Elizabeth, in 1591. In the course of a hundred years from that time
various companies had been established by royal charter, and a regular
trade had sprung up. In 1702 all previous charters were consolidated
into one, and the East India Company began its career. Its beginning
was very quiet and humble. It was a trader, and nothing more; but
when it saw a convenient harbour, a favourable landing-place, and
an industrious population, it bent as lowly as any Oriental slave
at the footstool of the unsuspecting Rajah, and obtained permission
to build a storehouse, to widen the wharf, and, finally, to erect a
small tower, merely for the defence of its property from the dangerous
inhabitants of the town. The storehouses became barracks, the towers
became citadels; and by the year 1750 the recognised possessions of
the inoffensive and unambitious merchants comprised mighty states, and
were dotted at intervals along the coast from Surat and Bombay on the
west to Madras and Calcutta on the east and far north. The French also
had not been idle, and looked out ill pleased, from their domains at
Pondicherry and Chandernagore, on the widely-diffused settlements and
stealthy progress of their silent rivals. They might have made as rapid
progress, and secured as extensive settlements, if they had imitated
their rivals' stealthiness and silence. But power is nothing in the
estimation of a Frenchman unless he can wear it like a court suit
and display it to all the world. The governors, therefore, of their
factories, obtained honours and ornaments from the native princes. One
went so far as to forge a gift of almost regal power from the Great
Mogul, and sat on a musnud, and was addressed with prostration by his
countrymen and the workmen in the warerooms. Wherever the British
wormed their way, the French put obstacles in their path. Whether there
was peace between Paris and London or not, made no difference to the
rival companies on the Coromandel shore. They were always at war, and
only cloaked their national hatred under the guise of supporters of
opposite pretenders to some Indian throne. Great men arose on both
sides. The climate or policies of Hindostan, which weaken the native
inhabitant, only call forth the energies and manly virtues of the
intrusive settler. No kingdom has such a bead-roll of illustrious names
as the British occupation. That one century of "work and will" has
called forth more self-reliant heroism and statesmanlike sagacity than
any period of three times the extent since the Norman Conquest. From
Clive, the first of the line, to the Lawrences and Havelocks of the
present day, there has been no pause in the patriotic and chivalrous
procession. Clive came just at the proper time. A born general, though
sent out in an humble mercantile situation, he retrieved the affairs of
his employers and laid the foundation of a new empire for the British
crown. Calcutta had been seized by a native ruler, instigated by the
French, in 1756. The British residents, to the number of one hundred
and forty-six, were packed in a frightful dungeon without a sufficiency
of light or air, and, after a night which transcends all nights of
suffering and despair, when the prison-doors were thrown open, but
twenty-two of the whole number survived. But these were twenty-two
living witnesses to the tyranny and cruelty of Surajah Dowlat. Clive
was on his track ere many months had passed. Calcutta was recovered,
other places were taken, and the battle of Plassey fought. In this
unparalleled exploit, Clive, with three thousand soldiers, principally
Sepoys, revenged the victims of the Black Hole, by defeating their
murderer at the head of sixty thousand men. This was on the 23d of
June, 1757; and when in that same year the news of the great European
war between the nations came thundering up the Ganges, the victors
enlarged their plans. They determined to expel the French from all
their possessions in the East; and Admiral Pococke and Colonel Coote
were worthy rivals of the gallant Clive. Great fleets encountered in
the Indian seas, and victory was always with the British flag. Battles
took place by land, and uniformly with the same result. Closer and
closer the invading lines converged upon the French; and at last, in
1761, Pondicherry, the last remaining of all their establishments, was
taken, after a vigorous defence, and the French influence was at an
end in India. These four years, from 1757 to 1761, had been scarcely
less prolific of distinguished men on the French side than our own. The
last known of these was Lally Tollendal, a man of a furious courage and
headstrong disposition, against whom his enemies at home had no ground
of accusation except his want of success and savageness of manner. Yet
when he returned, after the loss of Pondicherry and a long imprisonment
in England, he was attacked with all the vehemence of personal hatred.
He was tried for betraying the interests of the king, tortured, and
executed. The prosecution lasted many years, and the public rage seemed
rather to increase. [A.D. 1766.] Long after peace was concluded
between France and England, the tragedy of the French expulsion from
India received its final scene in the death of the unfortunate Count
Lally.
Quebec and its dependencies, during the same glorious administration,
were conquered and annexed by Wolfe; and already the throes of the
great Revolution were felt, though the causes remained obscure. Cut
off from the money-making regions of Hindostan and the patriarchal
settlements of Canada, the Frenchman, oppressed at home, had no outlet
either for his ambition or discontent. The feeling of his misery was
further aggravated by the sight of British prosperity. The race of
men called Nabobs, mercantile adventurers who had gone out to India
poor and came back loaded with almost incredible wealth, brought the
ostentatious habits of their Oriental experience with them to Europe,
and offended French and English alike by the tasteless profusion
of their expense. Money wrung by extortion from native princes was
lavished without enjoyment by the denationalized _parvenu_. A French
duke found himself outglittered by the equipage of the over-enriched
clove-dealer,--and hated him for his presumption. The Frenchman of
lower rank must have looked on him as the lucky and dishonourable
rival who had usurped his place, and hated him for the opportunity
he had possessed of winning all that wealth. Ground to the earth by
taxes and toil, without a chance of rising in the social scale or
of escaping from the ever-growing burden of his griefs, the French
peasant and small farmer must have listened with indignation to the
accounts of British families of their own rank emerging from a twenty
years' residence in Madras or Calcutta with more riches than half
the hereditary nobles. It was therefore with a feeling of unanimous
satisfaction that all classes of Frenchmen heard, in 1773, that the
old English colonies in America were filled with disaffection,--that
Boston had risen in insurrection, and that a spirit of resistance to
the mother-country was rife in all the provinces.
The quarrel came to a crisis between the Crown and the colonies within
fourteen years of the conquest of Canada. It seemed as if the British
had provided themselves with a new territory to compensate for the
approaching loss of the old; and bitter must have been the reflection
of the French when they perceived that the loyalty of that recent
acquisition remained undisturbed throughout the succeeding troubles.
Taxation, the root of all strength and the cause of all weakness,
had been pushed to excess, not in the amount of its exaction, but in
the principle of its imposition; and the British blood had not been
so colonialized as to submit to what struck the inhabitants of all
the towns as an unjustifiable exercise of power. The cry at first,
therefore, was, No tax without representation; but the cry waxed louder
and took other forms of expression. The cry was despised, whether
gentle or loud,--then listened to,--then resented. The passions of
both countries became raised. America would not submit to dictation;
Britain would not be silenced by threats. Feelings which would have
found vent at home in angry speeches in Parliament, and riots at a
new election, took a far more serious shape when existing between
populations separated indeed by a wide ocean, but identical in most
of their qualities and aspirations. The king has been blamed. "George
the Third lost us the colonies by his obstinacy: he would not yield
an inch of his royal dignity, and behold the United States our rivals
and enemies,--perhaps some day our conquerors and oppressors!"
Now, we should remember that the Great Britain of 1774 was a very
narrow-minded, self-opinionated, pig-headed Great Britain, compared to
the cosmopolitan, philanthropical, and altogether disinterested Great
Britain we call it now. If the king had bated his breath for a moment,
or even spoken respectfully and kindly of the traitors and rebels who
were firing upon his flags, he would have been the most unpopular man
in his dominions. Many, no doubt, held aloof, and found excuses for the
colonists' behaviour; but the influence of those meditative spirits
was small; their voice was drowned in the chorus of indignation at
what appeared revolt and mutiny more than resistance to injustice. And
when other elements came into the question,--when the French monarch,
ostensibly at peace with Britain, permitted his nobles and generals
and soldiers to volunteer in the patriot cause,--the sentiments of
this nation became embittered with its hereditary dislike to its
ancient foe. We turned them out of India: were they going to turn us
out of America? We had taken Canada: are they going to take New York?
We might have offered terms to our own countrymen, made concessions,
granted exemptions from imperial burdens, or even a share in imperial
legislation; but with Lafayette haranguing about abstract freedom, and
all the young counts and marquises of his expedition declaring against
the House of Lords, the thing was impossible. [A.D. 1778-1780.] War
was declared upon France, and upon Spain, and upon Holland. We fought
everywhere, and lavished blood and treasure in this great quarrel.
And yet the nation had gradually accustomed itself to the new view of
American wrongs. The Ministry, by going so far in their efforts at
accommodation, had confessed the original injustice of their cause.
So we fought with a blunted sword, and hailed even our victories with
misgivings as to our right to win them. But it was the season of vast
changes in the political distribution of all the world. Prussia was
a foremost kingdom. Russia was a European Empire. India had risen
into a compact dominion under the shield of Britain. Why should not
America take a substantive place in the great family of nations, and
play a part hereafter in the old game of statesmen, called the Balance
of Power? In 1783 this opinion prevailed. France, Spain, and Holland
sheathed their swords. The Independence of the United States was
acknowledged at the Peace of Versailles, and everybody believed that
the struggle against established governments was over.
France seemed elevated by the results of the American War, and Great
Britain humiliated. Prophecies were frequent about our rapid fall
and final extinction. Our own orators were, as usual, the loudest in
confessions of our powerlessness and decay. Our institutions were held
up to dislike; and if you had believed the speeches and pamphlets
of discontented patriots, you would have thought we were the most
spiritless and down-trodden, the most unmerciful and dishonest, nation
in the world. The whole land was in a fury of self-abasement at the
degradation brought upon our name and standing by the treachery and
iniquities of Warren Hastings in India; our European glory was crushed
by the surrender at Paris. It must be satisfactory to all lovers of
their country to know that John Bull has no such satisfaction as in
proving that he is utterly exhausted,--always deceived by his friends,
always overreached by his enemies, always disappointed in his aims.
In this self-depreciating spirit he conducts all his wars and all his
treaties; yet somehow it always happens that he gets what he wanted,
and the overreaching and deceiving antagonist gives it up. His power is
over a sixth of the human race, and he began a hundred years ago with
a population of less than fourteen millions; and all the time he has
been singing the most doleful ditties of the ill success that always
attends him,--of his ruinous losses and heart-breaking disappointments.
The men at the head of affairs in the trying years from the Peace of
Versailles to 1793 were therefore quite right not to be taken in by
the querulous lamentations of the nation. We had lost three millions
of colonists, and gained three million independent customers. We were
trading to India, and building up and putting down the oldest dynasties
of Hindostan. Ships and commerce increased in a remarkable degree;
the losses of the war were compensated by the gains of those peaceful
pursuits in a very few years; and we were contented to leave to Paris
the reputation of the gayest city in the world, and to the French the
reputation of the happiest and best-ruled people. But Paris was the
wretchedest of towns, and the French the most miserable of peoples.
When anybody asks us in future what was the cause of the French
Revolution, we need not waste time to discuss the writings of Voltaire,
or the unbelief of the clergy, or the immorality of the nobles. We must
answer at once by naming the one great cause by which all revolutions
are produced,--over-taxation. The French peasant, sighing for liberty,
had no higher object than an escape from the intolerable burden of his
payments. He cared no more for the rights of man, or the happiness
of the human race, than for the quarrels of Achilles and Agamemnon.
He wanted to get rid of the "taille," the "corvée," and twenty other
imposts which robbed him of his last penny. If he had had a chicken
in his pot, and could do as he liked with his own spade and pick-axe,
he never would have troubled his head about codes and constitutions.
But life had become a burden to him. Everybody had turned against him.
The grand old feudal noble, who would have protected and cherished
him under the shadow of his castle-wall, was a lord-chamberlain at
court. The kind old priest, who would have attended to his wants and
fed him, if required, at the church-door, was dancing attendance
in the antechamber of a great lady in Paris, or singing improper
songs at a jolly supper-party at Versailles. There were intendants
and commissaries visiting his wretched hovel at rapidly-decreasing
intervals of time, to collect his contributions to the revenue. These
men farmed the taxes, and squeezed out the last farthing like a Turkish
pasha. But while the small land-owner--and they were already immensely
numerous--and the serf--for he was no better--were oppressed by these
exactions, the gentry were exempt. The seigneur visited his castle for
a month or two in the year, but it was to embitter the countryman's
lot by the contrast. His property had many rights, but no duties.
In ancient times in France, and at all times in England, those two
qualities went together. Our upper classes lived among their tenants
and dependants. They had no alleviation of burdens in consequence of
their wealth, but they took care that their poorer neighbours should
have alleviation in consequence of their poverty. Cottages had no
window-tax. The pressure of the public burdens increased with the
power to bear them. But in France the reverse was the case. Poverty
paid the money, and wealth and luxury spent it. The evil was too
deep-rooted to be remedied without pulling up the tree. The wretched
millions were starving, toiling, despairing, and the thousands were
rioting in extravagance and show. The same thing occurred in 1789 as
had occurred in the last glimmer of the Roman civilization in the time
of Clovis. The Roman Emperor issued edicts for the collection of his
revenue. Commissioners spread over the land; the miserable Gaul saw
the last sheaf of his corn torn away, and the last lamb of his flock.
But when the last property of the poorest was taken away, the imperial
exchequer could not remain unfilled. You remember the unhappy men
called Curials,--holders of small estates in the vicinity of towns.
They were also endowed with rank, and appointed to office. Their office
was to make up from their own resources, or by extra severity among
their neighbours, for any deficiency in the sum assessed. Peasant,
land-owner, curial,--all sank into hopeless misery by the crushing of
this gold-producing machinery. They looked across the Rhine to Clovis
and the Franks, and hailed the ferocious warriors as their deliverers
from an intolerable woe. They could not be worse off by the sword of
the stranger than by the ledger of the tax-collector. In 1789 the
system of the old Roman extortion was revived. The village or district
was made a curial, and became responsible in its aggregate character
for the individual payments. If the number of payers diminished, the
increase fell upon the few who were not yet stripped. The Clovis of
the present day who was to do away with their oppressors, though
perhaps to immolate themselves, was a Revolution,--a levelling of all
distinctions, ranks, rights, exemptions, privileges. This was the
"liberty, equality, fraternity" that were to overflow the worn-out
world and fertilize it as the Nile does Egypt.
Great pity has naturally been expressed for the nobility (or gentry)
and clergy of France; but, properly considered, France had at that
time neither a nobility nor a clergy. A nobility with no status
independent of the king--with no connection with its estates beyond
the reception of their rents--with no weight in the legislature; with
ridiculously exaggerated rank, and ridiculously contracted influence;
with no interest in local expenditure or voice in public management; a
gentry, in short, debarred from active life, except as officers of the
army--shut out by monarchic jealousy from interference in affairs, and
by the pride of birth from the pursuits of commerce--is not a gentry
at all. A clergy, in the same way, is a priesthood only in right of
its belief in the doctrines it professes to hold, and the attention
it bestows on its parishioners. Except in some few instances, the
Christianity both of faith and practice had disappeared from France. It
was time, therefore, that nobility and clergy should also disappear.
The excesses of the Revolution which broke out in 1789, and reached
their climax in the murder of the king in 1793, showed the excesses
of the misgovernment of former years. If there had been one redeeming
feature of the ancient system, it would have produced its fruits in
the milder treatment of the victims of the reaction. In one or two
provinces, indeed, we are told that hereditary attachment still bound
the people to their superiors, and in those provinces, the philosophic
chronicler of the fact informs us, the centralizing system had not
completed its authority. The gentry still performed some of the duties
of their station, and the priests, of their profession. Everywhere
else blind hatred, unreasoning hope, and bloody revenge. The century,
which began with the vainglorious egotism of Louis the Fourteenth
and the war of the Spanish Succession,--which progressed through the
British masterdom of India and the self-sustaining republicanism of
America,--died out in the convulsive strugglings of thirty-one millions
of souls on the soil of France to breathe a purer political air and
shake off the trammels which had gradually been riveted upon them for
three hundred years. Great Britain had preceded them by a century, and
has ever since shown the bloodless and legal origin of her freedom by
the bloodless and legal use she has made of it. We emerged from the
darkness of 1688 with all the great landmarks of our country not only
erect, but strengthened. We had king, lords, and commons, and a respect
for law, and veneration for precedents, which led the great Duke of
Wellington to say, in answer to some question about the chance of a
British revolution, that "no man could foresee whether such a thing
might occur or not, but, when it did, he was sure it would be done by
Act of Parliament."
War with France began in 1793. Our military reputation was at the
lowest, for Wolfe and Clive had had time to be forgotten; and even
our navy was looked on without dismay, for the laurels of Howe and
Boscawen were sere from age. But in the remaining years of the century
great things were done, and Britannia had the trident firmly in her
hand. Jervis, and Duncan, and Nelson, were answering with victories at
sea the triumphs of Napoleon in Italy. And while fame was blowing the
names of those champions far and wide, a blast came across also from
India, where Wellesley had begun his wondrous career. [A.D. 1798.]
Equally matched the belligerents, and equally favoured with mighty
men of valour to conduct their forces, the feverish energy of the
newly-emancipated France being met by the healthful vigour of the
matured and self-respecting Britain, the world was uncertain how the
great drama would close. But the last year of the century seemed to
incline the scale to the British side. [A.D. 1799.] Napoleon, after
a dash at Egypt, had been checked by the guns of Nelson in the great
battle of the Nile. He secretly withdrew from his dispirited army, and
made his appearance in Paris as much in the character of a fugitive as
of a candidate for power. But all the fruits of his former battles had
been torn from his countrymen in his absence. Italy was delivered from
their grasp; Russia was pouring her hordes into the South; confusion
was reigning everywhere, and the fleets of Great Britain were blocking
up every harbour in France.
Napoleon was created First Consul, and the Century went down upon the
final preparations of the embittered rivals. Both parties felt now
that the struggle was for life or death, and "the boldest held his
breath for a time," when he thought of what awful events the Nineteenth
Century would be the scene.
FOOTNOTES.
[A] The following is a carefully compiled table of the forces of
Europe in the year 1854-55. Since that time the Russian fleet
has been destroyed, but the diminution has been more than
counterbalanced by the increased navies of the other powers.
Military Forces of Europe in 1855.
Men. Ships. Guns.
Austria 650,000 102 752
Bavaria 239,886 ... ...
Belgium 100,000 ... ...
Denmark 75,169 120 880
France 650,000 407 11,773
Germany 452,473 ... ...
Great Britain 265,000[1] 591 17,291
Greece 10,226 25 143
Ionian Isles 3,000 4 ...
Modena and Parma 6,302 ... ...
Netherlands 58,647 84 2,000
Papal States 11,274 ... ...
Portugal 33,000 44 404
Prussia 525,000 50 250
Russia 699,000 207 9,000
Sardinia 48,088 40 900
Sicilies 106,264 29 444
Spain 75,000 410 1530
Sweden 167,000 ... ...
Switzerland 108,000 ... ...
Tuscany 16,930 ... ...
Turkey 310,970 ... ...
---------- ---- -------
4,611,229 2113 45,367[2]
[1] Indian army 250,000, and militia 145,000, not included; making
a total of 660,000
[2] Taking an average of ten men to each gun, the sailors will be
453,670; which gives a total of fighting-men, 5,064,899!!!
[B] He was called Le Grand Bâtisseur.
[C] Wickliff's English Bible, 1383.
[D] Popular History--Henry VI.
[E] Dr. Robertson.
INDEX.
Abdelmalek the caliph, 167.
À-Beckett, the elevation and career of, 290 _et seq._
Abelard, rise of free inquiry with, 280.
Abou Beker, the exploits, &c. of, 157, 158
--chosen Mohammed's successor, 160
--his exploits, 161.
Absolutism, rise of, in France under Louis XIV., 475 _et seq._
Abu Taleb, uncle of Mohammed, 138.
Academies, establishment of, by Charlemagne, 196.
Adrian, the emperor, accession and reign of, 45 _et seq._
--his death, 48.
Adrian IV., Pope, 289.
Africa, progress of the Saracens in, 166
--trading-company to, 452.
Agincourt, battle of, 381.
Agriculture, state of, in seventh century, 142.
Agrippina, the empress, 22.
Alans, the, 100.
Alaric the Goth, first appearance of, 98
--hostilities with, 101
--sack of Rome, 106
--his death and burial, 107.
Albigenses, tenets, &c. of the, 299
--the crusade against them, 302 _et seq._
Albinus, a candidate for the empire, 60.
Alboin, King of the Lombards, 129.
Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne, 194
--as Abbot of Tours, 195.
Aleppo taken by the Saracens, 163.
Alexander VI., character, &c. of, 389, 406.
Alexandria, the monks of, 115
--taken by the Saracens, and destruction of the library, 163.
Alexis, the emperor, and the Crusaders, 263.
Alfred, rise and exploits of, 215.
Ali becomes caliph, 167
--the exploits &c. of, 157, 158, 160.
Alva, the Duke of, the St. Bartholomew massacre planned with, 441
--his cruelties in the Netherlands, 441.
Amadis de Gaul, the romance of, 349.
America, the discovery of, 396
--growing importance of its discovery, 402
--progress of British power in, 517.
Amru, the Saracen conqueror, 163.
Anagni, the arrest of Boniface VIII. at, 329.
Anglican Church, the, under Henry II., 289 _et seq._
Anglo-Saxons, establishment of the, 120.
Anne, the literature of the reign of, 506.
Anselm, learning, &c. of, 247.
Antharis, conquest of Italy by, 130.
Antioch, the capture of, by the Crusaders, 264
--the battle of, 265.
Antoninus Pius, the emperor, his character and reign, 49.
Aquileia, siege of, by Maximin, 70
--taken by Attila, 110.
Aquitaine, power of the Dukes of, 204, 232.
Arcadius, the emperor, 101.
Architecture, advancement of, during the eleventh century, 242, 243.
Argentine, Sir Giles d', death of, 353.