressed no farther than a decision to
secularise the ecclesiastical states for the purpose, when
extravagant demands from the French deputies brought
negotiation to a deadlock. Meanwhile, another coalition war
had been brewing. Paul I. of Russia had regarded with little
pleasure the doings of the Revolution, and when his proteges,
the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, had been deprived of
Malta by Bonaparte on his way to Egypt, when the Directory
established by force of arms a Helvetic republic in
Switzerland, when it found occasion to carry off the Pope into
exile and erect a Roman republic, he abandoned the cautious
and self-seeking policy of Catherine, and cordially responded
to Pitt's advances for an alliance. At the same time Turkey
was compelled by the invitation of Egypt to ally itself for
once with Russia. Austria, convinced that the French did not
intend to pay a fair price for the treaty of Campo Formio,
also determined to renew hostilities; and Naples, exasperated
by the sacrilege of a republic at Rome, and alarmed by French
aggressiveness, enrolled itself in the league. The Neapolitan
king, indeed, opened the war with some success, before he
could receive support from his allies; but he was soon
vanquished by the French, and his dominions were converted
into a Parthenopean republic. Austria, on the contrary,
awaited the arrival of the Russian forces; and the general
campaign began early in 1799. The French, fighting against
such generals as the Archduke Charles and the Russian
Suvaroff, without the supervision of Carnot or the strategy
and enterprise of Bonaparte, suffered severe reverses and
great privations. Towards the end the Russian army endured
much hardship on account of the selfishness of the Austrian
cabinet; and this caused the Tsar, who thought he had other
reasons for discontent, to withdraw his troops from the field.
{223}
When Bonaparte was made First Consul the military position of
France was, nevertheless, very precarious. ... The Roman and
Cisalpine republics had fallen. The very congress at Rastadt
had been dispersed by the approach of the Austrians; and the
French emissaries had been sabred by Austrian troopers, though
how their insolence came to be thus foully punished has never
been clearly explained. At this crisis France was rescued from
foreign foes and domestic disorders by its most successful
general. ... In the campaign which followed, France obtained
signal satisfaction for its chagrin. Leaving Moreau to carry
the war into Germany, Bonaparte suddenly crossed the Alps, and
defeated the Austrians on the plain of Marengo. The Austrians,
though completely cowed, refrained from concluding a definite
peace out of respect for their engagements with England; and
armistices, expiring into desultory warfare, prolonged the
contest till Moreau laid the way open to Vienna, by winning a
splendid triumph at Hohenlinden. A treaty of peace was finally
concluded at Lunéville, when Francis II. pledged the Empire to
its provisions on the ground of the consents already given at
Rastadt. In conformity with the treaty of Campo Formio,
Austria retained the boundary of the Adige in Italy; France
kept Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine; and the princes,
dispossessed by the cessions, were promised compensation in
Germany; while Tuscany was given to France to sell to Spain at
the price of Parma, Louisiana, six ships of the line, and a
sum of money. Shortly afterwards peace was extended to Naples
on easy terms. ... The time was now come for the Revolution to
complete the ruin of the Holy Roman Empire. Pursuant to the
treaty of Lunéville, the German Diet met at Regensburg to
discuss a scheme of compensation for the dispossessed rulers.
Virtually the meeting was a renewal of the congress of
Rastadt. ... At Rastadt the incoherence and disintegration of
the venerable Empire had become painfully apparent. ... When
it was known that the head of the nation, who had guaranteed
the integrity of the Empire in the preliminaries of Leoben,
and had renewed the assurance when he convoked the assembly,
had in truth betrayed to the stranger nearly all the left bank
of the Rhine,--the German rulers greedily hastened to secure
every possible trifle in the scramble of redistribution. The
slow and wearisome debates were supplemented by intrigues of
the most degraded nature. Conscious that the French Consul
could give a casting vote on any disputed question, the
princes found no indignity too shameful, no trick too base, to
obtain his favour. ... The First Consul, on his side,
prosecuted with a duplicity and address, heretofore
unequalled, the traditional policy of France in German
affairs. ... Feigning to take into his counsels the young
Tsar, whose convenient friendship was thus easily obtained on
account of his family connections with the German courts, he
drew up a scheme of indemnification and presented it to the
Diet for endorsement. In due time a servile assent was given
to every point which concerned the two autocrats. By this
settlement, Austria and Prussia were more equally balanced
against one another, the former being deprived of influence in
Western Germany, and the latter finding in more convenient
situations a rich recompense for its cessions on the Rhine;
while the middle states, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg,
received very considerable accessions of territory. But if
Bonaparte dislocated yet further the political structure of
Germany, he was at least instrumental in removing the worst of
the anachronisms which stifled the development of improved
institutions among a large division of its people. The same
measure which brought German separatism to a climax, also
extinguished the ecclesiastical sovereignties and nearly all
the free cities. That these strongholds of priestly
obscurantism and bourgeois apathy would some day be invaded by
their more ambitious and active neighbours, had long been
apparent. ... And war was declared when thousands of British
subjects visiting France had already been ensnared and
imprisoned. ... Pitt had taken the conduct of the war out of
the hands of Addington's feeble ministry. Possessing the
confidence of the powers, he rapidly concluded offensive
alliances with Russia, Sweden, and Austria, though Prussia
obstinately remained neutral. Thus, by 1805, Napoleon had put
to hazard all his lately won power in a conflict with the
greater part of Europe. The battle of Cape Trafalgar crushed
for good his maritime power, and rendered England safe from
direct attack. The campaign on land, however, made him master
of central Europe. Bringing the Austrian army in Germany to an
inglorious capitulation at Ulm, he marched through Vienna,
and, with inferior forces won in his best style the battle of
Austerlitz against the troops of Francis and Alexander. The
action was decisive. The allies thought not of renewing the
war with the relays of troops which were hurrying up from
North and South. Russian and Austrian alike wished to be rid
of their ill-fated connection. The Emperor Alexander silently
returned home, pursued only by Napoleon's flattering tokens of
esteem; the Emperor Francis accepted the peace of Presburg,
which deprived his house of the ill-gotten Venetian States,
Tyrol, and its more distant possessions in Western Germany;
the King of Prussia, who had been on the point of joining the
coalition with a large army if his mediation were
unsuccessful, was committed to an alliance with the conqueror
by his terrified negotiator. And well did Napoleon appear to
make the fruits of victory compensate France for its
exertions. The empire was not made more unwieldy in bulk, but
its dependents, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden, received
considerable accessions of territory, and the two first were
raised to the rank of kingdoms; while the Emperor's Italian
principality, which he had already turned into a kingdom of
Italy to the great disgust of Austria, was increased by the
addition of the ceded Venetian lands. But the full depth of
Europe's humiliation was not experienced till the two
following years. In 1806 an Act of Federation was signed by
the kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and
thirteen minor princes, which united them into a league under
the protection of the French Emperor. The objects of this
confederacy, known as the Rheinbund were defence against
foreign aggression and the exercise of complete autonomy at
home. ... Already the consequences of the Peace of Lunéville
had induced the ruling Hapsburg to assure his equality with
the sovereigns of France and Russia by taking the imperial
title in his own right; and before the Confederation of the
Rhine was made public he formally renounced his office of
elective Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and released from
allegiance to him all the states and princes of the Reich, The
triumph of the German policy of the Consulate was complete."
A. Weir, The Historical Basis of Modern Europe, chapter 4.
See, also,
FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799, to 1805, and
GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803, to 1805-1806.
{224}
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1809-1814.
The second struggle with Napoleon and the second defeat.
The Marriage alliance.
The Germanic War of Liberation.
The final alliance and the overthrow of the Corsican.
"On the 12th of July, 1806, fourteen princes of the south and
west of Germany united themselves into the confederation of
the Rhine, and recognised Napoleon as their protector. On the
1st of August, they signified to the diet of Ratisbon their
separation from the Germanic body. The Empire of Germany
ceased to exist, and Francis II. abdicated the title by
proclamation. By a convention signed at Vienna, on the 15th of
December, Prussia exchanged the territories of Anspach, Cleves
and Neufchâtel for the electorate of Hanover, Napoleon had all
the west under his power. Absolute master of France and Italy,
as emperor and king, he was also master of Spain, by the
dependence of that court; of Naples and Holland, by his two
brothers; of Switzerland, by the act of mediation; and in
Germany he had at his disposal the kings of Bavaria and
Wurtemberg, and the confederation of the Rhine against Austria
and Prussia. ... This encroaching progress gave rise to the
fourth coalition. Prussia, neutral since the peace of Bâle,
had, in the last campaign, been on the point of joining the
Austro-Russian coalition. The rapidity of the emperor's
victories had alone restrained her; but now, alarmed at the
aggrandizement of the empire, and encouraged by the fine
condition of her troops, she leagued with Russia to drive the
French from Germany. ... The campaign opened early in October.
Napoleon, as usual, overwhelmed the coalition by the
promptitude of his marches and the vigour of his measures. On
the 14th of October, he destroyed at Jena the military
monarchy of Prussia, by a decisive victory. ... The campaign
in Poland was less rapid, but as brilliant as that of Prussia.
Russia, for the third time, measured its strength with France.
Conquered at Zurich and Austerlitz, it was also defeated at Eylau
and Friedland. After these memorable battles, the emperor
Alexander entered into a negotiation, and concluded at Tilsit,
on the 21st of June, 1807, an armistice which was followed by
a definitive treaty on the 7th of July. The peace of Tilsit
extended the French domination on the continent. Prussia was
reduced to half its extent. In the south of Germany, Napoleon
had instituted the two kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemberg
against Austria; further to the north, he created the two
feudatory kingdoms of Saxony and Westphalia against Prussia.
... In order to obtain universal and uncontested supremacy, he
made use of arms against the continent, and the cessation of
commerce against England. But in forbidding to the continental
states all communication with England, he was preparing new
difficulties for himself, and soon added to the animosity of
opinion excited by his despotism, and the hatred of states
produced by his conquering domination, the exasperation of
private interests and commercial suffering occasioned by the
blockade. ... The expedition of Portugal in 1807, and the
invasion of Spain in 1808, began for him and for Europe a new
order of events. ... The reaction manifested itself in three
countries, hitherto allies of France, and it brought on the
fifth coalition. The court of Rome was dissatisfied; the
peninsula was wounded in its national pride by having imposed
upon it a foreign king; in its usages, by the suppression of
convents, of the Inquisition, and of the grandees; Holland
suffered in its commerce from the blockade, and Austria
supported impatiently its losses and subordinate condition.
England, watching for an opportunity to revive the struggle on
the continent, excited the resistance of Rome, the peninsula,
and the cabinet of Vienna. ... Austria ... made a powerful
effort, and raised 550,000 men, comprising the Landwehr, and
took the field in the spring of 1809. The Tyrol rose, and King
Jerome was driven from his capital by the Westphalians: Italy
wavered; and Prussia only waited till Napoleon met with a
reverse, to take arms; but the emperor was still at the height
of his power and prosperity. He hastened from Madrid in the
beginning of February, and directed the members of the
confederation to keep their contingents in readiness. On the
12th of April he left Paris, passed the Rhine, plunged into
Germany, gained the victories of Eckmühl and Essling, occupied
Vienna a second time on the 15th of May and overthrew this new
coalition by the battle of Wagram, after a campaign of four
mouths. ... The peace of Vienna, of the 11th of October, 1809,
deprived the house of Austria of several more provinces, and
compelled it again to adopt the continental system. ...
Napoleon, who seemed to follow a rash but inflexible policy,
deviated from his course about this time by a second marriage.
He divorced Josephine that he might give an heir to the
empire, and married, on the 1st of April, 1810, Marie-Louise,
arch-duchess of Austria. This was a decided error. He quitted
his position and his post as a parvenu and revolutionary
monarch, opposing in France the ancient courts as the republic
had opposed the ancient governments. He placed himself in a
false situation with respect to Austria, which he ought either

to have crushed after the victory of Wagram, or to have
reinstated in its possessions after his marriage with the
arch-duchess. ... The birth, on the 20th of March, 1811, of a
son, who received the title of king of Rome, seemed to
consolidate the power of Napoleon, by securing to him a
successor. The war in Spain was prosecuted with vigour during
the years 1810 and 1811. ... While the war was proceeding in
the peninsula with advantage, but without any decided success,
a new campaign was preparing in the north. Russia perceived
the empire of Napoleon approaching its territories. ... About
the close of 1810, it increased its armies, renewed its
commercial relations with Great Britain, and did not seem
indisposed to a rupture. The year 1811 was spent in
negotiations which led to nothing, and preparations for war
were made on both sides. ... On the 9th of March, Napoleon
left Paris. ... During several months he fixed his court at
Dresden, where the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia,
and all the sovereigns of Germany, came to bow before his high
fortune.
{225}
On the 22nd of June, war was declared against Russia. ...
Napoleon, who, according to his custom, wished to finish all
in one campaign, advanced at once into the heart of Russia,
instead of prudently organizing the Polish barrier against it.
His army amounted to about 500,000 men. He passed the Niemen
on the 24th of June; took Wilna, and Witepsk, defeated the
Russians at Astrowno, Polotsk, Mohilow Smolensko, at the
Moskowa, and on the 14th of September, made his entry into
Moscow. ... Moscow was burned by its governor. ... The emperor
ought to have seen that this war would not terminate as the
others had done; yet, conqueror of the foe, and master of his
capital, he conceived hopes of peace which the Russians
skilfully encouraged. Winter was approaching, and Napoleon
prolonged his stay at Moscow for six weeks. He delayed his
movements on account of the deceptive negotiations of the
Russians; and did not decide on a retreat till the 19th of
October. This retreat was disastrous, and began the downfall
of the empire. ... The cabinet of Berlin began the defections.
On the 1st of March, 1813, it joined Russia and England, which
were forming the sixth coalition. Sweden acceded to it soon
after; yet the emperor, whom the confederate power thought
prostrated by the last disaster, opened the campaign with new
victories. The battle of Lutzen, won by conscripts, on the 2nd
of May, the occupation of Dresden; the victory of Bautzen, and
the war carried to the Elbe, astonished the coalition.
Austria, which, since 1810, had been on a footing of peace,
was resuming arms, and already meditating a change of
alliance. She now proposed herself as a mediatrix between the
emperor and the confederates. Her meditation was accepted; an
armistice was concluded at Plesswitz, on the 4th of June, and
a congress assembled at Prague to negotiate peace. It was
impossible to come to terms. ... Austria joined the coalition,
and war, the only means of settling this great contest, was
resumed. The emperor had only 280,000 men against 520,000.
.... Victory seemed, at first, to second him. At Dresden he
defeated the combined forces; but the defeats of his
lieutenants deranged his plans. ... The princes of the
confederation of the Rhine chose this moment to desert the
cause of the empire. A vast engagement having taken place at
Leipsic between the two armies, the Saxons and Wurtembergers
passed over to the enemy on the field of battle. This
defection to the strength of the coalesced powers, who had
learned a more compact and skilful mode of warfare, obliged
Napoleon to retreat, after a struggle of three days. ... The
empire was invaded in all directions. The Austrians entered
Italy; the English, having made themselves masters of the
peninsula during the last two years, had passed the Bidassoa,
under General Wellington, and appeared on the Pyrenees. Three
armies pressed on France to the east and north. ... Napoleon
was ... obliged to submit to the conditions of the allied
powers; their pretensions increased with their power. ... On
the 11th of April, 1814, he renounced for himself and children
the thrones of France and Italy, and received in exchange for
his vast sovereignty, the limits of which had extended from
Cadiz to the Baltic Sea, the little island of Elba."
F. A. Mignet, History of the French Revolution, chapter 15.
See
GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE), to 1813;
RUSSIA: A. D. 1812; and
FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812 to 1814.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1814.
Restored rule in Northern Italy.
See ITALY: A. D. 1814-1815.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1814-1815.
Treaties of Paris and Congress of Vienna.
Readjustment of French boundaries.
Recovery of the Tyrol from Bavaria and Lombardy in Italy.
Acquisition of the Venetian states.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE),
and 1815 (JULY-NOVEMBER):
also VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1814-1820.
Formation of the Germanic Confederation.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815.
The Holy Alliance.
See HOLY ALLIANCE.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815.
Return of Napoleon from Elba.
The Quadruple Alliance.
The Waterloo Campaign and Its results.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1814-1815.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815-1835.
Emperor Francis, Prince Metternich, and "the system."
"After the treaty of Vienna in 1809, and still more
conspicuously after the pacification of Europe, the political
wisdom of the rulers of Austria inclined them ever more and
more to the maintenance of that state of things which was
known to friends and foes as the System. But what was the
System? It was the organisation of do-nothing. It cannot even
be said to have been reactionary: it was simply reactionary.
... 'Mark time in place' was the word of command in every
government office. The bureaucracy was engaged from morning to
night in making work, but nothing ever came of it. Not even
were the liberal innovations which had lasted through the
reign of Leopold got rid of. Everything went on in the
confused, unfinished, and ineffective state in which the great
war had found it. Such was the famous System which was
venerated by the ultra-Tories of every land, and most
venerated where it was least understood. Two men dominate the
history of Austria during this unhappy time--men who, though
utterly unlike in character and intellect, were nevertheless
admirably fitted to work together, and whose names will be
long united in an unenviable notoriety. These were the Emperor
Francis and Prince Metternich. The first was the evil genius
of internal politics; the second exercised a hardly less
baneful influence over foreign affairs. ... For the external
policy of Prince Metternich, the first and most necessary
condition was, that Austria should give to Europe the
impression of fixed adherence to the most extreme Conservative
views. So for many years they worked together, Prince
Metternich always declaring that he was a mere tool in the
hands of his master, but in reality far more absolute in the
direction of his own department than the emperor was in his.
... Prince Metternich had the power of making the most of all
he knew, and constantly left upon persons of real merit the
impression that he was a man of lofty aspirations and liberal
views, who forced himself to repress such tendencies in others
because he thought that their repression was a sine quâ non for
Austria. The men of ability, who knew him intimately, thought
less well of him.
{226}
To them he appeared vain and superficial, with much that
recalled the French noblesse of the old régime in his way of
looking at things, and emphatically wanting in every element
of greatness. With the outbreak of the Greek insurrection in
1821, began a period of difficulty and complications for the
statesmen of Austria. There were two things of which they were
mortally afraid--Russia and the revolution. Now, if they
assisted the Greeks, they would be playing into the hands of
the second; and if they opposed the Greeks, they would be
likely to embroil themselves with the first. The whole art of
Prince Metternich was therefore exerted to keep things quiet
in the Eastern Peninsula, and to postpone the intolerable
'question d'Orient.' Many were the shifts he tried, and
sometimes, as just after the accession of Nicholas, his hopes
rose very high. All was, however, in vain. England and Russia
settled matters behind his back; and although the tone which
the publicists in his pay adopted towards the Greeks became
more favourable in 1826-7, the battle of Navarino was a sad
surprise and mortification to the wily chancellor. Not less
annoying was the commencement of hostilities on the Danube
between Russia and the Porte. The reverses with which the
great neighbour met in his first campaign cannot have been
otherwise than pleasing at Vienna. But the unfortunate success
which attended his arms in the second campaign soon turned
ill-dissembled joy into ill-concealed sorrow, and the treaty
of Adrianople at once lowered Austria's prestige in the East,
and deposed Metternich from the commanding position which he
had occupied in the councils of the Holy Allies. It became,
indeed, ever more and more evident in the next few years that
the age of Congress politics, during which he had been the
observed of all observers, was past and gone, that the
diplomatic period had vanished away, and that the military
period had begun. The very form in which the highest
international questions were debated was utterly changed. At
Vienna, in 1814, the diplomatists had been really the primary,
the sovereigns only secondary personages; while at the
interview of Münchengratz, between Nicholas and the Emperor
Francis, in 1833, the great autocrat appeared to look upon
Prince Metternich as hardly more than a confidential clerk.
The dull monotony of servitude which oppressed nearly the
whole of the empire was varied by the agitations of one of its
component parts. When the Hungarian Diet was dissolved in
1812, the emperor had solemnly promised that it should be
called together again within three years. Up to 1815,
accordingly, the nation went on giving extraordinary levies
and supplies without much opposition. When, however, the
appointed time was fulfilled, it began to murmur. ... Year by
year the agitation went on increasing, till at last the
breaking out of the Greek revolution, and the threatening
appearance of Eastern politics, induced Prince Metternich to
join his entreaties to those of many other counsellors, who
could not be suspected of the slightest leaning to
constitutional views. At length the emperor yielded, and in
1825 Presburg was once more filled with the best blood and
most active spirits of the land, assembled in parliament. Long
and stormy were the debates which ensued. Bitter was, from
time to time, the vexation of the emperor, and great was the
excitement throughout Hungary. In the end, however, the court
of Vienna triumphed. Hardly any grievances were redressed,
while its demands were fully conceded. The Diet of 1825 was,
however, not without fruit. The discussion which took place
advanced the political education of the people, who were
brought back to the point where they stood at the death of
Joseph II.--that is, before the long wars with France had
come to distract their attention from their own affairs. ...
The slumbers of Austria were not yet over. The System dragged
its slow length along. Little or nothing was done for the
improvement of the country. Klebelsberg administered the
finances in an easy and careless manner. Conspiracies and
risings in Italy were easily checked, and batches of prisoners
sent off from time to time to Mantua or Spielberg. Austrian
influence rose ever higher and higher in all the petty courts
of the Peninsula. ... In other regions Russia or England might
be willing to thwart him, but in Italy Prince Metternich might
proudly reflect that Austria was indeed a 'great power.' The
French Revolution of 1830 was at first alarming; but when it
resulted in the enthronement of a dynasty which called to its
aid a 'cabinet of repression,' all fears were stilled. The
Emperor Francis continued to say, when any change was
proposed, 'We must sleep upon it,' and died in 1835 in 'the
abundance of peace.'"
M. E. Grant Duff, Studies in European Politics,
pages 140-149.
See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1819-1847.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815-1846.
Gains of the Hapsburg monarchy.
Its aggressive absolutism.
Death of Francis I.
Accession of Ferdinand I.
Suppression of revolt in Galicia.
Extinction and annexation of the Republic of Cracow.
"In the new partition of Europe, arranged in the Congress of
Vienna [see VIENNA. THE CONGRESS OF], Austria received
Lombardy and Venice under the title of a Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom, the Illyrian provinces also as a kingdom, Venetian
Dalmatia, the Tirol, Vorarlberg, Salzburg, the Innviertel and
Hausrucksviertel, and the part of Galicia ceded by her at an
earlier period. Thus, after three and twenty years of war, the
monarchy had gained a considerable accession of strength,
having obtained, in lieu of its remote and unprofitable
possessions in the Netherlands, territories which consolidated
its power in Italy, and made it as great in extent as it had
been in the days of Charles VI., and far more compact and
defensible. The grand duchies of Modena, Parma, and Placentia,
were moreover restored to the collateral branches of the house
of Hapsburg. ... After the last fall of Napoleon ... the great
powers of the continent ... constituted themselves the
champions of the principle of absolute monarchy. The
maintenance of that principle ultimately became the chief
object of the so-called Holy Alliance established in 1816
between Russia, Austria and Prussia, and was pursued with
remarkable steadfastness by the Emperor Francis and his
minister, Prince Metternich [see HOLY ALLIANCE]. ...
Thenceforth it became the avowed policy of the chief
sovereigns of Germany to maintain the rights of dynasties in
an adverse sense to those of their subjects. The people, on
the other hand, deeply resented the breach of those promises
which had been so lavishly made to them on the general summons
to the war of liberation.
{227}
Disaffection took the place of that enthusiastic loyalty with
which they had bled and suffered for their native princes; the
secret societies, formed with the concurrence of their rulers,
for the purpose of throwing off the yoke of the foreigner,
became ready instruments of sedition. ... In the winter of
1819, a German federative congress assembled at Vienna. In May
of the following year it published an act containing closer
definitions of the Federative Act, having for their essential
objects the exclusion of the various provincial Diets from all
positive interference in the general affairs of Germany, and
an increase of the power of the princes over their respective
Diets, by a guarantee of aid on the part of the confederates"
(see GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820). During the next three years,
the powers of the Holy Alliance, under the lead of Austria,
and acting under a concert established at the successive
congresses of Troppau, Laybach and Verona (see VERONA,
CONGRESS OF), interfered to put down popular risings against
the tyranny of government in Italy and Spain, while they
discouraged the revolt of the Greeks.
See ITALY: A. D. 1820-1821;
and SPAIN: A. D. 1814-1827.
"The commotions that pervaded Europe after the French
Revolution of 1830 affected Austria only in her Italian
dominions, and there but indirectly, for the imperial
authority remained undisputed in the Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom. But the duke of Modena and the archduke of Parma were
obliged to quit those states, and a formidable insurrection
broke out in the territory of the Church. An Austrian army of
18,000 men quickly put down the insurgents, who rose again,
however, as soon as it was withdrawn: The pope again invoked
the aid of Austria, whose troops entered Bologna in January,
1832, and established themselves there in garrison. Upon this,
the French immediately sent a force to occupy Ancona, and for
a while a renewal of the oft-repeated conflict between Austria
and France on Italian ground seemed inevitable; but it soon
appeared that France was not prepared to support the
revolutionary party in the pope's dominions, and that danger
passed away. The French remained for some years in Ancona, and
the Austrians in Bologna and other towns of Romagna. This was
the last important incident in the foreign affairs of Austria
previous to the death of the Emperor Francis I. on the 2nd of
March, 1835, after a reign of 43 years. ... The Emperor
Francis was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I., whose
accession occasioned no change in the political or
administrative system of the empire. Incapacitated, by
physical and mental infirmity, from labouring as his father
had done in the business of the state, the new monarch left to
Prince Metternich a much more unrestricted power than that
minister had wielded in the preceding reign. ... The province
of Galicia began early in the new reign to occasion uneasiness
to the government. The Congress of Vienna had constituted the
city of Cracow an independent republic--a futile
representative of that Polish nationality which had once
extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. After the failure
of the Polish insurrection of 1831 against Russia, Cracow
became the focus of fresh conspiracies, to put an end to which
the city was occupied by a mixed force of Russians, Prussians,
and Austrians; the two former were soon withdrawn, but the
latter remained until 1840. When they also had retired, the
Polish propaganda was renewed with considerable effect. An
insurrection broke out in Galicia in 1846, when the scantiness
of the Austrian military force in the province seemed to
promise it success. It failed, however, as all previous
efforts of the Polish patriots had failed, because it rested
on no basis of popular sympathy. The nationality for which
they contended had ever been of an oligarchical pattern,
hostile to the freedom of the middle and lower classes. The
Galician peasants had no mind to exchange the yoke of Austria,
which pressed lightly upon them, for the feudal oppression of
the Polish nobles. They turned upon the insurgents and slew or
took them prisoners, the police inciting them to the work by
publicly offering a reward of five florins for every suspected
person delivered up by them, alive or dead. Thus the agents of
a civilized government became the avowed instigators of an
inhuman 'jacquerie.' The houses of the landed proprietors were
sacked by the peasants, their inmates were tortured and
murdered, and bloody anarchy raged throughout the land in the
prostituted name of loyalty. The Austrian troops at last
restored order; but Szela, the leader of the sanguinary
marauders, was thanked and highly rewarded in the name of his
sovereign. In the same year the three protecting powers,
Austria, Russia, and Prussia, took possession of Cracow, and,
ignoring the right of the other parties to the treaty of
Vienna to concern themselves about the fate of the republic,
they announced that its independence was annulled, and that
the city and territory of Cracow were annexed to, and forever
incorporated with, the Austrian monarchy. From this time forth
the political atmosphere of Europe became more and more loaded
with the presages of the storm that burst in 1848."
W. K. Kelly, Continuation of Coxe's History of the
House of Austria, chapter 5-6.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815-1849.
Arrangements in Italy of the Congress of Vienna.
Heaviness of the Austrian yoke.
The Italian risings.
"By the treaty of Vienna (1815), the ... entire kingdom of
Venetian-Lombardy was handed over to the Austrians; the
duchies of Modena, Reggio, with Massa and Carrara, given to
Austrian princes; Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla to Napoleon's
queen, Maria Luisa, because she was an Austrian princess; the
grand-duchy of Tuscany to Ferdinand III. of Austria; the duchy
of Lucca to a Bourbon. Rome and the Roman states were restored
to the new Pope, Pius VII.; Sicily was united to Naples under
the Bourbons, and later deprived of her constitution, despite
the promised protection of England; the Canton Ticino, though
strictly Italian, annexed to the Swiss Confederation; the
little republic of St. Marino left intact, even as the
principality of Monaco. England retained Malta; Corsica was
left to France. Italy, so Metternich and Europe fondly hoped,
was reduced to a geographical expression. Unjust, brutal, and
treacherous as was that partition, at least it taught the
Italians that 'who would be free himself must strike the
blow.' It united them into one common hatred of Austria and
Austrian satellites. By substituting papal, Austrian, and
Bourbon despotism for the free institutions, codes, and
constitutions of the Napoleonic era, it taught them the
difference between rule and misrule.
{228}
Hence the demand of the Neapolitans during their first
revolution (1820) was for a constitution; that of the
Piedmontese and Lombards (1821) for a constitution and war
against Austria. The Bourbon swore and foreswore, and the
Austrians 'restored order' in Naples. The Piedmontese, who had
not concerted their movement until Naples was crushed--after
the abdication of Victor Emmanuel I., the granting of the
constitution by the regent Charles Albert, and its abrogation
by the new king Charles Felix--saw the Austrians enter
Piedmont, while the leaders of the revolution went out into
exile [see ITALY: A. D. 1820-1821]. But those revolutions and
those failures were the beginning of the end. The will to be
independent of all foreigners, the thirst for freedom, was
universal; the very name of empire or of emperor, was rendered
ridiculous, reduced to a parody--in the person of Ferdinand of
Austria. But one illusion remained--in the liberating virtues
of France and the French; this had to be dispelled by bitter
experience, and for it substituted the new idea of one Italy
for the Italians, a nation united, independent, free, governed
by a president or by a king chosen by the sovereign people.
The apostle of this idea, to which for fifty years victims and
martyrs were sacrificed by thousands, was Joseph Mazzini; its
champion, Joseph Garibaldi. By the genius of the former, the
prowess of the latter, the abnegation, the constancy, the
tenacity, the iron will of both, all the populations of Italy
were subjugated by that idea: philosophers demonstrated it,
poets sung it, pious Christian priests proclaimed it,
statesmen found it confronting their negotiations, baffling
their half-measures."
J. W. V. Mario, Introduction to Autobiography of
Garibaldi.-
See ITALY: A. D. 1830-1832, and 1848-1849.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1835.
Accession of the Emperor Ferdinand I.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1839-1840.
The Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.
Quadruple Alliance.
See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848.
The Germanic revolutionary rising.
National Assembly at Frankfort.
Archduke John elected Administrator of Germany.
"When the third French Revolution broke out, its influence was
immediately felt in Germany. The popular movement this time
was very different from any the Governments had hitherto had
to contend with. The people were evidently in earnest, and
resolved to obtain, at whatever cost, their chief demands. ...
The Revolution was most serious in the two great German
States, Prussia and Austria. ... It was generally hoped that
union as well as freedom was now to be achieved by Germany;
but, as Prussia and Austria were in too much disorder to do
anything, about 500 Germans from the various States met at
Frankfurt, and on March 21 constituted themselves a
provisional Parliament. An extreme party wished the assembly
to declare itself permanent; but to this the majority would
not agree. It was decided that a National Assembly should be
elected forthwith by the German people. The Confederate Diet,
knowing that the provisional Parliament was approved by the
nation, recognized its authority. Through the Diet the various
Governments were communicated with, and all of them agreed to
make arrangements for the elections. ... The National Assembly
was opened in Frankfurt on May 18, 1848. It elected the
Archduke John of Austria as the head of a new provisional
central Government. The choice was a happy one. The Archduke
was at once acknowledged by the different governments, and on
July 12 the President of the Confederate Diet formally made
over to him the authority which had hitherto belonged to the
Diet. The Diet then ceased to exist. The Archduke chose from
the Assembly seven members, who formed a responsible ministry.
The Assembly was divided into two parties, the Right and the
Left. These again were broken up into various sections. Much
time was lost in useless discussions, and it was soon
suspected that the Assembly would not in the end prove equal
to the great task it had undertaken."
J. Sime, History of Germany, chapter 19, sections. 8-11.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848 (December).
Accession of the Emperor Francis Joseph I.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.
Revolutionary risings.
Bombardment of Prague and Vienna.
Abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand.
Accession of Francis Joseph.
The Hungarian struggle for independence.
"The rise of national feeling among the Hungarian, Slavonic,
and Italian subjects of the House of Hapsburg was not the only
difficulty of the Emperor Ferdinand I. Vienna was then the
gayest and the dearest centre of fashion and luxury in Europe,
but side by side with wealth there seethed a mass of wretched
poverty; and the protective trade system of Austria so
increased the price of the necessaries of life that
bread-riots were frequent. ... The university students were
foremost in the demand for a constitution and for the removal
of the rigid censorship of the press and of all books. So,
when the news came of the flight of Louis Philippe from Paris
[see FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848, and 1848] the students as well
as the artisans of Vienna rose in revolt (March 13, 1848), the
latter breaking machinery and attacking the houses of
unpopular employers. A deputation of citizens clamoured for
the resignation of the hated Metternich: his house was burnt
down, and he fled to England. A second outbreak of the excited
populace (May 15, 1848), sent the Emperor Ferdinand in
helpless flight to Innsprück in Tyrol; but he returned when
they avowed their loyalty to his person, though they detested
the old bureaucratic system. Far more complicated, however,
were the race jealousies of the Empire. The Slavs of Bohemia
... had demanded of Ferdinand the union of Bohemia, Moravia,
and Austrian Silesia in Estates for those provinces, and that
the Slavs should enjoy equal privileges with the Germans.
After an unsatisfactory answer had been received, they
convoked a Slavonic Congress at Prague. ... But while this
Babel of tongues was seeking for a means of fusion, Prince
Windischgrätz was assembling Austrian troops around the
Bohemian capital. Fights in the streets led to a bombardment
of the city, which Windischgrätz soon entered in triumph. This
has left a bitterness between the Tsechs or Bohemians and the
Germans which still divides Bohemia socially and politically.
... The exciting news of the spring of 1848 had made the hot
Asiatic blood of the Magyars boil; yet even Kossuth and the
democrats at first only demanded the abolition of Metternich's
system in favour of a representative government. ...
{229}
Unfortunately Kossuth claimed that the Magyar laws and
language must now be supreme, not only in Hungary proper, but
also in the Hungarian 'crown lands' of Dalmatia, Croatia, and
Slavonia, and the enthusiastic Magyars wished also to absorb
the ancient principality of Transylvania; but this again was
stoutly resisted by the Roumanians, Slavs, and Saxons of that
little known corner of Europe, and their discontent was fanned
by the court of Vienna. Jellachich, the Ban or Governor of
Croatia, headed this movement, which aimed at making Agram the
capital of the southern Slavs. Their revolt against the
Hungarian ministry of Batthyanyi was at first disavowed in
June, 1848, but in October was encouraged, by the perfidious
government of Vienna. A conference between Batthyanyi and
Jellachich ended with words of defiance: 'Then we must meet on
the Drave,' said the Hungarian. 'No, on the Danube,' retorted
the champion of the Slavs. The vacillating Ferdinand annulled
his acceptance of the new Hungarian constitution and declared
Jellachich dictator of Hungary. His tool was unfortunate.
After crossing the Drave, the Slavs were defeated by the brave
Hungarian 'honveds' (defenders); and as many as 9,000 were
made prisoners. Unable to subdue Hungary, Jellachich turned
aside towards Vienna to crush the popular party there. For the
democrats, exasperated by the perfidious policy of the
government, had, on October 6, 1848, risen a third time: the
war-minister, Latour, had been hanged on a lamp-post, and the
emperor again fled from his turbulent capital to the
ever-faithful Tyrolese. But now Jellachich and Windischgrätz
bombarded the rebellious capital. It was on the point of
surrendering when the Hungarians appeared to aid the city; but
the levies raised by the exertions of Kossuth were this time
outmanœuvred [and defeated] by the imperialists at Schwechat
(October 30, 1848), and on the next day Vienna surrendered.
Blum, a delegate from Saxony [to the German Parliament of
Frankfort, who had come on a mission of mediation to Vienna,
but who had taken a part in the fighting], and some other
democrats, were shot. By this clever but unscrupulous use of
race jealousy the Viennese Government seemed to have overcome
Bohemians, Italians, Hungarians, and the citizens of its own
capital in turn; while it had diverted the southern Slavonians
from hostility to actual service on its side. ... The weak
health and vacillating spirit of Ferdinand did not satisfy the
knot of courtiers of Vienna, who now, flushed by success,
sought to concentrate all power in the Viennese Cabinet. Worn
out by the excitements of the year and by the demands of these
men, Ferdinand, on December 2, 1848, yielded up the crown, not
to his rightful successor, his brother, but to his nephew,
Francis Joseph. He, a youth of eighteen, ascended the throne
so rudely shaken, and still, in spite of almost uniform
disaster in war, holds sway over an empire larger and more
powerful than he found it in 1848. The Hungarians refused to
recognise the young sovereign thus forced upon them; and the
fact that he was not crowned at Presburg with the sacred iron
crown of St. Stephen showed that he did not intend to
recognise the Hungarian constitution. Austrian troops under
Windischgrätz entered Buda-Pesth, but the Hungarian patriots
withdrew from their capital to organize a national resistance;
and when the Austrian Government proclaimed the Hungarian
constitution abolished and the complete absorption of Hungary
in the Austrian Empire, Kossuth and his colleagues retorted by
a Declaration of Independence (April 24, 1849). The House of
Hapsburg was declared banished from Hungary, which was to be a
republic. Kossuth, the first governor of the new republic, and
Görgei, its general, raised armies which soon showed their
prowess." The first important battle of the war had been
fought at Kapolna, on the right bank of the Theiss, on the
26th of February, 1849, Görgei and Dembinski commanding the
Hungarians and Windischgrätz leading the Austrians. The latter
won the victory, and the Hungarians retreated toward the
Theiss. About the middle of March, Görgei resumed the
offensive, advancing toward Pesth, and encountered the
Austrians at Isaszeg, where he defeated them in a hard-fought
battle,--or rather in two battles which are sometimes called
by different names: viz., that of Tapio Biscke fought April
4th, and that of Godolo, fought on the 5th. It was now the
turn of the Austrians to fall back, and they concentrated
behind the Rakos, to cover Pesth. The Hungarian general passed
round their left, carried Waitzen by storm, forced them to
evacuate Pesth and to retreat to Presburg, abandoning the
whole of Hungary with the exception of a few fortresses, which
they held. The most important of these fortresses, that of
Buda, the "twin-city," opposite Pesth on the Danube, was
besieged by the Hungarians and carried by storm on the 21st of
May. "In Transylvania, too, the Hungarians, under the talented
Polish general Bem, overcame the Austrians, Slavonians, and
Roumanians in many brilliant encounters. But the proclamation
of a republic had alienated those Hungarians who had only
striven for their old constitutional rights, so quarrels arose
between Görgei and the ardent democrat Kossuth. Worse still,
the Czar Nicholas, dreading the formation of a republic near
his Polish provinces sent the military aid which Francis
Joseph in May 1849 implored. Soon 80,000 Russians under
Paskiewitch poured over the northern Carpathians to help the
beaten Austrians, while others overpowered the gallant Bem in
Transylvania. Jellachich with his Croats again invaded South
Hungary, and Haynau, the scourge of Lombardy, marched on the
strongest Hungarian fortress, Komorn, on the Danube." The
Hungarians, overpowered by the combination of Austrians and
Russians against them, were defeated at Pered, June 21; at
Acz, July 3; at Komorn, July 11; at Waitzen, July 16; at
Tzombor, July 20; at Segesvar, July 31; at Debreczin, August
2; at Szegedin, August 4; at Temesvar, August 10. "In despair
Kossuth handed over his dictatorship to his rival Görgei, who
soon surrendered at Vilagos with all his forces to the
Russians (August 13, 1849). About 5,000 men with Kossuth, Bem,
and other leaders, escaped to Turkey. Even there Russia and
Austria sought to drive them forth; but the Porte, upheld by
the Western Powers, maintained its right to give sanctuary
according to the Koran. Kossuth and many of his fellow-exiles
finally sailed to England [and afterwards to America], where
his majestic eloquence aroused deep sympathy for the afflicted
country. Many Hungarian patriots suffered death. All rebels had
their property confiscated and the country was for years ruled
by armed force, and its old rights were abolished."
J. H. Rose, A Century of Continental History, chapter
31.
ALSO IN:
Sir A. Alison, History of Europe, 1815-1852, chapter 55.
A. Görgei, My Life and Acts in Hungary.
General Klapka, Memoirs of the War of Independence in
Hungary.
Count Hartig, Genesis of the Revolution in Austria.
W. H. Stiles, Austria in 1848-49.
{230}
AUSTRIA: A. D.1848-1849.
Revolt in Lombardy and Venetia.
War with Sardinia.
Victories of Radetzky.
Italy vanquished again.
See ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1850.
Failure of the movement for Germanic national unity.
End of the Frankfort Assembly.
"Frankfort had become the centre of the movement. The helpless
Diet had acknowledged the necessity of a German parliament,
and had summoned twelve men of confidence charged with drawing
up a new imperial constitution. But it was unable to supply
what was most wanted--a strong executive. ... Instead of
establishing before all a strong executive able to control and
to realise its resolutions, the Assembly lost months in
discussing the fundamental rights of the German people, and
thus was overhauled by the events. In June, Prince
Windischgraetz crushed the insurrection at Prague; and in
November the anarchy which had prevailed during the whole
summer at Berlin was put down, when Count Brandenburg became
first minister. ... Schwarzenberg [at Vienna] declared as soon
as he had taken the reins, that his programme was to maintain
the unity of the Austrian empire, and demanded that the whole
of it should enter into the Germanic confederation. This was
incompatible with the federal state as contemplated by the
National Assembly, and therefore Gagern, who had become
president of the imperial ministry [at Frankfort], answered
Schwarzenberg's programme by declaring that the entering of
the Austrian monarchy with a majority of non-German
nationalities into the German federal state was an
impossibility. Thus nothing was left but to place the king of
Prussia at the head of the German state. But in order to win a
majority for this plan Gagern found it necessary to make large
concessions to the democratic party, amongst others universal
suffrage. This was not calculated to make the offer of the
imperial crown acceptable to Frederic William IV., but his
principal reason for declining it was, that he would not
exercise any pressure on the other German sovereigns, and
that, notwithstanding Schwarzenberg's haughty demeanour, he
could not make up his mind to exclude Austria from Germany.
After the refusal of the crown by the king, the National
Assembly was doomed; it had certainly committed great faults,
but the decisive reason of its failure was the lack of a clear
and resolute will in Prussia. History, however, teaches that
great enterprises, such as it was to unify an empire
dismembered for centuries, rarely succeed at the first
attempt. The capital importance of the events of 1848 was that
they had made the German unionist movement an historical fact;
it could never be effaced from the annals, that all the German
governments had publicly acknowledged that tendency as
legitimate, the direction for the future was given, and even
at the time of failure it was certain, as Stockmar said, that
the necessity of circumstances would bring forward the man
who, profiting by the experiences of 1848, would fulfil the
national aspirations."
F. H. Geffcken, The Unity of Germany (English Historical
Revised, April, 1891).
See GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1850.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1849-1859.
The Return to pure Absolutism.
Bureaucracy triumphant.
"The two great gains which the moral earthquake of 1848
brought to Austria were, that through wide provinces of the
Empire, and more especially in Hungary, it swept away the sort
of semi-vassalage in which the peasantry had been left by the
Urbarium of Maria Theresa [an edict which gave to the peasants
the right of moving from place to place, and the right of
bringing up their children as they wished, while it
established in certain courts the trial of all suits to which
they were parties], and other reforms akin to or founded upon
it, and introduced modern in the place of middle-age relations
between the two extremes of society. Secondly, it overthrew
the policy of do-nothing--a surer guarantee for the
continuance of abuses than even the determination, which soon
manifested itself at headquarters, to make the head of the
state more absolute than ever. After the taking of Vienna by
Windischgrätz, the National Assembly had, on the 15th of
November 1848, been removed from the capital to the small town
of Kremsier, in Moravia. Here it prolonged all ineffective
existence till March 1849, when the court camarilla felt
itself strong enough to put an end to an inconvenient censor,
and in March 1849 it ceased to exist. A constitution was at
the same time promulgated which contained many good
provisions, but which was never heartily approved by the
ruling powers, or vigorously carried into effect--the
proclamation of a state of siege in many cities, and other
expedients of authority in a revolutionary period, easily
enabling it to be set at naught. The successes of the reaction
in other parts of Europe, and, above all, the coup d'état in
Paris, emboldened Schwartzenberg to throw off the mask; and on
the last day of 1851 Austria became once more a pure
despotism. The young emperor had taken 'Viribus unitis' for
his motto; and his advisers interpreted those words to mean
that Austria was henceforward to be a state as highly
centralised as France--a state in which the minister at Vienna
was absolutely to govern everything from Salzburg to the Iron
Gate. The hand of authority had been severely felt in the
pre-revolutionary period, but now advantage was to be taken of
the revolution to make it felt far more than ever. In Hungary,
for example, ... it was fondly imagined that there would be no
more trouble. The old political division into counties was
swept away; the whole land was divided into five provinces;
and the courtiers might imagine that from henceforth the
Magyars would be as easily led as the inhabitants of Upper
Austria. These delusions soon became general, but they owed
their origin partly to the enthusiastic ignorance of those who
were at the head of the army, and partly to two men"--Prince
Schwartzenberg and Alexander Bach. Of the latter, the "two
leading ideas were to cover the whole empire with a German
bureaucracy, and to draw closer the ties which connected the
court of Vienna with that of Rome.
{231}
... If absolutism in Austria had a fair trial from the 31st of
December 1851 to the Italian war, it is to Bach that it was
owing; and if it utterly and ludicrously failed, it is he more
than any other man who must bear the blame. Already, in 1849,
the bureaucracy had been reorganised, but in 1852 new and
stricter regulations were introduced. Everything was
determined by precise rules--even the exact amount of hair
which the employee was permitted to wear upon his face. Hardly
any question was thought sufficiently insignificant to be
decided upon the spot. The smallest matters had to be referred
to Vienna. .... We can hardly be surprised that the great ruin
of the Italian war brought down with a crash the whole edifice of
the reaction."
M. E. G. Duff, Studies in European Politics, chapter 3.
ALSO IN: L. Leger, History of Austro-Hungary, chapter 33.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1853.
Commercial Treaty with the German Zollverein.
See TARIFF LEGISLATION (GERMANY): A. D. 1853-1892.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1853-1856.
Attitude in the Crimean War.
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1856-1859.
The war in Italy with Sardinia and France.
Reverses at Magenta and Solferino.
Peace of Villafranca.
Surrender of Lombardy.
"From the wars of 1848-9 the King of Sardinia was looked upon
by the moderate party as the champion of Italian freedom.
Charles Albert had failed: yet his son would not, and indeed
could not, go back, though, when he began his reign, there
were many things against him. ... Great efforts were made to
win him over to the Austrian party, but the King was neither
cast down by defeat and distrust nor won over by soft words.
He soon showed that, though he had been forced to make a
treaty with Austria, yet he would not cast in his lot with the
oppression of Italy. He made Massimo d'Azeglio his chief
Minister, and Camillo Benso di Cavour his Minister of
Commerce. With the help of these two men he honestly carried
out the reforms which had been granted by his father, and set
new ones on foot. ... The quick progress of reform frightened
Count Massimo d'Azeglio. He retired from office in 1853, and
his place was taken by Count Cavour, who made a coalition with
the democratic party in Piedmont headed by Urbano Rattazzi.
The new chief Minister began to work not only for the good of
Piedmont but for Italy at large. The Milanese still listened
to the hopes which Mazzini held out, and could not quietly
hear their subjection. Count Cavour indignantly remonstrated
with Radetzky for his harsh government. ... The division and
slavery of Italy had shut her out from European politics.
Cavour held that, if she was once looked upon as an useful
ally, then her deliverance might be hastened by foreign
interference. The Sardinian army had been brought into good
order by Alfonso della Marmora; and was ready for action. In
1855, Sardinia made alliance with England and France, who were
at war with Russia; for Cavour looked on that power as the
great support of the system of despotism on the Continent, and
held that it was necessary for Italian freedom that Russia
should be humbled. The Sardinian army was therefore sent to
the Crimea, under La Marmora, where it did good service in the
battle of Tchernaya. ... The next year the Congress of Paris
was held to arrange terms of peace between the allies and
Russia, and Cavour took the opportunity of laying before the
representatives of the European powers the unhappy state of
his countrymen. ... In December, 1851, Louis Napoleon
Buonaparte, the President of the French Republic, seized the
government, and the next year took the title of Emperor of the
French. He was anxious to weaken the power of Austria, and at
the beginning of 1859 it became evident that war would soon
break out. As a sign of the friendly feeling of the French
Emperor towards the Italian cause, his cousin, Napoleon
Joseph, married Clotilda, the daughter of Victor Emmanuel.
Count Cavour now declared that Sardinia would make war on
Austria, unless a separate and national government was granted
to Lombardy and Venetia, and unless Austria promised to meddle
no more with the rest of Italy. On the other hand, Austria
demanded the disarmament of Sardinia. The King would not
listen to this demand, and France and Sardinia declared war
against Austria. The Emperor Napoleon declared that he would
free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. ... The Austrian
army crossed the Ticino, but was defeated by the King and
General Cialdini. The French victory of Magenta, on June 4th
forced the Austrians to retreat from Lombardy. ... On June
24th the Austrians, who had crossed the Mincio, were defeated
at Solferino by the allied armies of France and Sardinia. It
seemed as though the French Emperor would keep his word. But
he found that if he went further, Prussia would take up the
cause of Austria, and that he would have to fight on the Rhine
as well as on the Adige. When, therefore, the French army came
before Verona, a meeting was arranged between the two
Emperors. This took place at Villafranca, and there
Buonaparte, without consulting his ally, agreed with Francis
Joseph to favour the establishment of an Italian
Confederation. ...Austria gave up to the King of Sardinia
Lombardy to the west of Mincio. But the Grand Duke of Tuscany
and the Duke of Modena were to return to their States. The
proposed Confederation was never made, for the people of
Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Romagna sent to the King to pray
that they might be made part of his Kingdom, and Victor
Emmanuel refused to enter on the scheme of the French Emperor.
In return for allowing the Italians of Central Italy to shake
off the yoke, Buonaparte asked for Savoy and Nizza. ... The
King ... consented to give up the 'glorious cradle of his
Monarchy' in exchange for Central Italy."
W. A. Hunt, History of Italy, chapter 11.
ALSO IN:
J. W. Probyn, Italy from 1815 to 1890, chapter 9-10.
C. de Mazade, Life of Count Cavour, chapter 2-7.
See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1856-1859, and 1859-1861.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1862-1866.
The Schleswig-Holstein question.
Quarrel with Prussia.
The humiliating Seven Weeks War.
Conflict with Prussia grew out of the complicated
Schleswig-Holstein question, reopened in 1862 and
provisionally settled by a delusive arrangement between
Prussia and Austria, into which the latter was artfully drawn
by Prince Bismarck.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862,
and GERMANY: A. D. 1861-1866.
{232}
No sooner was the war with Denmark over, than "Prussia showed
that it was her intention to annex the newly acquired duchies
to herself. This Austria could not endure, and accordingly, in
1866, war broke out between Austria and Prussia. Prussia
sought alliance with Italy, which she stirred up to attack
Austria in her Italian possessions. The Austrian army defeated
the Italian at Eustazza [or Custozza (see ITALY: A. D.
1862-1866)]; but the fortunes of war were against them in
Germany. Allied with the Austrians were the Saxons, the
Bavarians, the Würtembergers, Baden and Hesse, and Hanover.
The Prussians advanced with their chief army into Bohemia with
the utmost rapidity, dreading lest the Southern allies should
march north to Hanover, and cut the kingdom in half, and push
on to Berlin. The Prussians had three armies, which were to
enter Bohemia and effect a junction. The Elbe army under the
King, the first army under Prince Frederick Charles, and the
second army under the Crown Prince. The Elbe army advanced
across Saxony by Dresden. The first army was in Lusatia, at
Reichenberg, and the second army in Silesia at Heisse. They
were all to meet at Gitschin. The Austrian army under General
Benedek was at Königgrätz, in Eastern Bohemia. ... As in the
wars with Napoleon, so was it now; the Austrian generals ...
never did the right thing at the right moment. Benedek did
indeed march against the first army, but too late, and when he
found it was already through the mountain door, he retreated,
and so gave time for the three armies to concentrate upon him.
The Elbe army and the first met at Münchengratz, and defeated
an Austrian army there, pushed on, and drove them back out of
Gitschin on Königgrätz. ... The Prussians pushed on, and now
the Elbe army went to Smidar, and the first army to Horzitz,
whilst the second army, under the Crown Prince, was pushing
on, and had got to Gradlitz. The little river Bistritz is
crossed by the high road to Königgrätz. It runs through swampy
ground, and forms little marshy pools or lakes. To the north
of Königgrätz a little stream of much the same character
dribbles through bogs into the Elbe. ... But about Chlum,
Nedelist and Lippa is terraced high ground, and there Benedek
planted his cannon. The Prussians advanced from Smidar against
the left wing of the Austrians, from Horzitz against the
centre, and the Crown Prince was to attack the right wing. The
battle began on the 3d of July, at 7 o'clock in the morning,
by the simultaneous advance of the Elbe and the first army
upon the Bistritz. At Sadowa is a wood, and there the battle
raged most fiercely. ... Two things were against the
Austrians; first, the incompetence of their general, and,
secondly, the inferiority of their guns. The Prussians had
what are called needle-guns, breach-loaders, which are fired
by the prick of a needle, and for the rapidity with which they
can be fired far surpassed the old-fashioned muzzle-loaders
used by the Austrians. After this great battle, which is
called by the French and English the battle of Sadowa (Sadowa
(o Breve), not Sadowa (o Macron), as it is erroneously
pronounced), but which the Germans call the battle of
Königgrätz, the Prussians marched on Vienna, and reached the
Marchfeld before the Emperor Francis Joseph would come to
terms. At last, on the 23d of August, a peace which gave a
crushing preponderance in Germany to Prussia, was concluded at
Prague."
S. Baring-Gould, The Story of Germany, pages 390-394.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866.
The War in Italy.
Loss of Venetia.
See ITALY: A. D. 1862-1866.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1867.
Concession of nationality to Hungary.
Formation of the dual Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"For twelve years the name of Hungary, as a State, was erased
from the map of Europe. Bureaucratic Absolutism ruled supreme
in Austria, and did its best to obliterate all Hungarian
institutions. Germanisation was the order of the day, the
German tongue being declared the exclusive language of
official life as well as of the higher schools. Government was
carried on by means of foreign, German, and Czech officials.
No vestige was left, not only of the national independence,
but either of Home Rule or of self-government of any sort; the
country was divided into provinces without regard for
historical traditions; in short, an attempt was made to wipe
out every trace denoting the existence of a separate Hungary.
All ranks and classes opposed a sullen passive resistance to
these attacks against the existence of the nation; even the
sections of the nationalities which had rebelled against the
enactments of 1848, at the instigation of the reactionary
Camarilla, were equally disaffected in consequence of the
short-sighted policy of despotical centralisation. ...
Finally, after the collapse of the system of Absolutism in
consequence of financial disasters and of the misfortunes of
the Italian War of 1859, the Hungarian Parliament was again
convoked; and after protracted negotiations, broken off and
resumed again, the impracticability of a system of provincial
Federalism having been proved in the meantime, and the defeat
incurred in the Prussian War of 1866 having demonstrated the
futility of any reconstruction of the Empire of Austria in
which the national aspirations of Hungary were not taken into
due consideration--an arrangement was concluded under the
auspices of Francis Deák, Count Andrássy, and Count Beust, on
the basis of the full acknowledgment of the separate national
existence of Hungary, and of the continuity of its legal
rights. The idea of a centralised Austrian Empire had to give
way to the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which is in fact an
indissoluble federation of two equal States, under the common
rule of a single sovereign, the Emperor of Austria and King of
Hungary, each of the States having a constitution, government,
and parliament of its own, Hungary especially retaining, with
slight modifications, its ancient institutions remodelled in
1848. The administration of the foreign policy, the management
of the army, and the disbursement of the expenditure necessary
for these purposes, were settled upon as common affairs of the
entire monarchy, for the management of which common ministers
were instituted, responsible to the two delegations, co-equal

committees of the parliaments of Hungary and of the
Cisleithanian (Austrian) provinces. Elaborate provisions were
framed for the smooth working of these common institutions,
for giving weight to the constitutional influence, even in
matters of common policy, of the separate Cisleithanian and
Hungarian ministries, and for rendering their responsibility
to the respective Parliaments an earnest and solid reality.
{233}
The financial questions pending in the two independent and
equal States were settled by a compromise; measures were taken
for the equitable arrangement of all matters which might arise
in relation to interests touching both States, such as
duties, commerce, and indirect taxation, all legislation on
these subjects taking place by means of identical laws
separately enacted by the Parliament of each State. ...
Simultaneously with these arrangements the political
differences between Hungary and Croatia were compromised by
granting provincial Home Rule to the latter. ... Thus the
organisation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy on the basis of
dualism, and the compromise entered into between the two
halves composing it, whilst uniting for the purposes of
defence the forces of two States of a moderate size and extent
into those of a great empire, able to cope with the exigencies
of an adequate position amongst the first-class Powers of
Europe, restored also to Hungary its independence and its
unfettered sovereignty in all internal matters."
A. Pulszky, Hungary (National Life and Thought,
lecture 3).
"The Ausgleich, or agreement with Hungary, was arranged by a
committee of 67 members of the Hungarian diet, at the head of
whom was the Franklin of Hungary, Francis Deák, the true
patriot and inexorable legist, who had taken no part in the
revolutions, but who had never given up one of the smallest of
the rights of his country. ... On the 8th of June [1867], the
emperor Francis Joseph was crowned with great pomp at Pesth.
On the 28th of the following June, he approved the decisions
of the diet, which settled the position of Hungary with regard
to the other countries belonging to his majesty, and modified
some portions of the laws of 1848. ... Since the Ausgleich the
empire has consisted of two parts. ... For the sake of
clearness, political language has been increased by the
invention of two new terms, Cisleithania and Transleithania,
to describe the two groups, separated a little below Vienna by
a small affluent of the Danube, called the Leitha--a stream
which never expected to become so celebrated."
L. Leger, History of Austro-Hungary, chapter 35.
ALSO IN:
Francis Deák, A Memoir, chapter 26-31.
Count von Beust, Memoirs, volume 2, chapter 38.
L. Felbermann, Hungary and its People, chapter 5.
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1887.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Its new national life.
Its difficulties and promises.
Its ambitions and aims in Southeastern Europe.
"Peace politicians may say that a war always does more harm
than good to the nations which engage in it. Perhaps it always
does, at any rate, morally speaking, to the victors: but that
it does not to the vanquished, Austria stands as a living
evidence. Finally excluded from Italy and Germany by the
campaign of 1866, she has cast aside her dreams of foreign
domination, and has set herself manfully to the task of making
a nation out of the various conflicting nationalities over
which she presides. It does not require much insight to
perceive that as long as she held her position in Germany this
fusion was hopeless. The overwhelming preponderance of the
German element made any approach to a reciprocity of interests
impossible. The Germans always were regarded as sovereigns,
the remaining nationalities as subjects; it was for these to
command, for those to obey. In like manner, it was impossible
for the Austrian Government to establish a mutual
understanding with a population which felt itself
attracted--alike by the ties of race, language, and
geographical position--to another political union. Nay more,
as long as the occupation of the Italian provinces remained as
a blot on the Imperial escutcheon, it was impossible for the
Government to command any genuine sympathy from any of its
subjects. But with the close of the war with Prussia these two
difficulties--the relations with Germany and the relations
with Italy--were swept away. From this time forward Austria
could appear before the world as a Power binding together for
the interests of all, a number of petty nationalities, each of
which was too feeble to maintain a separate existence. In
short, from the year 1866 Austria had a raison d'être, whereas
before she had none. ... Baron Beust, on the 7th of February,
1867, took office under Franz Joseph. His programme may be
stated as follows. He saw that the day of centralism and
imperial unity was gone past recall, and that the most liberal
Constitution in the world would never reconcile the
nationalities to their present position, as provinces under
the always detested and now despised Empire. But then came the
question--Granted that a certain disintegration is inevitable,
how far is this disintegration to go? Beust proposed to disarm
the opposition of the leading nationality by the gift of an
almost complete independence, and, resting on the support thus
obtained, to gain time for conciliating the remaining
provinces by building up a new system of free government. It
would be out of place to give a detailed account of the
well-known measure which converted the 'Austrian empire' into
the 'Austro-Hungarian monarchy.' It will be necessary,
however, to describe the additions made to it by the political
machinery. The Hungarian Reichstag was constructed on the same
principle as the Austrian Reichsrath. It was to meet in Pesth,
as the Reichsrath at Vienna, and was to have its own
responsible ministers. From the members of the Reichsrath and
Reichstag respectively were to be chosen annually sixty
delegates to represent Cisleithanian and sixty to represent
Hungarian interests--twenty being taken in each case from the
Upper, forty from the Lower House. These two 'Delegations,'
whose votes were to be taken, when necessary, collectively,
though each Delegation sat in a distinct chamber, owing to the
difference of language, formed the Supreme Imperial Assembly,
and met alternate years at Vienna and Pesth. They were
competent in matters of foreign policy, in military
administration, and in Imperial finance. At their head stood
three Imperial ministers--the Reichskanzler, who presided at
the Foreign Office, and was ex officio Prime Minister, the
Minister of War, and the Minister of Finance. These three
ministers were independent of the Reichsrath and Reichstag,
and could only be dismissed by a vote of want of confidence on
the part of the Delegations. The 'Ausgleich' or scheme of
federation with Hungary is, no doubt, much open to criticism,
both as a whole and in its several parts. It must always be
borne in mind that administratively and politically it was a
retrogression.
{234}
At a time in which all other European nations--notably North
Germany--were simplifying and unifying their political
systems, Austria was found doing the very reverse. ... The
true answer to these objections is, that the measure of 1867
was constructed to meet a practical difficulty. Its end was
not the formation of a symmetrical system of government, but
the pacification of Hungary. ... The internal history of the
two halves of the empire flows in two different channels. Graf
Andrassy, the Hungarian Premier, had a comparatively easy task
before him. There were several reasons for this. In the first
place, the predominance of the Magyars in Hungary was more
assured than that of the Germans in Cisleithania. It is true
that they numbered only 5,000,000 out of the 16,000,000
inhabitants; but in these 5,000,000 were included almost all
the rank, wealth, and intelligence of the country. Hence they
formed in the Reichstag a compact and homogeneous majority,
under which the remaining Slovaks and Croatians soon learnt to
range themselves. In the second place, Hungary had the great
advantage of starting in a certain degree afresh. Her
government was not bound by the traditional policy of former
Vienna ministries, and ... it had managed to keep its
financial credit unimpaired. In the third place, as those who
are acquainted with Hungarian history well know, Parliamentary
institutions had for a long time flourished in Hungary. Indeed
the Magyars, who among their many virtues can hardly be
credited with the virtue of humility, assert that the world is
mistaken in ascribing to England the glory of having invented
representative government, and claim this glory for
themselves. Hence one of the main difficulties with which the
Cisleithanian Government had to deal was already solved for
Graf Andrassy and his colleagues."--Austria since Sadowa
(Quarterly Review, volume 131, pages 90-95).--"It is difficult
for anyone except an Austro-Hungarian statesman to realise the
difficulties of governing the Dual Monarchy. Cisleithania has,
as is well-known, a Reichsrath and seventeen Provincial Diets.
The two Austrias, Styria, Carinthia, and Salzburg present no
difficulties, but causes of trouble are abundant in the other
districts. The Emperor will probably end by getting himself
crowned King of Bohemia, although it will be difficult for him
to lend himself to a proscription of the German language by
the Tsechs, as he has been forced by the Magyars to lend
himself to the proscription in parts of Hungary of Rouman and
of various Slavonic languages. But how far is this process to
continue? The German Austrians are as unpopular in Istria and
Dalmatia as in Bohemia; and Dalmatia is also an ancient
kingdom. These territories were originally obtained by the
election of the King of Hungary to the crown of the tripartite
kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. Is 'Ferencz
Jozsef' to be crowned King of Dalmatia? And is Dalmatia to
have its separate Ministry and its separate official language,
and its completely separate laws? And what then of Fiume, the
so-called Hungarian port? Then, again, Galicia is also an
ancient kingdom, although it has at other times formed part of
Poland; and the Emperor is King of Galicia, as he is King of
Bohemia and Dalmatia. Is he to be crowned King of Galicia? And
if so, is the separate existence of Galicia to be a Polish or
a Ruthenian existence, or, indeed, a Jewish? for the Jews are
not only extraordinarily powerful and numerous there, but are
gaining ground day by day. The Ruthenians complain as bitterly
of being bullied by the Poles in Galicia as the Croats
complain of the Magyars. Even here the difficulties are not
ended. The Margraviate of Moravia contains a large Tsech
population, and will have to be added to the Bohemian kingdom.
Bukowina may go with Galicia or Transylvania, Austrian Silesia
may be divided between the Tsechs of Bohemia and Moravia on
the one part, and the Poles or Ruthenians or Jews of Galicia
on the other. But what is to become of that which, with the
most obstinate disregard of pedants, I intend to continue to
call the Tyrol? Trieste must go with Austria and Salzburg, and
the Northern Tyrol and Styria and Carinthia no doubt; but it
is not difficult to show that Austria would actually be
strengthened by giving up the Southern Tyrol, where the
Italian people, or at least the Italian language, is gaining
ground day by day. There really seems very little left of the
integrity of the Austrian Empire at the conclusion of our
survey of its constituent parts. Matters do not look much
better if we turn to Trans-Leithania. Hungary has its
Reichstag (which is also known by some terrible Magyar name),
its House of Representatives, and its House of Magnates, and,
although there are not so many Provincial Diets as in Austria,
Slavonia and the Banat of Croatia possess a Common Diet with
which the Magyars are far from popular; and the Principality
of Transylvania also possessed separate local rights, for
trying completely to suppress which the Magyars are at present
highly unpopular. The Principality, although under Magyar
rule, is divided between 'Saxons' and Roumans, who equally
detest the Magyars, and the Croats and Slovenes who people the
Banat are Slavs who also execrate their Ugrian rulers,
inscriptions in whose language are defaced whenever seen.
Croatia is under-represented at Pest, and says that she goes
unheard, and the Croats, who have partial Home Rule without an
executive, ask for a local executive as well, and demand Fiume
and Dalmatia. If we look to the numbers of the various races,
there are in Austria of Germans and Jews about 9,000,000 to
about 13,000,000 Slavs and a few Italians and Roumans. There
are in the lands of the Crown of Hungary 2,000,000 of Germans
and Jews, of Roumans nearly 3,000,000, although the Magyars
only acknowledge 2,500,000, and of Magyars and Slavs between
five and six millions apiece. In the whole of the territories
of the Dual Monarchy it will be seen that there are 18,000,000
of Slavs and only 17,000,000 of the ruling races--Germans,
Jews, and Magyars--while between three and four millions of
Roumans and Italians count along with the Slav majority as
being hostile to the dominant nationalities. It is difficult
to exaggerate the gravity for Austria of the state of things
which these figures reveal."
The Present Position of European Polities (Fortnightly
Review, April, 1887).
{235}
"In past times, when Austria had held France tight bound
between Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, she had aspired
to a dominant position in Western Europe; and, so long as her
eyes were turned in that direction, she naturally had every
interest in preserving the Ottoman Empire intact, for she was
thus guaranteed against all attacks from the south. But, after
the loss of her Italian possessions in 1805, and of part of
Croatia in 1809, after the disasters of 1849, 1859 and 1866,
she thought more and more seriously of indemnifying herself at
the expense of Turkey. It was moreover evident that, in order
to paralyse the damaging power of Hungary, it was essential
for her to assimilate the primitive and scattered peoples of
Turkey, accustomed to centuries of complete submission and
obedience, and form thus a kind of iron band which should
encircle Hungary and effectually prevent her from rising. If,
in fact, we glance back at the position of Austria in 1860,
and take the trouble carefully to study the change of ideas
and interests which had then taken place in the policy of
France and of Russia, the tendencies of the strongly
constituted nations who were repugnant to the authority and
influence of Austria, the basis of the power of that empire,
and, finally, the internal ruin with which she was then
threatened, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that
Austria, by the very instinct of self-preservation, was forced
to turn eastwards and to consider how best she might devour
some, at least, of the European provinces of Turkey. Austrian
statesmen have been thoroughly convinced of this fact, and,
impelled by the instinct above-mentioned, have not ceased
carefully and consistently to prepare and follow out the
policy here indicated. Their objects have already been
partially attained by the practical annexation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1878 [see TURKS: A. D. 1878]; and it was
striking to observe with what bitter feeling and resentment
this measure was looked upon at the time by the Hungarian
section of the empire. ... Russia has never made any secret of
her designs upon Turkey; she has, indeed, more than once
openly made war in order to carry them out. But Austria
remains a fatal obstacle in her path. Even as things at
present stand, Austria, by her geographical position, so
commands and dominates the Russian line of operations that,
once the Danube passed, the Russians are constantly menaced by
Austria on the flank and rear. ... And if this be true now,
how much more true would it be were Austria to continue her
march eastwards towards Salonica. That necessarily, at some
time or other, that march must be continued may be taken for
almost certain; but that Austria has it in her power to
commence it for the present, cannot, I think, be admitted. She
must further consolidate and make certain of what she has.
Movement now would bring upon her a struggle for life or
death--a struggle whose issue may fairly be said, in no
unfriendly spirit to Austria, to be doubtful. With at home a
bitterly discontented Croatia, strong Pan-slavistic tendencies
in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia, a Greek population
thoroughly disaffected, and a Hungary whose loyalty is
doubtful, she would have to deal beyond her frontiers with the
not contemptible armies, when combined, of Servia, Bulgaria,
and Greece, whose aspirations she would be asphyxiating for
ever, with a bitterly hostile population in Macedonia, with
the whole armed force of Turkey, and with the gigantic
military power of Russia; whilst it is not fantastic to
suppose that Germany would be hovering near ready to pounce on
her German provinces when the 'moment psychologique' should
occur. With such a prospect before her, it would be worse than
madness for Austria to move until the cards fell more favourably
for her."
V. Caillard, The Bulgarian Imbroglio (Fortnightly
Review, December, 1885).
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1878.
The Treaty of Berlin.
Acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
See TURKS: A. D. 1878.
----------AUSTRIA: End----------
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE.
See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1867.
AUTERI, The.
See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.
AUTUN: Origin.
See GAULS.
AUTUN: A. D. 287.
Sacked by the Bagauds.
See BAGAUDS.
----------AUTUN: End----------
AUVERGNE, Ancient.
The country of the Arverni.
See ÆDUI;
also GAULS.
AUVERGNE, The Great Days of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1665.
AUXILIUM.
See TALLAGE.
AVA.
See INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833.
AVALON.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655;
and MARYLAND: A. D. 1632.
AVARICUM.
See BOURGES, ORIGIN OF.
AVARS, The.
The true Avars are represented to have been a powerful
Turanian people who exercised in the sixth century a wide
dominion in Central Asia. Among the tribes subject to them was
one called the Ogors, or Ouigours, or Ouiars, or Ouar Khouni,
or Varchonites (these diverse names have been given to the
nation) which is supposed to have belonged to the national
family of the Huns. Some time in the early half of the sixth
century, the Turks, then a people who dwelt in the very center
of Asia, at the foot of the Altai mountains, making their
first appearance in history as conquerors, crushed and almost
annihilated the Avars, thereby becoming the lords of the
Ouigours, or Ouar Khouni. But the latter found an opportunity
to escape from the Turkish yoke. "Gathering together their
wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, they
turned their waggons towards the Setting Sun. This immense
exodus comprised upwards of 200,000 persons. The terror which
inspired their flight rendered them resistless in the onset;
for the avenging Turk was behind their track. They overturned
everything before them, even the Hunnic tribes of kindred
origin, who had long hovered on the north-east frontiers of
the Empire, and, driving out or enslaving the inhabitants,
established themselves in the wide plains which stretch
between·the Volga and the Don. In that age of imperfect
information they were naturally enough confounded with the
greatest and most formidable tribe of the Turanian stock known
to the nations of the West. The report that the Avars had
broken loose from Asia, and were coming in irresistible force
to overrun Europe, spread itself all along both banks of the
Danube and penetrated to the Byzantine court. With true
barbaric cunning, the Ouar Khouni availed themselves of the
mistake, and by calling themselves Avars largely increased the
terrors of their name and their chances of conquest." The
pretended Avars were taken into the pay of the Empire by
Justinian and employed against the Hun tribes north and east
of the Black Sea.
{236}
They presently acquired a firm footing on both banks of the
Danube, and turned their arms against the Empire. The
important city of Sirmium was taken by them after an obstinate
siege and its inhabitants put to the sword. Their ravages
extended over central Europe to the Elbe, where they were
beaten back by the warlike Franks, and, southwards, through
Moesia, Illyria, Thrace, Macedonia and Greece, even to the
Peloponnesus. Constantinople itself was threatened more than
once, and in the summer of 626, it was desperately attacked by
Avars and Persians in conjunction (see ROME: A. D. 565-628),
with disastrous results to the assailants. But the seat of
their Empire was the Dacian country--modern Roumania,
Transylvania and part of Hungary--in which the Avars had
helped the Lombards to crush and extinguish the Gepidæ. The
Slavic tribes which, by this time, had moved in great numbers
into central and south-eastern Europe, were largely in
subjection to the Avars and did their bidding in war and
peace. "These unfortunate creatures, of apparently an
imperfect, or, at any rate, imperfectly cultivated
intelligence, endured such frightful tyranny from their Avar
conquerors, that their very name has passed into a synonyme
for the most degraded servitude."
J. G. Sheppard, Fall of Rome, lecture 4.
ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, chapter 42.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717
AVARS: 7th Century.
The Slavic Revolt.
The Empire of the Avars was shaken and much diminished in the
Seventh Century by an extensive rising of their oppressed
Slavic subjects, roused and led, it is said, by a Frank
merchant, or adventurer, named Samo, who became their king.
The first to throw off the yoke were a tribe called the
Vendes, or Wendes, or Venedi, in Bohemia, who were reputed to
be half-castes, resulting from intercourse between the Avar
warriors and the women of their Slavic vassals. Under the lead
of Samo, the Wendes and Slovenes or Slavonians drove the Avars
to the east and north; and it seems to have been in connection
with this revolution that the Emperor Heraclius induced the
Serbs or Servians and Croats--Slavic tribes of the same race
and region--to settle in depopulated Dalmatia. "'From the year
630 A. D.' writes M. Thierry, 'the Avar people are no longer
mentioned in the annals of of the East; the successors of
Attila no longer figure beside the successors of Constantine.
It required new wars in the West to bring upon the stage of
history the khan and his people.' In these wars [of Pepin and
Charlemagne] they were finally swept off from the roll of
European nations."
J. G. Sheppard, Fall of Rome, lecture 4.
AVARS: A. D. 791-805.
Conquest by Charlemagne.
"Hungary, now so called, was possessed by the Avars, who,
joining with themselves a multitude of Hunnish tribes,
accumulated the immense spoils which both they themselves and
their equally barbarous predecessors had torn from the other
nations of Europe. ... They extended their limits towards
Lombardy, and touched upon the very verge of Bavaria. ... Much
of their eastern frontier was now lost, almost without a
struggle on their part, by the rise of other barbarous
nations, especially the various tribes of Bulgarians." This
was the position of the Avars at the time of Charlemagne, whom
they provoked by forming an alliance with the ambitious Duke
of Bavaria, Tassilo,--most obstinate of all who resisted the
Frank king's imperious and imperial rule. In a series of
vigorous campaigns, between 791 and 797 Charlemagne crushed
the power of the Avars and took possession of their country.
The royal "ring" or stronghold--believed to have been situated
in the neighborhood of Tatar, between the Danube and the
Theiss--was penetrated, and the vast treasure stored there was
seized. Charlemagne distributed it with a generous hand to
churches, to monasteries and to the poor, as well as to his
own nobles, servants and soldiers, who are said to have been
made rich. There were subsequent risings of the Avars and
wars, until 805, when the remnant of that almost annihilated
people obtained permission to settle on a tract of land
between Sarwar and Haimburg, on the right bank of the Danube,
where they would be protected from their Slavonian enemies.
This was the end of the Avar nation.
G. P. R. James, History of Charlemagne, books 9 and 11.
ALSO IN: J. I. Mombert, History of Charles the Great,
book 2, chapter 7.
----------AVARS: End----------
AVARS, The Rings of the.
The fortifications of the Avars were of a peculiar and
effective construction and were called Hrings, or Rings. "They
seem to have been a series of eight or nine gigantic ramparts,
constructed in concentric circles, the inner one of all being
called the royal circle or camp, where was deposited all the
valuable plunder which the warriors had collected in their
expeditions. The method of constructing these ramparts was
somewhat singular. Two parallel rows of gigantic piles were
driven into the ground, some twenty feet apart. The
intervening space was filled with stones, or a species of
chalk, so compacted as to become a solid mass. The sides and
summit were covered with soil, upon which were planted trees
and shrubs, whose interlacing branches formed an impenetrable
hedge."
J. G. Sheppard, Fall of Rome, lecture 9.
AVEBURY.
See ABURY.
AVEIN, Battle of (1635).
See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1635-1638.
AVENTINE, The.
See SEVEN HILLS OF ROME.
AVERNUS, Lake and Cavern.
A gloomy lake called Avernus, which filled the crater of an
extinct volcano, situated a little to the north of the Bay of
Naples, was the object of many superstitious imaginations
among the ancients. "There was a place near Lake Avernus
called the prophetic cavern. Persons were in attendance there
who called up ghosts. Anyone desiring it came thither, and,
having killed a victim and poured out libations, summoned
whatever ghost he wanted. The ghost came, very faint and
doubtful to the sight, but vocal and prophetic; and, having
answered the questions, went off."
Maximus Tyrius, quoted by C. C. Felton, in Greece,
Ancient and Modern, c. 2, lecture 9.
See, also, CUMÆ: AND BAIÆ.
AVERYSBORO, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (FEBRUARY-MARCH:
THE CAROLINAS).
AVIGNON: 10th Century.
In the Kingdom of Arles.
See BURGUNDY: A. D. 843-933.
AVIGNON: A. D. 1226.
Siege by Louis VIII.
See ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1217-1229.
{237}
AVIGNON: A. D. 1309-1348.
Made the seat of the Papacy.
Purchase of the city by Clement V.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1294-1348.
AVIGNON: A. D. 1367-1369.
Temporary return of Urban V. to Rome.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1352-1378.
AVIGNON: A. D. 1377-1417.
Return of Pope Gregory XI. to Rome.
Residence of the anti-popes of the great Schism.
See PAPACY: A. D.1377-1417.
AVIGNON: A. D. 1790-1791.
Revolution and Anarchy.
Atrocities committed.
Reunion with France decreed.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791.
AVIGNON: A. D. 1797.
Surrendered to France by the Pope.
See FRANCE: A. D: 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).
AVIGNON: A. D. 1815.
Possession by France confirmed.
See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.
----------AVIGNON: End----------
AVIONES, The.
"The Aviones were a Suevic clan. They are mentioned by
Tacitus in connexion with the Reudigni, Angli, Varini,
Eudoses, Suardones and Nuithones, all Suevic clans. These
tribes must have occupied Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Sleswick-Holstein, the Elbe being
their Eastern boundary. It is, however, impossible to define
their precise localities."
A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, Minor Works of
Tacitus, Geographical Notes to the Germany.
AVIS, The House of.
See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1383-1385.
AVIS, Knights of.
This is a Portuguese military-religions order which originated
about 1147 during the wars with the Moors, and which formerly
observed the monastic rule of St. Benedict. It became
connected with the order of Calatrava in Spain and received
from the latter its property in Portugal. Pope Paul III.
united the Grand Mastership to the Crown of Portugal.
F. C. Woodhouse, Military Religious Orders, part 4.
See, also, PORTUGAL: A. D. 1095-1325.
AVITUS, Roman Emperor (Western), A. D. 455-456.
AVVIM, The.
The original inhabitants of the south-west corner of Canaan,
from which they were driven by the Philistines.
H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 1, section 4.
AYACUCHO, Battle of (1824).
See PERU: A. D. 1820-1826.
AYLESBURY ELECTION CASE.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1703.
AYLESFORD, Battle of (A. D. 455).
The first battle fought and won by the invading Jutes after
their landing in Britain under Hengest and Horsa. It was
fought at the lowest ford of the river Medway.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.
AYMARAS, The.
See PERU: THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
AYOUBITE OR AIYUBITE DYNASTY.
See SALADIN, THE EMPIRE OF.
AZINCOUR (AGINCOURT), Battle of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1415.
AZOF OR AZOV: A. D. 1696.
Taken by the Russians.
See TURKS: A. D. 1684-1696.
AZOF: A. D. 1711.
Restoration to the Turks.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.
AZOF: A. D. 1736-1739.
Captured by the Russians.
Secured to them by the Treaty of Belgrade.
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1725-1739.
----------AZOF: End----------
AZTEC.
See MEXICO, ANCIENT; and A. D. 1325-1502;
also, AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MAYAS.
AZTEC AND MAYA PICTURE-WRITING.
"No nation ever reduced it [pictography] more to a system. It
was in constant use in the daily transactions of life. They
[the Aztecs] manufactured for writing purposes a thick coarse
paper from the leaves of the agave plant by a process of
maceration and pressure. An Aztec book closely resembles one
of our quarto volumes. It is made of a single sheet, 12 to 15
inches wide, and often 60 or 70 feet long, and is not rolled,
but folded either in squares or zigzags in such a manner that
on opening there are two pages exposed to view. Thin wooden
boards are fastened to each of the outer leaves, so that the
whole presents as neat an appearance, remarks Peter Martyr, as
if it had come from the shop of a skilful book binder. They
also covered buildings, tapestries and scrolls of parchment
with these devices. ... What is still more astonishing, there
is reason to believe, in some instances, their figures were
not painted, but actually printed with movable blocks of wood
on which the symbols were carved in relief, though this was
probably confined to those intended for ornament only. In
these records we discern something higher than a mere symbolic
notation. They contain the germ of a phonetic alphabet, and
represent sounds of spoken language. The symbol is often not
connected with the idea, but with the word. The mode in which
this is done corresponds precisely to that of the rebus. It is
a simple method, readily suggesting itself. In the middle ages
it was much in vogue in Europe for the same purpose for which
it was chiefly employed in Mexico at the same time--the
writing of proper names. For example, the English family
Bolton was known in heraldry by a 'tun' transfixed by a
'bolt.' Precisely so the Mexican Emperor Ixcoatl is mentioned
in the Aztec manuscripts under the figure of a serpent,
coatl,' pierced by obsidian knives, 'ixtli.' ... As a syllable
could be expressed by any object whose name commenced with it,
as few words can be given the form of a rebus without some
change, as the figures sometimes represent their full phonetic
value, sometimes only that of their initial sound, and as
universally the attention of the artist was directed less to
the sound than to the idea, the didactic painting of the
Mexicans, whatever it might have been to them, is a sealed
book to us, and must remain so in great part. ... Immense
masses of such documents were stored in the imperial archives
of ancient Mexico. Torquemada asserts that five cities alone
yielded to the Spanish governor on one requisition no less
than 16,000 volumes or scrolls! Every leaf was destroyed.
Indeed, so thorough and wholesale was the destruction of these
memorials, now so precious in our eyes, that hardly enough
remain to whet the wits of antiquaries. In the libraries of
Paris, Dresden, Pesth, and the Vatican are, however, a
sufficient number to make us despair of deciphering them, had
we for comparison all which the Spaniards destroyed. Beyond
all others the Mayas, resident on the peninsula of Yucatan,
would seem to have approached nearest a true phonetic system.
They had a regular and well understood alphabet of 27
elementary sounds, the letters of which are totally different
from those of any other nation, and evidently originated with
themselves. But besides these they used a large number of
purely conventional symbols, and moreover were accustomed
constantly to employ the ancient pictographic method in
addition as a sort of commentary on the sound represented. ...
With the aid of this alphabet, which has fortunately been
preserved, we are enabled to spell out a few words on the
Yucatecan manuscripts and façades, but thus far with no
positive results. The loss of the ancient pronunciation is
especially in the way of such studies. In South America, also,
there is said to have been a nation who cultivated the art of
picture-writing, the Panos, on the river Ucayale."
D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World, chapter 1.
----------AZTEC: End----------
{238}
B.
BABAR,
King of Ferghana, A. D. 1494-;
King of Kabul, A. D. 1504-;
Moghul Emperor or Padischah of India, A. D. 1526-1530.
BABENBERGS, The.
See AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.
BABYLON: The City.
"The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a
hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the
entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such
is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that
approaches it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a
broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall
fifty royal cubits in width and two hundred in height. ... And
here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out
of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall
was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat the soil which they
got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a
sufficient number were completed they baked the bricks in
kilns. Then they set to building, and began with bricking the
borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct
the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot
bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every
thirtieth course of the brick. On the top, along the edges of
the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber
facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse
chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred
gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side posts. The
bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from the Is, a
small stream which flows into the Euphrates at the point where
the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from
Babylon. Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this
river. The city is divided into two portions by the river
which runs through the midst of it. This river is the
Euphrates. ... The city wall is brought down on both sides to
the edge of the stream; thence, from the corners of the wall,
there is carried along each bank of the river a fence of burnt
bricks. The houses are mostly three and four stories high; the
streets all run in straight lines; not only those parallel to
the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the
water side. At the river end of these cross streets are low
gates in the fence that skirts the stream, which are, like the
great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and open on the
water. The outer wall is the main defence of the city. There
is, however, a second inner wall, of less thickness than the
first, but very little inferior to it in strength. The centre
of each division of the town was occupied by a fortress. In
the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of
great strength and size: in the other was the sacred precinct
of Jupiter Belus, a square enclosure, two furlongs each way,
with gates of solid brass; which was also remaining in my
time. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid
masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was
raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to
eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path
which winds round all the towers. . . . On the topmost tower
there is a spacious temple."
Herodotus, History, translated by G. Rawlinson,
book 1, chapters 178-181.
According to Ctesias, the circuit of the walls of Babylon was
but 360 furlongs. The historians of Alexander agreed nearly
with this. As regards the height of the walls, "Strabo and the
historians of Alexander substitute 50 for the 200 cubits of
Herodotus, and it may therefore be suspected that the latter
author referred to hands, four of which were equal to the
cubit. The measure, indeed, of 50 fathoms or 200 royal cubits
for the walls of a city in a plain is quite preposterous. ...
My own belief is that the height of the walls of Babylon did
not exceed 60 or 70 English feet."
H. C. Rawlinson, note to above.-
See, also, BABYLONIA: B. C. 625-539.
BABYLON OF THE CRUSADERS, The.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.
BABYLONIA, Primitive.
(So much new knowledge of the ancient peoples in the East has
been and is being brought to light by recent search and study,
and the account of it in English historical literature is so
meagre as yet, that there seems to be good reason for
deferring the treatment of these subjects, for the most part,
to a later volume of this work. The reader is referred,
therefore, to the article "Semites," in the hope that, before
its publication is reached, in the fourth or fifth volume,
there will be later and better works to quote from on all the
subjects embraced. Terrien de Lacouperie's interesting theory,
which is introduced below, in this place, is questioned by
many scholars; and Professor Sayce, whose writings have done
much to popularize the new oriental studies, seems to go
sometimes in advance of the sure ground.)
The Sumirians, inhabitants of the Shinar of the Old Testament
narrative, and Accadians, who divided primitive Babylonia
between them, "were overrun and conquered by the Semitic
Babylonians of later history, Accad being apparently the first
half of the country to fall under the sway of the new comers.
It is possible that Casdim, the Hebrew word translated
Chaldees or Chaldeans in the authorized version, is the
Babylonian 'casidi' or conquerors, a title which continued to
cling to them in consequence of their conquest. The Accadiaus
had been the inventors of the pictorial hieroglyphics which
afterwards developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped
writing; they had founded the great cities of Chaldea, and had
attained to a high degree of culture and civilization. Their
cities possessed libraries, stocked with books, written partly
on papyrus, partly on clay, which was, while still soft,
impressed with characters by means of a metal stylus.
{239}
The books were numerous, and related to a variety of subjects.
... In course of time, however, the two dialects of Sumir and
Accad ceased to be spoken; but the necessity for learning them
still remained, and we find, accordingly, that down to the
latest days of both Assyria and Babylonia, the educated
classes were taught the old extinct Accadian, just as in
modern Europe they are taught Latin."
A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments,
chapter 2.
"Since Sumir, the Shinar of the Bible, was the first part of
the country occupied by the invading Semites, while Accad long
continued to be regarded as the seat of an alien race, the
language and population of primitive Chaldea have been named
Accadian by the majority of Assyrian scholars. The part played
by these Accadians in the intellectual history of mankind is
highly important. They were the earliest civilizers of Western
Asia, and it is to them that we have to trace the arts and
sciences, the religious traditions and the philosophy not only
of the Assyrians, but also of the Phœnicians, the Aramæans,
and even the Hebrews themselves. It was, too, from Chaldea
that the germs of Greek art and of much of the Greek pantheon
and mythology originally came. Columnar architecture reached
its first and highest development in Babylonia; the lions that
still guard the main entrance of Mykenæ are distinctly
Assyrian in character; and the Greek Herakles with his twelve
labours finds his prototype in the hero of the great Chaldean
epic. It is difficult to say how much of our present culture
is not owed to the stunted, oblique-eyed people of ancient
Babylonia; Jerusalem and Athens are the sacred cities of our
modern life; and both Jerusalem and Athens were profoundly
influenced by the ideas which had their first starting-point
in primæval Accad. The Semite has ever been a trader and an
intermediary, and his earliest work was the precious trade in
spiritual and mental wares. Babylonia was the home and mother
of Semitic culture and Semitic inspiration; the Phœnicians
never forgot that they were a colony from the Persian Gulf,
while the Israelite recounted that his father Abraham had been
born in Ur of the Chaldees. Almost the whole of the Assyrian
literature was derived from Accad, and translated from the
dead language of primitive Chaldea."
A. H. Sayce, Babylonian Literature, pages 6-7.
A. H. Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, appendix 2.
"The place of China in the past and future is not that which
it was long supposed to be. Recent researches have disclosed
that its civilization, like ours, was variously derived from
the same old focus of culture of south-western Asia. ... It
was my good fortune to be able to show, in an uninterrupted
series of a score or so of papers in periodicals, of
communications to the Royal Asiatic Society and elsewhere,
published and unpublished, and of contributions to several
works since April 1880, downwards, that the writing and some
knowledge of arts, science and government of the early
Chinese, more or less enumerated below, were derived from the
old civilization of Babylonia, through the secondary focus of
Susiana, and that this derivation was a social fact, resulting
not from scientific teaching but from practical intercourse of
some length between the Susian confederation and the future
civilizers of the Chinese, the Bak tribes, who, from their
neighbouring settlements in the N., moved eastwards at the
time of the great rising of the XXIII. century B. C. Coming
again in the field, Dr. J. Edkins has joined me on the same
line."
Terrien de Lacouperie, Babylonia and China
(Academy, Aug. 7, 1880).
"We could enumerate a long series of affinities between
Chaldean culture and Chinese civilization, although the last
was not borrowed directly. From what evidence we have, it
seems highly probable that a certain number of families or of
tribes, without any apparent generic name, but among which the
Kutta filled an important position, came to China about the
year 2500 B. C. These tribes, which came from the West, were
obliged to quit the neighbourhood, probably north of the
Susiana, and were comprised in the feudal agglomeration of
that region, where they must have been influenced by the
Akkado-Chaldean culture."
Terrien de Lacouperie, Early History of Chinese
Civilization, page 32.
See, also, CHINA: THE ORIGIN OF THE PEOPLE.
BABYLONIA: The early (Chaldean) monarchy.
"Our earliest glimpse of the political condition of Chaldea
shows us the country divided into numerous small states, each
headed by a great city, made famous and powerful by the
sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled by a
patesi, a title which is now thought to mean priest-king, i.
e., priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the
beginning of the city was every where the temple, with its
college of ministering priests, and that the surrounding
settlement was gradually formed by pilgrims and worshippers.
That royalty developed out of the priesthood is also more than
probable. ... There comes a time when for the title of patesi
is substituted that of king. ... It is noticeable that the
distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the indigenous
Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names
of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic
idiom, which we call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old
language. ... Furthermore, even superficial observation shows
that the old language and the old names survive longest in
Shumir,--the South. From this fact it is to be inferred with
little chance of mistake that the North,--the land of Accad,--
was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic immigrants established
their first headquarters in that part of the country, that
their power and influence thence spread to the South. Fully in
accordance with these indications, the first grand historical
figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history, dim
with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet
unmistakably real, is that of the Semite Sharrukin, king of
Accad, or Agade, as the great Northern city came to be
called--more generally known in history under the corrupt
modern reading of Sargon, and called Sargon I., 'the First,'
to distinguish him from a very famous Assyrian monarch of the
same name who reigned many centuries later. As to the city of
Agade, it is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in
Genesis x, 10. It was situated close to the Euphrates on a
wide canal just opposite Sippar, so that in time the two
cities came to be considered as one double city, and the
Hebrews always called it 'the two Sippars'--Sepharvaim, which
is often spoken of in the Bible. ... The tremendously ancient
date of 3800 B. C. is now generally accepted for Sargon of
Agade--perhaps the remotest authentic date yet arrived at in
history."
Z. A. Ragozin, Story of Chaldea, chapter 4.
{240}
"A horde of Cassites or Kossæans swept down from the mountains
of Northern Elam under their leader, Khammuragas; Accad was
conquered, a foreign dynasty established in the land, and the
capital transferred from Agade to Babylon. Babylon now became
a city of importance for the first time; the rank assigned to
it in the mythical age was but a reflection of the position it
held after the Cassite conquest. The Cassite dynasty is
probably the Arabian dynasty of Berosos. ... A newly-found
inscription of Nabonidos makes the date [of its advent] B. C.
3750 [foot-note]. ... The first care of Khammuragas,
after establishing himself in Accad, was to extend his sway
over the southern kingdom of Sumer as well. ... Khammuragas
became king of the whole of Babylonia. From this time onward
the country remained a united monarchy. The Cassite dynasty
must have lasted for several centuries, and probably included
more than one line of kings. ... It was under the Cassite
dynasty that the kingdom of Assyria first took its rise,--
partly, perhaps, in consequence of the Asiatic conquests of
the Egyptian monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty. ... In B. C.
1400 the Cassite king married an Assyrian princess. Her son,
Kara-Murdas, was murdered by the party opposed to Assyrian
influence, but the usurper, Nazi-bugas, was quickly overthrown
by the Assyrians, who placed a vassal-prince on the throne.
This event may be considered the turning-point in the history
of the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates; Assyria
henceforth takes the place of the worn-out monarchy of
Babylonia, and plays the chief part in the affairs of Western
Asia until the day of its final fall. In little more than a
hundred years later the Assyrians were again in Babylonia, but
this time as avowed enemies to all parties alike; Babylon was
captured by the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-Adar in B. C. 1270,
and the rule of the Cassite dynasty came to an end."
A. H. Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, appendix 2.
ALSO IN:
G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies: Chaldea, chapter 8.
See, also, ASSYRIA.
BABYLONIA: B. C. 625-539.
The later Empire.
For more than six centuries after the conquest of B. C. 1270,
Babylonia was obscured by Assyria. During most of that long
period, the Chaldean kingdom was subject to its northern
neighbor and governed by Assyrian viceroys. There were
frequent revolts and some intervals of independence; but they
were brief, and the political life of Babylonia as a distinct
power may be said to have been suspended from 1270 until 625
B. C., when Nabopolassar, who ruled first as the viceroy of
the Assyrian monarch, threw off his yoke, took the attributes
of sovereignty to himself, and joined the Medes in
extinguishing the glory of Nineveh. "The Assyrian Empire was
now shared between Media and Babylon. Nabucudur-utser, or
Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar's eldest son, was the real
founder of the Babylonian empire. The attempt of Pharaoh Necho
to win for Egypt the inheritance of Assyria was overthrown at
the battle of Carchemish, and when Nebuchadrezzar succeeded
his father in B. C. 604, he found himself the undisputed lord
of Western Asia. Palestine was coerced in 602, and the
destruction of Jerusalem in 587 laid a way open for the
invasion of Egypt, which took place twenty years later. Tyre
also underwent a long siege of thirteen years, but it is
doubtful whether it was taken after all. Babylon was now
enriched with the spoils of foreign conquest. It owed as much
to Nebuchadrezzar as Rome owed to Augustus. The buildings and
walls with which it was adorned were worthy of the metropolis
of the world. The palace, now represented by the Kasr mound,
was built in fifteen days, and the outermost of its three
walls was seven miles in circuit. Hanging gardens were
constructed for Queen Amytis, the daughter of the Median
prince, and the great temple of Bel was roofed with cedar and
overlaid with gold. The temple of the Seven Lights, dedicated
to Nebo at Borsippa by an early king, who had raised it to a
height of forty-two cubits, was completed, and various other
temples were erected on a sumptuous scale, both in Babylon and
in the neighbouring cities, while new libraries were
established there. After a reign of forty-two years, six
months and twenty-one days, Nebuchadrezzar died (B. C. 562),
and left the crown to his son Evil-Merodach, who had a short
and inactive reign of three years and thirty-four days, when
he was murdered by his brother-in-law, Nergal-sharezer, the
Neriglissar of the Greeks. ... The chief event of his reign of
four years and four months was the construction of a new
palace. His son, who succeeded him, was a mere boy, and was
murdered after a brief reign of four months. The power now
passed from the house of Nabopolassar,--Nabu-nahid or
Nabonidos, who was raised to the throne, being of another
family. His reign lasted seventeen years and five months, and
witnessed the end of the Babylonian empire,"--which was

overthrown by Cyrus the Great (or Kyros), B. C. 539 [see
PERSIA: B. C. 543-521], and swallowed up in the Persian empire
which he founded.
A. H. Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, appendix 2.
ALSO IN:
M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 4, chapter 15.
G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies: The Fourth
Monarchy, chapter 8.
BABYLONIAN JEWS.
See JEWS: B. C. 536-A. D. 50, and A. D. 200-400.
BABYLONIAN TALENT.
See TALENT.
BABYLONIAN TALMUD, The.
See TALMUD.
"BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY" OF THE POPES.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1294-1348.
BACCALAOS, OR BACALHAS, OR BACALHAO COUNTRY.
See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578.
BACCHIADÆ.
See CORINTH.
BACCHIC FESTIVALS.
See DIONYSIA.
BACENIS, Forest of.
See HERCYNIAN FOREST.
BACON'S REBELLION.
See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1660-1677.
{241}
BACTRIA.
"Where the edge [of the tableland of Iran] rises to the lofty
Hindu Kush, there lies on its northern slope a favored
district in the region of the Upper Oxus. ... On the banks of
the river, which flows in a north-westerly direction, extend
broad mountain pastures, where support is found in the fresh
mountain air for numerous herds of horses and sheep, and
beneath the wooded hills are blooming valleys. On these slopes
of the Hindu Kush, the middle stage between the table-land and
the deep plain of the Caspian Sea, lay the Bactrians--the Bakhtri
of the Achaemenids, the Bakhdhi of the Avesta. ... In ancient
times the Bactrians were hardly distinguished from nomads; but
their land was extensive and produced fruits of all kinds,
with the exception of the vine. The fertility of the land
enabled the Hellenic princes to make great conquests."
M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 6. chapter 2.
The Bactrians were among the people subjugated by Cyrus the
Great and their country formed part of the Persian Empire
until the latter was overthrown by Alexander (see MACEDONIA,
&c.: B. C. 330-323). In the division of the Macedonian
conquests, after Alexander's death, Bactria, with all the
farther east, fell to the share of Seleucus Nicator and formed
part of what came to be called the kingdom of Syria. About 256
B. C. the Bactrian province, being then governed by an
ambitious Greek satrap named Diodotus, was led by him into
revolt against the Syrian monarchy, and easily gained its
independence, with Diodotus for its king (see SELEUCIDÆ: B. C.
281-224). "The authority of Diodotus was confirmed and riveted
on his subjects by an undisturbed reign of eighteen years
before a Syrian army even showed itself in his neighbourhood.
... The Bactrian Kingdom was, at any rate at its commencement,
as thoroughly Greek as that of the Seleucidæ." "From B. C. 206
to about B. C. 185 was the most flourishing period of the
Bactrian monarchy, which expanded during that space from a
small kingdom to a considerable empire"--extending over the
greater part of modern Afghanistan and across the Indus into
the Punjaub. But meantime the neighboring Parthians, who threw
off the Seleucid yoke soon after the Bactrians had done so,
were growing in power and they soon passed from rivalry to
mastery. The Bactrian kingdom was practically extinguished
about 150 B. C. by the conquests of the Parthian Mithridates
I., "although Greek monarchs of the Bactrian series continued
masters of Cabul and Western India till about B. C. 126."
G. Rawlinson, Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy, chapter 3-5.
BADAJOS: The Geographical Congress (1524).
See AMERICA: A. D. 1519-1524.
BADEN: Early Suevic population.
See SUEVI.
BADEN: A. D. 1801-1803.
Acquisition of territory under the Treaty of Luneville.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.
BADEN: A. D. 1805-1806.
Aggrandized by Napoleon.
Created a Grand Duchy.
Joined to the Confederation of the Rhine.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806, and 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST).
BADEN: A. D. 1813.
Abandonment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the French
Alliance.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH).
BADEN: A. D. 1849.
Revolution suppressed by Prussian troops.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1850.
BADEN: A. D. 1866.
The Seven Weeks War.
Indemnity and territorial cession to Prussia.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.
BADEN: A. D. 1870-1871.
Treaty of Union with the Germanic Confederation, soon
transformed into the German Empire.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER), and 1871.
----------BADEN: End----------
BADEN, OR RASTADT, Treaty of (1714).
See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714.
BADR, OR BEDR, Battle of.
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 609-632.
BÆCULA, Battle of.
See PUNIC WAR, THE SECOND.
BÆRSÆRK.
See BERSERKER.
BÆTICA.
The ancient name of the province in Spain which afterwards
took from the Vandals the name of Andalusia.
See SPAIN: B. C. 218-25, and A. D. 428;
also TURDETANI, and VANDALS: A. D. 428.
BÆTIS, The.
The ancient name of the Guadalquiver river in Spain.
BAGACUM.
See NERVII.
BAGAUDS, Insurrection of the (A. D. 287).
The peasants of Gaul, whose condition had become very wretched
during the distractions and misgovernment of the third
century, were provoked to an insurrection, A. D. 287, which
was general and alarming. It was a rising which seems to have
been much like those that occurred in France and England
eleven centuries later. The rebel peasants were called
Bagauds,--a name which some writers derive from the Celtic
word "bagad" or "bagat," signifying "tumultuous assemblage."
They sacked and ruined several cities,--taking Autun after a
siege of seven months,--and committed many terrible
atrocities. The Emperor Maximian--colleague of
Diocletian,--succeeded, at last, in suppressing the general
outbreak, but not in extinguishing it every where. There were
traces of it surviving long afterwards.
P. Godwin, History of France, volume 1: Ancient Gaul, book 2,
chapter 6.
ALSO IN:
W. T. Arnold, The Roman System of Provincial
Administration, chapter 4.
See, also, DEDITITIUS.
BAGDAD, A. D. 763.
The founding of the new capital of the Caliphs.
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST AND EMPIRE: A. D. 763.
BAGDAD: A. D. 815-945.
Decline of the Caliphate.
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST AND EMPIRE: A. D. 815-945.
BAGDAD: A. D. 1050.
In the hands of the Turks.
See TURKS: A. D. 1004-1063.
BAGDAD: A. D. 1258.
The Fall of the Caliphate.
Destruction of the city by the Mongols.
In 1252, on the accession of Mangu Khan, grandson of Jingis
Khan, to the sovereignty of the Mongol Empire [see MONGOLS], a
great Kuriltai or council was held, at which it was decided to
send an expedition into the West, for two purposes: (1), to
exterminate the Ismaileans or Assassins, who still maintained
their power in northern Persia; (2), to reduce the Caliph of
Bagdad to submission to the Mongol supremacy. The command of
the expedition was given to Mangu's brother Khulagu, or
Houlagou, who performed his appointed tasks with thoroughness
and unmerciful resolution. In 1257 he made an end of the
Assassins, to the great relief of the whole eastern world,
Mahometan and Christian. In 1258 he passed on to Bagdad,
preceded by an embassy which summoned the Caliph to submit, to
raze the walls of Bagdad, to give up his vain pretensions to
the sovereignty of the Moslem world, and to acknowledge the
Great Khan for his lord. The feeble caliph and his treacherous
and incapable ministers neither submitted nor made vigorous
preparations for defence. As a consequence, Bagdad was taken
after a siege which only excited the ferocity of the Mongols.
They fired the city and slaughtered its people, excepting some
Christians, who are said to have been spared through the
influence of one of Khulagu's wives, who was a Nestorian. The
sack of Bagdad lasted seven days. The number of the dead, we
are told by Raschid, was 800,000. The caliph, Mostassem, with
all his family, was put to death.
H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols,
volume 1, pages 193-201.
----------BAGDAD: End----------
[Image]
I.
Asia Minor
And The
Balkan Peninsula
Near The Close Of The Twelfth Century.
Byzantine Empire.
Selj. Turks.
Servia.
Bulgaria.
Cilician Armenia.
Venetian Possessions.
States Under Latin Rule.
County Palatinate Of Cephalonia.
II
ASIA MINOR
AND THE
BALKAN PENINSULA
IN 1265
(SHOWING RESTORED BYZANTINE
EMPIRE AND SURROUNDING STATES)
III
ASIA MINOR.
IV
TURKISH EMPIRE.
----------End----------

{242}
BAGDAD: A. D. 1258. (Continued)
For a considerable period before this final catastrophe, in
the decline of the Seljuk Empire, the Caliphate at Bagdad had
become once more "an independent temporal state, though,
instead of ruling in the three quarters of the globe, the
caliphs ruled only over the province of Irak Arabi. Their
position was not unlike that of the Popes in recent times,
whom they also resembled in assuming a new name, of a pious
character, at their inauguration. Both the Christian and the
Moslem pontiff was the real temporal sovereign of a small
state; each claimed to be spiritual sovereign over the whole
of the Faithful; each was recognized as such by a large body,
but rejected by others. But in truth the spiritual recognition
of the Abbaside caliphs was more nearly universal in their
last age than it had ever been before." With the fall of
Bagdad fell the caliphate as a temporal sovereignty; but it
survived, or was resurrected, in its spiritual functions, to
become merged, a little later, in the supremacy of the sultan
of the Ottoman Turks. "A certain Ahmed, a real or pretended
Abbasside, fled [from Bagdad] to Egypt, where he was
proclaimed caliph by the title of Al Mostanser Billah, under
the protection of the then Sultan Bibars. He and his
successors were deemed, in spiritual things, Commanders of the
Faithful, and they were found to be a convenient instrument
both by the Mameluke sultans and by other Mahometan princes.
From one of them, Bajazet the Thunderbolt received the title
of Sultan; from another, Selim the Inflexible procured the
cession of his claims, and obtained the right to deem himself
the shadow of God upon earth. Since then, the Ottoman Padishah
has been held to inherit the rights of Omar and of Haroun,
rights which if strictly pressed, might be terrible alike to
enemies, neutrals, and allies."
E. A. Freeman, History and Conquest of the Saracens,
lecture 4.
BAGDAD: A. D. 1393.
Timour's pyramid of heads.
See TIMOUR.
BAGDAD: A. D. 1623-1638.
Taken by the Persians and retaken by the Turks.
Fearful slaughter of the inhabitants.
See TURKS: A. D. 1623-1640.
----------BAGDAD: End----------
BAGISTANA.
See BEHISTUN, ROCK OF.
BAGLIONI, The.
"The Baglioni first came into notice during the wars they
carried on with the Oddi of Perugia in the 14th and 15th
centuries. This was one of those duels to the death, like that
of the Visconti with the Torrensi of Milan, on which the fate
of so many Italian cities of the middle ages hung. The nobles
fought; the townsfolk assisted like a Greek chorus, sharing
the passions of the actors, but contributing little to the
catastrophe. The piazza was the theatre on which the tragedy
was played. In this contest the Baglioni proved the stronger,
and began to sway the state of Perugia after the irregular
fashion of Italian despots. They had no legal right over the
city, no hereditary magistracy, no title of princely
authority. The Church was reckoned the supreme administrator
of the Perugian commonwealth. But in reality no man could set
foot on the Umbrian plain without permission from the
Baglioni. They elected the officers of state. The lives and
goods of the citizens were at their discretion. When a Papal
legate showed his face, they made the town too hot to hold
him. ... It was in vain that from time to time the people rose
against them, massacring Pandolfo Baglioni on the public
square in 1393, and joining with Ridolfo and Braccio of the
dominant house to assassinate another Pandolfo with his son
Niccolo in 1460. The more they were cut down, the more they
flourished. The wealth they derived from their lordships in
the duchy of Spoleto and the Umbrian hill-cities, and the
treasures they accumulated in the service of the Italian
republics, made them omnipotent in their native town. ... From
father to son they were warriors, and we have records of few
Italian houses, except perhaps the Malatesti of Rimini, who
equalled them in hardihood and fierceness. Especially were
they noted for the remorseless vendette which they carried on
among themselves, cousin tracking cousin to death with the
ferocity and and craft of sleuth-hounds. Had they restrained
these fratricidal passions, they might, perhaps, by following
some common policy, like that of the Medici in Florence or the
Bentivogli in Bologna, have successfully resisted the Papal
authority, and secured dynastic sovereignty. It is not until
1495 that the history of the Baglioni becomes dramatic,
possibly because till then they lacked the pen of Matarazzo.
But from this year forward to their final extinction, every
detail of their doings has a picturesque and awful interest.
Domestic furies, like the revel descried by Cassandra above
the palace of Mycenae, seem to take possession of the fated
house; and the doom which has fallen on them is worked out
with pitiless exactitude to the last generation."
J. A. Symonds, Sketches in Italy and Greece,
pages 70-72.
BAGRATIDAE, The.
See ARMENIA: 12th-14th CENTURIES.
BAHAMA ISLANDS: A. D. 1492.
Discovery by Columbus.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1492.
BAHRITE SULTANS.
See EGYPT: A. D. 1250-1517.
BAIÆ.
Baiæ, in Campania, opposite Puteoli on a small bay near
Naples, was the favorite watering place of the ancient Romans.
"As soon as the reviving heats of April gave token of
advancing summer, the noble and the rich hurried from Rome to
this choice retreat; and here, till the raging dogstar forbade
the toils even of amusement, they disported themselves on
shore or on sea, in the thick groves or on the placid lakes,
in litters and chariots, in gilded boats with painted sails,
lulled by day and night with the sweetest symphonies of song
and music, or gazing indolently on the wanton measures of male
and female dancers. The bath, elsewhere their relaxation, was
here the business of the day; ... they turned the pools of
Avernus and Lucrinus into tanks for swimming; and in these
pleasant waters both sexes met familiarly together, and
conversed amidst the roses sprinkled lavishly on their
surface."
C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 40.
BAINBRIDGE, Commodore William, in the War of 1812.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812-1813.
{243}
BAIREUTH, Creation of the Principality of.
See GERMANY: THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Separation from the Electorate of Brandenburg.
See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1417-1640.
----------BAIREUTH: End----------
BAJAZET I.--Turkish Sultan, A. D. 1389-1402.
Bajazet II., A. D. 1481-1512.
BAKAIRI, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: CARIBS.
BAKER, Colonel Edward D., Killed at Ball's Bluff.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER: VIRGINIA).
BAKSAR, OR BAXAR, OR BUXAR, Battle of (1764).
See INDIA: A. D. 1757-1772.
BALACLAVA, Battle of.
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1854 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).
BALANCE OF POWER.
In European diplomacy, a phrase signifying the policy which
aimed at keeping an approximate equilibrium of power among the
greater nations.
T. J. Lawrence, International Law, page 126.
BALBINUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 238.
BALBOA'S DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1513-1517.
BALCHITAS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.
BALDWIN OF FLANDERS, The Crusade of.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1201-1203.
Baldwin I., Latin Emperor at Constantinople
(Romania), A. D. 1204-1205.
Baldwin II., A. D. 1237-1261.
BALEARIC ISLANDS:
Origin of the Name.
"The name 'Baleares' was derived by the Greeks from 'ballein,'
to throw; but the art was taught them by the Phœnicians, and
the name is no doubt Phœnician."
J. Kenrick, Phœnicia, chapter 4.
For the chief incidents in the history of these islands,
See MINORCA and MAJORCA.
BALIA OF FLORENCE, The.
The chief instrument employed by the Medici to establish their
power in Florence was "the pernicious system of the Parlamento
and Balia, by means of which the people, assembled from time
to time in the public square, and intimidated by the reigning
faction, entrusted full powers to a select committee nominated
in private by the chiefs of the great house. ... Segni says:
'The Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the
Piazza of the Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to
address the meeting, the piazza is guarded by armed men, and
then the people are asked whether they wish to give absolute
power (Balia) and authority to the citizens named, for their
good. When the answer, yes, prompted partly by inclination and
partly by compulsion, is returned, the Signory immediately
retires into the palace. This is all that is meant by this
parlamento, which thus gives away the full power of effecting
a change in the state."
J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Age of the Despots,
page 164, and foot-note.
See, also, FLORENCE: A. D. 1378-1427, and 1458-1469.
----------BALIA OF FLORENCE: End----------
BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES.
BALKAN: Ancient History.
The States of southeastern Europe, lately emancipated, for the
most part, from the rule of the Turks, are so associated by a
common history, although remarkably diverse in race, that it
seems expedient to bring them for discussion together. They
occupy mainly the regions known in Roman times as MOESIA,
DACIA and ILLYRICUM, to which names the reader is referred for
some account of the scanty incidents of their early history.
See, also, AVARS.
----------BALKAN: End----------
{244}

Danubian And Balkan States
Showing Changes During
The Present Century
The political condition in 1815 is shown by ROMAN
LETTERS and this style of boundary:
All subsequent change, are shown by ITALIC
LETTERS and this style of boundary:
The Bulgarian boundary according to the Treaty
of San Stefano 1878 is shown thus:
----------Danubian And Balkan States: End----------
BALKAN:
Races existing.
"In no part of Western Europe do we find districts inhabited
by men differing in speech and national feeling, lying in
distinct patches here and there over a large country. A
district like one of our larger counties in which one parish,
perhaps one hundred, spoke Welsh, another Latin, another
English, another Danish, another Old French, another the
tongue of more modern settlers, Flemings, Huguenots or
Palatines, is something which we find hard to conceive, and
which, as applied to our own land or to any other Western
land, sounds absurd on the face of it. When we pass into
South-eastern Europe, this state of things, the very idea of
which seems absurd in the West, is found to be perfectly real.
All the races which we find dwelling there at the beginning of
recorded history, together with several races which have come
in since, all remain, not as mere fragments or survivals, but
as nations, each with its national language and national
feelings, and each having its greater or less share of
practical importance in the politics of the present moment.
Setting aside races which have simply passed through the
country without occupying it, we may say that all the races
which have ever settled in the country are there still as
distinct races. And, though each race has its own particular
region where it forms the whole people or the great majority
of the people, still there are large districts where different
races really live side by side in the very way which seems so
absurd when we try to conceive it in any Western country. We
cannot conceive a Welsh, an English, and a Norman village side
by side; but a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Turkish village side
by side is a thing which may be seen in many parts of Thrace.
The oldest races in those lands, those which answer to Basques
and Bretons in Western Europe, hold quite another position
from that of Basques and Bretons in Western Europe. They form
three living and vigorous nations, Greek, Albanian, and
Rouman. They stand as nations alongside of the Slaves who came
in later, and who answer roughly to the Teutons in the West,
while all alike are under the rule of the Turk, who has
nothing answering to him in the West. ... When the Romans
conquered the South-eastern lands, they found there three
great races, the Greek, the Illyrian, and the Thracian. Those
three races are all there still. The Greeks speak for
themselves. The Illyrians are represented by the modern
Albanians. The Thracians are represented, there seems every
reason to believe, by the modern Roumans. Now had the whole of
the South-eastern lands been inhabited by Illyrians and
Thracians, those lands would doubtless have become as
thoroughly Roman as the Western lands became. ... But the
position of the Greek nation, its long history and its high
civilization, hindered this.
{245}
The Greeks could not become Romans in any but the most purely
political sense. Like other subjects of the Roman Empire, they
gradually took the Roman name; but they kept their own
language, literature, and civilization. In short we may say
that the Roman Empire in the East became Greek, and that the
Greek nation became Roman. The Eastern Empire and the
Greek-speaking lands became nearly coextensive. Greek became
the one language of the Eastern Roman Empire, while those that
spoke it still called themselves Romans. Till quite lately,
that is till the modern ideas of nationality began to spread,
the Greek-speaking subjects of the Turk called themselves by
no name but that of Romans. ... While the Greeks thus took the
Roman name without adopting the Latin language, another people
in the Eastern peninsula adopted both name and language,
exactly as the nations of the West did. If, as there is good
reason to believe, the modern Roumans represent the old
Thracians, that nation came under the general law, exactly
like the Western nations. The Thracians became thoroughly
Roman in speech, as they have ever since kept the Roman name.
They form in fact one of the Romance nations, just as much as
the people of Gaul or Spain. ... In short, the existence of a
highly civilized people like the Greeks hindered in every way
the influence of Rome from being so thorough in the East as it
was in the West. The Greek nation lived on, and alongside of
itself, it preserved the other two ancient nations of the
peninsula. Thus all three have lived on to the present as
distinct nations. Two of them, the Greeks and the Illyrians,
still keep their own languages, while the third, the old
Thracians, speak a Romance language and call themselves
Roumans. ... The Slavonic nations hold in the East a place
answering to that which is held by the Teutonic nations in the
West. ... But though the Slaves in the East thus answer in
many ways to the Teutons in the West, their position with
regard to the Eastern Empire was not quite the same as that of
the Teutons towards the Western Empire. ... They learned much
from the half Roman, half Greek power with which they had to
do; but they did not themselves become either Greek or Roman,
in the way in which the Teutonic conquerors in the Western
Empire became Roman. ... Thus, while in the West everything
except a few survivals of earlier nations, is either Roman or
Teutonic, in the East, Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians or
Roumans, and Slaves, all stood side by side as distinct
nations when the next set of invaders came, and they remain as
distinct nations still. ... There came among them, in the form
of the Ottoman Turk, a people with whom union was not only
hard but impossible, a people who were kept distinct, not by
special circumstances, but by the inherent nature of the case.
Had the Turk been other than what he really was, he might
simply have become a new nation alongside of the other
South-eastern nations. Being what he was the Turk could not do
this. ... The original Turks did not belong to the Aryan
branch of mankind, and their original speech is not an Aryan
speech. The Turks and their speech belong to altogether
another class of nations and languages. ... Long before the
Turks came into Europe, the Magyars or Hungarians had come;
and, before the Magyars came, the Bulgarians had come. Both
the Magyars and the Bulgarians were in their origin Turanian
nations, nations as foreign to the Aryan people of Europe as
the Ottoman Turks themselves. But their history shows that a
Turanian nation settling in Europe may either be assimilated
with an existing European nation or may sit down as an
European nation alongside of others. The Bulgarians have done
one of these things; the Magyars have done the other; the
Ottoman Turks have done neither. So much has been heard lately
of the Bulgarians as being in our times the special victims of
the Turk that some people may find it strange to hear who the
original Bulgarians were. They were a people more or less
nearly akin to the Turks, and they came into Europe as
barbarian conquerors who were as much dreaded by the nations
of South-eastern Europe as the Turks themselves were
afterwards. The old Bulgarians were a Turanian people, who
settled in a large part of the South-eastern peninsula, in
lands which had been already occupied by Slaves. They came in
as barbarian conquerors; but, exactly as happened to so many
conquerors in Western Europe, they were presently assimilated
by their Slavonic subjects and neighbours. They learned the
Slavonic speech; they gradually lost all traces of their
foreign origin. Those whom we now call Bulgarians are a
Slavonic people speaking a Slavonic tongue, and they have
nothing Turanian about them except the name which they
borrowed from their Turanian masters. ... The Bulgarians
entered the Empire in the seventh century, and embraced
Christianity in the ninth. They rose to great power in the
South-eastern lands, and played a great part in their history.
But all their later history, from a comparatively short time
after the first Bulgarian conquest, has been that of a
Slavonic and not that of a Turanian people. The history of the
Bulgarians therefore shows that it is quite possible, if
circumstances are favourable, for a Turanian people to settle
among the Aryans of Europe and to be thoroughly assimilated by
the Aryan nation among whom they settled."
E. A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Europe, chapter 2.
ALSO IN: R. G. Latham, The Nationalities of Europe.
BALKAN: 7th Century.
(Servia, Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia and Montenegro.)
The Slavonic settlement.
"No country on the face of our unfortunate planet has been
oftener ravaged, no land so often soaked with the blood of its
inhabitants. At the dawn of history Bosnia formed part of
Illyria. It was said to have been already peopled by Slav
tribes. Rome conquered all this region as far as the Danube,
and annexed it to Dalmatia. Two provinces were formed,
'Dalmatia maritima,' and 'Dalmatia interna,' or 'Illyris
barbara.' Order reigned, and as the interior communicated with
the coast, the whole country flourished. Important ports grew
upon the littoral. ... At the fall of the Empire came the
Goths, then the Avars, who, for two centuries, burned and
massacred, and turned the whole country into a desert. ... In
630 the Croats began to occupy the present Croatia, Slavonia,
and the north of Bosnia, and in 640 the Servians, of the same
race and language, exterminated the Avars and peopled Servia,
Southern Bosnia, Montenegro and Dalmatia. The ethnic situation
which exists to-day dates from this epoch."
E. de Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula, chapter 3.
{246}
"Heraclius [who occupied the throne of the Eastern Empire at
Constantinople from 610 to 642] appears to have formed the
plan of establishing a permanent barrier in Europe against the
encroachments of the Avars and Sclavonians. ... To accomplish
this object, Heraclius induced the Serbs, or Western
Sclavonians, who occupied the country about the Carpathian
mountains, and who had successfully opposed the extension of
the Avar empire in that direction, to abandon their ancient
seats, and move down to the South into the provinces between
the Adriatic and the Danube. The Roman and Greek population of
these provinces had been driven towards the seacoast by the
continual incursions of the northern tribes, and the desolate
plains of the interior had been occupied by a few Sclavonian
subjects and vassals of the Avars. The most important of the
western Sclavonian tribes who moved southward at the
invitation of Heraclius were the Servians and Croatians, who
settled in the countries still peopled by their descendants.
Their original settlements were formed in consequence of
friendly arrangements, and, doubtless, under the sanction of
an express treaty; for the Sclavonian people of Illyria and
Dalmatia long regarded themselves as bound to pay a certain
degree of territorial allegiance to the Eastern Empire. ...
These colonies, unlike the earlier invaders of the Empire,
were composed of agricultural communities. ... Unlike the
military races of Goths, Huns, and Avars, who had preceded
them, the Servian nations increased and flourished in the
lands which they had colonized; and by the absorption of every
relic of the ancient population, they formed political
communities and independent states, which offered a firm
barrier to the Avars and other hostile nations. ... The states
which they constituted were of considerable weight in the
history of Europe; and the kingdoms or bannats of Croatia,
Servia, Bosnia, Rascia and Dalmatia, occupied for some
centuries a political position very similar to that now held
by the secondary monarchical states of the present day."
G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 4, section 6.
See, also, AVARS: THE BREAKING OF THEIR DOMINION;
and SLAVONIC NATIONS: 6TH AND 7TH CENTURIES.
BALKAN: 7th-8th Centuries (Bulgaria).
Vassalage to the Khazars.
See KHAZARS.
BALKAN: 9th Century (Servia).
Rise of the Kingdom.
"At the period alluded to [the latter part of the ninth
century] the Servians did not, like the rest of the
Sclavonians, constitute a distinct state, but acknowledged the
supremacy of the Eastern Roman Emperor: in fact the country
they inhabited had, from ancient times, formed part of the
Roman territory; and it still remained part of the Eastern
Empire when the Western Empire was re-established, at the time
of Charlemagne. The Servians, at the same period, embraced the
Christian faith; but in doing so they did not subject
themselves entirely, either to the empire or church of the
Greeks. .... The Emperor ... permitted the Servians to be
ruled by native chiefs, solely of their own election, who
preserved a patriarchal form of government. ... In the
eleventh century, the Greeks, despite of the stipulations they
had entered into, attempted to take Servia under their
immediate control, and to subject it to their financial
system." The attempt met with a defeat which was decisive.
"Not only did it put a speedy termination to the encroachment
of the Court of Constantinople in imposing a direct
government, but it also firmly established the princely power
of the Grand Shupanes; whose existence depended on the
preservation of the national independence. ... Pope Gregory
VII. was the first who saluted a Grand Shupane as King."
L. Von Ranke, History of Servia, chapter 1.
BALKAN: 9th-16th Centuries (Bosnia, Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia.)
Conversion to Christianity.
The Bogomiles.
Hungarian crusades.
Turkish conquest.
After the Slavonic settlement of Servia, Bosnia, Croatia and
Dalmatia, for a time "the sovereignty of Byzantium was
acknowledged. But the conversion of these tribes, of identical
race, to two different Christian rites, created an antagonism
which still exists. The Croats were converted first by
missionaries from Rome; they thus adopted Latin letters and
Latin ritual; the Servians, on the contrary, and consequently
part of the inhabitants of Bosnia, were brought to
Christianity by Cyril and Methodius, who, coming from
Thessalonica, brought the characters and rites of the Eastern
Church. About 860 Cyril translated the Bible into Slav,
inventing an alphabet which bears his name, and which is still
in use. ... In 874 Budimir, the first Christian King of
Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia, called a diet upon the plain of
Dalminium, where he tried to establish a regular organization.
It was about this time that the name Bosnia appeared for the
first time. It is said to be derived from a Slav tribe coming
originally from Thrace. In 905 Brisimir, King of Servia,
annexed Croatia and Bosnia; but this union did not last long.
The sovereignty of Byzantium ceased in these parts after the
year 1000. It was gained by Ladislaus, King of Hungary, about
1091. In 1103 Coloman, King of Hungary, added the titles of
'Rex Ramæ' (Herzegovina), then of 'Rex Bosniæ.' Since then
Bosnia has always been a dependence of the crown of Saint
Stephen. ... About this time some Albigenses came to Bosnia.
who converted to their beliefs a large number of the people
who were called Catare, in German Patarener. In Bosnia they
received and adopted the name of Bogomile, which means 'loving
God.' Nothing is more tragic than the history of this heresy.
... They [the Bogomiles] became in Bosnia a chief factor, both
of its history and its present situation. ... The Hungarian
Kings, in obedience to the Pope, ceaselessly endeavoured to
extirpate them, and their frequent wars of extermination
provoked the hatred of the Bosnians. ... In 1238 the first
great crusade was organized by Bela IV. of Hungary, in
obedience to Pope Gregory VII. The whole country was
devastated, and the Bogomiles nearly all massacred, except a
number who escaped to the forests and mountains. In 1245 the
Hungarian Bishop of Kalocsa himself led a second crusade. In
1280 a third crusade was undertaken by Ladislaus IV., King of
Hungary, in order to regain the Pope's favour. ... About the
year 1300 Paul of Brebir, 'Banus Croatorum et Bosniæ
dominus,' finally added Herzegovina to Bosnia. Under the Ban
Stephen IV., the Emperor of Servia, the great Dushan, occupied
Bosnia, but it soon regained its independence (1355), and
under Stephen Tvartko, who took the title of king, the country
enjoyed a last period of peace and prosperity. ...
{247}
Before his death the Turks appeared on the
frontiers. At the memorable and decisive battle of Kossovo
[see TURKS: A. D. 1360-1389], which gave them Servia, 30,000
Bosnians were engaged, and, though retreating stopped the
conqueror. Under Tvartko II., the second king, who was a
Bogomile, Bosnia enjoyed some years' peace (1326-1443). Then
followed [see TURKS: A. D. 1402-1451] a bloody interlude of
civil war," which invited the Turks and prepared the way for
them. "Mohammed II., who had just taken Constantinople (1453),
advanced with a formidable army of 150,000 men, which nothing
could resist. The country was laid waste: 30,000 young men
were circumcised and enrolled amongst the janissaries; 200,000
prisoners were made slaves; the towns which resisted were
burned; the churches turned into mosques, and the land
confiscated by the conquerors (1463). ... A period of struggle
lasted from 1463 till the definite conquest in 1527 [see
TURKS: A. D. 1451-1481]. ... When the battle of Mohacz (August
29, 1526) gave Hungary to the Ottomans [see HUNGARY: A. D.
1487-1526] Jaitche, the last rampart of Bosnia, whose defence
had inspired acts of legendary courage, fell in its turn in
1527. A strange circumstance facilitated the Mussulman
conquest. To save their wealth, the greater number of
magnates, and almost all the Bogomiles, who were exasperated
by the cruel persecutions directed against them, went over to
Islamism. From that time they became the most ardent followers
of Mohammedanism, whilst keeping the language and names of
their ancestors. They fought everywhere in the forefront of
the battles which gained Hungary for the Turks." Within the
present century the Bosnian Mussulmans have risen in arms
"against all the reforms that Europe, in the name of modern
principles, wrested from the Porte."
E. de Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula, chapter 3.
ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of Servia, &c.
BALKAN: 10th-11th Centuries (Bulgaria).
The First Bulgarian Kingdom and its overthrow by Basil II.
"The glory of the Bulgarians was confined to a narrow scope
both of time and place. In the 9th and 10th centuries they
reigned to the south of the Danube, but the more powerful
nations that had followed their emigration repelled all return
to the north and all progress to the west. ... In the
beginning of the 11th century, the Second Basil [Byzantine or
Greek Emperor, A. D. 976-1025] who was born in the purple,
deserved the appellation of conqueror of the Bulgarians
[subdued by his predecessor, John Zimisces, but still
rebellious]. His avarice was in some measure gratified by a
treasure of 400,000 pounds sterling (10,000 pounds' weight of
gold) which he found in the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty
inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on 15,000 captives
who had been guilty of the defence of their country. They were
deprived of sight, but to one of each hundred a single eye was
left, that he might conduct his blind century to the presence
of their king. Their king is said to have expired of grief and
horror; the nation was awed by this terrible example; the
Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and
circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs
bequeathed to their children the advice of patience and the
duty of revenge."
E. Gibbon, Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 55.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717
ALSO IN:
G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine Empire, from 716 to
1007, book 2, chapter 2.
See, also, CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 907-1043,
and ACHRIDA, THE KINGDOM OF.
BALKAN: A. D. 1096 (Bulgaria).
Hostilities with the First Crusaders.
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.
BALKAN: 12th Century (Bulgaria).
The Second Bulgarian or Wallachian Kingdom.
"The reign of Isaac II. [Byzantine or Greek Emperor, A. D.
1185-1195] is filled with a series of revolts, caused by his
incapable administration and financial rapacity. The most
important of these was the great rebellion of the Vallachian
and Bulgarian population which occupied the country between
Mount Hæmus and the Danube. The immense population of this
extensive country now separated itself finally from the
government of the Eastern Empire, and its political destinies
ceased to be united with those of the Greeks. A new European
monarchy, called the Vallachian, or Second Bulgarian kingdom,
was formed, which for some time acted an important part in the
affairs of the Byzantine Empire, and contributed powerfully to
the depression of the Greek race. The sudden importance
assumed by the Vallachian population in this revolution, and
the great extent of country then occupied by a people who had
previously acted no prominent part in the political events of
the East, render it necessary to give some account of their
previous history. Four different countries are spoken of under
the name of Vallachia by the Byzantine writers: Great
Vallachia, which was the country round the plain of Thessaly,
particularly the southern and south-western part. White
Vallachia, or the modern Bulgaria, which formed the
Vallachio-Bulgarian kingdom that revolted from Isaac II.;
Black Vallachia, Mavro-Vallachia, or Karabogdon, which is
Moldavia; and Hungarovallachia, or the Vallachia of the
present day, comprising a part of Transylvania. ... The
question remains undecided whether these Vallachians are the
lineal descendants of the Thracian race, who, Strabo tells us,
extended as far south as Thessaly, and as far north as to the
borders of Pannonia; for of the Thracian language we know
nothing."
G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires,
from 716 to 1453, book 3, chapter 3, section 1.
"Whether they were of Slavic origin or of Gaelic or Welsh
origin, whether they were the aboriginal inhabitants of the
country who had come under the influence of the elder Rome,
and had acquired so many Latin words as to overlay their
language and to retain little more than the grammatical forms
and mould of their own language, or whether they were the
descendants of the Latin colonists of Dacia [see DACIA:
TRAJAN'S CONQUEST] with a large mixture of other peoples, are
all questions which have been much controverted. It is
remarkable that while no people living on the south of the
Balkans appear to be mentioned as Wallachs until the tenth
century, when Anna Comnena mentions a village called Ezeban,
near Mount Kissavo, occupied by them, almost suddenly we hear
of them as a great nation to the south of the Balkans. They
spoke a language which differed little from Latin. Thessaly,
during the twelfth century is usually called Great Wallachia.
... Besides the Wallachs in Thessaly, whose descendants are
now called Kutzo-Wallachs, there were the Wallachs in Dacia,
the ancestors of the present Roumanians, and Mavro-Wallachs in
Dalmatia. Indeed, according to the Hungarian and Byzantine
writers, there were during the twelfth century a series of
Wallachian peoples, extending from the Theiss to the Dniester.
... The word Wallach is used by the Byzantine writers as
equivalent to shepherd, and it may be that the common use of a
dialect of Latin by all the Wallachs is the only bond of union
among the peoples bearing that name. They were all
occasionally spoken of by the Byzantine writers as descendants
of the Romans."
E. Pears, The Fall of Constantinople, chapter 3.
{248}
"The classical type of feature, so often met with among
Roumanian peasants, pleads strongly for the theory of Roman
extraction, and if just now I compared the Saxon peasants to
Noah's ark figures rudely carved out of the coarsest wood, the
Roumanians as often remind me of a type of face chiefly to be
seen on cameo ornaments, or ancient signet rings. Take at
random a score of individuals from any Roumanian village, and,
like a handful of antique gems which have been strewn
broadcast over the land, you will there surely find a good
choice of classical profiles worthy to be immortalized on
agate, onyx, or jasper. An air of plaintive melancholy
generally characterizes the Roumanian peasant: it is the
melancholy of a long-subjected and oppressed race. ... Perhaps
no other race possesses in such marked degree the blind and
immovable sense of nationality which characterizes the
Roumanians. They hardly ever mingle with the surrounding
races, far less adopt manners and customs foreign to their
own. This singular tenacity of the Roumanians to their own
dress, manners and customs is probably due to the influence of
their religion [the Greek church], which teaches that any
divergence from their own established rules is sinful."
E. Gérard, Transylvanian Peoples
(Contemporary Review, March, 1887).
BALKAN: A. D. 1341-1356 (Servia).
The Empire of Stephan Dushan.
"In 1341, when John Cantacuzenus assumed the purple [at
Constantinople], important prospects were opened to the
Servians. Cantacuzenus ... went up the mountains and prevailed
upon Stephan Dushan, the powerful king of the Servians, whom
he found in a country palace at Pristina, to join his cause."
As the result of this connection, and by favor of the
opportunities which the civil war and general decline in the
Greek Empire afforded him, Stephan Dushan extended his
dominions over Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and a part of
Thrace. "The Shkypetares in Albania followed his standard;
Arta and Joannina were in his possession. From these points
his Voivodes [Palatines], whose districts may easily be
traced, spread themselves over the whole of the Roumelian
territory on the Vardar and the Marizza, as far as Bulgaria,
which he also regarded as a province of his kingdom. Being in
the possession of so extensive a dominion, he now ventured to
assume a title which was still in dispute between the Eastern
and Western Empires, and could not rightly be claimed by
either. As a Servian Krale, he could neither ask nor expect
the obedience of the Greeks: therefore he called himself
Emperor of the Roumelians--the Macedonian Christ-loving
Czar--and began to wear the tiara. ... Stephan Dushan died
[Dec. 2, 1356] before he had completed the Empire of which he
had laid the foundation, and ere he had strengthened his power
by the bulwark of national institutions."
L. Von Ranke, History of Servia, chapter 1-2.
ALSO IN: M'me E. L. Mijatovich, Kossovo, Int.
BALKAN: A. D. 1389 (Bulgaria).
Conquest by the Turks.
See TURKS (THE OTTOMANS): A. D. 1360-1389.
BALKAN: 14th Century (Bulgaria).
Subjection to Hungary.
See HUNGARY: A. D. 1301-1442.
BALKAN: 14th-18th Centuries (Roumania, or Wallachia, and Moldavia).
Four Centuries of Conflict with Hungarians and Turks.
"The Wallacho-Bulgarian monarchy, whatever may have been its
limits, was annihilated by a horde of Tartars about A. D.
1250. The same race committed great havoc in Hungary,
conquered the Kumani, overran Moldavia, Transylvania, &c., and
held their ground there until about the middle of the 14th
century, when they were driven northward by the Hungarian,
Saxon, and other settlers in Transylvania; and with their exit
we have done with the barbarians. ... Until recently the
historians of Roumania have had little to guide them
concerning the events of the period beyond traditions which,
though very interesting, are now gradually giving place to
recorded and authenticated facts. .... It is admitted that the
plains and slopes of the Carpathians were inhabited by
communities ruled over by chieftains of varying power and
influence. Some were banates, as that of Craiova, which long
remained a semi-independent State; then there were petty
voivodes or princes . ... and besides these there were
Khanates, ... some of which were petty principalities, whilst
others were merely the governorships of villages or groups of
them. ... Mircea, one of the heroes of Roumanian history, not
only secured the independent sovereignty, and called himself
Voivode of Wallachia 'by the grace of God,' but in 1389 he
formed an alliance with Poland, and assumed other titles by
the right of conquest. This alliance ... had for its objects
the extension of his dominions, as well as protection against
Hungary on the one hand, and the Ottoman power on the other;
for the ... Turkish armies had overrun Bulgaria, and about the
year 1391 they first made their appearance north of the
Danube. At first the bravery of Mircea was successful in
stemming the tide of invasion;" but after a year or two,
"finding himself between two powerful enemies, the King of
Hungary and the Sultan, Mircea elected to form an alliance
with the latter, and concluded a treaty with him at Nicopolis
(1393), known as the First Capitulation, by which Wallachia
retained its autonomy, but agreed to pay an annual tribute and
to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Sultan. ... According to
several historians Mircea did not adhere to it long, for he is
said to have been in command of a contingent in the army of
the crusaders, and to have been present at the battle of
Nicopolis (1396), in which the flower of the French nobility
fell, and, when he found their cause to be hopeless, once more
to have deserted them and joined the victorious arms of
Bajazet. Of the continued wars and dissensions in Wallachia
during the reign of Mircea it is unnecessary to speak. He
ruled with varying fortunes until 1418 A. D." A Second
Capitulation was concluded, at Adrianople, with the Turks, in
1460, by a later Wallachian voivode, named Vlad.
{249}
It increased the tribute to the Porte, but made no other
important change in the terms of suzerainty. Meantime, in the
neighbouring Moldavian principality, events were beginning to
shape themselves into some historical distinctness. "For a
century after the foundation of Moldavia, or, as it was at
first called, Bogdania, by Bogdan Dragosch the history of the country is shrouded in darkness. Kings or
princes are named, one or more of whom were Lithuanians. ...
At length a prince more powerful than the rest ascended the
throne. ... This was Stephen, sometimes called the 'Great' or
'Good.' ... He came to the throne about 1456 or 1458, and
reigned until 1504, and his whole life was spent in wars
against Transylvania, Wallachia, ... the Turks, and Tartars.
... In 1475 he was at war with the Turks, whom he defeated on
the river Birlad. ... In that year also Stephen ... completely
overran Wallachia. Having reduced it to submission, he placed
a native boyard on the throne as his viceroy, who showed his
gratitude to Stephen by rebelling and liberating the country
from his rule; but he was in his turn murdered by his
Wallachian subjects. In 1476 Stephen sustained a terrible
defeat at the hands of the Ottomans at Valea Alba (the White
Valley), but eight years afterwards, allied with the Poles, he
again encountered [and defeated] this terrible enemy. ...
After the battle of Mohacs [see HUNGARY: A. D. 1487-1526] the
Turks began to encroach more openly upon Roumanian
(Moldo-Wallachian) territory. They occupied and fortified
Braila, Giurgevo, and Galatz; interfered in the election of
the princes ... adding to their own influence, and rendering
the princes more and more subservient to their will. This
state of things lasted until the end of the 16th century, when
another hero, Michael the Brave of Wallachia, restored
tranquility and independence to the Principalities, and raised
them for a season in the esteem of surrounding nations."
Michael, who mounted the throne in 1593, formed an alliance
with the Prince of Siebenbürgen (Transylvania) and the voivode
of Moldavia, against the Turks. He began his warfare,
November, 1591, by a wholesale massacre of the Turks in
Bucharest and Jassy. He then took Giurgevo by storm and
defeated the Ottoman forces in a battle at Rustchuk. In 1595,
Giurgevo was the scene of two bloody battles, in both of which
Michael came off victor, with famous laurels. The Turks were
effectually driven from the country. The ambition of the
victorious Michael was now excited, and he invaded
Transylvania (1599) desiring to add it to his dominions. In a
battle "which is called by some the battle of Schellenberg,
and by others of Hermanstadt," he defeated the reigning
prince, Cardinal Andreas, and Transylvania was at his feet. He
subdued Moldavia with equal ease, and the whole of ancient
Dacia became subject to his rule. The Emperor Rudolph, as
suzerain of Transylvania, recognized his authority. But his
reign was brief. Before the close of the year 1600 a rising
occurred in Transylvania, and Michael was defeated in a battle
fought at Miriszlo. He escaped to the mountains and became a
fugitive for some months, while even his Wallachian throne was
occupied by a brother of the Moldavian voivode. At length he
made terms with the Emperor Rudolph, whose authority had been
slighted by the Transylvanian insurgents, and procured men and
money with which he returned in force, crushed his opponents
at Goroszlo, and reigned again as viceroy. But he quarreled
soon with the commander of the imperial troops, General Basta,
and the latter caused him to be assassinated, some time in
August, 1601. ... The History of Moldo-Wallachia during the
17th century ... possesses little interest for English
readers." At the end of the 17th century "another great Power
[Russia] was drawing nearer and nearer to Roumania, which was
eventually to exercise a grave influence upon her destiny. ...
In the beginning of the 18th century there ruled two voivodes,
Constantine Brancovano, in Wallachia, and Demetrius Cantemir
in Moldavia, both of whom had been appointed in the usual
manner under the suzerainty of the Porte; but these princes,
independently of each other, had entered into negotiations
with Peter the Great after the defeat of Charles XII. at
Pultawa (1709), to assist them against the Sultan, their
suzerain, stipulating for their own independence under the
protection of the Czar." Peter was induced to enter the
country with a considerable army [1711], but soon found
himself in a position from which there appeared little chance
of escape. He was extricated only by the cleverness of the
Czarina, who bribed the Turkish commander with her jewels.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1707-1718.
The Moldavian Voivode escaped with the Russians. The
Wallachian, Brancovano, was seized, taken to Constantinople,
and put to death, along with his four sons. "Stephen
Cantacuzene, the son of his accusers, was made Voivode of
Wallachia, but like his predecessors he only enjoyed the
honour for a brief term, and two years afterwards he was
deposed, ordered to Constantinople, imprisoned, and
decapitated; and with him terminated the rule of the native
princes, who were followed, both in Wallachia and Moldavia, by
the so-called Phanariote governors [see PHANARIOTES] or
farmers-general of the Porte."
J. Samuelson, Roumania, Past and Present,
part 2, chapter 11-13.
BALKAN: 14th-19th Centuries:
(Montenegro) The new Servia.
"The people that inhabit the two territories known on the map
as Servia and Montenegro are one and the same. If you ask a
Montenegrin what language he speaks, he replies 'Serb.' The
last of the Serb Czars fell gloriously fighting at Kossovo in
1389 [see TURKS: A. D. 1360-1389]. To this day the Montenegrin
wears a strip of black silk upon his headgear in memory of
that fatal day. ... The brave Serbs who escaped from Kossovo
found a sanctuary in the mountains that overlook the Bay of
Cattaro. Their leader, Ivo, surnamed Tsernoi (Black), gave the
name of Tzrnogora (Montenegro) to these desert rocks. ...
Servia having become a Turkish province, her colonists created
in Montenegro a new and independent Servia [see TURKS: A. D.
1451-1481]. The memory of Ivo the Black is still green in the
country. Springs, ruins, and caverns are called after him,
and the people look forward to the day when he will reappear
as a political Messiah. But Ivo's descendants proved unworthy
of him; they committed the unpardonable sin of marrying
aliens, and early in the 16th century the last descendant of
Ivo the Black retired to Venice.
{250}
From 1516 to 1697 Montenegro
was ruled by elective Vladikas or Bishops; from 1697 to 1851
by hereditary Vladikas. For the Montenegrins the 16th, 17th
and 18th centuries formed a period of incessant warfare. ...
Up till 1703 the Serbs of the mountain were no more absolutely
independent of the Sultan than their enslaved kinsmen of the
plain. The Havatch or Sultan's slipper tax was levied on the
mountaineers. In 1703 Danilo Petrovitch celebrated his
consecration as a Christian Bishop by ordering the slaughter
of every Mussulman who refused to be baptised. This massacre
took place on Christmas Eve 1703. ... The 17th and 18th
centuries were for Montenegro a struggle for existence. In the
19th century began their struggle for an outlet to the sea.
The fall of Venice would naturally have given the mountaineers
the bay of Cattaro, had not the French stepped in and annexed
Dalmatia." In 1813, the Vladika, Peter I., "with the aid of
the British fleet ... took Cattaro from the French, but
(pursuant to an arrangement between Russia and Austria) was
compelled subsequently to relinquish it to the latter power.
... Peter I. of Montenegro ... died in 1830, at the age of 80.
... His nephew Peter II. was a wise ruler. ... On the death of
Peter II., Prince Danilo, the uncle of the present Prince,
went to Russia to be consecrated Bishop of Montenegro. The
czar seems to have laughed him out of this ancient practice;
and the late Prince instead of converting himself into monk
and bishop returned to his own country and married [1851]. ...
Prince Danilo was assassinated at Cattaro (1860). ... He was
succeeded by his nephew Nicholas."
J. G. C. Minchin, Servia and Montenegro (National Life
and Thought, lecture 19).
"The present form of government in Montenegro is at once the
most despotic and the most popular in Europe--despotic,
because the will of the Prince is the law of the land; and
popular, because the personal rule of the Prince meets all the
wants and wishes of the people. No Sovereign in Europe sits so
firmly on his throne as the Prince of this little State, and
no Sovereign is so absolute. The Montenegrins have no army;
they are themselves a standing army."
J. G. C. Minchin, The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan
Peninsula, chapter 1.
A. A. Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic,
book 2, chapter 7 (volume 1).
L. Von Ranke, History of Servia, &c.: Slave Provinces of
Turkey, chapter 2-6.
"Montenegro is an extremely curious instance of the way in
which favourable geographical conditions may aid a small
people to achieve a fame and a place in the world quite out of
proportion to their numbers. The Black Mountain is the one
place where a South Sclavonic community maintained themselves
in independence, sometimes seeing their territory overrun by
the Turks, but never acknowledging Turkish authority de jure
from the time of the Turkish Conquest of the 15th century down
to the Treaty of Berlin. Montenegro could not have done that
but for her geographical structure. She is a high mass of
limestone; you cannot call it a plateau, because it is seamed
by many valleys, and rises into many sharp mountain-peaks.
Still, it is a mountain mass, the average height of which is
rather more than 2,000 feet above the sea, with summits
reaching 5,000. It is bare limestone, so that there is hardly
anything grown on it, only grass--and very good grass--in
spots, with little patches of corn and potatoes, and it has
scarcely any water. Its upland is covered with snow in winter,
while in summer the invaders have to carry their water with
them, a serious difficulty when there were no roads, and
active mountaineers fired from behind every rock, a difficulty
which becomes more serious the larger the invading force.
Consequently it is one of the most impracticable regions
imaginable for an invading army. It is owing to those
circumstances that this handful of people--because the
Montenegrins of the 17th century did not number more than
40,000 or 50,000--have maintained their independence. That
they did maintain it is a fact most important in the history
of the Balkan Peninsula, and may have great consequences yet
to come."
J. Bryce, Relations of History and Geography
(Contemporary Review, March, 1886).
BALKAN: 14th-19th Centuries.--(Servia):
The long oppression of the Turk.
Struggle for freedom under Kara Georg and Milosch.
Independence achieved.
The Obrenovitch dynasty.
"The brilliant victories of Stephan Dushan were a misfortune
to Christendom. They shattered the Greek empire, the last
feeble bulwark of Europe, and paved the way for those ultimate
successes of the Asiatic conquerors which a timely union of
strength might have prevented. Stephan Dushan conquered, but
did not consolidate: and his scourging wars were
insufficiently balanced by the advantage of the code of laws
to which he gave his·name. His son Urosh, being a weak and
incapable prince, was murdered by one of the generals of the
army, and thus ended the Neman dynasty, after having subsisted
212 years, and produced eight kings and two emperors. The
crown now devolved on Knes, or Prince Lasar; a connexion of
the house of Neman. ... Of all the ancient rulers of the
country, his memory is held the dearest by the Servians of the
present day." Knes Lasar perished in the fatal battle of
Kossovo, and with him fell the Servian monarchy.
See TURKS: A. D. 1360-1389, 1402-1451, and 1459;
also MONTENEGRO.
"The Turkish conquest was followed by the gradual dispersion
or disappearance of the native nobility of Servia, the last of
whom, the Brankovitch, lived as despots' in the castle of
Semendria up to the beginning of the 18th century. ... The
period preceding the second siege of Vienna was the
spring-tide of Islam conquest. After this event, in 1684,
began the ebb. Hungary was lost to the Porte, and six years
afterwards 37,000 Servian families emigrated into that
kingdom; this first led the way to contact with the
civilization of Germany. ... Servia Proper, for a short time
wrested from the Porte by the victories of Prince Eugene,
again became a part of the dominions of the Sultan."
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1739.
{251}
"But a turbulent militia overawed the government and tyrannized
over the Rayahs. Pasvan Oglou and his bands at Widdin were, at
the end of the last century, in open revolt against the Porte.
Other chiefs had followed his example; and for the first time
the Divan thought of associating Christian Rayahs with the
spahis, to put down these rebels. The Dahis, as these
brigand-chiefs were called, resolved to anticipate the
approaching struggle by a massacre of the most influential
Christians. This atrocious massacre was carried out with
indescribable horrors. ... Kara Georg [Black George], a
peasant, born at Topola about the year 1767, getting timely
information that his name was in the list of the doomed, fled
into the woods, and gradually organized a formidable force. In
the name of the Porte he combated the Dahis, who had usurped
local authority in defiance of the Pasha of Belgrade. The
Divan, little anticipating the ultimate issue of the struggle
in Servia, was at first delighted at the success of Kara
Georg; but soon saw with consternation that the rising of the
Servian peasants grew into a formidable rebellion, and ordered
the Pashas of Bosnia and Scodra to assemble all their
disposable forces and invade Servia. Between 40,000 and 50,000
Bosniacs burst into Servia on the west, in the spring of 1806,
cutting to pieces all who refused to receive Turkish
authority. Kara Georg undauntedly met the storm," defeating
the Turkish forces near Tchoupria, September, 1804, and more
severely two years later (August, 1806) at Shabatz. In
December of the same year he surprised and took Belgrade. "The
succeeding years were passed in the vicissitudes of a guerilla
warfare, neither party obtaining any marked success; and an
auxiliary corps of Russians assisted in preventing the Turks
from making the re-conquest of Servia. ... Kara Georg was now
a Russian lieutenant-general, and exercised an almost
unlimited power in Servia; the revolution, after a struggle of
eight years, appeared to be successful, but the momentous
events then passing in Europe completely altered the aspect of
affairs. Russia, in 1812, on the approach of the countless
legions of Napoleon, precipitately concluded the treaty of
Bucharest, the eighth article of which formally assured a
separate administration to the Servians. Next year, however,
was fatal to Kara Georg. In 1813, the vigour of the Ottoman
empire ... was now concentrated on the resubjugation of
Servia. A general panic seemed to seize the nation; and Kara
Georg and his companions in arms sought a retreat on the
Austrian territory, and thence passed into Wallachia. In 1814,
300 Christians were impaled at Belgrade by the Pasha, and
every valley in Servia presented the spectacle of infuriated
Turkish spahis avenging on the Servians the blood, exile and
confiscation of the ten preceding years. At this period,
Milosh Obrenovitch appears prominently on the political tapis.
He spent his youth in herding the famed swine of Servia; and
during the revolution was employed by Kara Georg to watch the
passes of the Balkans. ... He now saw that a favourable
conjuncture had come for his advancement from the position of
chieftain to that of chief; he therefore lost no time in
making terms with the Turks, offering to collect the tribute,
to serve them faithfully, and to aid them in the resubjugation
of the people. ... He now displayed singular activity in the
extirpation of all the other popular chiefs," until he found
reason to suspect that the Turks were only using him to
destroy him in the end. Then, in 1815, he turned upon them and
raised the standard of revolt. The movement which he headed
was so formidable that the Porte made haste to treat, and
Milosch made favourable terms for himself, being reinstated as
tribute-collector. "Many of the chiefs, impatient at the
speedy submission of Milosh, wished to fight the matter out,
and Kara Georg, in order to give effect to their plans, landed
in Servia. Milosh pretended to be friendly to his designs, but
secretly betrayed his place of concealment to the governor,
whose men broke into the cottage where he slept, and put him
to death."
A. A. Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic,
book 1, chapter 3.
"In 1817 Milosch was proclaimed hereditary Prince of Servia by
the National Assembly. ... In 1830 the autonomy of Servia was
at length solemnly recognized by the Porte, and Milosch
proclaimed 'the father of the Fatherland.' ... If asked why
the descendants of Milosch still rule over Servia, and not the
descendants of Kara George, my answer is that every step in
Servian progress is connected with the Obrenovitch dynasty.
The liberation of the country, the creation of a peasant
proprietary, the final withdrawal of the Turkish troops from
Belgrade in 1862, the independence of the country, the
extension of its territory, and the making of its
railways,--all of these are among the results of Obrenovitch
rule. The founder of the dynasty had in 1830 a great
opportunity of making his people free as well as independent.
But Milosch had lived too long with Turks to be a lover of
freedom. ... In 1839 Milosch abdicated. The reason for this
step was that he refused to accept a constitution which Russia
and Turkey concocted for him. This charter vested the actual
government of the country in a Senate composed of Milosch's
rivals, and entirely independent of that Prince. ... It was
anti-democratic, no less than anti-dynastic. Milosch was
succeeded first by his son Milan, and on Milan's death by
Michael. Michael was too gentle for the troubled times in
which he lived, and after a two years's reign he too started
upon his travels. ... When Michael crossed the Save, Alexander
Kara Georgevitch was elected Prince of Servia. From 1842 to
1858 the son of Black George lived--he can scarcely be said to
have reigned--in Belgrade. During these 17 years this feeble
son of a strong man did absolutely nothing for his country.
... Late in 1858 he fled from Servia, and Milosch ruled in his
stead. Milosch is the Grand Old Man of Serb history. His mere
presence in Servia checked the intrigues of foreign powers. He
died peacefully in his bed. ... Michael succeeded his father.
... Prince Michael was murdered by convicts in the park at
Topschidera near Belgrade." He "was succeeded (1868) by Milan,
the grandson of Zephrem, the brother of Milosch. As Milan was
barely fourteen years of age, a Regency of three was
appointed."
J. G. C. Minchin, Servia and Montenegro (National Life
and Thought, lecture 19).
ALSO IN: E. de Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula, chapter 6.
BALKAN: A. D. 1718 (Bosnia).
A part ceded to Austria by the Turks.
See HUNGARY: A. D. 1699-1718.
BALKAN: A. D. 1739 (Bosnia and Roumania).
Entire restoration of Bosnia to the Turks, and Cession of
Austrian Wallachia.
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1725-1739.
{252}
BALKAN: 19th Century (Roumania and Servia).
Awakening of a National Spirit.
The effect of historical teaching.
"No political fact is of more importance and interest in
modern continental history than the tenacity with which the
smaller nations of Europe preserve their pride of nationality
in the face of the growing tendency towards the formation of
large, strongly concentrated empires, supported by powerful
armies. Why should Portugal utterly refuse to unite with
Spain? Why do Holland and Belgium cling to their existence as
separate States, in spite of all the efforts of statesmen to
join them? Why do the people of Bohemia and Croatia, of
Finland, and of Poland, refuse to coalesce with the rest of
the population of the empires of which they form but small
sections? Why, finally, do the new kingdoms of Roumania and
Servia show such astonishing vitality? The arguments as to
distinctive race or' distinctive language fail to answer all
these questions. ... This rekindling of the national spirit is
the result chiefly of the development of the new historical
school all over the Continent. Instead of remaining in
ignorance of their past history, or, at best, regarding a mass
of legends as containing the true tale of their countries'
achievements, these small nations have now learnt from the
works of their great historians what the story of their
fatherlands really is, and what title they have to be proud of
their ancestors. These great historians--Herculano, Palacky,
Széchenyi, and the rest--who made it their aim to tell the
truth and not to show off the beauties of a fine literary
style, all belonged to the generation which had its interest
aroused in the history of the past by the novels of Sir Walter
Scott and the productions of the Romantic School, and they all
learnt how history was to be studied, and then written, from
Niebuhr, Von Ranke and their disciples and followers. From
these masters they learnt that their histories were not to be
made interesting at the expense of truth. ... The vitality of
the new historical school in Roumania is particularly
remarkable, for in the Danubian provinces, which form that
kingdom, even more strenuous efforts had been made to stamp
out the national spirit than in Bohemia. The extraordinary
rapidity with which the Roumanian people has reasserted itself
in recent years, is one of the most remarkable facts in modern
European history, and it is largely due to the labours of its
historians. Up till 1822 the Roumanian language was vigorously
proscribed; the rulers of the Danubian provinces permitted
instruction to the upper classes in the language of the rulers
only, and while Slavonic, and in the days of the Phanariots
Greek, was the official and fashionable language, used in
educating the nobility and bourgeois, the peasants were left
in ignorance. Four men, whose names deserve record, first
endeavoured to raise the Roumanian language to a literary
level, and not only studied Roumanian history, but tried to
teach the Roumanian people something of their own early
history. Of these four, George Schinkaï was by far the most
remarkable. He was an inhabitant of Transylvania, a Roumanian
province which still remains subject to Hungary, and he first
thought of trying to revive the Roumanian nationality by
teaching the people their history. He arranged the annals of
his country from A. D. 86 to A. D. 1739 with indefatigable
labour, during the last half of the 18th century, and,
according to Edgar Quinet, in such a truly modern manner,
after such careful weighing of original authorities, and with
such critical power, that he deserves to be ranked with the
creators of the modern historical school. It need hardly be
said that Schinkaï's History was not allowed to be printed by
the Hungarian authorities, who had no desire to see the
Roumanian nationality re-assert itself, and the censor marked
on it 'opus igne, auctor patibulo dignus.' It was not
published until 1853, more than forty years after its
completion, and then only at Jassy, for the Hungarians still
proscribed it in Transylvania. Schinkaï's friend, Peter Major,
was more fortunate in his work, a 'History of the Origin of
the Roumanians in Dacia,' which, as it did not touch on modern
society, was passed by the Hungarian censorship, and printed
at Buda Pesth in 1813. The two men who first taught Roumanian
history in the provinces which now form the kingdom of
Roumania were not such learned men as Schinkaï and Peter
Major, but their work was of more practical importance. In

1813 George Asaky got leave to open a Roumanian class at the
Greek Academy of Jassy, under the pretext that it was
necessary to teach surveying in the Roumanian tongue, because
of the questions which constantly arose in that profession, in
which it would be necessary to speak to the peasants in their
own language, and in his lectures he carefully inserted
lessons in Roumanian history, and tried to arouse the spirit
of the people. George Lazarus imitated him at Bucharest in
1816, and the fruit of this instruction was seen when the
Roumanians partially regained their freedom. The
Moldo-Wallachian princes encouraged the teaching of Roumanian
history, as they encouraged the growth of the spirit of
Roumanian independence, and when the Roumanian Academy was
founded, an historical section was formed with the special
mission of studying and publishing documents connected with
Roumanian history. The modern scientific spirit has spread
widely throughout the kingdom."
H. Morse Stephens, Modern Historians and Small
Nationalities (Contemporary Review, July, 1887).
BALKAN: A. D. 1829 (Roumania, or Wallachia and Moldavia).
Important provisions of the Treaty of Adrianople.
Life Election of the Hospodars.
Substantial independence of the Turk.
See TURKS: A. D. 1826-1829.
BALKAN: A. D. 1856 (Roumania, or Wallachia and Moldavia).
Privileges guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris.
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1854-1856.
BALKAN: A. D. 1858-1866.
(Roumania or Wallachia and Moldavia).
Union of the two provinces under one Crown.
Accession of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern.
See TURKS: A. D. 1861-1877.
{253}
BALKAN: A. D. 1875-1878.
The Breaking of the Turkish yoke.
Bulgarian atrocities.
Russo-Turkish War.
In 1875, a revolt broke out in Herzegovina. "The efforts made
to suppress the growing revolt strained the already weakened
resources of the Porte, until they could bear up against it no
longer, and the Herzegovinese rebellion proved the last straw
which broke the back of Turkish solvency. ... The hopes of the
insurgents were of course quickened by this catastrophe,
which, as they saw, would alienate much sympathy from the
Turks. The advisers of the Sultan, therefore, thought it
necessary to be conciliatory, and ... they induced him to
issue an Iradé, or circular note, promising the remission of
taxes, and economical and social reforms. ... Europe, however,
had grown tired of the Porte's promises of amendment, and for
some time the Imperial Powers had been laying their heads
together, and the result of their consultations was the
Andrassy Note. The date of this document was December 30th,
1875, and it was sent to those of the Western Powers who had
signed the treaties of 1856. It declared that although the
spirit of the suggested reforms was good, there was some doubt
whether the Porte had the strength to carry them out; Count
Andrassy, therefore, proposed that the execution of the
necessary measures should be placed under the care of a
special commission, half the members of which should be
Mussulmans and half Christians. ... It concluded with a
serious warning, that if the war was not gone with the snow,
'the Governments of Servia and Montenegro, which have had
great difficulty in keeping aloof from the movement, will be
unable to resist the current.' ... It was evident, however,
that this note would have but little or no effect; it
contained no coercive precautions, and accordingly the Porte
quietly allowed the question to drop, and contented himself
with profuse promises. ... So affairs drifted on; the little
war continued to sputter on the frontier; reinforced by
Servians and Montenegrins, the Herzegovinese succeeded in
keeping their enemy at bay, and, instigated, it is said, by
Russian emissaries, put forward demands which the Porte was
unable to accept. ... The Powers, in no wise disconcerted by
the failure of their first attempt to settle the difficulties
between the Sultan and his rebellious subjects, had published
a sequel to the Andrassy Note. There was an informal
conference of the three Imperial Chancellors, Prince Bismarck,
Prince Gortschakoff, and Count Andrassy, at Berlin, in May.
... Then on May 18th the Ambassadors of England, France, and
Italy were invited to Prince Bismarck's house, and the text of
the famous Berlin Memorandum was laid before them. ... While
the three Chancellors were forging their diplomatic
thunderbolt, a catastrophe of such a terrible nature had
occurred in the interior of Turkey that all talk of armistices
and mixed commissions had become stale and unprofitable. The
Berlin Memorandum was not even presented to the Porte; for a
rumour, though carefully suppressed by Turkish officials, was
beginning to leak out that there had been an insurrection of
the Christian population of Bulgaria, and that the most
horrible atrocities had been committed by the Turkish
irregular troops in its suppression. It was communicated to
Lord Derby by Sir Henry Elliot on the 4th of May. ... On June
16th a letter was received from him at the Foreign Office,
saying, 'The Bulgarian insurrection appears to be
unquestionably put down, although I regret to say, with
cruelty, and, in some places, with brutality.' ... A week
afterwards the Constantinople correspondent of the Daily News
... gave the estimates of Bulgarians slain as varying from
18,000 to 30,000, and the number of villages destroyed at
about a hundred. ... That there was much truth in the
statements of the newspaper correspondents was ...
demonstrated beyond possibility of denial as soon as Sir Henry
Elliot's despatches were made public. ... 'I am satisfied,'
wrote Sir Henry Elliot, 'that, while great atrocities have
been committed, both by Turks upon Christians and Christians
upon Turks, the former have been by far the greatest, although
the Christians were undoubtedly the first to commence them.'
... Meanwhile, the Daily News had resolved on sending out a
special commissioner to make an investigation independent of
official reports. Mr. J. A. MacGahan, an American, who had
been one of that journal's correspondents during the
Franco-German War, was the person selected. He started in
company with Mr. Eugene Schuyler, the great authority on the
Central Asian question, who, in the capacity of
Consul-General, was about to prepare a similar statement for
the Honorable Horace Maynard, the United States Minister at
Constantinople. They arrived at Philippopolis on the 25th of
July; where Mr. Walter Baring, one of the Secretaries of the
British Legation at Constantinople, was already engaged in
collecting information. The first of Mr. MacGahan's letters
was dated July the 28th, and its publication in this country
revived in a moment the half-extinct excitement of the
populace. ... Perhaps the passage which was most frequently in
men's mouths at the time was that in which he described the
appearance of the mountain village of Batak. 'We entered the
town. On every side were skulls and skeletons charred among
the ruins, or lying entire where they fell in their clothing.
There were skeletons of girls and women, with long brown hair
hanging to their skulls. We approached the church. There these
remains were more frequent, until the ground was literally
covered by skeletons, skulls, and putrefying bodies in
clothing. Between the church and school there were heaps. The
stench was fearful. We entered the churchyard. The sight was
more dreadful. The whole churchyard, for three feet deep, was
festering with dead bodies, partly covered; hands, legs, arms,
and heads projecting in ghastly confusion. I saw many little
hands, heads, and feet of children three years of age, and
girls with heads covered with beautiful hair. The church was
still worse. The floor was covered with rotting bodies quite
uncovered. I never imagined anything so fearful. ... The town
had 9,000 inhabitants. There now remain 1,200. Many who had
escaped had returned recently, weeping and moaning over their
ruined homes. Their sorrowful wailing could be heard half a
mile off. Some were digging out the skeletons of loved ones. A
woman was sitting moaning over three small skulls, with hair
clinging to them, which she had in her lap. The man who did
this, Achmed Agra, has been promoted, and is still governor of
the district.' An exceeding bitter cry of horror and disgust
arose throughout the country on the receipt of this terrible
news. Mr. Anderson at once asked for information on the
subject, and Mr. Bourke was entrusted with the difficult duty
of replying. He could only read a letter from Mr. Baring, in
which he said that, as far as he had been able to discover,
the proportion of the numbers of the slain was about 12,000
Bulgarians to 500 Turks, and that 60 villages had been wholly
or partially burnt. ... Mr. Schuyler's opinions were, as might
be expected from the circumstance that his investigations had
been shorter than those of Mr. Baring, and that he was
ignorant of the Turkish language--which is that chiefly spoken
in Bulgaria--and was therefore at the mercy of his
interpreter, the more highly coloured. He totally rejected
Lord Beaconsfield's idea that there had been a civil war, and
that cruelties had been committed on both sides. On the
contrary he asserted that 'the insurgent villages made little
or no resistance.
{254}
In many cases they surrendered their arms on the first demand.
... No Turkish women or children were killed in cold blood. No
Mussulman women were, violated. No Mussulmans were tortured.
No purely Turkish village was attacked or burnt. No Mosque was
desecrated or destroyed. The Bashi-Bazouks, on the other hand,
had burnt about 65 villages, and killed at least 15,000
Bulgarians.' The terrible story of the destruction of Batak
was told in language of precisely similar import to that of
Mr. MacGahan, whose narrative the American Consul had never
seen, though there was a slight difference in the numbers of
the massacred. 'Of the 8,000 inhabitants,' he said, 'not 2,000
are known to survive'. ... Abdul Aziz had let loose the hordes
of Bashi-Bazouks on defenceless Bulgaria, but Murad seemed
utterly unable to rectify the fatal error; the province fell
into a state of complete anarchy. ... As Lord Derby remarked,
it was impossible to effect much with an imbecile monarch and
bankrupt treasury. One thing, at any rate, the Turks were
strong enough to do, and that was to defeat the Servians, who
declared war on Turkey on July 1st. ... Up to the last Prince
Milan declared that his intentions were purely pacific; but
the increasing troubles of the Porte enabled him, with some
small chance of success, to avail himself of the anti-Turkish
spirit of his people and to declare war. His example was
followed by Prince Nikita of Montenegro, who set out with his
brave little army from Cettigne on July 2nd. At first if
appeared as if the principalities would have the better of the
struggle. The Turkish generals showed their usual dilatoriness
in attacking Servia, and Tchernaieff, who was a man of
considerable military talent, gave them the good-bye, and cut
them off from their base of operations. This success was,
however, transitory; Abdul Kerim, the Turkish
Commander-in·Chief, drove back the enemy by mere force of
numbers, and by the end of the month he was over the border.
Meanwhile, the hardy Montenegrins had been considerably more
fortunate; but their victories over Mukhtar Pasha were not
sufficiently important to effect a diversion. The Servians
fell back from all their positions of defence, and on
September 1st received a most disastrous beating before the
walls of Alexinatz. ... On September 16th the Porte agreed to
a suspension of hostilities until the 25th. It must be
acknowledged that the Servians used this period of grace
exceedingly ill. Prince Milan was proclaimed by General
Tchernaieff, in his absence and against his will, King of
Servia and Bosnia; and though, on the remonstrance of the
Powers, he readily consented to waive the obnoxious title, the
evil effect of the declaration remained. Lord Derby's
proposals for peace, which were made on September 21st, were
nevertheless accepted by the Sultan when he saw that unanimity
prevailed among the Powers, and he offered in addition to
prolong the formal suspension of hostilities to October 2nd.
This offer the Servians, relying on the Russian volunteers who
were flocking to join Tchernaieff, rejected with some
contempt, and hostilities were resumed. They paid dearly for
their temerity. Tchernaieff's position before Alexinatz was
forced by the Turks after three days' severe fighting;
position after position yielded to them; on October 31st
Alexinatz was taken, and Deligrad was occupied on November
1st. Nothing remained between the outpost of the crescent and
Belgrade, and it seemed as if the new Kingdom of Servia must
perish in the throes of its birth." Russia now invoked the
intervention of the powers, and brought about a conference at
Constantinople, which effected nothing, the Porte rejecting
all the proposals submitted. On the 24th of April, 1877,
Russia declared war and entered upon a conflict with the
Turks, which had for its result the readjustment of affairs in
South-eastern Europe by the Congress and Treaty of Berlin.
Cassell's Illustrated History of England,
volume 10, chapter 22-23.
See TURKS: A. D. 1877-1878, and 1878.
BALKAN: A. D. 1878.
Treaty of Berlin.
Transfer of Bosnia to Austria.
Independence of Servia, Montenegro and Roumania.
Division and semi-independence of Bulgaria.
"(1) Bosnia, including Herzegovina, was assigned to Austria
for permanent occupation. Thus Turkey lost a great province of
nearly 1,250,000 inhabitants. Of these about 500,000 were
Christians of the Greek Church, 450,000 were Mohammedans,
mainly in the towns, who offered a stout resistance to the
Austrian troops, and 200,000 Roman Catholics. By the
occupation of the Novi-Bazar district Austria wedged in her
forces between Montenegro and Servia, and was also able to
keep watch over the turbulent province of Macedonia. (2)
Montenegro received less than the San Stefano terms had
promised her, but secured the seaports of Antivari and
Dulcigno. It needed a demonstration of the European fleets off
the latter port, and a threat to seize Smyrna, to make the
Turks yield Dulcigno to the Montenegrians (who alone of all
the Christian races of the peninsula had never been conquered
by the Turks). (3) Servia was proclaimed an independent
Principality, and received the district of Old Servia on the
upper valley of the Morava. (4) Roumania also gained her
independence and ceased to pay any tribute to the Porte, but
had to give up to her Russian benefactors the slice acquired
from Russia in 1856 between the Pruth and the northern mouth
of the Danube. In return for this sacrifice she gained the
large but marshy Dobrudscha district from Bulgaria, and so
acquired the port of Kustendje on the Black Sea. (5) Bulgaria,
which, according to the San Stefano terms, would have been an
independent State as large as Roumania, was by the Berlin
Treaty subjected to the suzerainty of the sultan, divided into
two parts, and confined within much narrower limits. Besides
the Dobrudscha, it lost the northern or Bulgarian part of
Macedonia, and the Bulgarians who dwelt between the Balkans
and Adrianople were separated from their kinsfolk on the north
of the Balkans, in a province called Eastern Roumelia, with
Philippopolis as capital. The latter province was to remain
Turkish, under a Christian governor nominated by the Porte
with the consent of the Powers. Turkey was allowed to occupy
the passes of the Balkans in time of war."
J. H. Rose, A Century of Continental History, chapter 42.
See TURKS: A. D. 1878.
ALSO IN: E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty,
volume 4, nos. 518, 524-532.
{255}
BALKAN: A. D. 1878-1891.
Proposed Balkan Confederation and its aims.
"During the reaction against Russia which followed the great
war of 1878, negotiations were actually set on foot with a
view to forming a combination of the Balkan States for the
purpose of resisting Russian aggression. ... Prince Alexander
always favoured the idea of a Balkan Confederation which was
to include Turkey; and even listened to proposals on the part
of Greece, defining the Bulgarian and Greek spheres of
influence in Macedonia. But the revolt of Eastern Roumelia,
followed by the Servo-Bulgarian war and the chastisement of
Greece by the Powers, provoked so much bitterness of feeling
among the rival races that for many years nothing more was
heard of a Balkan Confederation. The idea has lately been
revived under different auspices and with somewhat different
aims. During the past six years the Triple Alliance, with
England, has, despite the indifference of Prince Bismarck,
protected the Balkan States in general, and Bulgaria in
particular from the armed intervention of Russia. It has also
acted the part of policeman in preserving the peace throughout
the Peninsula, and in deterring the young nations from any
dangerous indulgence in their angry passions. The most
remarkable feature in the history of this period has been the
extraordinary progress made by Bulgaria. Since the revolt of
Eastern Roumelia, Bulgaria has been treated by Dame Europa as
a naughty child. But the Bulgarians have been shrewd enough to
see that the Central Powers and England have an interest in
their national independence and consolidation; they have
recognised the truth that fortune favours those who help
themselves, and they have boldly taken their own course, while
carefully avoiding any breach of the proprieties such as might
again bring them under the censure of the European Areopagus.
They ventured, indeed, to elect a Prince of their own choosing
without the sanction of that august conclave; the wiseacres
shook their heads, and prophesied that Prince Ferdinand's days
in Bulgaria might, perhaps, be as many as Prince Alexander's
years. Yet Prince Ferdinand remains on the throne, and is now
engaged in celebrating the fourth anniversary of his
accession; the internal development of the country proceeds
apace, and the progress of the Bulgarian sentiment outside the
country--in other words, the Macedonian propaganda—is not a
whit behind. The Bulgarians have made their greatest strides
in Macedonia since the fall of Prince Bismarck, who was always
ready to humour Russia at the expense of Bulgaria. … What
happened after the great war of 1878? A portion of the
Bulgarian race was given a nominal freedom which was never
expected to be a reality; Russia pounced on Bessarabia,
England on Cyprus, Austria on Bosnia and Herzegovina. France
got something elsewhere, but that is another matter. The
Bulgarians have never forgiven Lord Beaconsfield for the
division of their race, and I have seen some bitter poems upon
the great Israelite in the Bulgarian tongue which many
Englishmen would not care to hear translated. The Greeks have
hated us since our occupation of Cyprus, and firmly believe
that we mean to take Crete as well. The Servians have not
forgotten how Russia, after instigating them to two disastrous
wars, dealt with their claims at San Stefano; they cannot
forgive Austria for her occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and every Servian peasant, as he pays his heavy taxes, or
reluctantly gives a big price for some worthless imported
article, feels the galling yoke of her fiscal and commercial
tyranny. Need it be said how outraged Bulgaria scowls at
Russia, or how Roumania, who won Plevna for her heartless
ally, weeps for her Bessarabian children, and will not be
comforted? It is evident that the Balkan peoples have no
reason to expect much benefit from the next great war, from
the European Conference which will follow it, or from the
sympathy of the Christian Powers. ... What, then, do the
authors of the proposed Confederation suggest as its ultimate
aim and object? The Balkan States are to act independently of
the foreign Powers, and in concert with one another. The Sick
Man's inheritance lies before them, and they are to take it
when an opportunity presents itself. They must not wait for
the great Armageddon, for then all may be lost. If the Central
Powers come victorious out of the conflict, Austria, it is
believed, will go to Salonika; if Russia conquers, she will
plant her standard at Stamboul, and practically annex the
Peninsula. In either ease the hopes of the young nations will
be destroyed forever. It is, therefore, sought to extricate a
portion at least of the Eastern Question from the tangled web
of European politics, to isolate it, to deal with it as a
matter which solely concerns the Sick Man and his immediate
successors. It is hoped that the Sick Man may be induced by
the determined attitude of his expectant heirs to make over to
them their several portions in his lifetime; should he refuse,
they must act in concert, and provide euthanasia for the
moribund owner of Macedonia, Crete, and Thrace. In other
words, it is believed that the Balkan States, if once they
could come to an understanding as regards their claims to what
is left of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, might conjointly, and
without the aid of any foreign Power, bring such pressure to
bear upon Turkey as to induce her to surrender peaceably her
European possessions, and to content herself henceforth with
the position of an Asiatic Power."
J. D. Bourchier, A Balkan Confederation (Fortnightly
Review, Sept., 1891).
BALKAN: A. D. 1878-1886 (Bulgaria):
Reunion of the two Bulgarias.
Hostility of Russia.
Victorious war with Servia.
Abduction and abdication of Prince Alexander.
"The Berlin Treaty, by cutting Bulgaria into three pieces,
contrary to the desire of her inhabitants, and with utter
disregard of both geographical and ethnical fitness, had
prepared the ground from which a crop of never-ending
agitation was inevitably bound to spring--a crop which the
Treaty of San Stefano would have ended in preventing. On
either side of the Balkans, both in Bulgaria and in Roumelia,
the same desire for union existed. Both parties were agreed as
to this, and only differed as to the means by which the end
should be attained. The Liberals were of opinion that the
course of events ought to be awaited; the unionists, on the
other hand, maintained that they should be challenged. It was
a few individuals belonging to the latter party and acting
with M. Karaveloff, the head of the Bulgarian Cabinet, who
prepared and successfully carried out the revolution of
September 18, 1885. So unanimously was this movement supported
by the whole population, including even the Mussulmans, that
it was accomplished and the union proclaimed without the least
resistance being encountered, and without the shedding of one
drop of blood!
{256}
Prince Alexander was in no way made aware of what was in
preparation; but he knew very well that it would be his duty
to place himself at the head of any national movement, and in
a proclamation dated the 19th of September, and addressed from
Tirnova, the ancient capital, he recommended union and assumed
the title of Prince of North and South Bulgaria. The Porte
protested in a circular, dated the 23rd of September, and
called upon the Powers who had signed the Treaty of Berlin, to
enforce the observance of its stipulations. On the 13th of
October, the Powers collectively declare 'that they condemn
this violation of the Treaty, and are sure that the Sultan
will do all that he can, consistently with his sovereign
rights, before resorting to the force which he has at his
disposal.' From the moment when there was opposition to the
use of force, which even the Porte did not seem in a hurry to
employ, the union of the two Bulgarias necessarily became an
accomplished fact. ... Whilst England and Austria both
accepted the union of the two Bulgarias as being rendered
necessary by the position of affairs, whilst even the Porte
(although protesting) was resigned, the Emperor of Russia
displayed a passionate hostility to it, not at all in accord
with the feelings of the Russian nation. ... In Russia they
had reckoned upon all the liberties guaranteed by the
Constitution of Tirnova becoming so many causes of disorder
and anarchy, instead of which the Bulgarians were growing
accustomed to freedom. Schools were being endowed, the country
was progressing in every way, and thus the Bulgarians were
becoming less and less fitted for transformation into Russian
subjects. Their lot was a preferable one, by far, to that of
the people of Russia--henceforth they would refuse to accept
the Russian yoke! ... If, then, Russia wanted to maintain her
high-handed policy in Bulgaria, she must oppose the union and
hinder the consolidation of Bulgarian nationality by every
means in her power; this she has done without scruple of any
sort or kind, as will be shown by a brief epitome of what has
happened recently. Servia, hoping to extend her territory in
the direction of Tru and Widdin, and, pleading regard for the
Treaty of Berlin and the theory of the balance of power,
attacks Bulgaria. On November 14th [17th to 19th?] 1885,
Prince Alexander defends the Slivnitza positions [in a three
days' battle] with admirable courage and strategic skill. The
Roumelian militia, coming in by forced marches of unheard-of
length, perform prodigies of valour in the field. Within eight
days, i. e., from the 20th to the 28th of November, the
Servian army, far greater in numbers, is driven back into its
own territory; the Dragoman Pass is crossed; Pirot is taken by
assault; and Prince Alexander is marching on Nisch, when his
victorious progress is arrested by the Austrian Minister,
under threats of an armed intervention on the part of that
country! On December 21st, an armistice is concluded,
afterwards made into a treaty of pence, and signed at
Bucharest on March 3rd by M. Miyatovitch on behalf of Servia,
by M. Guechoff on behalf of Bulgaria, and by Madgid Pascha for
the Sultan. Prince Alexander did all he could to bring about a
reconciliation with the Czar and even went so far as to
attribute to Russian instructors all the merit of the
victories he had just won. The Czar would not yield. Then the
Prince turned to the Sultan, and with him succeeded in coming
to a direct understanding. The Prince was to be nominated
Governor-General of Roumelia; a mixed Commission was to meet
and modify the Roumelian statutes; more than this, the Porte
was bound to place troops at his disposal in the event of his
being attacked, ... From that date the Czar swore that he
would cause Prince Alexander's downfall. It was said that
Prince Alexander of Battenberg had changed into a sword the
sceptre which Russia had given him and was going to turn it
against his benefactor. Nothing could be more untrue. Up to
the very last moment, he did everything he could to disarm the
anger of the Czar, but what was wanted from him was this--that
he should make Bulgaria an obedient satellite of Russia, and
rather than consent to do so he left Sofia. The story of the
Prince's dethronement by Russian influence, or, as Lord
Salisbury said, by Russian gold, is well known. A handful of
malcontent officers, a few cadets of the École Militaire, and
some of Zankoff's adherents, banding themselves together,
broke into the palace during the night of the 21st of August,
seized the Prince, and had him carried off, without escort, to
Rahova on the Danube, from thence to Reni in Bessarabia, where
he was handed over to the Russians! The conspirators
endeavoured to form a government, but the whole country rose
against them, in spite of the support openly given them by M.
Bogdanoff the Russian diplomatic agent. On the 3rd of
September, a few days after these occurrences, Prince
Alexander returned to his capital, welcomed home by the
acclamations of the whole people; but in answer to a
respectful, not to say too humble, telegram in which he
offered to replace his Crown in the hands of the Czar, that
potentate replied that he ceased to have any relations with
Bulgaria as long as Prince Alexander remained there. Owing to
advice which came, no doubt, from Berlin, Prince Alexander
decided to abdicate; he did so because of the demands of the
Czar and in the interests of Bulgaria."
E. de Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula, Introduction.
ALSO IN:
A. Von Huhn, The Struggle of the Bulgarians.
J. G. C. Minchin, Growth of Freedom in the Balkan
Peninsula.
A. Koch, Prince Alexander of Battenberg.
BALKAN: A. D. 1879-1889 (Servia).
Quarrels and divorce of King Milan and Queen Natalia.
Abdication of the King.
"In October, 1875. ... Milan, then but twenty-one years old,
married Natalia Kechko, herself but sixteen. The present Queen
was the daughter of a Russian officer and of the Princess
Pulckerie Stourdza. She, as little as her husband, had been
born with a likelihood to sit upon the throne, and a quiet
burgher education had been hers at Odessa. But even here her
great beauty attracted notice, as also her abilities, her
ambition and her wealth. ... At first all went well, to
outward appearance at least, for Milan was deeply enamoured of
his beautiful wife, who soon became the idol of the Servians,
on account of her beauty and her amiability. This affection
was but increased when, a year after her marriage, she
presented her subjects with an heir. But from that hour the
domestic discord began. The Queen had been ill long and
seriously after her boy's birth; Milan had sought distractions
elsewhere. Scenes of jealousy and recrimination grew frequent.
{257}
Further, Servia was then passing through a
difficult political crisis: the Turkish war was in full swing.
Milan, little beloved ever since he began to reign, brought
home no wreaths from this conflict, although his subjects
distinguished themselves by their valour. Then followed in
1882 the raising of the principality into a kingdom--a fact
which left the Servians very indifferent, and in which they
merely beheld the prospect of increased taxes, a prevision
that was realized. As time went on, and troubles increased,
King Milan became somewhat of a despot, who was sustained
solely by the army, itself undermined by factious intrigues.
Meantime the Queen, now grown somewhat callous to her
husband's infidelities, aspired to comfort herself by assuming
a political role, for which she believed herself to have great
aptitude. ... As she could not influence the decisions of the
Prince, the lady entered into opposition to him, and made it
her aim to oppose all his projects. The quarrel spread
throughout the entire Palace, and two inimical factions were
formed, that of the King and that of the Queen. ... Meantime
Milan got deeper and deeper into debt, so that after a time he
had almost mortgaged his territory. ... While the husband and
wife were thus quarrelling and going their own ways, grave
events were maturing in neighbouring Bulgaria. The coup d'état
of Fillippopoli, which annexed Eastern Roumelia to the
principality, enlarged it in such wise that Servia henceforth
had to cut a sorry figure in the Balkans. Milan roused
himself, or pretended to rouse himself, and war was declared
against Bulgaria. ... There followed the crushing defeat of
Slivnitza, in which Prince Alexander of Battenberg carried off
such laurels, and the Servians had to beat a disgraceful and
precipitate retreat. Far from proving himself the hero
Nathalie had dreamed, Milan ... telegraphed to the Queen,
busied with tending the wounded, that he intended to abdicate
forthwith. This cowardly conduct gave the death blow to any
feeling the Queen might have retained for the King. Henceforth
she despised him, and took no pains to hide the fact. ... In
1887 the pair parted without outward scandals, the Queen
taking with her the Crown Prince. ... Florence was the goal of
the Queen's wanderings, and here she spent a quiet winter. ...
The winter ended, Nathalie desired to return to Belgrade.
Milan would not hear of it. ... The Queen went to Wiesbaden in
consequence. While residing there Milan professed to be
suddenly taken with a paternal craving to see his son. ... And
to the shame of the German Government, be it said, they lent
their hand to abducting an only child from his mother. ...
Before ever the excitement about this act could subside in
Europe, Milan ... petitioned the Servian Synod for a divorce,
on the ground of 'irreconcilable mutual antipathy.' Neither by
canonical or civil law was this possible, and the Queen
refused her consent. ... Nor could the divorce have been
obtained but for the servile complaisance of the Servian
Metropolitan Theodore. ... Quick vengeance, however, was in
store for Milan. The international affairs of Servia had grown
more and more disturbed. ... The King, perplexed, afraid,
storm-tossed between divided counsels, highly irritable, and
deeply impressed by Rudolph of Hapsburg's recent suicide,
suddenly announced his intention to abdicate in favour of his
son. ... Without regret his people saw depart from among them
a man who at thirty-five years of age was already decrepit,
and who had not the pluck or ambition to try and overcome a
difficult political crisis. ... After kneeling down before his
son and swearing fidelity to him as a subject (March, 1889),
Milan betook himself off to tour through Europe ... leaving
the little boy and his guardians to extricate themselves. ...
'Now I can see mamma again,' were the first words of the boy
King on hearing of his elevation. ... Three Regents are
appointed to aid the King during his minority."
"Politikos," The Sovereigns, pages 353-363.
----------BALKAN: End----------
BALKH.
Destruction by Jingis Khan (A. D. 1221).
From his conquest of the region beyond the Oxus, Jingis Khan
moved southward with his vast horde of Mongols, in pursuit of
the fugitive Khahrezmian prince, in 1220 or 1221, and invested
the great city of Balkh,--which is thought in the east to be
the oldest city of the world, and which may not impossibly
have been one of the capitals of the primitive Aryan race.
"Some idea of its extent and riches [at that time] may
possibly be formed from the statement that it contained 1,200
large mosques, without including chapels, and 200 public baths
for the use of foreign merchants and travellers--though it has
been suggested that the more correct reading would be 200
mosques and 1,200 baths. Anxious to avert the horrors of storm
and pillage, the citizens at once offered to capitulate; but
Chinghiz, distrusting the sincerity of their submission so
long as Sultan Mohammed Shah was yet alive, preferred to carry
the place by force of arms--an achievement of no great
difficulty. A horrible butchery ensued, and the 'Tabernacle of
Islam'--as the pious town was called--was razed to the ground.
In the words of the Persian poet, quoted by Major Price, 'The
noble city he laid as smooth as the palm of his hand--its
spacious and lofty structures he levelled in the dust.'"
J. Hutton, Central Asia, chapter 4.
ALSO IN: H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols,
volume 1, chapter 3.
BALL'S BLUFF, The Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER: VIRGINIA).
BALMACEDA'S DICTATORSHIP.
See CHILE: A. D. 1885-1891.
BALNEÆ.
SEE THERMÆ.
BALTHI, OR BALTHINGS.
"The rulers of the Visigoths, though they, like the Amal kings
of the Ostrogoths, had a great house, the Balthi, sprung from
the seed of gods, did not at this time [when driven across the
Danube by the Huns] bear the title of King, but contented
themselves with some humbler designation, which the Latin
historians translated into Judex (Judge)."
T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders,
introduction, chapter 3.
See BAUX, LORDS OF.
BALTIMORE, Lord, and the Colonization of Maryland.
See MARYLAND: A. D. 1632, to 1688-1757.
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1729-1730.
Founding of the city.
See MARYLAND: A. D. 1729-1730.
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1812.
Rioting of the War Party.
The mob and the Federalists.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-OCTOBER).
{258}
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1814.
British attempt against the city.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814
(AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1860.
The Douglas Democratic and Constitutional Union Conventions.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1860 (APRIL-NOVEMBER).
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1861 (April).
The city controlled by the Secessionists.
The Attack on the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL).
BALTIMORE: A. D. 1861 (May).
Disloyalty put down.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL-MAY: MARYLAND).
----------BALTIMORE: End----------
BALUCHISTAN.
See Supplement in volume 5.
BAN.--BANAT.
"Ban is Duke (Dux), and Banat is Duchy. The territory
[Hungarian] east of the Carpathians is the Banat of Severin,
and that of the west the Banat of Temesvar. ... The Banat is
the cornucopia, not only of Hungary, but of the whole Austrian
Empire."
A. A. Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic,
volume 2, page 28.
Among the Croats, "after the king, the most important officers
of the state were the bans. At first there was but one ban,
who was a kind of lieutenant-general; but later on there were
seven of them, each known by the name of the province he
governed, as the ban of Sirmia, ban of Dalmatia, etc. To this
day the royal lieutenant of Croatia (or 'governor-general,' if
that title be preferred) is called the ban."
L. Leger, History of Austro-Hungary, page 55.
BAN, The Imperial.
See SAXONY: A. D. 1178-1183.
BANBURY, Battle of.
Sometimes called the "Battle of Edgecote"; fought July
26,1469, and with success, by a body of Lancastrian
insurgents, in the English "Wars of the Roses," against the
forces of the Yorkist King, Edward IV. The latter were routed
and most of their leaders' taken and beheaded.
Mrs. Hookham, Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou,
volume 2, chapter 5.
BANDA ORIENTAL, The.
Signifying the "Eastern Border"; a name applied originally by
the Spaniards to the country on the eastern side of Rio de La
Plata which afterwards took the name of Uruguay.
See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC: A. D. 1580-1777.
BANGALORE, Capture of (1790).
See INDIA: A. D. 1785-1793.
BANK OF ST. GEORGE.
See GENOA: A. D. 1407-1448.
BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1833-1836.
BANKS, General Nathaniel P.
Command in the Shenandoah.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MAY-JUNE: VIRGINIA).
Siege and Capture of Port Hudson.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (MAY-JULY:
ON THE MISSISSIPPI).
Red River Expedition.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MARCH-MAY: LOUISIANA).
BANKS OF AMSTERDAM, ENGLAND AND FRANCE.
The Bank of Amsterdam was founded in 1609, and replaced, after
1814. by the Netherland Bank. The Bank of England was founded
in 1694 by William Patterson, a Scotchman; and that of France
by John Law, in 1716. The latter collapsed with the
Mississippi scheme and was revived in 1776.
J. J. Lalor, editor. Cyclopædia of Political Science.
ALSO IN: J. W. Gilbart, History and Principles of
Banking, section 1 and 3.
BANKS, Wildcat.
See WILDCAT BANKS.
BANNACKS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SHOSHONEAN FAMILY.
BANNERETS, Knights.
See KNIGHTS BANNERETS.
BANNOCKBURN, Battle of (A. D. 1314).
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1314; and 1314-1328.
BANT, The.
See GAU.
BANTU TRIBES, The.
See SOUTH AFRICA: THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS;
and AFRICA: THE INHABITING RACES.
BAPTISTS.
See article in the Supplement, volume 5.
BAR, A. D. 1659-1735.
The Duchy ceded to France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1659-1661, and 1733-1735.
BAR: The Confederation of.
See POLAND: A. D. 1763-1773.
BARATHRUM, The.
"The barathrum, or 'pit of punishment' at Athens, was a deep
hole like a well into which criminals were precipitated. Iron
hooks were inserted in the sides; which tore the body in
pieces as it fell. It corresponded to the Ceadas of the
Lacedæmonians."
G. Rawlinson, History of Herodotus,
book 7, section 133, note.
BARBADOES: A. D. 1649-1660.
Royalist attitude towards the English Commonwealth.
See NAVIGATION LAWS: A. D. 1651.
BARBADOES: A. D. 1656.
Cromwell's colony of disorderly women.
See JAMAICA: A. D. 1655.
BARBARIANS.
See ARYANS.
BARBAROSSAS, Piracies and dominion of.
See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1516-1535.
----------BARBAROSSAS: End----------
BARBARY STATES.
BARBARY STATES: A. D. 647-709.
Mahometan conquest of North Africa.
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 647-709.
BARBARY STATES: A. D. 908-1171.
The Fatimite Caliphs.
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST AND EMPIRE: A. D. 908-1171.
BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1415.
Siege and capture of Ceuta by the Portuguese.
See PORTUGAL: A. D.1415-1460.
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BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1505-1510.
Spanish conquests on the coast.
Oran.
Bugia.
Algiers.
Tripoli.
In 1505, a Spanish expedition planned and urged by Cardinal
Ximenes, captured Mazarquiver, an "important port, and
formidable nest of pirates, on the Barbary coast, nearly
opposite Carthagena." In 1509, the same energetic prelate led
personally an expedition of 4,000 horse and 10,000 foot, with
a fleet of 10 galleys and 80 smaller vessels, for the conquest
of Oran. "This place, situated about a league from the former,
was one of the most considerable of the Moslem possessions in
the Mediterranean, being a principal mart for the trade of the
Levant," and maintained a swarm of cruisers, which swept the
Mediterranean "and made fearful depredations on its populous
borders." Oran was taken by storm. "No mercy was shown; no
respect for age or sex; and the soldiery abandoned themselves
to all the brutal license and ferocity which seem to stain
religious wars above every other. ... No less than 4,000 Moors
were said to have fallen in the battle, and from 5,000 to
8,000 were made prisoners. The loss of the Christians was
inconsiderable." Recalled to Spain by King Ferdinand, Ximenes
left the army in Africa under the command of Count Pedro
Navarro. Navarro's "first enterprise was against Bugia (January
13th, 1510), whose king, at the head of a powerful army, he
routed in two pitched battles, and got possession of his
flourishing capital (January 31st). Algiers, Teunis, Tremecin,
and other cities on the Barbary coast, submitted one after
another to the Spanish arms. The inhabitants were received as
vassals of the Catholic king. ... They guaranteed, moreover,
the liberation of all Christian captives in their dominions;
for which the Algerines, however, took care to indemnify
themselves, by extorting the full ransom from their Jewish
residents. ...On the 26th of July, 1510, the ancient city of
Tripoli, after a most bloody and desperate defence,
surrendered to the arms of the victorious general, whose name
had now become terrible along the whole northern borders of
Africa. In the following month, however (Aug. 28th), he met
with a serious discomfiture in the island of Gelves, where
4,000 of his men were slain or made prisoners. This check in
the brilliant career of Count Navarro put a final stop to the
progress of the Castilian arms in Africa under Ferdinand. The
results obtained, however, were of great importance. ... Most
of the new conquests escaped from the Spanish crown in later
times, through the imbecility or indolence of Ferdinand's
successors. The conquests of Ximenes, however, were placed in
so strong a posture of defence as to resist every attempt for
their recovery by the enemy, and to remain permanently
incorporated with the Spanish empire."
W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella, chapter 21 (volume 3).
BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1516-1535.
Piratical dominion of the Barbarossas in Algiers.
Establishment of Turkish sovereignty.
Seizure of Tunis by the Corsairs and its conquest by Charles V.
"About the beginning of the 16th century, a sudden revolution
happened, which, by rendering the states of Barbary formidable
to the Europeans, hath made their history worthy of more
attention. This revolution was brought about by persons born
in a rank of life which entitled them to act no such
illustrious part. Hornc and Hayradin, the sons of a potter in
the isle of Lisbos, prompted by a restless and enterprising
spirit, forsook their father's trade, ran to sea, and joined a
crew of pirates. They soon distinguished themselves by their
valor and activity, and, becoming masters of a small
brigantine, carried on their infamous trade with such conduct
and success that they assembled a fleet of 12 galleys, besides
many vessels of smaller force. Of this fleet Hornc, the elder
brother, called Barbarossa from the red color of his beard,
was admiral, and Hayradin second in command, but with almost
equal authority. They called themselves the friends of the
sea, and the enemies of all who sail upon it; and their names
soon became terrible from the Straits of the Dardanelles to
those of Gibraltar. ... They often carried the prizes which
they took on the coasts of Spain and Italy into the ports of
Barbary, and, enriching the inhabitants by the sale of their
booty, and the thoughtless prodigality of their crews, were
welcome guests in every place at which they touched. The
convenient situation of these harbours, lying so near the
greatest commercial states at that time in Christendom, made
the brothers wish for an establishment in that country. An
opportunity of accomplishing this quickly presented itself
[1516], which they did not suffer to pass unimproved." Invited
by Entemi, king of Algiers, to assist him in taking a Spanish
fort which had been built in his neighbourhood, Barbarossa was
able to murder his too confiding employer, master the Algerine
kingdom and usurp its crown. "Not satisfied with the throne
which he had acquired, he attacked the neighbouring king of
Tremecen, and, having vanquished him in battle, added his
dominions to those of Algiers. At the same time, he continued
to infest the coasts of Spain and Italy with fleets which
resembled the armaments of a great monarch, rather than the
light squadrons of a corsair. Their frequent cruel
devastations obliged Charles [the Fifth--the great Emperor and
King of Spain: 1519-1555], about the beginning of his reign,
to furnish the Marquis de Comares, governor of Oran, with
troops sufficient to attack him." Barbarossa was defeated in
the ensuing war, driven from Tremecen, and slain [1518]. "His
brother Hayradin, known likewise by the name of Barbarossa,
assumed the sceptre of Algiers with the same ambition and
abilities, but with better fortune. His reign being
undisturbed by the arms of the Spaniards, which had full
occupation in the wars among the European powers, he regulated
with admirable prudence the interior police of his kingdom,
carried on his naval operations with great vigour, and
extended his conquests on the continent of Africa. But
perceiving that the Moors and Arabs submitted to his
government with reluctance, and being afraid that his
continual depredations would one day draw upon him the arms of
the Christians, he put his dominions under the protection of
the Grand Seignior [1519], and received from him [with the
title of Bey, or Beylerbey] a body of Turkish soldiers
sufficient for his domestic as well as foreign enemies. At
last, the fame of his exploits daily increasing, Solyman
offered him the command of the Turkish fleet. ... Barbarossa
repaired to Constantinople, and ... gained the entire
confidence both of the sultan and his vizier. To them he
communicated a scheme which he had formed of making himself
master of Tunis, the most flourishing kingdom at that time on
the coast of Africa; and this being approved of by them, he
obtained whatever he demanded for carrying it into execution.
His hopes of success in this undertaking were founded on the
intestine divisions in the kingdom of Tunis." The last king of
that country, having 34 sons by different wives, had
established one of the younger sons on the throne as his
successor. This young king attempted to put all of his
brothers to death; but Alraschid, who was one of the eldest,
escaped and fled to Algiers. Barbarossa now proposed to the
Turkish sultan to attack Tunis on the pretence of vindicating
the rights of Alraschid. His proposal was adopted and carried
out; but even before the Turkish expedition sailed.
{260}
Alraschid himself disappeared--a prisoner, shut up in the
Seraglio--and was never heard of again. The use of his name,
however, enabled Barbarossa to enter Tunis in triumph, and the
betrayed inhabitants discovered too late that he came as a
viceroy, to make them the subjects of the sultan. "Being now
possessed of such extensive territories, he carried on his
depredations against the Christian states to a greater extent
and with more destructive violence than ever. Daily complaints
of the outrages committed by his cruisers were brought to the
emperor by his subjects, both in Spain and Italy. All
Christendom seemed to expect from him, as its greatest and
most fortunate prince, that he would put an end to this new
and odious species of oppression. At the same time
Muley-Hascen, the exiled king of Tunis, ... applied to Charles
as the only person who could assert his rights in opposition
to such a formidable usurper." The Emperor, accordingly, in
1535, prepared a great expedition against Tunis, drawing men
and ships from every part of his wide dominions--from Spain,
Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. "On the 16th of July the
fleet, consisting of near 500 vessels, having on board above
30,000 regular troops, set sail from Cagliari, and, after a
prosperous navigation, landed within sight of Tunis." The fort
of Goletta, commanding the bay, was invested and taken; the
corsair's fleet surrendered, and Barbarossa, advancing boldly
from Tunis to attack the invaders, was overwhelmingly beaten,
and fled, abandoning his capital. Charles's soldiers rushed
into the unfortunate town, escaping all restraint, and making
it a scene of indescribable horrors. "Above 30,000 of the
innocent inhabitants perished on that unhappy day, and 10,000
were carried away as slaves. Muley-Hascen took possession of a
throne surrounded with carnage, abhorred by his subjects, on
whom he had brought such calamities." Before quitting the
country, Charles concluded a treaty with Muley-Hascen, under
which the latter acknowledged that he held his kingdom in fee
of the crown of Spain, doing homage to the Emperor as his
liege, and maintaining a Spanish garrison in the Goletta. He
also released, without ransom, all the Christian slaves in his
dominions, 20,000 in number, and promised to detain in
servitude no subject of the Emperor thereafter. He opened his
kingdom to the Christian religion, and to free trade, and
pledged himself to exclude Turkish corsairs from his ports.
W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V.,
book 5 (volume 2).
BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1541.
The disastrous expedition of Charles V. against Algiers.
Encouraged, and deceived, by his easy success at Tunis, the
emperor, Charles V., determined, in 1541, to undertake the
reduction of Algiers, and to wholly exterminate the
freebooters of the north African coast. Before his
preparations were completed, "the season unfortunately was far
advanced, on which account the Pope entreated, and Doria
conjured him not to expose his whole armament to a destruction
almost unavoidable on a wild shore during the violence of the
autumnal gales. Adhering, however, to his plan with determined
obstinacy, he embarked at Porto Venere. ... The force ...
which he had collected ... consisted of 20,000 foot and 2,000
horse, mostly veterans, together with 3,000 volunteers. ...
Besides these there had joined his standard 1,000 soldiers
sent by the Order of St. John, and led by 100 of its most
valiant knights. Landing near Algiers without opposition,
Charles immediately advanced towards the town. To oppose the
invaders, Hassan had only 800 Turks, and 5,000 Moors, partly