had inspired his soldiers with the hope of rewards in this world and the
next. His camp re-echoed with the shouts of "God is God; there is but
one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God"; and the sea and land, from
Galata to the Seven Towers, were illuminated with the blaze of the
Moslem fires.
Far different was the state of the Christians. On that last night of the
Roman Empire, Constantine Palæologus, in his palace, addressed the
noblest of the Greeks and the bravest of the allies on the duties and
dangers that lay before them. It was the funeral oration of the Roman
Empire. That same night the emperor and some faithful companions entered
the Dome of St. Sofia, which, within a few hours, was to be converted
into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the
sacrament of the Holy Communion. He reposed some moments in the palace,
which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all
whom he might have injured, and mounted on horseback to visit the guards
and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the last
Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine
Cæsars.
At daybreak on May 29 the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land. For
two hours the Greeks maintained the defence with advantage, and the
voice of the emperor was heard encouraging the soldiers to achieve by a
last effort the deliverance of their country. The new and fresh forces
of the Turks supplied the places of their wearied associates. From all
sides the attack was pressed.
The number of the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps one hundred, times
superior to that of the Christians, the double walls were reduced by the
cannons to a heap of ruins, and at last one point was found which the
besiegers could penetrate. Hasan, the Janizary, of gigantic stature and
strength, ascended the outward fortification. The walls and towers were
instantly covered with a swarm of Turks, and the Greeks, now driven from
the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes.
Amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of
a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. His mournful
exclamation was heard, "Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my
head?" and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the
infidels. The prudent despair of Constantine cast away the purple.
Amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried
under a mountain of the slain.
After his death, resistance and order were no more. Two thousand Greeks
were put to the sword, and more would have perished had not avarice soon
prevailed over cruelty.
It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that Constantinople,
which had defied the power of Chosroes and the caliphs, was
irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet II. Sixty thousand Greeks
were driven through the streets like cattle and sold as slaves. The nuns
were torn from the monasteries and compelled to enter the harems of
their conquerors. The churches were plundered, and the gold and silver,
the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments of St. Sofia
were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind.
The cathedral itself, despoiled of its images and ornaments, was
converted into a mosque, and Mahomet II. performed the _namaz_ of prayer
and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had
so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. The body of
Constantine was discovered under a heap of slain, by the golden eagles
embroidered on his shoes, and after exposing the bloody trophy, Mahomet
bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. Constantinople,
desolated by bloodshed, was re-peopled and re-adorned by Mahomet. Its
churches were shared between the two religions, and the Greeks were
attracted back to their ancient capital by the assurance of their lives
and the free exercise of their religion.
The grief and terror of Europe when the fall of Constantinople became
known revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades.
Pius II. attempted to lead Christendom against the Turks, but on the
very day on which he embarked his forces drew back, and he was compelled
to abandon the attempt. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks put
an end to all thoughts of a crusade, and the general consternation was
only allayed by the death of Mahomet II. in the fifty-first year of his
age.
His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy; he was possessed of a
strong city and a capacious harbour, and the same reign might have been
decorated with the trophies of the New and the Ancient Rome.
* * * * *
FRANÇOIS GUIZOT
History of Civilisation in Europe
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French historian and
statesman, was born of Huguenot parents at Nimes on October 4,
1787. The liberal opinions of his family did not save his
father from the guillotine in 1794, and the mother fled to
Geneva, where Guizot was educated. He went to Paris in the
later days of the Empire, and engaged himself at once in
literature and politics. His lectures on the History of
Civilisation delivered in 1828, 1829, and 1830, during his
professorship at the University of Paris, revealed him as a
historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad
essential truths of history, co-ordinating them, and
expounding them with vigour and impressiveness. His first
series of lectures was on "The History of Civilisation in
Europe," a masterly abstract of a colossal subject; the second
on "The History of Civilisation in France." From 1830 to 1848
Guizot occupied high offices of State, ultimately becoming
prime minister; in 1848, like his master Louis Philippe, he
had to fly the country. He died on September 12, 1874.
_I.--The Nature of Civilisation_
The subject I propose to consider is the civilisation of Europe--its
origins, its progress, its aims, its character. The fact of civilisation
belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a
vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, I admit, to explain and
describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. It
is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others
contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people,
and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the
forces of its existence, are joined in unity.
What, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality
that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? It seems to me
that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is
the fact of progress, of development. But what is this progress? What is
this development? Here is the greatest difficulty of all.
The etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer.
It tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the
development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to
men. But is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of
the word? France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was
acknowledged to be the most civilised country in Europe; yet in respect
of purely civil progress France was then greatly inferior to some other
European countries, Holland and England, for example. Another
development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life,
of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas.
These two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of
civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the
development of individual activity--are intimately related to each
other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of
men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great
moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the
great social advances have profited the individual mind.
So much for civilisation in general. It is now necessary to point out
the essential difference between modern European and other
civilisations. The characteristic of other civilisations has been unity;
they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. In Egypt
and India, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the
Greek and Phoenician republics, the democratic principle. The
civilisation of modern Europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused,
stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic,
monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are
infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. All the various
forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a
certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise.
These diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them
extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise
with the rest. The outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is
liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the European over
the other civilisations. European civilisation, if I may say so, has
entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of God.
_II.--Feudalism_
It would be an important confirmation of my assertion as to the diverse
character of our civilisation if we should find in its very cradle the
causes and the elements of that diversity. And indeed, at the fall of
the Roman empire, we do so find it. Three forms of society, each
entirely different from the other, are visible at this time of chaos.
The municipalities survived, the last remnant of the Imperial system.
The Christian Church survived. And in the third place there were the
Barbarians, who brought with them a military organisation, and a hardy
individual independence, that were wholly new to the peoples who had
dwelt under the shelter of the empire. The Barbarian epoch was the chaos
of all the elements, the infancy of all the systems, a universal hubbub
in which even conflict itself had no definite or permanent effects.
Europe laboured to escape from this confusion; at some times, and in
some places, it was temporarily checked--in particular by the great
Charlemagne in his revival of the imperial power; but the confusion did
not cease until its causes no longer acted. These causes were two--one
material, one moral. The material cause was the irruption of fresh
Barbarian hordes. The moral cause was the lack of any ideas in common
among men as to the structure of society. The old imperial fabric had
disappeared; Charlemagne's restoration of it depended wholly on his own
personality, and did not survive him; men had no ideas of any new
structure--their intellectual horizon was limited to their own affairs.
By the beginning of the tenth century the Barbarian invasions ended, and
as the populations settled down a new system appeared, based partly on
the Barbarians' love of independence, partly on their plans of military
gradation--the system of feudalism.
A sound proof that in the tenth century the feudal system was necessary,
and the only social state possible, lies in the universality of its
establishment. Everywhere society was dismembered; everywhere there was
formed a multitude of small, obscure, isolated societies, consisting of
the chief, his family, his retainers, and the wretched serfs over whom
he ruled without restraint, and who had no appeal against his whim. The
power he exercised was the power of individual over individual, the
domination of personal will and caprice; and this is perhaps the only
kind of tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, is never willing to
endure. Hence the prodigious and invincible hatred that the people have
at all times entertained for feudal rule, for the memories of it, for
its very name.
The narrow concentrated life of the feudal lord lent, undoubtedly, a
great preponderance to domesticity in his affairs. The lord had his wife
and children for his permanent society; they continually shared his
interests, his destiny. It was in the bosom of the feudal family that
woman gained her importance in civilisation. The system excited
development of private character and passion that were, all things
considered, noble. Chivalry was the daughter of feudalism.
But from the social point of view feudalism failed to provide either
legal order or political security. It contained elaborate obligations
between the higher and the lower orders of the feudal hierarchy, duties
of protection on the one side and of service on the other. But these
obligations could never be established as institutions. There was no
superior force to which all had to submit; there was public opinion to
make itself respected. Hence the feudal system was without political
guarantee to sustain it. Might alone was right. Feudalism was as much
opposed to the establishment of general order as to the extension of
general liberty. It was indispensable for the reconstruction of European
society, but politically it was in itself a radically bad system.
_III.--The Church_
Meanwhile the Church, adhering to its own principles, had steadily
advanced along the route that it had marked out for itself in the early
days of its organisation. It was during the feudal epoch the only power
that made for civilised development. All education was ecclesiastical;
all the arts were in the service of the Church. It had, during the Dark
Ages, won the Barbarians to its fold by the gorgeous solemnity of its
ritual; and, to protect itself against secular interference, it had
declared the spiritual power to be independent of the temporal--the
first great assertion, in the history of European civilisation, of the
liberty of thought.
In one set of respects the Church during the feudal epoch satisfied the
conditions of good government; in another, it did not. Its power was
uniformly distributed, it drew its recruits from all classes, and
entrusted the rule to the most capable. It was in close touch with every
grade of mankind; every colony of serfs, even, had its priest. It was
the most popular and most accessible society of the time, the most open
to all talents and all noble ambitions. But, on the other hand, it
failed in that all-important requisite of good government, respect for
liberty. It denied the rights of individual reason in spiritual matters,
and it claimed the right to compel belief--a claim that placed it in
some dependence upon the temporal powers, since as a purely spiritual
body, governing by influence and not by force, it could not persecute
without the aid of the secular arm.
To sum up, the Church exerted an immense and on the whole a beneficent
influence on ideas, sentiments, and conduct; but from the political
point of view the Church was nearly always the interpreter and defender
of the theocratic system and the Roman Imperial system--that is, of
religious and civil despotism.
_IV.--The Towns_
Like the Church, the municipalities survived the downfall of the Roman
empire. Their history varied greatly in different parts of Europe, but
none the less some observations can be made that are broadly accurate
with respect to most of them.
From the fifth to the tenth century, the state of the towns was a state
neither of servitude nor of liberty. They suffered all the woes that are
the fate of the weak; they were the prey of continual violence and
depredation; yet, in spite of the fearful disorders of the time, they
preserved a certain importance. When feudalism was established, the
towns lost such independence as they had possessed; they found
themselves under the heel of feudal chiefs. But feudalism did bring
about a sort of peace, a sort of order; and with the slightest gleam of
peace and order a man's hope revives, and on the revival of hope he
takes to work. So it was with the towns. New wants were created;
commerce and industry arose to satisfy them; wealth and population
slowly returned.
But industry and commerce were absolutely without security; the townsmen
were exposed to merciless extortion and plundering at the hands of their
feudal overlords. Nothing irritates a man more than to be harassed in
his toil, thus deprived of its promised fruits. The only way in which
the towns could defend themselves from the violence of their masters was
by using violence themselves. So in the eleventh century we find town
after town rising in revolt against its despot, and winning from him a
charter of liberty.
Although the insurrection was in a sense general, it was in no way
concerted--it was not a rising of the combined citizens against the
combined feudal aristocracy. All the towns found themselves exposed to
much the same evils, and rescued themselves in much the same manner. But
each town acted for itself--did not go to the help of any other town.
Hence these detached communities had no ambitions, no aspirations to
national importance; their outlook was limited to themselves. But at the
same time the emancipation of the towns created a new class, a class of
citizens engaged in the same pursuits, with the same interests and the
same modes of life; a class that would in time unite and assert itself,
and prevent the domination of a single order of society that has been
the curse of Asia.
Although it may be broadly asserted that the emancipation did not alter
the relations of the citizens with the general government, that
assertion must be modified in one respect. A link was established
between the citizens and the king. Sometimes they appealed for his aid
against their lord, sometimes the lord invoked him as judge; in one way
or another a relation was established between the king and the towns,
and the citizens thus came into touch with the centre of the State.
_V.--The Crusades_
From the fifth to the twelfth century, society, as we have seen,
contained kings, a lay aristocracy, a clergy, citizens, peasantry, the
germs, in fact, of all that goes to make a nation and a government;
yet--no government, no nation. We have come across a multitude of
particular forces, of local institutions, but nothing general, nothing
public, nothing properly speaking political.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the contrary, all the
classes and the particular forces have taken a secondary place, are
shadowy and almost effaced; the stage of the world is occupied by two
great figures, government and people.
Here, if I am not mistaken, is the essential distinction between
primitive Europe and modern Europe. Here is the change that was
accomplished in the period extending from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century. Viewed by itself, that period seems a characterless
one of confusion without cause, of movement without direction, of
agitation without result. Yet, in relation to the period that followed,
this period had a tendency and a progress of its own; it slowly
accomplished a vast work. It was the second period of European
civilisation--the period of attempt and experiment, succeeding that of
origins and formation, and preparing the way for that of development
properly so called.
The first great event of this period was the Crusades--a universal
movement of all classes and all countries in moral unity--the truly
heroic event of Europe. Besides the religious impulse that led to the
Crusades, there was another impulse. They gave to me an opportunity of
widening their horizons, of indulging the taste for movement and
adventure. The opportunity, thus freely taken, changed the face of
society. Men's minds were opened, their ideas were extended, by contact
with other races; European society was dragged out of the groove along
which it had been travelling. Religious ideas remained unchanged, but
religious beliefs were no longer the only sphere in which the human
intellect exercised itself. The moral state of Europe was profoundly
modified.
The social state underwent a similar change. Many of the smaller feudal
lords sold their fiefs, or impoverished themselves by crusading, or lost
much of their power during their absence. Property and power came into
fewer hands; society was more centralised, no longer dispersed as it
formerly was. The citizens, on their part, were no longer content with
local industry and trade; they entered upon commerce on a grander scale
with countries oversea. Petty influence yielded place to larger
influences; the small existences grouped themselves round the great. By
the end of the Crusades, the march of society towards centralisation was
in steady progress.
_VI.--The Age of Centralisation_
Already, in the twelfth century, a new idea of kingship had begun, very
faintly, to make its appearance. In most European countries the king,
under the feudal system, had been a head who could not enforce his
headship. But there was, all the while, such a thing as kingship, and
somebody bore the title of king; and society, striving to escape from
feudal violence and to get hold of real order and unity, had recourse to
the king in an experimental way, to see, as one might say, what he could
do. Gradually there developed the idea of the king as the protector of
public order and justice and of the common interest as the paramount
magistrate--the idea that changed Europe society from a series of
classes into a group of centralised States.
But the old order did not perish without efforts to perpetuate itself.
These efforts were of two kinds; a particular class sought predominance,
or it was proposed that the classes should agree to act in concert. To
the first kind belonged the design of the Church to gain mastery over
Europe that culminated with Pope Gregory VII. It failed for three
reasons--because Christianity is a purely moral force and not a temporal
administrative force; because the ambitions of the Church were opposed
by the feudal aristocracy; and because the celibacy of the clergy
prevented the formation of a caste capable of theocratic organisation.
Attempts at democracy were made, for a time with apparent means, by the
Italian civic republics; but they were a prey to internal disorder,
their government tended to become oligarchical, and their incapacity for
uniting among themselves made them the victims of foreign invaders. The
Swiss Republican organisation was more successful, but became
aristocratic and immobile. The House Towns and the towns of Flanders and
the Rhine organised for pure defence; they preserved their privileges,
but remained confined within their walls.
The effort at concerted action by the classes was manifested in the
States General of France, Spain, and Portugal, the Diet in Germany, and
the Parliament in England. All these, except the Parliament, were
ineffective and as it were accidental in their action; all they did was
to preserve in a manner the notion of liberty. The circumstances of
England were exceptional. The Parliament did not govern; but it became a
mode of government adopted in principle, and often indispensable in
practice.
Nothing, however, could arrest the march of centralisation. In France
the war of independence against England brought a sense of national
unity and purpose, and feudalism was finally overthrown, and the central
power made dominant, by the policy of Louis XI. Similar effects were
brought about in Spain by the war against the Moors and the rule of
Ferdinand. In England feudalism was destroyed by the Wars of the Roses,
and was succeeded by the Tudor despotism. In Germany, the House of
Austria began its long ascendancy. Thus in the fifteenth century the new
principles prevailed; the old forms, the old liberties were swept aside
to make way for centralised government under absolute rulers.
At the same time another new fact entered into European history. The
kings began to enter into relations with each other, to form alliances;
diplomacy was created. Since it is in the nature of diplomacy to be
conducted more or less secretly by a few persons, and since the peoples
did not and would not greatly concern themselves in it, this development
was favourable to the strengthening of royalty.
_VII.--The Spiritual Revolt_