Queen of Castile; Ferdinand was governor of that kingdom in her name,
but his regency was not accepted without demur. To secure his brief
authority he made alliance with Louis, including a marriage contract
with Louis' niece, Germaine de Ford. Six weeks after the wedding, the
Archduke Philip landed in Spain. Ferdinand's action had ruined his
popularity, and he saw security only in a compact assuring Philip the
complete sovereignty--Joanna being insane.
Philip's rule was very unpopular and very brief. A sudden illness, in
which for once poison was not suspected of playing a part, carried him
off. Ferdinand, absent at the time in Italy, was restored to the regency
of Castile, which he held undisputed--except for futile claims of the
Emperor Maximilian--for the rest of his life.
The years of Ferdinand's sole rule displayed his worst characteristics,
which had been restrained during his noble consort's life. He was
involved in the utterly unscrupulous and immoral wars issuing out of the
League of Cambray for the partition of Venice. The suspicion and
ingratitude with which he treated Gonsalvo de Cordova drove the Great
Captain into a privacy not less honourable than his glorious public
career. Within a twelvemonth of Gonsalvo's death, Ferdinand followed him
to the grave in January 1516--lamented in Aragon, but not in Castile.
During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the overgrown powers and
factious spirit of the nobility had been restrained. That genuine piety
of the queen which had won for the monarchs the title of "The Catholic"
had not prevented them from firmly resisting the encroachments of
ecclesiastical authority. The condition of the commons had been greatly
advanced, but political power had been concentrated in the crown, and
the crowns of Castile and Aragon were permanently united on the
accession of Charles--afterwards Charles V.--to both the thrones.
Under these great rulers we have beheld Spain emerging from chaos into a
new existence; unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to
her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her
resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial
enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of the feudal age
in the requirements of an intellectual and moral culture. We have seen
her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a
very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory both
in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the
discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters.
* * * * *
VOLTAIRE
History of Charles XII
Voltaire's "History of Charles XII." was his earliest notable
essay in history, written during his sojourn in England in
1726-9, when he was acquiring the materials for his "Letters
on the English," eleven years after the death of the Swedish
monarch. The prince who "left a name at which the world grew
pale, to point a moral and adorn a tale," was killed by a
cannon-ball when thirty-six years old, after a career
extraordinarily brilliant, extraordinarily disastrous, and in
result extraordinarily ineffective. A tremendous contrast to
the career, equally unique, of his great antagonist, Peter the
Great of Russia, whose history Voltaire wrote thirty years
later (see _ante_). Naturally the two works in a marked degree
illustrate each other. In both cases Voltaire claims to have
had first-hand information from the principal actors in the
drama.
_I.--The Meteor Blazes_
The house of Vasa was established on the throne of Sweden in the first
half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, Christina,
daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated in favour of her
cousin, who ascended the throne as Charles X. He and his vigorous son,
Charles XI., established a powerful absolute monarchy. To the latter was
born, on June 27, 1682, the infant who became Charles XII.--perhaps the
most extraordinary man who ever lived, who in his own person united all
the great qualities of his ancestors, whose one defect and one
misfortune was that he possessed all those qualities in excess.
In childhood he developed exceptional physical powers, and remarkable
linguistic facility. He succeeded to the throne at the age of fifteen,
in 1697. Within the year he declared himself of age, and asserted his
position as king; and the neighbouring powers at once resolved to take
advantage of the Swedish monarch's youth--the kings Christian of
Denmark, Augustus of Saxony and Poland, and the very remarkable Tsar
Peter the Great of Russia. Among them, the three proposed to appropriate
all the then Swedish territories on the Russian and Polish side of the
Gulf of Finland and the Baltic.
Danes and Saxons, joined by the forces of other German principalities,
were already attacking Holstein, whose duke was Charles's cousin; the
Saxons, too, were pouring into Livonia. On May 8, 1700, Charles sailed
from Stockholm with 8,000 men to the succour of Holstein, which he
effected with complete and immediate success by swooping on Copenhagen.
On August 6, Denmark concluded a treaty, withdrawing her claims in
Holstein and paying the duke an indemnity. Three months later, the Tsar,
who was besieging Narva, in Ingria, with 80,000 Muscovites, learnt that
Charles had landed, and was advancing with 20,000 Swedes. Another 30,000
were being hurried up by the Tsar when Charles, with only 8,000 men,
came in contact with 25,000 Russians at Revel. In two days he had swept
them before him, and with his 8,000 men fell upon the Russian force of
ten times that number in its entrenchments at Narva. Prodigies of valour
were performed, the Muscovites were totally routed. Peter, with 40,000
reinforcements, had no inclination to renew battle, but he very promptly
made up his mind that his armies must be taught how to fight. They
should learn from the victorious Swedes how to conquer the Swedes.
With the spring, Charles fell upon the Saxon forces in Livonia, before a
fresh league between Augustus and Peter had had time to develop
advantageously. After one decisive victory, the Duchy of Courland made
submission, and he marched into Lithuania. In Poland, neither the war
nor the rule of Augustus was popular, and in the divided state of the
country Charles advanced triumphantly. A Polish diet was summoned, and
Charles awaited events; he was at war, he said, not with Poland, but
with Augustus. He had, in fact, resolved to dethrone the King of Poland
by the instrumentality of the Poles themselves--a process made the
easier by the normal antagonism between the diet and the king, an
elective, not a hereditary ruler.
Augustus endeavoured, quite fruitlessly, to negotiate with Charles on
his own account, while the diet was much more zealous to curtail his
powers than to resist the Swedish monarch, and was determined that, at
any price, the Saxon troops should leave Poland. Intrigues were going on
on all sides. Presently Charles set his forces in motion. When Augustus
learned that there was to be no peace till Poland had a new king, he
resolved to fight. Charles's star did not desert him. He won a complete
victory. Pressing in pursuit of Augustus, he captured Cracow, but his
advance was delayed for some weeks by a broken leg; and in the interval
there was a considerable rally to the support of Augustus. But the
moment Charles could again move, he routed the enemy at Pultusk. The
terror of his invincibility was universal. Success followed upon
success. The anti-Saxon party in the diet succeeded in declaring the
throne vacant. Charles might certainly have claimed the crown for
himself, but chose instead to maintain the title of the Sobieski
princes. The kidnapping of James Sobieski, however, caused Charles to
insist on the election of Stanislaus Lekzinsky.
_II.--From Triumph to Disaster_
Charles left Warsaw to complete the subjugation of Poland, leaving the
new king in the capital. Stanislaus and his court were put to sudden
flight by the appearance of Augustus with 20,000 men. Warsaw fell at
once; but when Charles turned on the Saxon army, only the wonderful
skill of Schulembourg saved it from destruction. Augustus withdrew to
Saxony, and began repairing the fortifications of Dresden.
By this time, wherever the Swedes appeared, they were confident of
victory if they were but twenty to a hundred. Charles had made nothing
for himself out of his victories, but all his enemies were
scattered--except Peter, who had been sedulously training his people in
the military arts. On August 21, 1704, Peter captured Narva. Now he made
a new alliance with Augustus. Seventy thousand Russians were soon
ravaging Polish territory. Within two months, Charles and Stanislaus had
cut them up in detail, or driven them over the border. Schulembourg
crossed the Oder, but his battalions were shattered at Frawenstad by
Reuschild. On September 1, 1706, Charles himself was invading Saxony.
The invading troops were held under an iron discipline; no violence was
permitted. In effect, Augustus had lost both his kingdom and his
electorate. His prayers for peace were met by the demand for formal and
permanent resignation of the Polish crown, repudiation of the treaties
with Russia, restoration of the Sobieskies, and the surrender of Patkul,
a Livonian "rebel" who was now Tsar Peter's plenipotentiary at Dresden.
Augustus accepted, at Altranstad, the terms offered by Charles. Patkul
was broken on the wheel; Peter determined on vengeance; again the
Russians overran Lithuania, but retired before Stanislaus.
In September 1707, Charles left Saxony at the head of 43,000 men,
enriched with the spoils of Poland and Saxony. Another 20,000 met him in
Poland; 15,000 more were ready in Finland. He had no doubts of his power
to dethrone the Tsar. In January 1708 he was on the march for Grodow.
Peter retreated before him, and in June was entrenched beyond the
Beresina. Driven thence by a flank movement, the Russians engaged
Charles at Hollosin, where he gained one of his most brilliant
victories. Retreat and pursuit continued towards Moscow.
Charles now pushed on towards the Ukraine, where he was secretly in
treaty with the governor, Mazeppa. But when he reached the Ukraine,
Mazeppa joined him not as an ally, but as a fugitive. Meanwhile,
Lewenhaupt, marching to effect a junction with him, was intercepted by
Peter with thrice his force, and finally cut his way through to Charles
with only 5,000 men.
So severe was the winter that both Peter and Charles, contrary to their
custom, agreed to a suspension of arms. Isolated as he was, towards the
end of May, Charles laid siege to Pultawa, the capture of which would
have opened the way to Moscow. Thither Peter marched against him, while
Charles himself was unable to move owing to a serious wound in the foot,
endured with heroic fortitude. On July 8, the decisive battle was
fought. The victory lay with the Russians, and Charles was forced to fly
for his life. His best officers were prisoners. A column under
Lewenhaupt succeeded in joining the king, now prostrated by his wound
and by fever. At the Dnieper, Charles was carried over in a boat; the
force, overtaken by the Russians, was compelled to capitulate. Peter
treated the captured Swedish generals with distinction. Charles himself
escaped to Bender, in Turkey.
Virtually a captive in the Turkish dominions, Charles conceived the
project of persuading the sultan to attack Russia. At the outset, the
grand vizier, Chourlouly Ali, favoured his ideas; but Peter, by lavish
and judicious bribery, soon won him over. The grand vizier, however, was
overthrown by a palace intrigue, and was replaced by an incorruptible
successor, Numa Chourgourly, who was equally determined to treat the
fugitive king in becoming fashion and to decline to make war on the
Tsar.
Meanwhile, Charles's enemies were taking advantage of his enforced
absence. Peter again overran Livonia. Augustus repudiated the treaty of
Altranstad, and recovered the Polish crown. The King of Denmark
repudiated the treaty of Travendal, and invaded Sweden, but his troops
were totally routed by the raw levies of the Swedish militia at
Helsimburg.
The Vizier Chourgourly, being too honourable for his post, was displaced
by Baltaji Mehemet, who took up the schemes of Charles. War was declared
against Russia. The Prince of Moldavia, Cantemir, supported Peter. The
Turks seemed doomed to destruction; but first the advancing Tsar found
himself deserted by the Moldavians, and allowed himself to be hemmed in
by greatly superior forces on the Pruth. With Peter himself and his army
entirely at his mercy, Baltaji Mehemet--to the furious indignation of
Charles--was content to extort a treaty advantageous to Turkey but
useless to the Swede; and Peter was allowed to retire with the honours
of war.
_III.--The Meteor Quenched_
The great desire of the Porte was, in fact, to get rid of its
inconvenient guest; to dispatch him to his own dominions in safety with
an escort to defend him, but no army for aggression. Charles conceived
that the sultan was pledged to give him an army. The downfall of the
vizier--owing to the sultan's wrath on learning that Peter was not
carrying out the pledges of the Pruth treaty--did not help matters; for
the favourite, Ali Cournourgi, now intended Russia to aid his own
ambitions, and the favourite controlled the new vizier. Within six
months of Pruth, war had been declared and a fresh peace again patched
up, Peter promising to withdraw all his forces from Poland, and the
Turks to eject Charles.
But Charles was determined not to budge. He demanded as a preliminary
half a million to pay his debts. A larger sum was provided; still he
would not move. The sultan felt that he had now discharged all that the
laws of hospitality could possibly demand. Threats only made the king
more obstinate. His supplies were cut off and his guards withdrawn,
except his own 300 Swedes; whereupon Charles fortified the house he had
built himself. All efforts to bring him to reason were of no avail. A
force of Janissaries was despatched to cut the Swedes to pieces; but the
men listened to Baron Grothusen's appeal for a delay of three days, and
flatly refused to attack. But when they sent Charles a deputation of
veterans, he refused to see them, and sent them an insulting message.
They returned to their quarters, now resolved to obey the pasha.
The 300 Swedes could do nothing but surrender; yet Charles, with twenty
companions, held his house, defended it with a valour and temporary
success which were almost miraculous, and were only overwhelmed by
numbers when they sallied forth and charged the Turkish army with swords
and pistols. Once captured, the king displayed a calm as imperturbable
as his rage before had been tempestuous.
Charles was now conveyed to the neighbourhood of Adrianople, where he
was joined by another royal prisoner--Stanislaus, who had attempted to
enter Turkey in disguise in order to see him, but had been discovered
and arrested. Charles was allowed to remain at Demotica. Here he abode
for ten months, feigning illness; both he and his little court being
obliged to live frugally and practically without attendants, the
chancellor, Mullern, being the cook of the establishment.
The hopes which Charles obstinately clung to, of Turkish support, were
finally destroyed when Cournourgi at last became grand vizier. His
sister Ulrica warned him that the council of regency at Stockholm would
make peace with Russia and Denmark. At length he demanded to be allowed
to depart. In October 1714 he set out in disguise for the frontier, and
having reached Stralsund on November 21, not having rested in a bed for
sixteen days, on the same day he was already issuing from Stralsund
instructions for the vigorous prosecution of the war in every direction.
But meanwhile the northern powers, without exception, had been making
partition of all the cis-Baltic territories of the Swedish crown. Tsar
Peter, master of the Baltic, held that ascendancy which had once
belonged to Charles. But the hopes of Sweden revived with the knowledge
that the king had reappeared at Stralsund.
Even Charles could not make head against the hosts of his foes.
Misfortune pursued him now, as successes had once crowded upon him.
Before long he was himself practically cooped up in Stralsund, while the
enemies' ships controlled the Baltic. In October, Stralsund was
resolutely besieged. His attempt to hold the commanding island of Rugen
failed after a desperate battle. The besiegers forced their way into
Stralsund itself. Exactly two months after the trenches had been opened
against Stralsund, Charles slipped out to sea--the ice in the harbour
had first to be broken up--ran the gauntlet of the enemy's forts and
fleets, and reached the Swedish coast at Carlscrona.
Charles now subjected his people to a merciless taxation in order to
raise troops and a navy. Suddenly, at the moment when all the powers at
once seemed on the point of descending on Sweden, Charles flung himself
upon Norway, at that time subject to Denmark. This was in accordance
with a vast design proposed by his minister, Gortz, in which Charles was
to be leagued with his old enemy Peter, and with Spain, primarily
against England, Hanover, and Augustus of Poland and Saxony. Gortz's
designs became known to the regent Orleans; he was arrested in Holland,
but promptly released.
Gortz, released, continued to work out his intriguing policy with
increased determination. Affairs seemed to be progressing favourably.
Charles, who had been obliged to fall back from Norway, again invaded
that country, and laid siege to Fredericshall. Here he was inspecting a
part of the siege works, when his career was brought to a sudden close
by a cannon shot. So finished, at thirty-six, the one king who never
displayed a single weakness, but in whom the heroic virtues were so
exaggerated as to be no less dangerous than the vices with which they
are contrasted.
* * * * *
HENRY MILMAN, D.D.
History of Latin Christianity
The "History of Latin Christianity, to the Pontificate of
Nicholas V.," which is here presented, was published in
1854-56. It covers the religious or ecclesiastical history of
Western Europe from the fall of paganism to the pontificate of
Nicholas V., a period of eleven centuries, corresponding
practically with what are commonly called the Middle Ages, and
is written from the point of view of a large-minded Anglican
who is not seeking to maintain any thesis, but simply to set
forth a veracious account of an important phase of history.
(Milman, see vol. xi, p. 68.)
_I.--Development of the Church of Rome_
For ten centuries after the extinction of paganism, Latin Christianity
was the religion of Western Europe. It became gradually a monarchy, with
all the power of a concentrated dominion. The clergy formed a second
universal magistracy, exercising always equal, asserting, and for a long
time possessing, superior power to the civil government. Western
monasticism rent from the world the most powerful minds, and having
trained them by its stern discipline, sent them back to rule the world.
Its characteristic was adherence to legal form; strong assertion of, and
severe subordination to, authority. It maintained its dominion unshaken
till, at the Reformation, Teutonic Christianity asserted its
independence.
The Church of Rome was at first, so to speak, a Greek religious colony;
its language, organisation, scriptures, liturgy, were Greek. It was from
Africa, Tertullian, and Cyprian that Latin Christianity arose. As the
Church of the capital--before Constantinople--the Roman Church
necessarily acquired predominance; but no pope appears among the
distinguished "Fathers" of the Church until Leo.
The division between Greek and Latin Christianity developed with the
division between the Eastern and the Western Empire; Rome gained an
increased authority by her resolute support of Athanasius in the Arian
controversy.
The first period closes with Pope Damasus and his two successors. The
Christian bishop has become important enough for his election to count
in profane history. Paganism is writhing in death pangs; Christianity is
growing haughty and wanton in its triumph.
Innocent I., at the opening of the fifth century, seems the first pope
who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion.
The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal
supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of her bishop
throughout the West.
To this period, the time of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy,
belongs the establishment in Western Christendom of the doctrine of
predestination, and that of the inherent evil of matter which is at the
root of asceticism and monasticism. It was a few years later that the
Nestorian controversy had the effect of giving fixity to that conception
of the "Mother of God" which is held by Roman Catholics.
The pontificate of Leo is an epoch in the history of Christianity. He
had utter faith in himself and in his office, and asserted his authority
uncompromisingly. The Metropolitan of Constantinople was becoming a
helpless instrument in the hands of the Byzantine emperor; the Bishop of
Rome was becoming an independent potentate. He took an authoritative and
decisive part in the controversy formally ended at the Council of
Chalcedon; it was he who stayed the advance of Attila. Leo and his
predecessor, Innocent, laid the foundations of the spiritual monarchy of
the West.
In the latter half of the fifth century, the disintegration of the
Western Empire by the hosts of Teutonic invaders was being completed.
These races assimilated certain aspects of Christian morals and assumed
Christianity without assimilating the intellectual subtleties of the
Eastern Church, and for the most part in consequence adopted the Arian
form. But when the Frankish horde descended, Clovis accepted the
orthodox theology, thereby in effect giving it permanence and
obliterating Arianism in the West. Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy,
in nominal subjection to the emperor, was the last effective upholder of
toleration for his own Arian creed. Almost simultaneous with his death
was the accession of Justinian to the empire. The re-establishment of
effective imperial sway in Italy reduced the papacy to a subordinate
position. The recovery was the work of Gregory I., the Great; but papal
opposition to Gothic or Lombard dominion in Italy destroyed the prospect
of political unification for the peninsula.
Western monasticism had been greatly extended and organised by Benedict
of Nursia and his rule--comprised in silence, humility, and obedience.
Monasticism became possessed of the papal chair in the person of Gregory
the Great. Of noble descent and of great wealth, which he devoted to
religious uses as soon as he became master of it, he had also the
characteristics which were held to denote the highest holiness. In
austerity, devotion, and imaginative superstition, he, whose known
virtue and capacity caused him to be forced into the papal chair,
remained a monk to the end of his days.
But he became at once an exceedingly vigorous man of affairs. He
reorganised the Roman liturgy; he converted the Lombards and Saxons. And
he proved himself virtual sovereign of Rome. His administration was
admirable. He exercised his disciplinary authority without fear or
favour. And his rule marks the epoch at which all that we regard as
specially characteristic of mediæval Christianity--its ethics, its
asceticism, its sacerdotalism, and its superstitions--had reached its
lasting shape.