"To proceed, therefore, with our supposed student's course of
reading. Keeping the general history which he has been reading
as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a manner, of
the future figure, he must now break forth excursively to the
right and left, collecting richness and fulness of knowledge
from the most various sources. For example, we will suppose
that where his popular historian has mentioned that an alliance
was concluded between two powers, or a treaty of peace agreed
upon, he first of all resolves to consult the actual documents
themselves, as they are to be found in some one of the great
collections of European treaties, or, if they are connected
with English history, in Rymer's _Foedera_. By comparing the
actual treaty with his historian's report of its provisions, we
get, in the first place, a critical process of some value,
inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once tested: but
there are other purposes answered besides. An historian's
report of a treaty is almost always an abridgement of it; minor
articles will probably be omitted, and the rest condensed, and
stripped of all their formal language. But our object now being
to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is possible, the very
life of the period which we are studying, minute particulars
help us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration of titles,
and the specification of towns and districts in their legal
style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their
very particularity. Every common history records the substance
of the treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the succession to
the crown of France was given to Henry V. But the treaty in
itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to
England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively
impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and
the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles VI., in the
ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his
formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded
to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union
hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government.
"I have named treaties as the first class of official
instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs
unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently
referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes,
ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
_That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to
by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a
matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in
every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in
every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed,
have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has
endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the
name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form
an important part of the history of European nations during
many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having
been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to
local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in
a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of
any given period, we find in the first place, from their
particularity, a great additional help towards becoming
familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the
names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these,
when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading
nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from
their very number, to realize the state of things then
existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our
clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so
to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble
the crowded world around us. But in addition to this benefit,
which I am disposed to rate in itself very highly, every thing
of the nature of law has a peculiar interest and value,
_because it is the expression of the deliberate mind of the
supreme government of society_; and as history, as commonly
written, records so much of the passionate and unreflecting
part of human nature, we are bound in fairness to acquaint
ourselves with its calmer and better part also."
The inner life of a nation will be determined by its end, that end being
the security of its highest happiness, or, as it is "conceived and
expressed more piously, a setting forth of God's glory by doing his
appointed work." The history of a nation's internal life is the history
of its institutions and its laws. Here, then, it is that we shall find
the noblest lessons of history; here it is that we must look for the
causes, direct and indirect, which have modified the characters, and
decided the fate of nations. To this imperishable possession it is that
the philosopher appeals for the corroboration of his theory, as it is to
it also that the statesman ought to look for the regulation of his
practice. Religion, property, science, commerce, literature, whatever
can civilize and instruct rude mankind, whatever can embellish life in
its more advanced condition, even till it exhibit the wonders of which
it is now the theatre, may be referred to this subject, and are
comprised under this denomination. The importance of history has been
the theme of many a pen, but we question whether it has ever been more
beautifully described than in the following passage:--
"Enough has been said, I think, to show that history contains
no mean treasures; that, as being the biography of a nation, it
partakes of the richness and variety of those elements which
make up a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the
final cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and
man's perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of
history. Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in
human nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature, or
sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering, whether blessed
or unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
reverses, in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied
powers, its courage and its patience, its genius and its
wisdom, its justice and its love, that also is the measure of
the interest and variety of history. The treasures indeed are
ample, but we may more reasonably fear whether we may have
strength and skill to win them."
In passing we may observe, after Dr Arnold, that the most important
bearing of a particular institution upon the character of a nation is
not always limited to the effect which is most obvious; few who have
watched the proceedings in our courts of justice can doubt that, in
civil cases, the interference of a jury is often an obstacle, and
sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, to the attainment of justice. Dr
Arnold's remarks on this subject are entitled to great attention:--
"The effect," he says, "of any particular arrangement of the
judicial power, is seen directly in the greater or less purity
with which justice is administered; but there is a further
effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
of moral and intellectual culture--the opportunity, namely, of
exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to accustom a
number of persons to the intellectual exercise of attending to,
and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to the moral exercise
of being placed in a high and responsible situation, invested
with one of God's own attributes, that of judgment, and having
to determine with authority between truth and falsehood, right
and wrong, is to furnish them with very high means of moral and
intellectual culture--in other words, it is providing them with
one of the highest kinds of education. And thus a judicial
constitution may secure a pure administration of justice, and
yet fail as an engine of national cultivation, where it is
vested in the hands of a small body of professional men, like
the old French parliament. While, on the other hand, it may
communicate the judicial office very widely, as by our system
of juries, and thus may educate, if I may so speak, a very
large portion of the nation, but yet may not succeed in
obtaining the greatest certainty of just legal decisions. I do
not mean that our jury system does not succeed, but it is
conceivable that it should not. So, in the same way, different
arrangements of the executive and legislative powers should be
always regarded in this twofold aspect--as effecting their
direct objects, good government and good legislation; and as
educating the nation more or less extensively, by affording to
a greater or less number of persons practical lessons in
governing and legislating."
History is an account of the common purpose pursued by some one of the
great families of the human race. It is the biography of a nation; as
the history of a particular sect, or a particular body of men, describes
the particular end which the sect or body was instituted to pursue, so
history, in its more comprehensive sense, describes the paramount object
which the first and sovereign society--the society to which all others
are necessarily subordinate--endeavours to attain. According to Dr
Arnold, a nation's life is twofold, external and internal. Its external
life consists principally in wars. "Here history has been sufficiently
busy. The wars of the human race have been recorded when every thing
else has perished."
Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold justly observes, is calculated to
contract and enfeeble the understanding. It is a pedantic love of
detail, with an indifference to the result, for which alone it can be
considered valuable. It is the mistake, into which men are perpetually
falling, of the means for the end. There are people to whom the
tragedies of Sophocles are less precious than the Scholiast on
Lycophron, and who prize the speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
they may fling light on the dress of an Athenian citizen. The same
tendency discovers itself in other pursuits. Oxen are fattened into
plethoras to encourage agriculture, and men of station dress like
grooms, and bet like blacklegs, to keep up the breed of horses. It is
true that such evils will happen when agriculture is encouraged, and a
valuable breed of horses cherished; but they are the consequences, not
the cause of such a state of things. So the disciples of the old
philosophers drank hemlock to acquire pallid countenances--but they are
as far from obtaining the wisdom of their masters by this adventitious
resemblance, as the antiquarian is from the historian. To write well
about the past, we must have a vigorous and lively perception of the
present. This, says Dr Arnold, is the merit of Mitford. It is certainly
the only one he possesses; a person more totally unqualified for writing
history at all--to say nothing of the history of Greece--it is difficult
for us, aided as our imagination may be by the works of our modern
writers, to conceive. But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards, is indeed
a striking instance of that combination of actual experience with
speculative knowledge which all should aim at, but which it seldom
happens that one man in a generation is fortunate enough to obtain.
From the sixteenth century, the writers of history begin to assume a
different character from that of their predecessors. During the middle
ages, the elements of society were fewer and less diversified. Before
that time the people were nothing. Popes, emperors, kings, nobles,
bishops, knights, are the only materials about which the writer of
history cared to know or enquire. Perhaps some exception to this rule
might be found in the historians of the free towns of Italy; but they
are few and insignificant. After that period, not only did the classes
of society increase, but every class was modified by more varieties of
individual life. Even within the last century, the science of political
economy has given a new colouring to the thoughts and actions of large
communities, as the different opinions held by its votaries have
multiplied them into distinct and various classes. Modern historians,
therefore, may be divided into two classes; the one describing a state
of society in which the elements are few; the other the times in which
they were more numerous. As a specimen of the first order, he selects
Bede. Bede was born in 674, fifty years after the flight of Mahomet from
Mecca. He died in 755, two or three years after the victory of Charles
Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical history, in five books,
describes the period from Augustine's arrival in Kent, 597.
Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede involves him in the discussion of a
question on which much skill and ability have been exercised. We allude
to the question of miracles. "The question," says he, "in Bede takes
this form--What credit is to be attached to the frequent stories of
miracles or wonders which occur in his narrative?" He seizes at once
upon the difficulty, without compromise or evasion. He makes a
distinction between a wonder and a miracle: "to say that all recorded
wonders are false, from those recorded by Herodotus to the latest
reports of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly
unjustifiable." At the same time he thinks the character of Bede, added
to the religious difficulty, may incline us to limit miracles to the
earliest times of Christianity, and refuse our belief to all which are
reported by the historians of subsequent centuries. He then proceeds to
consider the questions which suggest themselves when we read Matthew
Paris, or still more, any of the French, German, or Italian historians
of the same period:--
"The thirteenth century contains in it, at its beginning, the
most splendid period of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
Third; its end coincides with that great struggle between
Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the first
stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick the
Second, and his long contest with the popes in Italy; the
foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Franciscan;
the last period of the crusades, and the age of the greatest
glory of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of interest as it
is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less
connected with two great questions concerning the church;
namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government
and in matters of faith; the merits of the contest between the
Papacy and the kings of Europe; the nature and character of
that influence over men's minds which affected the whole
philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of
the Christian world."--P. 138.
The pretensions and corruptions of the Church are undoubtedly the chief
object to which, at this period, the attention of the reader must be
attracted. "Is the church system of Innocent III. in faith or government
the system of the New Testament?" Is the difference between them
inconsiderable, such as may be accounted for by the natural progress of
society, or does the rent extend to the foundation? "The first century,"
says Dr Arnold, "is to determine our judgment of the second and of all
subsequent centuries. It will not do to assume that the judgment must be
interpreted by the very practices and opinions, the merits of which it
has to try." As a specimen of the chroniclers, he selects Philip de
Comines, almost the last great writer of his class. In him is
exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions of attaching to modern
history the importance of attending to genealogies.
"For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary, duchess
of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold,
with Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This marriage, conveying
all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs,
established a great independent sovereign on the frontiers of
France, giving to him on the north, not only the present
kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions of what is
now French territory, the old provinces of Artois and French
Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxemburg; while on the
east it gave him Franche Comté, thus yielding him a footing
within the Jura, on the very banks of the Saône. Thence ensued
in after ages, when the Spanish branch of the house of Austria
had inherited this part of its dominions--the long contests
which deluged the Netherlands with blood, the campaigns of King
William and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts, no less
skilful than valiant, in which Marlborough broke his way
through the fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain
became in a manner French by the accession of the House of
Bourbon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself;
and from thence the powers of Europe advanced, almost in our
own days, to assail France as a republic; and on this ground,
on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those great
victories which, for nearly twenty years, carried the French
standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the marriage recorded
by Comines has been working busily down to our very own times:
it is only since the settlement of 1814, and that more recent
one of 1830, that the Netherlands have ceased to be effected by
the union of Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian of
Austria"--P. 148.
Again, in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines
records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth
century, which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great
Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou, the fit and
unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that
great crime by the Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of the House of
Anjou in Sicily, the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna, the new
contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to
him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII. The following
passage is an admirable description of the reasons which lend to the
pages of Philip de Comines a deep and melancholy interest:--
"The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty years
before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of
Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage
of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away.
Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the
almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or,
to use Campbell's beautiful image--
'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'--
are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is
not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
dissolution is fast approaching--the interest has yet another
source; our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay
the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape
for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all
wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in
vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we
are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour
indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the
records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe
whether, in any point, there may be discerned an anticipation
of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
insensibility. In this respect, Comines' Memoirs are striking
from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other notions
than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their
events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to
continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest
form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the
instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that
to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling
Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly
of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines
praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the
crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere
with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and
respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he
himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on
his mind no impression."
We now enter upon a period which may be called the modern part of modern
history, the more complicated period, in contradistinction to the more
simple state of things which, up to this moment, has occupied the
student's attention. It is impossible to read, without deep regret, the
passage in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention--"if life and health
be spared him, to enter into minute details; selecting some one country
as the principal subject of his enquiries, and illustrating the lessons
of history for the most part from its particular experience."
He proceeds, however, to the performance of the task immediately before
him. After stating that the great object, the [Greek: teleiotaton
telos], of history is that which most nearly touches the inner life of
civilized man, he pauses for a while at the threshold before he enters
into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly some external knowledge is requisite
before we penetrate into its recesses: we want some dwelling-place, as
it were, for the mind, some local habitation in which our ideas may be
arranged, some topics that may be firmly grasped by the memory, and on
which the understanding may confidently rest; and thus it is that
geography, even with a view to other purposes, must engross, in the
first instance, a considerable share of our attention. The sense in
which Dr Arnold understands a knowledge of geography, is explained in
the following luminous and instructive commentary:--
"I said that geography held out one hand to geology and
physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact,
geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with
history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that question
which is now being discussed every where, the question of the
corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more richly
supplied with coal-mines than any other country in the world?
what has given a peculiar interest to our relations with China,
but the physiological fact, that the tea-plant, which is become
so necessary to our daily life, has been cultivated with equal
success in no other climate or country? what is it which
threatens the permanence of the union between the northern and
southern states of the American confederacy, but the
physiological fact, that the soil and climate of the southern
states render them essentially agricultural, while those of the
northern states, combined with their geographical advantages as
to sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally to be
manufacturing and commercial? The whole character of a nation
may be influenced by its geology and physical geography. But
for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there were
no other consideration, it would be worth our while to acquire
this richer view of geography. Conceive only the difference
between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere plan geography of
Italy gives us its shape, as I have observed, and the position
of its towns; to these it may add a semicircle of mountains
round the northern boundary to represent the Alps, and another
long line stretching down the middle of the country to
represent the Apennines. But let us carry on this a little
further, and give life and meaning and harmony to what is at
present at once lifeless and confused. Observe, in the first
place, how the Apennine line, beginning from the southern
extremity of the Alps, runs across Italy to the very edge of
the Adriatic, and thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps,
after running north and south, where they divide Italy from
France, turn then away to the eastward, running almost parallel
to the Apennines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic,
on the confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of
mountains there is enclosed one great basin or plain; enclosed
on three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea.
Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how well
it is watered. One great river flows through it in its whole
extent, and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on the one
side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder that
this large and rich and well-watered plain should be filled
with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended
for so often by successive invaders? Then descending into Italy
proper, we find the complexity of its geography quite in
accordance with its manifold political division. It is not one
simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
level country on either side between it and the sea, nor yet
is it a chain rising immediately from the sea on one side, like
the Andes in South America, and leaving room, therefore, on the
other side for wide plains of table-land, and rivers with a
sufficient length of course to become at last great and
navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with spines of unequal
length, some of them running out at regular distances parallel
to each other, but others twisted so strangely that they often
run for a long way parallel to the back-bone, or main ridge,
and interlace with one another in a maze almost inextricable.
And, as if to complete the disorder, in those spots where the
spines of the Apennines, being twisted round, run parallel to
the sea and to their own central chain, and thus leave an
interval of plain between their bases and the Mediterranean,
volcanic agency has broken up the space thus left with other
and distinct groups of hills of its own creation, as in the
case of Vesuvius, and of the Alban hills near Rome. Speaking
generally then, Italy is made up of an infinite multitude of
valleys pent in between high and steep hills, each forming a
country to itself, and cut off by natural barriers from the
others. Its several parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
man can thoroughly unite them. Even the various provinces of
the same kingdom are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi are
like an unknown world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch,
that when two Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since, made
an excursion to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the
central Apennines, they found there many medicinal plants
growing in the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were
regularly in the habit of importing from other countries, as no
one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
arises the romantic character of Italian scenery: the constant
combination of a mountain outline and all the wild features of
a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
climate in the valleys. Hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in
the population; so that to this day you may travel in many
places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
passing through a single town or village; for the towns still
cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu præruptis
oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then
called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds
of the primæval inhabitants of the country, and which are still
inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the
stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated
into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their
mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the
plain.
"I have been led on further than I intended, but I wished to
give an example of what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
of geography, which brings the whole character of a country
before our eyes, and enables us to understand its influence
upon the social and political condition of its inhabitants. And
this knowledge, as I said before, is very important to enable
us to follow clearly the external revolutions of different
nations, which we want to comprehend before we penetrate to
what has been passing within."
This introductory discussion is followed by a rapid sketch of the
different struggles for power and independence in Europe during the
three last centuries. The general tendency of this period has been to
consolidate severed nations into great kingdoms; but this tendency has
been checked when the growth of any single power has become excessive,
by the combined efforts of other European nations. Spain, France,
England, and Austria, all in their turns have excited the jealousy of
their neighbours, and have been attacked by their confederate strength.
But in 1793 the peace of Europe was assailed by an enemy still more
dangerous and energetic--still more destructive--we doubt whether in the
English language a more vivid description is to be found of the evil,
its progress, and its termination, than Dr Arnold has given in the
following passage:--
"Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most alarming
danger of universal dominion, which had ever threatened Europe.
The most military people in Europe became engaged in a war for
their very existence. Invasion on the frontiers, civil war and
all imaginable horrors raging within, the ordinary relations of
life went to wreck, and every Frenchman became a soldier. It
was a multitude numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated
by the courage and skill and energy of the old Romans. One
thing alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
wanted, to enable them to conquer the world--a general and a
ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to restore
and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and direct the
immense military resources of France against her foreign
enemies. And such an one appeared in Napoleon. Pacifying La
Vendée, receiving back the emigrants, restoring the church,
remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet carefully
preserving and maintaining all the great points which the
nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon united in himself,
not only the power, but the whole will of France; and that
power and will were guided by a genius for war such as Europe
had never seen since Cæsar. The effect was absolutely magical.
In November 1799, he was made First Consul; he found France
humbled by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his allies
invaded, his own frontier threatened. He took the field in May
1800, and in June the whole fortune of the war was changed, and
Austria driven out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still
the flood of the tide rose higher and higher, and every
successive wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly
state has never reached a prouder pinnacle than when Napoleon,
in June 1812, gathered his army at Dresden--that mighty host,
unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely, but
effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject
kings. And now, what was the principal adversary of this
tremendous power? by whom was it checked, and resisted, and put
down? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and manifest
interposition of God. I know of no language so well fitted to
describe that victorious advance to Moscow, and the utter
humiliation of the retreat, as the language of the prophet with
respect to the advance and subsequent destruction of the host
of Sennacherib. 'When they arose early in the morning, behold
they were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally to that
memorable night of frost, in which twenty thousand horses
perished, and the strength of the French army was utterly
broken. Human instruments, no doubt, were employed in the
remainder of the work; nor would I deny to Germany and to
Prussia the glories of the year 1813, nor to England the honour
of her victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory of
Waterloo. But at the distance of thirty years, those who lived
in the time of danger and remember its magnitude, and now
calmly review what there was in human strength to avert it,
must acknowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the
deliverance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was
effected neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but
by the hand of God alone."
The question, whether some races of men possess an inherent superiority
over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold, in his dissertation on military
science. Without laying down any universal rule, it may be stated that
such a superiority can be predicated of no European nation. Frederick
the Great defeated the French at Rosbach, as easily as Napoleon overcame
the Prussians at Jena. If Marlborough was uniformly successful, William
III. was always beaten by Luxembourg, and the Duke of Cumberland by
D'Etrées and Saxe. It seems, therefore, a fair inference, that no
civilized European nation possesses over its neighbours that degree of
superiority which greater genius in the general, or greater discipline
in the troops of its antagonists, will not be sufficient to counteract.
The defeat of the Vendéans in France, by the soldiers of the garrison of
Mentz; and the admirable conduct of our own Sepoys under British
generals, are, no doubt, strong instances to show the prodigious
importance of systematic discipline. Still, we cannot quite coincide
with Dr Arnold's opinion on this subject. We are quite ready to
admit--who, indeed, for a moment would deny?--in military as well as in
all other subjects, the value of professional attainments and long
experience. We cannot, however, consider them superior to those great
qualities of our nature which discipline may regulate and embellish, but
which it can never destroy or supersede. As every man is bound to form
his own opinion on religious matters, though he may not be a priest,
every man is obliged to defend his country when invaded, though he may
not be a soldier. Nor can the miseries which such a state of things
involves, furnish any argument against its necessity. All war must be
attended with misfortunes, which freeze the blood and make the soul sick
in their contemplation; but these very misfortunes deter those who wield
the reins of empire from appealing wantonly to its determination. The
resistance of Saragossa was not the less glorious, it does not the less
fire the heart of every reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
because it was not conducted according to the strict forms of military
tactics, because citizens and even women participated in its fame. The
inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish nation for its oppressor--which
wore down the French armies, which no severities, no violence, no
defeat, could subdue--will be, as long as time shall last, a terrible
lesson to ambitious conquerors. They will learn that there is in the
fury of an insulted nation a danger which the most exquisite military
combinations cannot remove, which the most perfectly served artillery
cannot sweep away, before which all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
lines of fortification in the world are useless--and compared with which
the science of the commander is pedantry, and strategy but a word. They
will discover that something more than mechanical power, however
great--something more than the skill of the practised officer, or the
instinct of well-trained soldiers, are requisite for success--where
every plain is a Marathon, and every valley a Thermopylæ.
Would to God that the same reproach urged against the Spanish
nation--that they defended their native soil irregularly--that they
fought like freemen rather than like soldiers--that they transgressed
the rules of war by defending one side of a street while the artillery
of the enemy, with its thousand mouths, was pouring death upon them from
the other--that they struggled too long, that they surrendered too late,
that they died too readily, could have been applied to Poland--one
fearful instance of success would have been wanting to encourage the
designs of despotism!
Some of the rights of war are next considered--that of sacking a town
taken by assault, and of blockading a town defended, not by the
inhabitants, but by a military garrison--are next examined;--in both
these cases the penalty falls upon the innocent. The Homeric description
of a town taken by assault, is still applicable to modern warfare:--
[Greek: andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei
tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyzônoys te gynaikas.]