spirit of fanaticism, and that the vicar of Christ placed the sword of
Mohammed in the hands of the sovereign of the Franks. It is, I think, an
unfounded charge, though sanctioned by Gibbon and by Warburton, and by
names of perhaps even greater authority than theirs. That the
alternative, “believe or die,” was sometimes proposed by Charlemagne to
the Saxons, I shall not, indeed, dispute. But it is not less true that,
before these terms were tendered to them, they had again and again
rejected his less formidable proposal, “be quiet and live.” In form and
in terms, indeed, their election lay between the Gospel and the sword.
In substance and in reality, they had to make their choice between
submission and destruction. A long and deplorable experience had already
shown that the Frankish people had neither peace nor security to expect
for a single year, so long as their Saxon neighbors retained their
heathen rites and the ferocious barbarism inseparable from them. Fearful
as may be the dilemma, “submit or perish,” it is that to which every
nation, even in our own
[Illustration: ALFRED THE GREAT.]
times, endeavors to reduce a host of invading and desolating foes; nor,
if we ourselves were now exposed to similar inroads, should we offer to
our assailants conditions more gentle or less peremptory.
ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND.
BY DAVID HUME.
[Hereditary King of the West Saxons, and Over-king of all England,
born in 849 A.D., died 901. Alfred was the true founder of the
English monarchy, and one of the greatest monarchs in English
history. In his reign the English became essentially one people,
and the Danish invaders then settled in England were incorporated
with the Saxons. Alfred was not only a great soldier and statesman,
but was distinguished for intellectual greatness in the pursuit of
arts and letters. Under his patronage the Saxon court became the
source of civilizing influences that extended over all Northern and
Western Europe.]
The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with
advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which
the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to
be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of
sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a
fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so
happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they
blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its
proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit
with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the
easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity;
the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of
deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the
most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are
almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the
former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly
to challenge our applause.
Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill
should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily
accomplishment--vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a
pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him
into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit
his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively
colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive
some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible
he could be entirely exempted.
The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice,
Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the
basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of
what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions
to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other
Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy,
prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of
government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he
contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the
institutions which he found previously established.
But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything
bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all
kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and
so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way
of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch
them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the
most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable
sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should
ever remain as free as their own thoughts.
As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though
not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of
learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his
legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former
dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit
less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward
letters.
When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest
ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the
government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were
destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and
thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted.
Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person
south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service,
and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of
erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars
from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the
instruction of his people; he founded--at least repaired--the University
of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and
immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as
made some proficiency in knowledge.
But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement
of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which,
notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed
himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into
three equal portions--one was employed in sleep, and the refection of
his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a
third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the
hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in
lanterns--an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of
dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown.
And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored
under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person
fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no
extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose
more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure
and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their
uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his
other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician
thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.
He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his
country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He
introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or
improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He
prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push
commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by
propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh
portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he
constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces,
and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from
the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those
productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of
justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and
dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own
subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in
Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had
ever adorned the annals of any nation.
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY.
BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[Earliest of the Norwegian kings who succeeded in implanting
Christianity in the soil of Norse paganism. Exact date of birth
unknown; died 1000 A.D. Son of Tryggve, a former under-king, or
jarl, of Norway, slain by Hakon Jarl, who had usurped the supreme
power about 975. Olaf spent his early years as a sea-rover, and
became the most celebrated viking of his age. He conquered and slew
Hakon in 995, and became king. During his reign of five years he
revolutionized his kingdom. He lost his life in a great sea-battle
with the combined fleets of Denmark and Norway. The facts of his
career are mostly drawn from the saga of Snorro Sturleson.]
Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle
for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by
soft and even merry methods--for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a
fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready--or, if
soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down
a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy
against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be
called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of
all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a
serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to
be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s
success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift
or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed.
Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:
Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch
upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and
jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they
had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from
his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man
than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to
them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what
their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The
appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done
to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should
Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a
great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all
manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet
hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men
strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said:
“Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was
his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human
sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best
men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized
persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism,
straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not
permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other
precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.
By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled
down idolatry so far as form went--how far in substance may be greatly
doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of
these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and
preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it,
was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity
of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over
with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to
be silent and outwardly conformable.
Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the Norse three,
had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither he of
Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent,
far-shining man, more expert in all “bodily exercises,” as the Norse
called them, than any man had ever been before him or after was. Could
keep five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth by its
handle, and sending it aloft again; could shoot supremely, throw a
javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in battle usually threw two
together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were the then
admirable fine arts of the North, in all which Tryggveson appears to
have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially
definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism
in such rude guise and environment--a high, true, and great human soul.
A jovial burst of laughter in him withal; a bright, airy, wise way of
speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved
exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he did not
like. “Hardly any king,” says Snorro, “was ever so well obeyed; by one
class out of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread.” His glorious
course, however, was not to last long.
Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the wonder of the
North. Especially in building war-ships--the Crane, the Serpent, last of
all, the Long Serpent--he had, for size, for outward beauty, and inward
perfection of equipment, transcended all example.
A new sea expedition undertaken by Olaf became an object of attention to
all neighbors; especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein
Double-Beard,[20] her now king, were attentive to it.
“This insolent Tryggveson,” Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long
been saying, to her Svein, “to marry thy sister without leave had or
asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies as if he, king
only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer
it, you kings really great?”
By such persuasions and reiterations King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of
Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by prosperous
sea-robbery and other good management, were brought to take the matter
up, and combine strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on
this grand Wendland expedition of his.
King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in summer
with his splendid fleet, went through the belts with prosperous winds,
under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet, with
its shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and
appearance, the Baltic never saw before.
Olaf’s chief captains, seeing the enemy’s fleet come out and how the
matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of
treachery, and with all sail hold on his course, fight being now on so
unequal terms. Snorro says the king, high on the quarter-deck where he
stood, replied: “Strike the sails! never shall men of mine think of
flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight
I will never take!” And so the battle arrangements immediately began,
and the battle with all fury went loose, and lasted hour after hour till
almost sunset, if I well recollect. “Olaf stood on the Serpent’s
quarter-deck,” says Snorro, “high over the others. He had a gilt shield
and a helmet inlaid with gold; over his armor he had a short red coat,
and was easily distinguished from other men.”
The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were both of them quickly dealt
with, and successively withdrew out of shotrange. And then Jarl Eric
came up and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or rather with her
surrounding comrades, and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men,
with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more
furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the Swedes and Danes; Olaf
had no such resource, except from the crews of his own beaten ships; and
at length this also failed him, all his ships, except the Long Serpent,
being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding. Eric twice boarded
him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarter-deck, unconquerable,
though left now more and more hopeless, fatally short of help. A tall
young man, called Einar Tamberskelver, very celebrated and important
afterward in Norway, and already the best archer known, kept busy with
his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship. “Shoot me that
man!” said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and, just as Tamberskelver
was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow hit it in the middle and
broke it in two. “What is this that has broken?” asked King Olaf.
“Norway from thy hand, king,” answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson’s men,
he observed with surprise, were striking violently on Eric’s, but to no
purpose; nobody fell. “How is this?” asked Tryggveson. “Our swords are
notched and blunted, king; they do not cut.” Olaf stepped down to his
arm-chest, delivered out new swords, and it was observed, as he did it,
blood ran trickling from his wrist, but none knew where the wound was.
Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more than one man,
sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of his still glancing in the
evening sun), and sank in the deep waters to his long rest.
Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some
movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had
dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as
Sigwald himself evidently did. “Much was hoped, supposed, spoken,” says
one old mourning Skald; “but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never
seen in Norseland more.” Strangely he remains still a shining figure to
us--the wildly beautifulest man in body and in soul that one has ever
heard of in the North.
CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.
BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
[Date of birth uncertain, died 1035 or 1036. He succeeded to the
command of the Danish invaders of England on the death of his
father Svein, and on the death of Eadmund Ironsides, the Saxon
king, he became the acknowledged King of England in 1017. His
exercise of power was marked by great qualities of justice,
ability, and devotion to the interests of his acquired kingdom; and
his name has been transmitted in history as a worthy successor of
the Great Alfred.]
The first of our foreign masters was the Dane. The countries of
Scandinavia which had so long been the mere starting points of the
pirate bands who had ravaged England and Ireland had now settled down
into comparative order. It was the aim of Svein to unite them in a great
Scandinavian Empire, of which England should be the head; and this
project, interrupted for a time by his death, was resumed with yet
greater vigor by his son Cnut. Fear of the Dane was still great in the
land, and Cnut had no sooner appeared off the English coast than Wessex,
Mercia, and Northumberland joined in owning him for their lord, and in
discarding again the rule of Æthelred, who had returned on the death of
Svein. When Æthelred’s death in 1016 raised his son Eadmund Ironside to
the throne, the loyalty of London enabled him to struggle bravely for a
few months against the Danes; but a decisive victory at Assandun and the
death of his rival left Cnut master of the realm. Conqueror as he was,
the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner
after him. His language differed little from the English tongue. He
brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut ruled, in fact,
not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. The good-will and
tranquillity of England were necessary for the success of his larger
schemes in the north, where the arms of his English subjects aided him
in later years in uniting Denmark and Norway beneath his sway.
Dismissing, therefore, his Danish “host,” and retaining only a trained
body of household troops or hus-carls to serve in sudden emergencies,
Cnut boldly relied for support within his realm on the justice and good
government he secured it. His aim during twenty years seems to have been
to obliterate from men’s minds the foreign character of his rule, and
the bloodshed in which it had begun. The change in himself was as
startling as the change in his policy. When he first appears in England,
it is as the mere northman, passionate, revengeful, uniting the guile of
the savage with his thirst for blood. His first acts of government were
a series of murders. Eadric of Mercia, whose aid had given him the
crown, was felled by an axe-blow at the king’s signal; a murder removed
Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund Ironside, while the children of Eadmund
were hunted even into Hungary by his ruthless hate. But from a savage
such as this Cnut rose suddenly into a wise and temperate king. Stranger
as he was, he fell back on “Eadgar’s law,” on the old constitution of
the realm, and owned no difference between conqueror and conquered,
between Dane and Englishman. By the creation of four earldoms--those of
Mercia, Northumberland, Wessex, and East Anglia--he recognized
provincial independence, but he drew closer than of old the ties which
bound the rulers of these great dependencies to the Crown. He even
identified himself with the patriotism which had withstood the stranger.
The Church had been the center of national resistance to the Dane, but
Cnut sought above all its friendship. He paid homage to the cause for
which Ælfheah had died, by his translation of the archbishop’s body to
Canterbury. He atoned for his father’s ravages by costly gifts to the
religious houses. He protected English pilgrims against the robber-lords
of the Alps. His love for monks broke out in the song which he composed
as he listened to their chant at Ely: “Merrily sang the monks in Ely
when Cnut King rowed by” across the vast fen-waters that surrounded
their abbey. “Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks
sing.”
Cnut’s letter from Rome to his English subjects marks the grandeur of
his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. “I
have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things,” wrote the king,
“to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer
just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was
just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready with God’s
help to amend it utterly.” No royal officer, either for fear of the king
or for favor of any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do wrong to
rich or poor “as they would value my friendship and their own
well-being.” He especially denounces unfair exactions: “I have no need
that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands.” “I have sent
this letter before me,” Cnut ends, “that all the people of my realm may
rejoice in my well-doing; for, as you yourselves know, never have I
spared nor will I spare to spend myself and my toil in what is needful
and good for my people.”
Cnut’s greatest gift to his people was that of peace. With him began the
long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the special
note of our national history. During two hundred years, with the one
terrible interval of the Norman Conquest, and the disturbance under
Stephen, England alone among the kingdoms of Europe enjoyed unbroken
repose. The wars of her kings lay far from her shores, in France or
Normandy, or, as with Cnut, in the more distant lands of the north. The
stern justice of their government secured order within. The absence of
internal discontent under Cnut--perhaps, too, the exhaustion of the
kingdom after the terrible Danish inroads--is proved by its quiet during
his periods of absence. Everything witnesses to the growing wealth and
prosperity of the country. A great part of English soil was, indeed,
still utterly uncultivated.