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[Illustration: THE MARVELOUS PROGRESS OF THE 19TH CENTURY
The above symbolic picture, after the master painting
of Paul Sinibaldi, explains the secret of the
wonderful progress of the past 100 years. The genius
of Industry stands in the centre. To her right sits
Chemistry; to the left the geniuses of Electricity
with the battery, the telephone, the electric light;
there also are the geniuses of Navigation with the
propeller, and of Literature and Art, all bringing
their products to Industry who passes them through the
hands of Labor in the foreground to be fashioned for
the use of mankind.]
The Achievements of One Hundred Years
FAMOUS MEN AND GREAT EVENTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Embracing Descriptions of the Decisive Battles of the Century and
the Great Soldiers Who Fought Them; the Rise and Fall of Nations; the
Changes in the Map of the World, and the Causes Which Contributed
to Political and Social Revolutions; Discoverers and Discoveries;
Explorers of the Tropics and Arctics; Inventors and Their Inventions;
the Growth of Literature, Science and Art; the Progress of Religion,
Morals and Benevolence in All Civilized Nations.
by
CHARLES MORRIS, LL. D.
Author of "The Aryan Race," "Civilization, Its History, Etc.,"
"The Greater Republic," Etc.
Embellished With Nearly 100 Full-Page Half-Tone Engravings,
Illustrating the Greatest Events of the Century, and 100 Portraits of
the Most Famous Men in the World.
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1899, by
W. E. Scull,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All Rights Reserved.
LIST OF CHAPTERS AND SUBJECTS
Introduction PAGE
A Bird's-eye View--Tyranny and Oppression in the Eighteenth
Century--Government and the Rights of Man in 1900--Prisons
and Punishment in 1900--The Factory System and Oppression
of the Workingman--Suffrage and Human Freedom--Criminal
Law and Prison Discipline in 1800--The Era of Wonderful
Inventions--The Fate of the Horse and the Sail--Education,
Discovery and Commerce 23
CHAPTER I
The Threshold of the Century
The Age We Live in and its Great Events--True History and
the Things Which Make It--Two of the World's Greatest
Events--The Feudal System and Its Abuses--The Climax of
Feudalism in France--The States General is Convened--The
Fall of the Bastille--King and Queen Under the
Guillotine--The Reign of Terror--The Wars of the French
Revolution--Napoleon in Italy and Egypt--England as a
Centre of Industry and Commerce--The Condition of the
German States--Dissension in Italy and Decay in Spain--The
Partition of Poland by the Robber Nations--Russia and
Turkey 33
CHAPTER II
Napoleon Bonaparte; The Man of Destiny
A Remarkable and Wonderful Career--The Enemies and Friends
of France--Movements of the Armies in Germany and
Italy--Napoleon Crosses the Alps at St. Bernard Pass--The
Situation in Italy--The Famous Field of Marengo--A
Great Battle Lost and Won--The Result of the Victory of
Marengo--Napoleon Returns to France--Moreau and the Great
Battle of Hohenlinden--The Peace of Luneville--The Peace
of Amiens--The Punishment of the Conspirators and the
Assassination of the Duke d'Enghien--Napoleon Crowned
Emperor of the French--The Great Works Devised By the New
Emperor 44
CHAPTER III
Europe in the Grasp of the Iron Hand
Great Preparations for the Invasion of England--Rapid March
on Austria--The Surrender of General Mack--The Eve Before
Austerlitz--The Dreadful Lake Horror--Treaty of Peace
With Austria--Prussian Armies in the Field--Defeat of the
Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt--Napoleon Divides the
Spoils of Victory--The Frightful Struggle at Eylau--The
Cost of Victory--The Total Defeat of the Russians--The
Emperors at Tilsit and the Fate of Prussia--The Pope a
Captive at Fontainebleau--Andreas Hofer and the War in
Tyrol--Napoleon Marches Upon Austria--The Battle of
Eckmuhl and the Capture of Ratisbon--The Campaign in
Italy--The Great Struggle of Essling and Aspern--Napoleon
Forced to His First Retreat--The Second Crossing of the
Danube--The Victory at Wagram--The Peace of Vienna--The
Divorce of Josephine and Marriage of Maria Louisa 57
CHAPTER IV
The Decline and Fall of Napoleon's Empire
The Causes of the Rise and Decline of Napoleon's Power--Aims
and Intrigues in Portugal and Spain--Spain's Brilliant
Victory and King Joseph's Flight--The Heroic Defence of
Saragossa--Wellington's Career in Portugal and Spain--The
Invasion of Russia by the Grand Army--Smolensk Captured
and in Flames--The Battle of Borodino--The Grand Army
in the Old Russian Capital--The Burning of the Great
City of Moscow--The Grand Army Begins its Retreat--The
Dreadful Crossing of the Beresina--Europe in Arms Against
Napoleon--The Battle of Dresden, Napoleon's Last Great
Victory--The Fatal Meeting of the Armies at Leipzig--The
Break-up of Napoleon's Empire--The War in France and the
Abdication of the Emperor--Napoleon Returns From Elba--The
Terrible Defeat at Waterloo--Napoleon Meets His Fate 83
CHAPTER V
Nelson and Wellington, the Champions of England
England and France on Land and Sea--Nelson Discovers the
French Fleet in Aboukir Bay--The Glorious Battle of the
Nile--The Fleet Sails for Copenhagen--The Danish Line
of Defence--The Attack on the Danish Fleet--How Nelson
Answered the Signal to Cease Action--Nelson in Chase of
the French Fleet--The Allied Fleet Leaves Cadiz--Off Cape
Trafalgar--The "Victory" and Her Brilliant Fight--The Great
Battle and its Sad Disaster--Victory for England and Death
for Her Famous Admiral--The British in Portugal--The Death
of Sir John Moore--The Gallant Crossing of the Douro--The
Victory at Talavera and the Victor's Reward--Wellington's
Impregnable Lines at Torres Vedras--The Siege and Capture
of the Portuguese Fortresses--Wellington Wins at Salamanca
and Enters Madrid--Vittoria and the Pyrenees--The Gathering
of the Forces at Brussels--The Battlefield of Waterloo--The
Desperate Charges of the French--Blücher's Prussians and
the Charge of Napoleon's Old Guard 101
CHAPTER VI
From the Napoleonic Wars to the Revolution 1830
A Quarter Century of Revolution--Europe After Napoleon's
Fall--The Work of the Congress--Italy, France and
Spain--The Rights of Man--The Holy Alliance--Revolution
in Spain and Naples--Metternich and His Congresses--How
Order Was Restored in Spain--The Revolution in Greece--The
Powers Come to the Rescue of Greece--The Spirit of
Revolution--Charles X. and His Attempt at Despotism--The
Revolution in Paris--Louis Phillippe Chosen as King--Effect
in Europe of the Revolution--The Belgian Uprising and
its Result--The Movements in Germany--The Condition of
Poland--The Revolt of the Poles--A Fatal Lack of Unity--The
Fate of Poland 116
CHAPTER VII
Bolivar, the Liberator of Spanish America
How Spain Treated Her Colonies--The Oppression of the
People--Bolivar the Revolutionary Leader--An Attempt
at Assassination--Bolivar Returns to Venezuela--The
Savage Cruelty of the Spaniards--The Methods of General
Morillo--Paez the Guerilla and His Exploits--British
Soldiers Join the Insurgents--Bolivar's Plan to Invade
New Granada--The Crossing of the Andes--The Terror of the
Mountains--Bolivar's Methods of Fighting--The Victory at
Boyaca--Bolivar and the Peruvians--The Freeing of the Other
Colonies 128
CHAPTER VIII
Great Britain as a World Empire
Napoleonic Wars' Influence--Great Awakening in Commerce--
Developments of the Arts--Growth of the Sciences--A Nation
Noted for Patriotism--National Pride--Conscious Strength--
Political Changes and Their Influence--Great Statesmen of
England 141
CHAPTER IX
The Great Reform Bill and the Corn Laws
Causes of Unrest--Demands of the People--The Struggle for
Reform in 1830--The Corn Laws--Free Trade in Great
Britain--Cobden the Apostle of Free Trade--Other Promoters
of Reform--England's Enlarged Commerce 147
CHAPTER X
Turkey the "Sick Man" of Europe
The Sultan's Empire in 1800--Revolts in Her
Dependencies--Greece Gains Her Freedom--The Sympathy of
the Christian World--Russian Threats--The Crimean War and
its Heroes--The War of 1877--The Armenian Massacres--The
Nations Warn off Russia--War in Crete and Greece in
1897--The Tottering Nation of to-day--The "Sick Man" 156
CHAPTER XI
The European Revolution of 1848
Corrupt Courts and Rulers--The Spirit of Liberty Among
the People--Bourbonism--Revolutionary Outbreak in
France--Spreads to Other Countries--The Struggle in
Italy--In Germany--The Revolt in Hungary--The Career of
Kossuth the Patriot, Statesman and Orator--His Visit
to America--Defeat of the Patriots by Austria and
Hungary--General Haynau the Cruel Tyrant--Later History of
Hungary 167
CHAPTER XII
Louis Napoleon and the Second French Empire
The Power of a Great Name--The French People Love the
Name Napoleon--Louis Napoleon's Personality--Elected
President--The Tricks of His Illustrious Ancestor
Imitated--Makes Himself Emperor--The War With
Austria--Sends an Army to Mexico--Attempt to Establish
an Empire in America--Maximilian Made Emperor in the New
World--His Sad Fate--War With Germany--Louis Napoleon
Dethroned 178
CHAPTER XIII
Garibaldi and the Unification of Italy
The Many Little States of Italy--Secret Movements for
Union--Mazzini the Revolutionist--Tyranny of Austria
and Naples--War in Sardinia--Victor Emanuel and Count
Cavour--Garibaldi in Arms--The French in Rome--Fall of the
Papal City--Rise of the New Italy--Naval War With Austria 194
CHAPTER XIV
Bismarck and the New Empire of Germany
The State of Prussia--Sudden Rise to Power--Bismarck Prime
Minister--War With Denmark--With Austria--With France--Metz
and Sedan--Von Moltke--The Fall of Paris--William I.
Crowned Emperor--United Germany--Bismarck and the Young
Kaiser--Peculiarities of William II.--Germany of To-Day 207
CHAPTER XV
Gladstone the Apostle of Liberalism in England
Sterling Character of the Man--His Steady Progress to
Power--Becomes Prime Minister--Home and Foreign Affairs
Under His Administration--His Long Contest With
Disraeli--Early Conservatism Later Liberalism--Home Rule
Champion--Result of Gladstone's Labors 243
CHAPTER XVI
Ireland the Downtrodden
Ancient Ireland--English Domination--Oppression--Patriotic
Struggles Against English Rule--Robert Emmet and
His Sad Fate--Daniel O'Connell--Grattan, Curran and
Other Patriots--The Fenians--Gladstone's Work for
Ireland--Parnell, the Irish Leader in Parliament--Ireland
of the Present 259
CHAPTER XVII
England and Her Indian Empire
Why England Went to India--Lord Clive and the East India
Company--Sir Arthur Wellesley--Trouble With the
Natives--Subjugation of Indian States--The Great
Mutiny--Havelock--Relief of Lucknow--Repulse From
Afghanistan--Conquest of Burmah--Queen Victoria Crowned
Empress of India--What English Rule Has Done for the
Orient--A Vast Country Teeming With Population--Its
Resources and Its Prospects 268
CHAPTER XVIII
Thiers, Gambetta and the Rise of the New French Republic
French Instability of Character--Modern Statesmen
of France--Thiers--MacMahon--Gambetta--The New
Republic--Leaders in Politics--Dangerous Powers of the
Army--Moral and Religious Decline--Law and Justice--The
Dreyfus Case as an Index to France's National Character and
the Perils Which Beset the Republic 277
CHAPTER XIX
Paul Kruger and South Africa
Review of the Boers--Their Establishment in Cape Colony--The
Rise and Progress of the Transvaal Republic--Diamond Mines
and Gold Discoveries--England's Aggressiveness--The Career
of Cecil Rhodes--Attempt to Overthrow the Republic--The
Zulus and Neighboring Peoples--The Uitlanders--Political
Struggle of England and Paul Kruger--Chamberlain's
Demands--The Boers' Firm Stand--War of 1899 295
CHAPTER XX
The Rise of Japan and the Decline of China
Former Cloud of Mystery Surrounding These Two Nations--Ancient
Civilizations--Closed Territory to the Outside World--Their
Ignorance of Other Nations--The Breaking Down of
the Walls in the Nineteenth Century--Japan's Sudden
Rise to Power--Aptness to Learn--The Yankees of the
East--Conditions of Conservatism Holds on in China--Li
Hung Chang Rises into Prominence--The Corean Trouble--War
Between China and Japan--The Battle of Yalu River--Admiral
Ito's Victory--Japanese Army Invades the Celestial
Empire--China Surrenders--European Nations Demand Open
Commerce--Threatened Partition 309
CHAPTER XXI
The Era of Colonies
Commerce the Promoter of Colonization--England's Wise
Policy--The Growth of Her Colonies Under Liberal
Treatment--India--Australia--Africa--Colonies of France
and Germany--Partition of Africa--Progress of Russia in
Asia--Aggressiveness of the Czar's Government--The United
States Becomes a Colonizing Power--The Colonial Powers and
Their Colonies at the Close of the Century 323
CHAPTER XXII
How the United States Entered the Century
A Newly Formed Country--Washington, the National Capital--Peace
With France--Nations of State Sovereignty--State
Legislatures and the National Congress--The Influence of
Washington--The Supreme Court and its Powers--Population
of Less Than Four Millions--No City of 50,000 Inhabitants
in America--Sparsely Settled Country--Savages--Trouble
With Algiers--War Declared by Tripoli--Thomas Jefferson
Elected President 343
CHAPTER XXIII
Expansion of the United States From Dwarf to Giant
Ohio Admitted in 1802--Louisiana Purchased From French
1803--Admission of the States--Florida Transferred to the
United States 1819--The First Railway in 1826--Indians
Cede Their Illinois Lands in 1830--Invention of Telegraph
1832--Fremont's Expeditions to the Pacific Slope--Conquest
of Mexico--Our Domain Established From Ocean to Ocean
1848--The Purchase of Alaska From Russia 1867--Rapid
Internal Growth--Cities Spring up on the Plains--A
Marvelous Era of Peace--Through the Spanish-American War
Comes the Acquisition of First Tropical Territory--From
East to West America's Domain Reaches Half-way Around the
World--Three Cities Each With Over 1,000,000 Inhabitants 351
CHAPTER XXIV
The Development of Democratic Institutions In America
Colonization and its Results--Religious Influences--Popular
Rights--Limitations--Colonial Legislatures--The Money
Question--Taxation--Confederation--The Franchise--Property
Qualifications--Growth of Western Ideas--Contrast Between
Institutions at the Beginning and Close of the Century 361
CHAPTER XXV
America's Answer to British Doctrine of Right of Search
Why the War of 1812 Was Fought--The Principles
Involved--Impressing American Sailors--Insults and
Outrages Resented--The "Chesapeake" and "Leopard"--Injury
to Commerce--Blockades--Embargo as Retaliation--Naval
Glory--Failure of Canadian Campaign--"Constitution" and
the "Guerriere"--The "Wasp" and the "Frolic"--Other
Sea Duels--Privateers--Perry's Great Victory--Land
Operations--The "Shannon" and the "Chesapeake"--Lundy's
Lane and Plattsburg--The Burning of Washington--Baltimore
Saved--Jackson's Victory at New Orleans--Treaty of Peace 369
CHAPTER XXVI
The United States Sustains Its Dignity Abroad
First Foreign Difficulty--The Barbary States--Buying
Peace--Uncle Sam Aroused--Thrashes the Algerian
Pirates--A Splendid Victory--King Bomba Brought to
Terms--Austria and the Koszta Case--Captain Ingraham--His
Bravery--"Deliver or I'll Sink You"--Austria Yields--The
Paraguayan Trouble--Lopez Comes to Terms--The Chilian
Imbroglio--Balmaceda--The Insult to the United
States--American Seamen Attacked--Matta's Impudent
Letter--Backdown--Peace--All's Well That Ends Well, Etc. 382
CHAPTER XXVII
Webster and Clay--The Preservation of the Union
The Great Questions in American Politics in the First Half
of the Century--The Great Orators to Which They Gave
Rise--Daniel Webster--Henry Clay--John C. Calhoun--Clay's
Compromise Measure on the Tariff Question--On Slavery
Extension--Webster and Calhoun and the Tariff
Question--Webster's Reply to Hayne--The Union Must and
Shall be Preserved 398
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Annexation of Texas and the War With Mexico
Texas as a Province of Mexico--Rebellion and War--The Alamo
Massacre--Rout of Mexicans at San Jacinto--Freedom
of Mexico--Annexation to the United States--The War
With Mexico--Taylor and Buena Vista--Scott and Vera
Cruz--Advance on and Capture of Mexico--Results of the War 413
CHAPTER XXIX
The Negro In America and the Slavery Conflict
The Negro in America--The First Cargo--Beginning of the Slave
Traffic--As a Laborer--Increase in Numbers--Slavery;
its Different Character in Different States--Political
Disturbances--Agitation and Agitators--John Brown--War and
How it Emancipated the Slave--The Free Negro--His Rapid
Progress 425
CHAPTER XXX
Abraham Lincoln and the Work of Emancipation
Lincoln's Increasing Fame--Comparison With Washington--The
Slave Auction at New Orleans--"If I Ever Get a Chance
to Hit Slavery, I Will Hit it Hard"--The Young
Politician--Elected Representative to Congress--His
Opposition to Slavery--His Famous Debates With Douglas--The
Cooper Institute Speech--The Campaign of 1860--The Surprise
of Lincoln's Nomination--His Triumphant Election--Threats
of Secession--Firing on Sumter--The Dark Days of the
War--The Emancipation Question--The Great Proclamation--End
of the War--The Great Tragedy--The Beauty and Greatness of
His Character 436
CHAPTER XXXI
Grant and Lee and The Civil War
Grant a Man for the Occasion--Lincoln's Opinion--"Wherever
Grant is Things Move"--"Unconditional Surrender"--"Not a
Retreating Man"--Lee a Man of Acknowledged Greatness--His
Devotion to Virginia--Great Influence--Simplicity of
Habits--Shares the Fare of His Soldiers--Lee's Superior
Skill--Gratitude and Affection of the South--Great
Influence in Restoring Good Feeling--The War--Secession
Not Exclusively a Southern Idea--An Irrepressible
Conflict--Coming Events--Lincoln--A Nation in Arms--
Sumter--Anderson--McClellan--Victory and Defeat--"Monitor"
and "Merrimac"--Antietam--Shiloh--Buell--Grant--George H.
Thomas--Rosecrans--Porter--Sherman--Sheridan--Lee--
Gettysburg--A Great Fight--Sherman's March--The
Confederates Weakening--More Victories--Appomattox--Lee's
Surrender--From War to Peace 449
CHAPTER XXXII
The Indian in the Nineteenth Century
Our Relations and Obligations to the Indian--Conflict
between Two Civilizations--Indian Bureau--Government
Policy--Treaties--Reservation Plan--Removals Under
It--Indian Wars--Plan of Concentration--Disturbance
and Fighting--Plan of Education and Absorption--Its
Commencement--Present Condition of Indians--Nature of
Education and Results--Land in Severalty Law--Missionary
Effort--Necessity and Duty of Absorption 468
CHAPTER XXXIII
The Development of the American Navy
The Origin of the American Navy--Sights on Guns and What They
Did--Opening Japan--Port Royal--Passing the Forts--The
"Monitor" and "Merrimac"--In Mobile Bay--The "Kearsarge"
and the "Alabama"--Naval Architecture Revolutionized--The
Samoan Hurricane--Building a New Navy--Great Ships of
the Spanish American War--The Modern Floating Iron
Fortresses--New "Alabama" and "Kearsarge" 482
CHAPTER XXXIV
America's Conflict With Spain
A War of Humanity--Bombardment of Matanzas--Dewey's Wonderful
Victory at Manila--Disaster to the "Winslow" at Cardenas
Bay--The First American Loss of Life--Bombardment of San
Juan, Porto Rico--The Elusive Spanish Fleet--Bottled-up in
Santiago Harbor--Lieutenant Hobson's Daring Exploit--Second
Bombardment of Santiago and Arrival of the Army--Gallant
Work of the Rough Riders and the Regulars--Battles of San
Juan and El Caney--Destruction of Cervera's Fleet--General
Shafter Reinforced in Front of Santiago--Surrender
of the City--General Miles in Porto Rico--An Easy
Conquest--Conquest of the Philippines--Peace Negotiations
and Signing of the Protocol--Its Terms--Members of the
National Peace Commission--Return of the Troops from Cuba
and Porto Rico--The Peace Commission in Paris--Conclusion
of its Work--Terms of the Treaty--Ratified by the Senate 496
CHAPTER XXXV
The Dominion of Canada
The Area and Population of Canada--Canada's Early
History--Upper and Lower Canada--The War of 1812--John
Strachan and the Family Compact--A Religious
Quarrel--French Supremacy in Lower Canada--The Revolt of
1837--Mackenzie's Rebellion--Growth of Population and
Industry--Organization of the Dominion of Canada--The
Riel Revolts--The Canadian Pacific Railway--The Fishery
Difficulties--The Fur-Seal Question--The Gold of
the Klondike--A Boundary Question--An International
Commission--The Questions at Issue--The Failure of
the Commission--Commerce of Canada with the United
States--Railway Progress in Canada--Manufacturing
Enterprise--Yield of Precious Metals--Extent and Resources
of the Dominion--The Character of the Canadian Population 509
CHAPTER XXXVI
Livingstone, Stanley, Peary, Nansen and other Great Discoverers and
Explorers
Ignorance of the Earth's Surface at the Beginning of
the Century--Notable Fields of Nineteenth Century
Travel--Famous African Travelers--Dr. Livingstone's
Missionary Labors--Discovery of Lake Ngami--Livingstone's
Journey from the Zambesi to the West Coast--The
Great Victoria Falls--First Crossing of the
Continent--Livingstone discovers Lake Nyassa--Stanley in
Search of Livingstone--Other African Travelers--Stanley's
Journeys--Stanley Rescues Emin Pasha--The Exploration
of the Arctic Zone--The Greely Party--The Fatal
"Jeanette" Expedition--Expeditions of Professor
Nordenskjöld--Peary Crosses North Greenland--Nansen and his
Enterprise--Andrée's Fatal Balloon Venture 523
CHAPTER XXXVII
Robert Fulton, George Stephenson, and the Triumphs of Invention
Anglo-Saxon Activity in Invention--James Watt and the
Steam Engine--Labor-Saving Machinery of the Eighteenth
Century--The Steamboat and the Locomotive--The First
Steamboat Trip up the Hudson--Development of Ocean
Steamers--George Stephenson and the Locomotive--First
American Railroads--Development of the Railroad--Great
Railroad Bridges--The Electric Steel Railway--The
Bicycle and the Automobile--Marvels in Iron and
Woodworking--Progress in Illumination and Heating--Howe and
the Sewing Machine--Vulcanization of Rubber--Morse and the
Telegraph--The Inventions of Edison--Marconi and Wireless
Telegraphy--Increase of Working Power of the Farmer--The
American Reapers and Mowers--Commerce of the United States 535
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The Evolution in Industry and the Revolt Against Capital
Mediæval Industry--Cause of Revolution in the Labor
System--Present Aspect of the Labor Question--The
Trade Union--The International Workingmen's
Association--The System of the Strike--Arbitration
and Profit Sharing--Experiments and Theories in
Economies--Co-operative Associations--The Theories
of Socialism and Anarchism--Secular Communistic
Experiments--Development of Socialism--Growth of the
Socialist Party--The Development of the Trust--An
Industrial Revolution 554
CHAPTER XXXIX
Charles Darwin and the Development of Science
Scientific Activity of the Nineteenth Century--Wallace's
"Wonderful Century"--Useful and Scientific Steps of
Progress--Foster's Views of Recent Progress--Discoveries
in Astronomy--The Spectroscope--The Advance of
Chemistry--Light and its Phenomena--Heat as a Mode of
Motion--Applications of Electricity--The Principles
of Magnetism--Progress in Geology--The Nebular and
Meteoric Hypotheses--Biological Sciences--Discoveries in
Physiology--Pasteur and His Discoveries--Koch and the
Comma Bacillus--The Science of Hygiene--Darwin and Natural
Selection 569
CHAPTER XL
Literature and Art in the Nineteenth Century
Literary Giants of Former Times--The Standing of the Fine Arts
in the Past and the Present--Early American Writers--The
Poets of the United States--American Novelists--American
Historians and Orators--The Poets of Great Britain--British
Novelists and Historians--Other British Writers--French
Novelists and Historians--German Poets and Novelists--The
Literature of Russia--The Authors of Sweden, Norway and
Denmark--Writers of Italy--Other Celebrated Authors--The
Novel and its Development--The Text-Book and Progress of
Education--Wide-spread use of Books and Newspapers 591
CHAPTER XLI
The American Church and the Spirit of Human Brotherhood
Division of Labor--American Type of Christianity--Distinguishing
Feature of American Life--The Sunday-school System--The Value
of Religion in Politics--Missionary Activity--New Religious
Movements--The Movement in Ethics--Child Labor in
Factories--Prevention of Cruelty to Animals--Prison
Reform--Public Executions--The Spirit of Sympathy--The Growth
of Charity--An Advanced Spirit of Benevolence 605
CHAPTER XLII
The Dawn of the Twentieth Century
The Century's Wonderful Stages--Progress in Education--The
Education of Women--Occupation and Suffrage
for Women--Peace Proposition of the Emperor of
Russia--The Peace Conference at The Hague--Progress in
Science--Political Evolution--Territorial Progress of the
Nations--Probable Future of English Speech--A Telephone
Newspaper--Among the Dull-Minded Peoples--Limitations to
Progress--Probable Lines of Future Activity--Industry in
the Twentieth Century--The King, the Priest and the Cash
Box--The New Psychology 617
LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Progress of the Nineteenth Century _Frontispiece_
Duke of Chartres at the Battle of Jemappes 21
Battle of Chateau-Gontier 22
Death of Marat 31
Last Victims of the Reign of Terror 32
Marie Antoinette Led to Execution 37
The Battle of Rivoli 38
Napoleon Crossing the Alps 47
Napoleon and the Mummy of Pharaoh 48
Napoleon Bonaparte 53
The Meeting of Two Sovereign 54
The Death of Admiral Nelson 59
Murat at the Battle of Jena 60
The Battle of Eylau 69
The Battle of Friedland 70
The Order to Charge at Friedland 79
Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia at Tilsit 80
Marshal Ney Retreating from Russia 89
General Blücher's Fall at Ligny 90
The Battle of Dresden, August 26 and 27, 1813 94
Famous English Novelists 95
The Eve of Waterloo 99
Wellington at Waterloo Giving the Word to Advance 100
Retreat of Napoleon from Waterloo 109
The Remnant of an Army 110
Illustrious Leaders of England's Navy and Army 119
James Watt, the Father of the Steam Engine 120
Great English Historians and Prose Writers 129
Famous Popes of the Century 130
Great English Statesmen (Plate I) 139
Britain's Sovereign and Heir Apparent to the Throne 140
Popular Writers of Fiction In England 149
Great English Statesmen (Plate II) 150
Potentates of the East 159
Landing in the Crimea and the Battle of Alma 160
The Congress at Berlin, June 13, 1878 169
The Wounding of General Bosquet 170
The Battle of Champigny 179
Noble Sons of Poland and Hungary 180
Noted French Authors 189
Napoleon III. at the Battle of Solferino 190
Great Italian Patriots 199
The Zouaves Charging the Barricades at Mentana 200
Noted German Emperors 209
Renowned Sons of Germany 210
The Storming of Garsbergschlosschen 219
Crown Prince Frederick at the Battle of Froschwiller 220
Present Kings of Four Countries 229
Great Men of Modern France 230
Russia's Royal Family and Her Literary Leader 257
Four Champions of Ireland's Cause 258
Dreyfus, His Accusers and Defenders 281
The Dreyfus Trial 282
The Bombardment of Alexandria 291
Battle Between England and the Zulus, South Africa 292
The Battle of Majuba Hill, South Africa 301
Two Opponents in the Transvaal War 302
Typical American Novelists 307
Two Powerful Men of the Orient 308
Four American Presidents 409
Great American Orators and Statesmen 410
The Battle of Resaca de la Palma 419
Great American Historians and Biographers 420
Great Men of the Civil War in America 445
The Attack on Fort Donelson 446
General Lee's Invasion of the North 455
The Sinking of the Alabama, etc. 456
The Surrender of General Lee 465
The Electoral Commission Which Decided Upon Election of
President Hayes 466
Prominent American Political Leaders 475
Noted American Journalists and Magazine Contributors 476
The U.S. Battleship "Oregon" 483
In the War-Room at Washington 484
Leading Commanders of the American Navy, Spanish-American War 487
Leading Commanders of the American Army 488
Prominent Spaniards in 1898 497
Popular Heroes of the Spanish-American War 498
The Surrender of Santiago 501
United States Peace Commissioners of the Spanish-American War 502
Illustrious Sons of Canada 521
Great Explorers in the Tropics and Arctics 522
Inventors of the Locomotive and the Electric Telegraph 539
Edison Perfecting the First Phonograph 540
The Hero of the Strike, Coal Creek, Tenn. 557
Arbitration 558
Illustrious Men of Science in the Nineteenth Century 575
Pasteur in His Laboratory 576
Great Poets of England 589
Great American Poets 590
Count Tolstoi at Literary Work 603
New Congressional Library at Washington, D. C. 604
Famous Cardinals of the Century 615
Noted Preachers and Writers of Religious Classics 616
Greater New York 629
Delegates to the Universal Peace Conference at The Hague, 1899 630
Key to above 631
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PORTRAITS
PAGE
Abbott, Lyman 476
Adams, John Quincy 409
Agassiz, Louis 575
Aguinaldo, Emilio 308
Albert Edward, (Prince of Wales) 140
Austin, Alfred 589
Balfour, A. J. 150
Bancroft, George 420
Barrie, James M. 149
Beecher, Henry Ward 410
Besant, Walter 149
Bismarck, Karl Otto Von 210
Black, William 149
Blaine, James G. 475
Blanco, Ramon 497
Bright, John 139
Browning, Robert 589
Bryan, William Jennings 475
Bryant, William Cullen 590
Bryce, James 150
Caine, T. Hall 149
Carlyle, Thomas 129
Cervera, (Admiral) 497
Chamberlain, Joseph 302
Christian IX, (King of Denmark) 229
Clay, Henry 410
Cleveland, Grover 475
Cooper, James Fenimore 307
Dana, Charles A. 476
Darwin, Charles 575
Davis, Cushman K. 502
Davis, Richard Harding 476
Davitt, Michael 258
Day, William R. 502
DeLesseps, Ferdinand 230
Depew, Chauncey M. 410
Dewey, George 487
Dickens, Charles 95
Disraeli, Benjamin 139
Dreyfus, (Captain), Alfred 281
Doyle, A. Conan 149
Drummond, Henry 616
Dumas, Alexander 189
DuMaurier, George 149
Eggleston, Edward 307
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 590
Esterhazy, Count Ferdinand W. 281
Everett, Edward 410
Farrar, Frederick W., (Canon) 616
Francis Joseph, (Emperor of Austria) 229
Froude, Richard H. 129
Frye, William P. 502
Gambetta, Leon 230
Garibaldi, Guiseppe 199
Gibbon, Edward 129
Gladstone, William Ewart 139
Gough, John B. 410
Grady, Henry W. 410
Grant, Ulysses S. 445
Gray, George 502
Greeley, Horace 476
Hale, Edward Everett 307
Halstead, Murat 476
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 307
Hawthorne, Julian 476
Healy, T. M. 258
Henry, Patrick 410
Henry, Lieutenant-Colonel 281
Hobson, Richmond Pearson 498
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 590
Howells, William Dean 307
Hugo, Victor 189
Humbert, (King of Italy) 229
Humboldt, F. H. Alexander von 575
Huxley, Thomas H. 575
Jackson, Andrew 409
Jefferson, Thomas 409
Kipling, Rudyard 149
Kosciusko, Thaddeus 180
Kossuth, Louis 180
Kruger, Paul 302
Labori, Maitre 281
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid 521
Lee, Robert E. 445
Lee, Fitzhugh 488
Leo XIII., (Pope) 130
Li Hung Chang 308
Lincoln, Abraham 445
Livingstone, David 522
Longfellow, Henry W. 590
Loubet (President of France) 230
Lowell, James Russell 590
Lytton, (Lord) Bulwer 95
McCarthy, Justin 150
Macaulay, Thomas B. 129
MacDonald, Sir John A. 521
MacDonald, George 149
McKinley, William 475
McMaster, John B. 420
Manning, Henry Edward (Cardinal) 615
Mercier, (General of French Army) 281
Merritt, Wesley 488
Miles, Nelson A. 488
Moltke, H. Karl B. von 210
Morley, John 150
Morse, Samuel F. B. 539
Motley, John L. 420
Nansen, (Dr.) Frithiof 522
Napoleon Bonaparte 53
Nelson, (Lord) Horatio 119
Newman, John Henry (Cardinal) 615
Nicholas II. and Family, (Czar of Russia) 257
O'Brien, William 258
Oscar II., (King of Sweden and Norway) 229
Otis, Elwell S. 498
Parnell, Charles Stewart 258
Parton, James 420
Pasteur, Louis, in his Laboratory 576
Peary, Lieutenant R. E. 522
Phillips, Wendell 410
Pitt, William, (Earl of Chatham) 139
Pius IX., (Pope) 130
Prescott, William H. 420
Reid, Whitelaw 476
Rios, Montero 497
Roosevelt, Theodore 498
Ruskin, John 129
Sagasta, Praxedes Mateo 497
Sampson, William T. 487
Schley, Winfield Scott 487
Scott, Sir Walter 95
Shafter, William R. 488
Shah of Persia 150
Shaw, Albert W. 476
Shelley, Percy B. 589
Sherman, William T. 445
Spurgeon, Charles H. 616
Stanley, Henry M. 522
Stephenson, George 539
Stevenson, Robert Louis 149
Sultan of Turkey 159
Taylor, Zachary 409
Tennyson, Alfred 589
Thackeray, William Makepeace 95
Thiers, Louis Adolphe 230
Thompson, Hon. J. S. D. 521
Tolstoi, Count Lyof Nikolaievitch 603
Trollope, Anthony 95
Tupper, Sir Charles 521
Victor Emmanuel (King of Italy) 199
Victoria (Queen of England) 140
Wallace, General Lew 307
Watson, John (Ian Maclaren) 616
Watson, John Crittenden 487
Watt, James 120
Watterson, Henry W. 476
Webster, Daniel 410
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, (Duke) 119
Wheeler, Joseph 498
Whittier, John G. 590
William I., Emperor of Germany 209
William II., Emperor of Germany 209
Wordsworth, William 589
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF CHARTRES AT THE BATTLE OF JEMAPPES--
(FROM THE ORIGINAL PAINTING BY A. LE DRES)
At Jemappes, in November, 1792, a battle was fought
between the French and Austrians. The Duke of Chartres
was Chief Lieutenant under General Dumouriez and
commanded the centre of attack. In 1830 the Duke was
made King of France, and on account of his peaceful
reign was known as the "Citizen's King." In 1848 he
abdicated the throne and soon after Napoleon III
became President of the new Republic.]
[Illustration: BATTLE OF CHATEAU-GONTIER
(REIGN OF TERROR, 1792)]
INTRODUCTION.
It is the story of a hundred years that we propose to give; the record
of the noblest and most marvelous century in the annals of mankind.
Standing here, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, as at the summit
of a lofty peak of time, we may gaze far backward over the road we have
traversed, losing sight of its minor incidents, but seeing its great
events loom up in startling prominence before our eyes; heedless of
its thronging millions, but proud of those mighty men who have made
the history of the age and rise like giants above the common throng.
History is made up of the deeds of great men and the movements of grand
events, and there is no better or clearer way to tell the marvelous
story of the Nineteenth Century than to put upon record the deeds of
its heroes and to describe the events and achievements in which reside
the true history of the age.
First of all, in this review, it is important to show in what the
greatness of the century consists, to contrast its beginning and
its ending, and point out the stages of the magnificent progress it
has made. It is one thing to declare that the Nineteenth has been
the greatest and most glorious of the centuries; it is another and
more arduous task to trace the development of this greatness and the
culmination of this career of glory. This it is that we shall endeavor
to do in the pages of this work. All of us have lived in the century
here described, many of us through a great part of it, some of us,
possibly, through the whole of it. It is in the fullest sense our own
century, one of which we have a just right to feel proud, and in whose
career all of us must take a deep and vital interest.
[=A Bird's-Eye View=]
Before entering upon the history of the age it is well to take a
bird's-eye view of it, and briefly present its claims to greatness.
They are many and mighty, and can only be glanced at in these
introductory pages; it would need volumes to show them in full. They
cover every field of human effort. They have to do with political
development, the relations of capital and labor, invention, science,
literature, production, commerce, and a dozen other life interests, all
of which will be considered in this work. The greatness of the world's
progress can be most clearly shown by pointing out the state of affairs
in the several branches of human effort at the opening and closing of
the century and placing them in sharp contrast. This it is proposed to
do in this introductory sketch.
[=Tyranny and Oppression in the Eighteenth Century=]
A hundred years ago the political aspect of the world was remarkably
different from what it is now. Kings, many of them, were tyrants;
peoples, as a rule, were slaves--in fact, if not in name. The absolute
government of the Middle Ages had been in a measure set aside, but
the throne had still immense power, and between the kings and the
nobles the people were crushed like grain between the upper and nether
millstones. Tyranny spread widely; oppression was rampant; poverty was
the common lot; comfort was confined to the rich; law was merciless;
punishment for trifling offences was swift and cruel; the broad
sentiment of human fellowship had just begun to develop; the sun of
civilization shone only on a narrow region of the earth, beyond which
barbarism and savagery prevailed.
In 1800, the government of the people had just fairly begun. Europe had
two small republics, Switzerland and the United Netherlands, and in the
West the republic of the United States was still in its feeble youth.
The so-called republic of France was virtually the kingdom of Napoleon,
the autocratic First Consul, and those which he had founded elsewhere
were the slaves of his imperious will. Government almost everywhere
was autocratic and arbitrary. In Great Britain, the freest of the
monarchies, the king's will could still set aside law and justice in
many instances and parliament represented only a tithe of the people.
Not only was universal suffrage unknown, but some of the greatest
cities of the kingdom had no voice in making the laws.
[=Government and the Rights of Man in 1900=]
In 1900, a century later, vast changes had taken place in the political
world. The republic of the United States had grown from a feeble infant
into a powerful giant, and its free system of government had spread
over the whole great continent of America. Every independent nation of
the West had become a republic and Canada still a British colony, was a
republic in almost everything but the name. In Europe, France was added
to the list of firmly-founded republics, and throughout that continent,
except in Russia and Turkey, the power of the monarchs had declined,
that of the people had advanced. In 1800, the kings almost everywhere
seemed firmly seated on their thrones. In 1900, the thrones everywhere
were shaking, and the whole moss-grown institution of kingship was
trembling over the rising earthquake of the popular will.
[=Suffrage and Human Freedom=]
The influence of the people in the government had made a marvelous
advance. The right of suffrage, greatly restricted in 1800, had
become universal in most of the civilized lands at the century's end.
Throughout the American continent every male citizen had the right of
voting. The same was the case in most of western Europe, and even in
far-off Japan, which a century before had been held under a seemingly
helpless tyranny. Human slavery, which held captive millions upon
millions of men and women in 1800, had vanished from the realms of
civilization in 1900, and a vigorous effort was being made to banish
it from every region of the earth. As will be seen from this hasty
retrospect, the rights of man had made a wonderful advance during the
century, far greater than in any other century of human history.
[=Criminal Law and Prison Discipline in 1800=]
In the feeling of human fellowship, the sentiment of sympathy and
benevolence, the growth of altruism, or love for mankind, there had
been an equal progress. At the beginning of the century law was stern,
justice severe, punishment frightfully cruel. Small offences met with
severe retribution. Men were hung for a dozen crimes which now call for
only a light punishment. Thefts which are now thought severely punished
by a year or two in prison then often led to the scaffold. Men are hung
now, in the most enlightened nations, only for murder. Then they were
hung for fifty crimes, some so slight as to seem petty. A father could
not steal a loaf of bread for his starving children except at peril of
a long term of imprisonment, or, possibly, of death on the scaffold.
And imprisonment then was a different affair from what it is now. The
prisons of that day were often horrible dens, noisome, filthy, swarming
with vermin, their best rooms unfit for human residence, their worst
dungeons a hell upon earth. This not only in the less advanced nations,
but even in enlightened England. Newgate Prison, in London, for
instance, was a sink of iniquity, its inmates given over to the cruel
hands of ruthless gaolers, forced to pay a high price for the least
privilege, and treated worse than brute cattle if destitute of money
and friends. And these were not alone felons who had broken some of the
many criminal laws, but men whose guilt was not yet proved, and poor
debtors whose only crime was their misfortune. And all this in England,
with its boast of high civilization. The people were not ignorant of
the condition of the prisons; Parliament was appealed to a dozen times
to remedy the horrors of the jails; yet many years passed before it
could be induced to act.
[=Prisons and Punishment in 1900=]
Compare this state of criminal law and prison discipline with that
of the present day. Then cruel punishments were inflicted for small
offences; now the lightest punishments compatible with the well-being
of the community are the rule. The sentiment of human compassion has
become strong and compelling; it is felt in the courts as well as among
the people; public opinion has grown powerful, and a punishment to-day
too severe for the crime would be visited with universal condemnation.
The treatment of felons has been remarkably ameliorated. The modern
prison is a palace as compared with that of a century ago. The terrible
jail fever which swept through the old-time prisons like a pestilence,
and was more fatal to their inmates than the gallows, has been stamped
out. The idea of sanitation has made its way into the cell and the
dungeon, cleanliness is enforced, the frightful crowding of the past is
not permitted, prisoners are given employment, they are not permitted
to infect one another with vice or disease, kindness instead of cruelty
is the rule, and in no direction has the world made a greater and more
radical advance.
[=The Factory System and the Oppression of the Workingman=]
A century ago labor was sadly oppressed. The factory system had
recently begun. The independent hand and home work of the earlier
centuries was being replaced by power and machine work. The
steam-engine and the labor-saving machine, while bringing blessings to
mankind, had brought curses also. Workmen were crowded into factories
and mines, and were poorly paid, ill-treated, ill-housed, over-worked.
Innocent little children were forced to perform hard labor when they
should have been at play or at school. The whole system was one of
white slavery of the most oppressive kind.
To-day this state of affairs no longer exists. Wages have risen, the
hours of labor have decreased, the comfort of the artisan has grown,
what were once luxuries beyond his reach have now become necessaries
of life. Young children are not permitted to work, and older ones not
beyond their strength. With the influences which have brought this
about we are not here concerned. Their consideration must be left to
a later chapter. It is enough here to state the important development
that has taken place.
Perhaps the greatest triumph of the nineteenth century has been in
the domain of invention. For ages past men have been aiding the work
of their hands with the work of their brains. But the progress of
invention continued slow and halting, and many tools centuries old were
in common use until the nineteenth century dawned. The steam-engine
came earlier, and it is this which has stimulated all the rest. A power
was given to man enormously greater than that of his hands, and he at
once began to devise means of applying it. Several of the important
machines used in manufacture were invented before 1800, but it was
after that year that the great era of invention began, and words are
hardly strong enough to express the marvelous progress which has since
taken place.
[=The Era of Wonderful Inventions=]
To attempt to name all the inventions of the nineteenth century would
be like writing a dictionary. Those of great importance might be named
by the hundreds; those which have proved epoch-making by the dozens. To
manufacture, to agriculture, to commerce, to all fields of human labor,
they extend, and their name is legion. Standing on the summit of this
century and looking backward, its beginning appears pitifully poor and
meager. Around us to-day are hundreds of busy workshops, filled with
machinery, pouring out finished products with extraordinary speed, men
no longer makers of goods, but waiters upon machines. In the fields the
grain is planted and harvested, the grass cut and gathered, the ground
ploughed and cultivated, everything done by machines. Looking back for
a century, what do we see? Men in the fields with the scythe and the
sickle, in the barn with the flail, working the ground with rude old
ploughs and harrows, doing a hundred things painfully by hand which now
they do easily and rapidly by machines. Verily the rate of progress on
the farm has been marvelous.
[=The Fate of the Horse and the Sail=]
The above are only a few of the directions of the century's progress.
In some we may name, the development has been more extraordinary
still. Let us consider the remarkable advance in methods of travel.
In the year 1800, as for hundreds and even thousands of years before,
the horse was the fastest means known of traveling by land, the
sail of traveling by sea. A hundred years more have passed over our
heads, and what do we behold? On all sides the powerful, and swift
locomotive, well named the iron-horse, rushes onward, bound for the
ends of the earth, hauling men and goods to right and left with a speed
and strength that would have seemed magical to our forefathers. On
the ocean the steam engine performs the same service, carrying great
ships across the Atlantic in less than a week, and laughing at the
puny efforts of the sail. The horse, for ages indispensable to man, is
threatened with banishment. Electric power has been added to that of
steam. The automobile carriage is coming to take the place of the horse
carriage. The steam plough is replacing the horse plough. The time
seems approaching when the horse will cease to be seen in our streets,
and may be relegated to the zoological garden.
In the conveyance of news the development is more like magic than fact.
A century ago news could not be transported faster than the horse could
run or the ship could sail. Now the words of men can be carried through
space faster than one can breathe. By the aid of the telephone a man
can speak to his friend a thousand miles away. And with the phonograph
we can, as it were, bottle up speech, to be spoken, if desired, a
thousand years in the future. Had we whispered those things to our
forefathers of a century past we should have been set down as wild
romancers or insane fools, but now they seem like every-day news.
These are by no means all the marvels of the century. At its beginning
the constitution of the atmosphere had been recently discovered. In
the preceding period it was merely known as a mysterious gas called
air. To-day we can carry this air about in buckets like so much water,
or freeze it into a solid like ice. In its gaseous state it has long
been used as the power to move ships and windmills. In its liquid state
it may also soon become a leading source of power, and in a measure
replace steam, the great power of the century before.
[=Education, Discovery and Commerce=]
In what else does the beginning of the twentieth stand far in advance
of that of the nineteenth century? We may contrast the tallow candle
with the electric light, the science of to-day with that of a century
ago, the methods and the extension of education and the dissemination
of books with those of the year 1800. Discovery and colonization of the
once unknown regions of the world have gone on with marvelous speed.
The progress in mining has been enormous, and the production of gold
in the nineteenth century perhaps surpasses that of all previous time.
Production of all kinds has enormously increased, and commerce now
extends to the utmost regions of the earth, bearing the productions of
all climes to the central seats of civilization, and supplying distant
and savage tribes with the products of the loom and the mine.
Such is a hasty review of the condition of affairs at the end of the
nineteenth century as compared with that existing at its beginning. No
effort has been made here to cover the entire field, but enough has
been said to show the greatness of the world's progress, and we may
fairly speak of this century as the Glorious Nineteenth.
[Illustration: DEATH OF MARAT
Never was there a more worthy act of murder than that
of the monster Marat, the most savage of the leaders
of the Reign of Terror, by the knife of the devoted
maiden, Charlotte Corday. She boldly avowed her guilt
and its purpose, and suffered death by the guillotine,
July 17, 1793.]
[Illustration: THE LAST VICTIMS OF THE REIGN OF TERROR--
(FROM THE PAINTING BY MULLER)]
CHAPTER I.
The Threshold of the Century.
[=The Age we Live in and its Great Events=]
After its long career of triumph and disaster, glory and shame, the
world stands to-day at the end of an old and the beginning of a new
century, looking forward with hope and backward with pride, for it has
just completed the most wonderful hundred years it has ever known, and
has laid a noble foundation for the twentieth century, now at its dawn.
There can be no more fitting time than this to review the marvelous
progress of the closing century, through a portion of which all of
us have lived, many of us through a great portion of it. Some of the
greatest of its events have taken place before our own eyes; in some of
them many now living have borne a part; to picture them again to our
mental vision cannot fail to be of interest and profit to us all.
[=True History and the Things which Make it=]
When, after a weary climb, we find ourselves on the summit of a lofty
mountain, and look back from that commanding altitude over the ground
we have traversed, what is it that we behold? The minor details of the
scenery, many of which seemed large and important to us as we passed,
are now lost to view, and we see only the great and imposing features
of the landscape, the high elevations, the town-studded valleys, the
deep and winding streams, the broad forests. It is the same when,
from the summit of an age, we gaze backward over the plain of time.
The myriad of petty happenings are lost to sight, and we see only the
striking events, the critical epochs, the mighty crises through which
the world has passed. These are the things that make true history, not
the daily doings in the king's palace or the peasant's hut. What we
should seek to observe and store up in our memories are the turning
points in human events, the great thoughts which have ripened into
noble deeds, the hands of might which have pushed the world forward
in its career; not the trifling occurrences which signify nothing,
the passing actions which have borne no fruit in human affairs. It is
with such turning points, such critical periods in the history of the
nineteenth century, that this work proposes to deal; not to picture the
passing bubbles on the stream of time, but to point out the great ships
which have sailed up that stream laden deep with a noble freight.
This is history in its deepest and best aspect, and we have set our
camera to photograph only the men who have made and the events which
constitute this true history of the nineteenth century.
[=Two of the World's Greatest Events=]
On the threshold of the century with which we have to deal two grand
events stand forth; two of those masterpieces of political evolution
which mold the world and fashion the destiny of mankind. These are,
in the Eastern hemisphere, the French Revolution; in the Western
hemisphere, the American Revolution and the founding of the republic
of the United States. In the whole history of the world there are no
events that surpass these in importance, and they may fitly be dwelt
upon as main foundation stones in the structure we are seeking to
build. The French Revolution shaped the history of Europe for nearly a
quarter century after 1800. The American Revolution shaped the history
of America for a still longer period, and is now beginning to shape
the history of the world. It is important therefore that we dwell on
those two events sufficiently to show the part they have played in the
history of the age. Here, however, we shall confine our attention to
the Revolution in France. That in America must be left to the American
section of our work.
[=The Feudal System and Its Abuses=]
The Mediæval Age was the age of Feudalism, that remarkable system of
government based on military organization which held western Europe
captive for centuries. The State was an army, the nobility its captains
and generals, the king its commander-in-chief, the people its rank and
file. As for the horde of laborers, they were hardly considered at all.
They were the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the armed and
fighting class, a base, down-trodden, enslaved multitude, destitute of
rights and privileges, their only mission in the world to provide food
for and pay taxes to their masters, and often doomed to starve in the
midst of the food which their labor produced.
France, the country in which the Feudal system had its birth, was
the country in which it had the longest lease of life. It came down
to the verge of the nineteenth century with little relief from its
terrible exactions. We see before us in that country the spectacle of a
people steeped in misery, crushed by tyranny, robbed of all political
rights, and without a voice to make their sufferings known; and of an
aristocracy lapped in luxury, proud, vain, insolent, lavish with the
people's money, ruthless with the people's blood, and blind to the
spectre of retribution which rose higher year by year before their eyes.
One or two statements must suffice to show the frightful injustice that
prevailed. The nobility and the Church, those who held the bulk of
the wealth of the community, were relieved of all taxation, the whole
burden of which fell upon the mercantile and laboring classes--an
unfair exaction that threatened to crush industry out of existence. And
to picture the condition of the peasantry, the tyranny of the feudal
customs, it will serve to repeat the oft-told tale of the peasants who,
after their day's hard labor in the fields, were forced to beat the
ponds all night long in order to silence the croaking of the frogs that
disturbed some noble lady's slumbers. Nothing need be added to these
two instances to show the oppression under which the people of France
lay during the long era of Feudalism.
[=The Climax of Feudalism in France=]
This era of injustice and oppression reached its climax in the closing
years of the eighteenth century, and went down at length in that
hideous nightmare of blood and terror known as the French Revolution.
Frightful as this was, it was unavoidable. The pride and privilege of
the aristocracy had the people by the throat, and only the sword or
the guillotine could loosen their hold. In this terrible instance the
guillotine did the work.
It was the need of money for the spendthrift throne that precipitated
the Revolution. For years the indignation of the people had been
growing and spreading; for years the authors of the nation had been
adding fuel to the flame. The voices of Voltaire, Rousseau and a dozen
others had been heard in advocacy of the rights of man, and the people
were growing daily more restive under their load. But still the lavish
waste of money wrung from the hunger and sweat of the people went on,
until the king and his advisers found their coffers empty and were
without hope of filling them without a direct appeal to the nation at
large.
[=The States General is Convened=]
It was in 1788 that the fatal step was taken. Louis XVI, King of
France, called a session of the States General, the Parliament of the
kingdom, which had not met for more than a hundred years. This body
was composed of three classes, the representatives of the nobility, of
the church, and of the people. In all earlier instances they had been
docile to the mandate of the throne, and the monarch, blind to the
signs of the times, had no thought but that this assembly would vote
him the money he asked for, fix by law a system of taxation for his
future supply, and dissolve at his command.
He was ignorant of the temper of the people. They had been given a
voice at last, and were sure to take the opportunity to speak their
mind. Their representatives, known as the Third Estate, were made
up of bold, earnest, indignant men, who asked for bread and were
not to be put off with a crust. They were twice as numerous as the
representatives of the nobles and the clergy, and thus held control
of the situation. They were ready to support the throne, but refused
to vote a penny until the crying evils of the State were reformed.
They broke loose from the other two Estates, established a separate
parliament under the name of the National Assembly, and begun that
career of revolution which did not cease until it had brought monarchy
to an end in France and set all Europe aflame.
[=The Fall of the Bastille=]
The court sought to temporize with the engine of destruction which it
had called into existence, prevaricated, played fast and loose, and
with every false move riveted the fetters of revolution more tightly
round its neck. In July, 1789, the people of Paris took a hand in the
game. They rose and destroyed the Bastille, that grim and terrible
State prison into which so many of the best and noblest of France had
been cast at the pleasure of the monarch and his ministers, and which
the people looked upon as the central fortress of their oppression and
woe.
With the fall of the Bastille discord everywhere broke loose, the
spirit of the Revolution spread from Paris through all France, and the
popular Assembly, now the sole law-making body of the State, repealed
the oppressive laws of which the people complained, and with a word
overturned abuses many of which were a thousand years old. It took
from the nobles their titles and privileges, and reduced them to the
rank of simple citizens. It confiscated the vast landed estates of the
church, which embraced nearly one-third of France. It abolished the
tithes and the unequal taxes, which had made the clergy and nobles rich
and the people poor. At a later date, in the madness of reaction, it
enthroned the Goddess of Reason and sought to abolish religion and all
the time-honored institutions of the past.
The Revolution grew, month by month and day by day. New and more
radical laws were passed; moss-grown abuses were swept away in an
hour's sitting; the king, who sought to escape, was seized and held as
a hostage; and war was boldly declared against Austria and Prussia,
which showed a disposition to interfere. In November, 1792, the
French army gained a brilliant victory at Jemmapes, in Belgium, which
eventually led to the conquest of that kingdom by France. It was the
first important event in the career of victory which in the coming
years was to make France glorious in the annals of war.
[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE LED TO EXECUTION
The hapless wife of Louis XVI, of France, imprisoned
during the Revolution in the prisons of the Temple and
Conciergerie, separated from her family and friends,
and treated to great indignities, died at length under
the knife of the guillotine, October 16, 1793.]
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF RIVOLI
Rivoli is a village of Venetia, Italy, on the western
bank of the Adige; population, about 1,000. On January
14 and 15, 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte here, in his first
campaign as commander-in-chief, gained a great victory
over the Austrians commanded by Alvinczy, who lost
20,000 prisoners.]
[=King and Queen Under the Guillotine=]
The hostility of the surrounding nations added to the revolutionary
fury in France. Armies were marching to the rescue of the king, and
the unfortunate monarch was seized, reviled and insulted by the mob,
and incarcerated in the prison called the Temple. The queen, Marie
Antoinette, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, was likewise haled from
the palace to the prison. In the following year, 1793, king and queen
alike were taken to the guillotine and their royal heads fell into
the fatal basket. The Revolution was consummated, the monarchy was at
an end, France had fallen into the hands of the people, and from them
it descended into the hands of a ruthless and blood-thirsty mob.
[=The Reign of Terror=]
At the head of this mob of revolutionists stood three men, Danton,
Marat, and Robespierre, the triumvirate of the Reign of Terror, under
which all safety ceased in France, and all those against whom the
least breath of suspicion arose were crowded into prison, from which
hosts of them made their way to the dreadful knife of the guillotine.
Multitudes of the rich and noble had fled from France, among them
Lafayette, the friend and aid of Washington in the American Revolution,
and Talleyrand, the acute statesman who was to play a prominent part in
later French history.
Marat, the most savage of the triumvirate, was slain in July, 1793,
by the knife of Charlotte Corday, a young woman of pious training,
who offered herself as the instrument of God for the removal of this
infamous monster. His death rather added to than stayed the tide of
blood, and in April, 1794, Danton, who sought to check its flow, fell
a victim to his ferocious associate. But the Reign of Terror was
nearing its end. In July the Assembly awoke from its stupor of fear,
Robespierre was denounced, seized, and executed, and the frightful
carnival of bloodshed came to an end. The work of the National Assembly
had been fully consummated; Feudalism was at an end, monarchy in France
had ceased, and a republic had taken its place, and a new era for
Europe had dawned.
[=The Wars of the French Revolution=]
Meanwhile a foreign war was being waged. England had formed a coalition
with most of the nations of Europe, and France was threatened by land
with the troops of Holland, Prussia, Austria, Spain and Portugal,
and by sea with the fleet of Great Britain. The incompetency of her
assailants saved her from destruction. Her generals who lost battles
were sent to prison or to the guillotine, the whole country rose as one
man in defence, and a number of brilliant victories drove her enemies
from her borders and gave the armies of France a position beyond the
Rhine.
These wars soon brought a great man to the front, Napoleon Bonaparte,
a son of Corsica, with whose nineteenth century career we shall deal
at length in the following chapters, but of whose earlier exploits
something must be said here. His career fairly began in 1794, when,
under the orders of the National Convention--the successor of the
National Assembly--he quelled the mob in the streets of Paris with
loaded cannon and put a final end to the Terror which had so long
prevailed.
Placed at the head of the French army in Italy, he quickly astonished
the world by a series of the most brilliant victories, defeating the
Austrians and the Sardinians wherever he met them, seizing Venice, the
city of the lagoon, and forcing almost all Italy to submit to his arms.
A republic was established here and a new one in Switzerland, while
Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine were held by France.
[=Napoleon in Italy and Egypt.=]
His wars here at an end, Napoleon's ambition led him to Egypt,
inspired by great designs which he failed to realize. In his absence
anarchy arose in France. The five Directors, then at the head of the
Government, had lost all authority, and Napoleon, who had unexpectedly
returned, did not hesitate to overthrow them and the Assembly which
supported them. A new government, with three Consuls at its head, was
formed, Napoleon as First Consul holding almost royal power. Thus
France stood in 1800, at the end of the Eighteenth Century.
[=England as a Centre of Industry and Commerce.=]
In the remainder of Europe there was nothing to compare with the
momentous convulsion which had taken place in France. England had gone
through its two revolutions more than a century before, and its people
were the freest of any in Europe. Recently it had lost its colonies
in America, but it still held in that continent the broad domain of
Canada, and was building for itself a new empire in India, while
founding colonies in twenty other lands. In commerce and manufactures
it entered the nineteenth century as the greatest nation on the earth.
The hammer and the loom resounded from end to end of the island, mighty
centres of industry arose where cattle had grazed a century before,
coal and iron were being torn in great quantities from the depths of
the earth, and there seemed everywhere an endless bustle and whirr.
The ships of England haunted all seas and visited the most remote
ports, laden with the products of her workshops and bringing back raw
material for her factories and looms. Wealth accumulated, London became
the money market of the world, the riches and prosperity of the island
kingdom were growing to be a parable among the nations of the earth.
On the continent of Europe, Prussia, which has now grown so great,
had recently emerged from its mediæval feebleness, mainly under the
powerful hand of Frederick the Great, whose reign extended until 1786,
and whose ambition, daring, and military genius made him a fitting
predecessor of Napoleon the Great, who so soon succeeded him in the
annals of war. Unscrupulous in his aims, this warrior king had torn
Silesia from Austria, added to his kingdom a portion of unfortunate
Poland, annexed the principality of East Friesland, and lifted Prussia
into a leading position among the European states.
[=The Condition of the German States=]
Germany, now--with the exception of Austria--a compact empire, was
then a series of disconnected states, variously known as kingdoms,
principalities, margravates, electorates, and by other titles, the
whole forming the so-called Holy Empire, though it was "neither
holy nor an empire." It had drifted down in this fashion from the
Middle Ages, and the work of consolidation had but just begun, in the
conquests of Frederick the Great. A host of petty potentates ruled the
land, whose states, aside from Prussia and Austria, were too weak to
have a voice in the councils of Europe. Joseph II., the titular emperor
of Germany, made an earnest and vigorous effort to combine its elements
into a powerful unit; but he signally failed, and died in 1790, a
disappointed and embittered man.
Austria, then far the most powerful of the German states, was from 1740
to 1780 under the reign of a woman, Maria Theresa, who struggled in
vain against her ambitious neighbor, Frederick the Great, his kingdom
being extended ruthlessly at the expense of her imperial dominions.
Austria remained a great country, however, including Bohemia and
Hungary among its domains. It was lord of Lombardy and Venice in Italy,
and was destined to play an important but unfortunate part in the
coming Napoleonic wars.
[=Dissension in Italy and Decay in Spain=]
The peninsula of Italy, the central seat of the great Roman Empire,
was, at the opening of the nineteenth century, as sadly broken up
as Germany, a dozen weak states taking the place of the one strong
one that the good of the people demanded. The independent cities of
the mediæval period no longer held sway, and we hear no more of wars
between Florence, Genoa, Milan, Pisa and Rome; but the country was
still made up of minor states--Lombardy, Venice and Sardinia in the
north, Naples in the south, Rome in the centre, and various smaller
kingdoms and dukedoms between. The peninsula was a prey to turmoil and
dissension. Germany and France had made it their fighting ground for
centuries, Spain had filled the south with her armies, and the country
had been miserably torn and rent by these frequent wars and those
between state and state, and was in a condition to welcome the coming
of Napoleon, whose strong hand for the time promised the blessing of
peace and union.
Spain, not many centuries before the greatest nation in Europe, and,
as such, the greatest nation on the globe, had miserably declined in
power and place at the opening of the nineteenth century. Under the
emperor Charles I. it had been united with Germany, while its colonies
embraced two-thirds of the great continent of America. Under Philip
II. it continued powerful in Europe, but with his death its decay set
in. Intolerance checked its growth in civilization, the gold brought
from America was swept away by more enterprising states, its strength
was sapped by a succession of feeble monarchs, and from first place it
fell into a low rank among the nations of Europe. It still held its
vast colonial area, but this proved a source of weakness rather than
of strength, and the people of the colonies, exasperated by injustice
and oppression, were ready for the general revolt which was soon to
take place. Spain presented the aspect of a great nation ruined by its
innate vices, impoverished by official venality and the decline of
industry, and fallen into the dry rot of advancing decay.
[=The Partition of Poland by the Robber Nations.=]
Of the nations of Europe which had once played a prominent part, one
was on the point of being swept from the map. The name of Poland, which
formerly stood for a great power, now stands only for a great crime.
The misrule of the kings, the turbulence of the nobility, and the
enslavement of the people had brought that state into such a condition
of decay that it lay like a rotten log amid the powers of Europe.
The ambitious nations surrounding--Russia, Austria, and Prussia--took
advantage of its weakness, and in 1772 each of them seized the portion
of Poland that bordered on its own territories. In the remainder of
the kingdom the influence of Russia grew so great that the Russian
ambassador at Warsaw became the real ruler in Poland. A struggle
against Russia began in 1792, Kosciusko, a brave soldier who had fought
under Washington in America, being at the head of the patriots. But
the weakness of the king tied the hands of the soldiers, the Polish
patriots left their native land in despair, and in the following year
Prussia and Russia made a further division of the state, Russia seizing
a broad territory with more than 3,000,000 inhabitants.
In 1794 a new outbreak began. The patriots returned and a desperate
struggle took place. But Poland was doomed. Suvoroff, the greatest of
the Russian generals, swept the land with fire and sword. Kosciusko
fell wounded, crying, "Poland's end has come," and Warsaw was taken and
desolated by its assailants. The patriot was right; the end had come.
What remained of Poland was divided up between Austria, Prussia, and
Russia, and only a name remained.
[=Russia and Turkey.=]
There are two others of the powers of Europe of which we must speak,
Russia and Turkey. Until the seventeenth century Russia had been a
domain of barbarians, weak and disunited, and for a long period the
vassal of the savage Mongol conquerors of Asia. Under Peter the Great
(1689-1725) it rose into power and prominence, took its place among
civilized states, and began that career of conquest and expansion which
is still going on. At the end of the eighteenth century it was under
the rule of Catharine II., often miscalled Catharine the Great, who
died in 1796, just as Napoleon was beginning his career. Her greatness
lay in the ability of her generals, who defeated Turkey and conquered
the Crimea, and who added the greater part of Poland to her empire.
Her strength of mind and decision of character were not shared by her
successor, Paul I., and Russia entered the nineteenth century under the
weakest sovereign of the Romanoff line.
Turkey, once the terror of Europe, and sending its armies into the
heart of Austria, was now confined within the boundaries it had long
before won, and had begun its long struggle for existence with its
powerful neighbor, Russia. At the beginning of the nineteenth century
it was still a powerful state, with a wide domain in Europe, and
continued to defy the Christians who coveted its territory and sought
its overthrow. But the canker-worm of a weak and barbarous government
was at its heart, while its cruel treatment of its Christian subjects
exasperated the strong powers of Europe and invited their armed
interference.
As regards the world outside of Europe and America, no part of it had
yet entered the circle of modern civilization. Africa was an almost
unknown continent; Asia was little better known; and the islands of
the Eastern seas were still in process of discovery. Japan, which was
approaching its period of manumission from barbarism, was still closed
to the world, and China lay like a huge and helpless bulk, fast in the
fetters of conservatism and blind self-sufficiency.