rights of the people against tyranny. All lovers of liberty and human
rights are greatly in debt to these two brave men who risked their lives
to save their country from the selfish wilfulness of kings. Englishmen
now were divided into two parties. The king’s party were the Cavaliers,
or Church of England men, who wore wigs or long curls and dressed in
velvets, silks, and laces like grown-up Lord Fauntleroys. The
parliamentary party were called Roundheads, so named because they cut
their hair short, as men do to-day. Oliver Cromwell, who never saw an
army until he was forty, was suddenly found to be a great general.
Because of their stern, unyielding courage, Cromwell’s soldiers were
called “Ironsides.” They often went into battle with a prayer on their
lips, or, in a grand chorus, sang a psalm of David while striking
valiantly for the right.
At last it became necessary to sacrifice King Charles in order to secure
the victory for Parliament, which stood for the freedom of Englishmen
against the tyranny of kings. So a court set up by Parliament voted to
put the king to death, and Oliver Cromwell was one of the signers of the
death-warrant. As James, the king’s father, had driven the Pilgrims out
of the country, so now the Puritans in Parliament forced the king’s sons
to leave the country for their country’s good.
During the few years in which Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of
England, he did much to strengthen the nation and to repair the great
harm brought upon it by the foolish whims of its extravagant kings. It
was then that England learned the terrible lesson which Europe had to be
taught almost three hundred years later--that no king has a divine right
to do wrong to the people.
NAPOLEON, THE CORSICAN BOY WHO RULED EUROPE
Though Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest soldier of his time, he was
small in body. His fullest height was a little above five feet. The
story of his strange career shows how a poor, puny little lad made
himself emperor of France and master of Europe, so that kings, generals,
and prime ministers bowed, like so many servants, to his imperial will.
He began, while he wore petticoats, to wish to be a soldier. He threw
away his baby rattle for a brass cannon, and his first playthings were
little iron soldiers. When he was old enough to play with other boys, he
always chose to be a soldier and, small as he was, he was the one who
told the bigger boys just what to do. Even then, if his mother gave him
a piece of cake, he would go out to the edge of the little town and
trade it to an old soldier for some coarse, black army bread. As he grew
older, this soldier-longing became his ambition. His health was never
very good. He was often nervous, wilful, and hard to manage. But he had
a keen sense of honor, and always despised a coward.
Napoleon’s home was the rugged island of Corsica. While he was still a
little boy, he found, between some rocks, near the shore, a cave which
he claimed for his own. This is still pointed out to thousands who come
to visit the boy’s birthplace, as “Napoleon’s Grotto.”
At that time there was a feud between the boys of the town and the
shepherd lads on the hills around. Little Napoleon told the other town
boys that if they would do as he said, he would make those big country
boys stop throwing stones at them whenever they met. The town lads
agreed to this; so Napoleon told them to gather stones and pile them in
a row a little distance below the fortress which the shepherds had
chosen behind some rocks on top of their hill.
The pale Bonaparte boy led his young army up till the country youths
fired a volley of stones at them. Then he turned and ran down the hill
followed by his company. The enemy came out and gave chase, pell-mell.
This was just what Napoleon expected. When the little leader got down to
the piles of stones he shouted--_“Halt!”_
His soldiers obeyed.
_“Stones!”_
Each boy gathered up as many as he could carry.
“_About face!_--FIRE!”
Before the astonished shepherds could stop they were met by a shower of
rocks. The big fellows broke and scattered in all directions, and two of
them were taken prisoner. Captain Bonaparte would not let them go till
the other country boys pledged themselves not to touch his “men” again.
Thus eight-year-old Napoleon became the leader of the boys in his home
town.
Before he was ten, he was sent to a military school in France, where
sons of noblemen were educated. Some of those French boys were wayward,
mean, and savagely cruel. They made fun of the shy country lad, for his
rough Corsican ways and speech, and because he was small and sallow.
Napoleon had entered the school on a scholarship, so they sneered at him
as “the charity boy.” He could not speak French at first, and pronounced
his own name so that it sounded like the French words for “Nose of
straw.” As Napoleon’s nose was long, straight, and thin, they laughed
and shouted his nickname, “Mr. Straw Nose!”
All this made the proud, sensitive lad speechless with rage. He kept
himself away from the rest. A garden plot was assigned for each cadet to
tend. A few of the others were too idle to take care of theirs, so they
gave them to Napoleon and he kept them in order as his own. In the
center of his little kingdom he built an arbor where he could stay alone
to study and plan as he had done in his little cave in Corsica, and woe
to those who entered there without his permission. He had suffered this
sort of life nearly four years before his father and mother managed to
visit their boy, who was almost a prisoner in military school. Napoleon
wrote of the shock the visit gave his mother:
“When she came to see me at Brienne she was frightened at my thinness. I
was indeed much changed, because I employed the hours of recreation in
working, and often passed the nights in thinking about the days’
lessons. My nature could not bear the idea of not being first in my
class.”
After finishing at this academy, Napoleon went to the military college
at Paris. Father Bonaparte’s death, about this time, left the family
poorer than ever. Sometimes Napoleon did not have enough to eat. But
that did not prevent him from studying hard. His great ambition kept him
from starving. Some time after his graduation he was assigned to a small
command in Paris. “Red” revolutionists were trying to destroy the city.
Young Napoleon thought it high time to stop them. A mob gathered in a
public square threatening to kill people and burn their houses. He
opened fire on the mob and cleared that square in short order. It was
said afterward, “Bonaparte stopped the French Revolution with a whiff of
grapeshot!”
From being “the Man of the Hour” Napoleon went on until he became “the
Man of Destiny.” He was raised to the highest rank, and as General
Bonaparte became commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy, where
he gained brilliant victories over the Austrians. But the Austrians
would not stay beaten, and while Napoleon was away in Egypt, Austria
started in to win back its control of northern Italy.
When Napoleon returned to Paris he was the idol of the people. They
elected him consul, a kind of president, of the French republic. The
Austrians were pleased at this, as it would keep “the Little Corporal,”
as the soldiers called Napoleon, in Paris. He would have to send another
commander to Italy, and the Austrians had gotten such a start that they
could win the victory before the French forces could go around the Alps.
Austria was already crowing over its triumph and all Europe was laughing
because General Bonaparte had been “caught napping,” when one May
morning Consul Napoleon and a great army came tobogganing down the
mountain sides into the plains of Italy, as if they had fallen from the
sky.
In a letter to his older brother, Napoleon wrote of this:
“We have dropped here like a thunderbolt; the enemy didn’t expect it,
and hardly believe it yet.”
He had made his soldiers climb up the Alps Mountains in the highest,
steepest place, dragging heavy cannon and army supplies after them. By
his wonderful feat of crossing the Alps, Napoleon won by surprise the
victory at Marengo, just as he had beaten the shepherd lads when he was
a boy of eight.
The people now made their hero consul for life. After that it was easy
for him to make himself Emperor of the French. At his coronation
Napoleon snatched the crown out of the hands of the pope and placed it
on his own head, to show that he was emperor by the right of his own
might. Yet Emperor Napoleon kept on leading his armies in person. He
still had to fight with other nations to hold his place as master of
Europe. He gained even more brilliant victories, as Emperor Napoleon,
than he had won as General Bonaparte. Not content with his record as a
great conqueror, he gave the French people the _Code Napoléon_, a set of
laws
[Illustration: EMPEROR NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO WATCHING THE
DOWNFALL OF HIS WONDERFUL ARMY.
_From the painting by David Neal_]
which proved him to be also a wise statesman and law-giver.
The kings and nobles of Europe always hated Napoleon. They said he was
vulgar, and called him “the Corsican upstart.” But the French people
loved him as one of themselves. No general or emperor ever had more
devoted followers than Napoleon Bonaparte. Millions of men gave their
lives willingly to fight his battles. He waged war after war till there
were but few fighting men left in France. Then the people began to think
that Napoleon loved them because they could help him win victories to
give him more power and fulfill his high ambition. They began to say
among themselves, “He is sacrificing us for his own glory.” While at the
height of his power, Napoleon exclaimed, “What are a million lives to a
man like me!”
When the people lost their faith in him, Napoleon began to lose instead
of win his battles. Generals and nobles stopped flattering him and began
to fight him. His own brothers and sisters, whom he had made kings and
queens, deserted him. Even his wife forsook him, taking with her his
only son, the idol of his heart.
Napoleon’s last battle was at Waterloo, in Belgium. Because this loss
brought ruin to him, the name of the place became a kind of proverb.
When overwhelming defeat comes to a great man, people say, “He has met
his Waterloo!”
The conquered conqueror was taken prisoner and sent thousands of miles
away as a captive to the bleak island of St. Helena. He made the best of
his hard lot as “the fortunes of war.” But the years of loneliness
endured by this friendless conqueror, who all his life had been selfish
and merciless, are suggested by a well-known picture, which shows
Napoleon on the shore of that far-off rock in the southern sea, standing
with hands clasped behind him, looking off across the ocean to where
France lay.
NELSON, THE HERO OF TRAFALGAR
A small English boy strayed away from his grandmother’s house after she
had warned him that gypsies encamped near by might carry him off. When
the old lady found the little fellow sitting beside a stream too wide
for him to cross, she exclaimed:
“Why did you run away, Horatio? I was half dead with fear--”
“Fear!” demanded the little lad, still in petticoats. “What is that? I
never saw a fear.”
The boy’s father’s name was Nelson. He was a clergyman of the Church of
England. His wife had died when this boy was a baby, leaving eight
children for the invalid father to care for. Once while the father was
away for his health, young Horatio heard that his mother’s brother had
been appointed to the command of a British man-of-war. Horatio said to
an older brother: “Do, William, write to my father and tell him that I
should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice.”
Thinking the navy might be a good place for the boy and a benefit to his
health, Doctor Nelson wrote to his brother-in-law. The bluff sea-captain
wrote right back:
“What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the
rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and
the first time we go into action a cannon-ball may knock off his
head and provide for him at once.”
Thus young Horatio Nelson entered the Royal Navy. One of his first trips
was as coxswain on a voyage to the Arctic regions. While dragging the
ship’s boats over the ice, the sailors had to fight with walruses and
polar bears. Coxswain Nelson killed a big white bear and carried home
the skin for his father.
When Horatio was fifteen he made a voyage on the warship _Seahorse_ to
the East Indies. A year and a half in that hot climate made the frail
lad so ill that he had to go home. Of his thoughts while sailing home on
sick leave he once said:
“After a long and gloomy revery in which I almost wished myself
overboard, a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me and
presented my king and country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the
idea. ‘Well then,’ I exclaimed, ‘I will be a hero, and trusting in God,
I will brave every danger.’”
Young Nelson had too much pluck to be sick long. England was then at war
with France and Spain, and he fought his country’s enemies in malarial
regions where hundreds of his fellows died from the poisoned air and
serpent bites. When Horatio was twenty-two his health again failed, and
he had to spend months in Brighton to recover it.
When peace was signed between England and France, in 1783, Nelson was
twenty-five. He was presented at court in that year, as he was a
favorite with the Duke of Clarence who afterward became King William the
Fourth.
The next year Captain Nelson was placed in command of the battle-ship
_Boreas_. He was very kind to the thirty midshipmen on board. When a boy
was afraid to climb a mast, Nelson would say to him with a winning
smile:
“I am going to race to the masthead and beg that I may meet you there.”
Once when he was invited to dinner with the governor of Barbadoes,
Nelson said, “Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my
midshipmen. I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I
can, as they have few to look up to besides myself while they are at
sea.”
[Illustration: NELSON RECEIVING THE SWORD OF THE SPANISH ADMIRAL
SURRENDERED AFTER A NAVAL BATTLE IN THE WAR OF 1797.
_From the painting by David Neal_]
It is not surprising that men under his command exclaimed, in comparing
him with other men, “_Nelson_ was the man to _love!_”
The wars of Great Britain with Napoleon kept the young navy officer in
active service. During a siege a shell burst and destroyed the sight of
his right eye. In another attack he was wounded in the arm. He shouted
to those who wished to remove him from the fray,
“Let me alone; I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make
haste and get the instruments. I know I must lose my right arm; so the
sooner it is off, the better.”
In 1798, when Napoleon started out with the French fleet for an unknown
port, to surprise and lay waste the countries of people friendly to
Great Britain, these instructions were issued to Admiral Nelson: “Take,
sink, burn, and destroy the French fleet.” With his battleships Nelson
set out to search the Mediterranean, but for a long time he was unable
to find the French fleet. At last it was found at anchor in Aboukir Bay
at the mouth of the Nile. The French were caught in a trap. Though
Nelson had not eaten or slept much for many days and nights, he invited
his officers to dinner on his flagship, the _Vanguard_, to discuss the
coming battle. “If we succeed, what will the world say?” asked one of
the officers.
“There is no ‘_if_’ in the case,” replied the admiral sharply. “We are
sure to succeed, but who may live to tell the story is a very different
question.”
Admiral Nelson had the colors flying from six different places on his
flagship when they went into battle that very night. That engagement,
now known as the battle of the Nile, was one of the greatest naval
combats in history. The French flagship, _L’Orient_, on which Napoleon
had sailed to carry war into Egypt, was blown up and the French admiral
killed with all on board. The battle raged from seven in the evening
until three in the morning. Though the French had thousands more men
than the British, most of them were killed. Nelson sent boats to rescue
them from the burning French ships, but they preferred to go on fighting
through the flames, amidst bursting shells and exploding powder
magazines.
Napoleon’s fleet was utterly destroyed. Nelson wrote of that night’s
work:
“Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene; it is a
conquest.”
The whole world, which had suffered in dread of “that monster,
Napoleon,” went wild over the news. England made Nelson a baron and
voted him a pension of ten thousand dollars a year. Other nations,
rulers, and corporations showered upon him great sums of money, gold
boxes filled with diamonds, jeweled swords, and gem-incrusted souvenirs.
The Queen of Naples, a sister of Queen Marie Antoinette, who had lately
been beheaded by the French people, was beside herself with joy. The
poor people of Italy expressed their gratitude when Nelson’s fleet was
anchored in the bay of Naples. Bringing cages of birds to the shore,
they opened the doors and let the birds out to fly about the flagship
and light on the beloved admiral’s shoulders.
Three years later the conquering hero was called to strike another blow
against Napoleon near Copenhagen, Denmark. Admiral Nelson opened the
attack on the allied fleet, but the admiral higher in command, thinking
it might be well to give Nelson a chance to withdraw a little, signaled
him to retire to repair several disabled ships. Nelson, hearing of this,
put his spyglass to his blind eye and winked as he said: “I really do
not see the signal. Keep on flying mine for ‘closer battle.’ That’s the
way _I_ answer such signals!”
The men of both fleets fought with undaunted courage for five long,
terrible hours. The enemy lost 1800 men and 6000 prisoners, but the
British had only 250 killed, and 680 wounded. Of the Battle of
Copenhagen, Nelson wrote:
“I have been in one hundred and five engagements, but this has been the
most terrible of all.”
For the victory at Copenhagen Nelson was made a viscount. But there was
no time for celebrations after this, for Napoleon was now waging war to
the death. Lord Nelson seemed to realize that the next fight must be the
end either of France or of England. At last the great day came, off Cape
Trafalgar, Spain, on the 21st of October, 1805. It is told of Admiral
Lord Nelson that as he walked the deck of his flagship, _Victory_, that
morning, his knees trembled more with excitement than fear. The
one-eyed, one-armed hero looked down and shook his fist at his legs,
saying: “Shake away, there! You would shake worse than that if you knew
where I’m going to take you to-day.” Then he gave the order for that
immortal signal: “ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY.” Trafalgar
was the greatest of all Nelson’s victories. It broke the power of
Napoleon and paved the way for Wellington at Waterloo.
At a shot from the mizzenmast of a French ship, the Lord Admiral fell.
Captain Hardy of the _Victory_ knelt beside him.
“They have done for me at last, Hardy,” he gasped.
Nelson lived for hours, giving his last directions, then died in the
moment of his greatest triumph.
“Now I am satisfied,” were his last words. “Thank God, I have done my
duty.”
DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS
COLUMBUS, THE MAP-MAKER WHO FOUND A NEW WORLD
In a tall narrow house in the midst of a block on a narrow street in
Genoa, Italy, lived a poor woolworker named Columbus. This slender house
was only two windows wide and seven stories high. In the lowest story,
in which there were a wide door and a grated window, Signor Columbus
stored the bales of wool which he washed and carded, using a tool
somewhat like the curry-comb for cleaning horses. He thus prepared the
wool to be spun into yarn, which would later be woven and made up into
clothing and blankets.
A small boy named Christopher went in and out of this foul-smelling
place to play and work. Very little is known of the boyhood of Columbus.
As Genoa was a large seaport town, it is supposed that he spent much of
his time on the wharves watching the boats-galleys from Venice, with
gay-colored sails, and strange-looking craft from Asia and Africa, with
long, slim, lateen wings, veering about like swallows of the sea.
There were pirates, or highway-robbers of the sea, in those days. Little
Christopher was sure to hear thrilling stories of how they fought
hand-to-hand with sabers and axes, and of how the wicked but powerful
pirates murdered the men on merchant ships and carried off the women
and children to be slaves in distant lands. Young Columbus seems to
have been fired with a boyish longing for--
“A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,”
for the next that is known of him is that he narrowly escaped from
drowning in a shipwreck by swimming six miles to shore on a boat oar.
He landed near a town in Portugal and soon found work in a map-maker’s
shop. Here he had a chance to learn all the geography that was known
four hundred years ago. Most of the maps he made were drawn as if the
world were flat. But there were curious charts with lands and seas
outlined on the six sides of a cube, and others drawn as if the world
were shaped like a huge section of stovepipe. Young Columbus found the
maps very interesting; but what seemed most wonderful of all was the
idea that the world was round, as every child now knows.
In those days a man was not allowed to believe anything different from
what every one else thought. So when young Columbus began to claim that
the earth was round, people laughed at him. They thought he was crazy.
Of course, a few astronomers and scientists knew how to prove the
roundness of the earth by the shadow it casts on the moon in an eclipse,
but most of the people could not understand such things. Columbus
himself could notice that the surface of the ocean, within the short
distance he could see, was slightly curved. He resolved to miss no
chance to prove his theory, by learning all he could about newly-found
lands; and he even began planning to sail around the earth to India and
Far Cathay, as China was called in the old days.
Travelers had been overland to the Far East and back. Daring sailors had
sailed along the coast of Africa. But the great body of water to the
west of Portugal was called the Sea of Darkness. People believed that
terrible sea-monsters haunted its dark waters, and that if men were to
sail far enough westward, their ship would go beyond the brink of the
world, as over a giant waterfall, and fall down, down through space
forever.
So when Christopher Columbus tried to persuade the king of Portugal and
the princes of other countries to fit out a few ships and let him prove
the roundness of the earth by sailing west to the Far East, no one would
listen to him seriously. But the poor man could not give it up, though
he spent many years wandering from country to country to persuade some
one rich and powerful enough to supply the ships and men for such a
dangerous voyage. Queen Isabella of Spain and her husband, King
Ferdinand, listened to him, but when the matter was referred to the
royal council, those grave men shook their heads and said such a thing
was absurd and unfit for a queen even to think about.
Columbus was in despair. His wife was now dead and he had his little son
Diego with him. The two were tramping across the country and came, about
sunset, to a monastery on the border of Spain, where the boy asked for a
drink just as the monk in charge happened to be passing. This monk spoke
to Columbus and, seeing what an interesting man he was, invited the
strangers in. Columbus told his strange, sad story. This monk had been a
friend and adviser to Queen Isabella. Also he knew two sailors who might
be a help in such an undertaking. He wrote at once to the queen, urging
her to let Columbus come and talk
[Illustration: COLUMBUS PLEADING HIS CAUSE BEFORE KING FERDINAND AND
QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN.]