from the mere reason that his successor was too young to have one. Some of
the more immediate friends of the great Béarnais, and his minister Sully
among the rest, refused to part with their beards, notwithstanding the
jeers of the new generation.
Who does not remember the division of England into the two great parties
of Roundheads and Cavaliers? In those days every species of vice and
iniquity was thought by the Puritans to lurk in the long curly tresses of
the monarchists, while the latter imagined that their opponents were as
destitute of wit, of wisdom, and of virtue, as they were of hair. A man's
locks were the symbol of his creed, both in politics and religion. The
more abundant the hair, the more scant the faith; and the balder the head,
the more sincere the piety.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT.]
But among all the instances of the interference of governments with men's
hair, the most extraordinary, not only for its daring, but for its
success, is that of Peter the Great, in 1705. By this time fashion had
condemned the beard in every other country in Europe, and with a voice
more potent than popes or emperors, had banished it from civilised
society. But this only made the Russians cling more fondly to their
ancient ornament, as a mark to distinguish them from foreigners, whom they
hated. Peter, however, resolved that they should be shaven. If he had been
a man deeply read in history, he might have hesitated before he attempted
so despotic an attack upon the time-hallowed customs and prejudices of his
countrymen; but he was not. He did not know or consider the danger of the
innovation; he only listened to the promptings of his own indomitable
will, and his fiat went forth, that not only the army, but all ranks of
citizens, from the nobles to the serfs, should shave their beards. A
certain time was given, that people might get over the first throes of
their repugnance, after which every man who chose to retain his beard was
to pay a tax of one hundred roubles. The priests and the serfs were put on
a lower footing, and allowed to retain theirs upon payment of a copeck
every time they passed the gate of a city. Great discontent existed in
consequence, but the dreadful fate of the Strelitzes was too recent to be
forgotten, and thousands who had the will had not the courage to revolt.
As is well remarked by a writer in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, they
thought it wiser to cut off their beards than to run the risk of incensing
a man who would make no scruple in cutting off their heads. Wiser, too,
than the popes and bishops of a former age, he did not threaten them with
eternal damnation, but made them pay in hard cash the penalty of their
disobedience. For many years, a very considerable revenue was collected
from this source. The collectors gave in receipt for its payment a small
copper coin, struck expressly for the purpose, and called the
"_borodováia_," or "the bearded." On one side it bore the figure of a
nose, mouth, and moustaches, with a long bushy beard, surmounted by the
words, "_Deuyee Vyeatee_," "money received;" the whole encircled by a
wreath, and stamped with the black eagle of Russia. On the reverse, it
bore the date of the year. Every man who chose to wear a beard was obliged
to produce this receipt on his entry into a town. Those who were
refractory, and refused to pay the tax, were thrown into prison.
Since that day, the rulers of modern Europe have endeavoured to persuade,
rather than to force, in all matters pertaining to fashion. The Vatican
troubles itself no more about beards or ringlets, and men may become hairy
as bears, if such is their fancy, without fear of excommunication or
deprivation of their political rights. Folly has taken a new start, and
cultivates the moustache.
Even upon this point governments will not let men alone. Religion as yet
has not meddled with it; but perhaps it will; and politics already
influence it considerably. Before the revolution of 1830, neither the
French nor Belgian citizens were remarkable for their moustaches; but,
after that event, there was hardly a shopkeeper either in Paris or
Brussels whose upper lip did not suddenly become hairy with real or mock
moustaches. During a temporary triumph gained by the Dutch soldiers over
the citizens of Louvain, in October 1830, it became a standing joke
against the patriots, that they shaved their faces clean immediately; and
the wits of the Dutch army asserted that they had gathered moustaches
enough from the denuded lips of the Belgians to stuff mattresses for all
the sick and wounded in their hospital.
The last folly of this kind is still more recent. In the German
newspapers, of August 1838, appeared an ordonnance, signed by the king of
Bavaria, forbidding civilians, on any pretence whatever, to wear
moustaches, and commanding the police and other authorities to arrest, and
cause to be shaved, the offending parties. "Strange to say," adds _Le
Droit_, the journal from which this account is taken, "moustaches
disappeared immediately, like leaves from the trees in autumn; every body
made haste to obey the royal order, and not one person was arrested."
The king of Bavaria, a rhymester of some celebrity, has taken a good many
poetical licences in his time. His licence in this matter appears neither
poetical nor reasonable. It is to be hoped that he will not take it into
his royal head to make his subjects shave theirs; nothing but that is
wanting to complete their degradation.
[Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY.[77]]
[77] The above engraving, shewing two soldiers of William the
Conqueror's army, is taken from the celebrated Bayeux
Tapestry.--See _ante_, p. 297.
END OF VOL. I.
[Illustration: POPE URBAN PREACHING THE CRUSADES.]
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
VOLUME II.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE THE HARZ MOUNTAINS.]
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
AND THE
MADNESS OF CROWDS.
BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "EGERIA," "THE SALAMANDRINE," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. II.
N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
BOILEAU.
LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.
1852.
CONTENTS.
THE CRUSADES.
Different accounts of the Crusaders derived from History and
Romance--Pilgrimages to the Holy Land first undertaken by converted Jews
and the very credulous--Increasing number of pilgrims every year--Relics
greatly valued--Haroun al Reschid--The pilgrims taxed--Robert of
Normandy--The pilgrims persecuted by the Turks--Peter the Hermit--His
first idea of rousing the powers of Christendom--His interview with
Simeon--Peter the Hermit preaches the Holy War to all the nations of
Christendom--The Pope crosses the Alps--King Philip accused of adultery
with Bertrade de Montfort--The Council of Clermont--Oration of Urban
II.--The "Truce of God"--_Gautier sans Avoir_, or Walter the
Pennyless--Gottschalk--The arrival at Semlin--Peter the Hermit at
Nissa--At Constantinople--The Crusaders conducted in safety to
Constantinople--Fresh hordes from Germany--Godfrey of Bouillon--Count of
Vermandois--Tancred--The siege of Antioch--The Holy Lance--Fate of Peter
Barthelemy--Siege of Jerusalem--St. Bernard--Second Crusade: Siege of
Damascus--Third Crusade: Death of Henry II.--Richard Coeur de Lion--Fourth
Crusade--Fifth Crusade: Constantinople assaulted--Sixth Crusade: Camhel
and Cohreddin--Seventh Crusade: Departure of Louis IX. for Cyprus--For
Acre--His death at Carthage--End of the Crusades
THE WITCH MANIA.
Popular notions of the devil--Inferior demons--Demons of both
sexes--Demons preferring the night between Friday and Saturday--The devil
in the shape of a goat--Sorcery--Execution of Joan of Arc--Witches burned
in Europe--Various charges of Witchcraft--Trois Echelles--The Witches of
Warbois--John Knox--Torture of Dr. Fian--The Lancashire Witches--Matthew
Hopkins--Burnings at Würzburg, at Lindheim, at Labourt--Request of the
parliament of Rouen to the King, in 1670--Würzburg the scene of the last
case of Witchcraft--The Witchcraft of Lady Hatton--Witchcraft at Hastings
and many other parts of England
THE SLOW POISONERS.
Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury--Trial of Weston--Of Sir Jervis
Elwes--Poisoning most prevalent in Italy--Poisons manufactured by La
Tophania--Her death--Madame de Brinvilliers--The poisoning of her father
and two brothers--Lavoisin and Lavigoreux
HAUNTED HOUSES.
The haunted house in Aix-la-Chapelle--In Tours--The royal palace of
Woodstock a haunted house--The supposed ghosts at Tedworth--At Cock
Lane--At Stockwell--Haunted house at Baldarroch
POPULAR FOLLIES OF GREAT CITIES.
Cant phrases--"Quoz"--"What a shocking bad hat"--"Hookey Walker"--"There
he goes with his eye out"--"Has your mother sold her mangle?"--"Does your
mother know you're out?"--"Tom and Jerry"--"Jim Crow"
POPULAR ADMIRATION OF GREAT THIEVES.
Robin Hood--Claude Duval--Dick Turpin--Jonathan Wild--Jack
Sheppard--Vidocq--Mausch Nadel--The Beggar's Opera--Rob Roy
DUELS AND ORDEALS.
The origin of the Duello--All persons engaged in duelling excommunicated
by the Council of Trent--The fire ordeal--The water ordeal--The
Corsned--Duel between Ingelgerius and Gontran--Duel between François de
Vivonne and Guy de Chabot--L'Isle-Marivaut and Marolles--Richelieu--Duel
between the Dukes De Beaufort and De Nemours--Laws against Duelling--Duel
between Lord Sanquir and Turner--Between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord
Mohun--German students inveterate Duellists
RELICS.
The True Cross--Tears of our Saviour--The Santa Scala, or Holy Stairs--The
mad Knight of Malta--Shakspeare's Mulberry-tree
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS IN VOL. II.
Pope Urban preaching the first Crusade.--Frontispiece.
View in the Harz Mountains. (Capt. Batty's _Hanoverian and Saxon
Scenery_.)--Title-page.
Initial--Crusaders' Weapons of the eleventh century
Peter the Hermit preaching
Cathedral at Clermont. (Sommerard's _Album_)
Nicée, Asia Minor. (Leon de Laborde's _Voyage en Orient_)
Godfrey of Bouillon. (From the Statue by Simonis, Brussels)
Siege of Antioch
The Holy Lance. (Copied, in Hone's _Everyday Book_, from a very rare print
published by the Ecclesiastics of Nuremberg)
Shrine of the Nativity, Bethlehem. (Laborde's _Voyage en Orient_)
Pilgrims' first sight of Jerusalem. (Print by Plüddemann)
Siege of Jerusalem
Jerusalem. (Gerhardt von Breydenbach's _Grand Voyage de Jherusalem_, 1517)
Bible of Baldwin's Queen. (Original in the British Museum)
Cathedral of Vezelai. (Sommerard's _Album_)
Pilgrim's Staff. (The _Archæologia_)
Damascus. (Laborde's _Voyage en Orient_)
Seal of Frederick Barbarossa. (Venetian History)
Henry II. (Stothard's _Monumental Effigies_)
Château of Gisors, Normandy. (_L'Univers Pittoresque_)
Philip Augustus. (Willemin's _Monumens Français inédits_)
The Island of Rhodes. (Royal Library, British Museum; print "in _Venetia_,
1570")
Richard I. and Berengaria. (Stothard's _Monumental Effigies_)
Bethlehem. (Laborde's _Voyage en Orient_)
Constantinople. (Print, Johann Baptist Hooman, Royal Library, British
Museum)
Templar and Hospitaller. (Fairholt's _Book of Costumes_)
Jaffa. (Laborde's _Voyage en Orient_)
Longespee or Longsword, Earl of Salisbury. (Effigy in Salisbury Cathedral)
Seal of Edward I. (From Great Seal)
Tomb of Queen Eleanor, Westminster Abbey. (Original sketch)
Arras. (Coney's _Cathedrals and Hotels de Ville_)
Philip IV. of France
Joan of Arc
Gate of Constance. (Print, from drawing by Major Cockburn)
Charles IX. of France. (French print by Adolph Brune)
Bishop Jewell
John Knox
Torture of the Boots. (Knight's _Pictorial Shakspere_)
James I. the Demonologist
Sir G. Mackenzie
Pietro d'Apone
Mathew Hopkins. (Print in Caulfield's _Remarkable Persons_, copied from a
rare print in the collection of J. Bindley, Esq.)
Sir Mathew Hale
Sir Thomas Brown
Lyons. (Prout's _Views in France_)
Bamberg. (Prout's _Views in Germany_)
Palais de Justice, Rouen. (Sommerard's _Arts du Moyen Age_)
Louis XIV.
Würzburg. (Prout's _Views in Germany_)
Lady Hatton's House, Cross Street, Hatton Garden. (Original sketch)
Floating a Witch
Place de Grève, Paris. (Old print)
Sir T. Overbury. (An extremely rare print by R. Elstracke)
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
Lord Chief-Justice Coke
The Earl of Somerset
Countess of Somerset
Death of Dr. Lamb, St. Paul's Cross. (The Cross copied from print in
Wilkinson's _Londina Illustrata_)
The Bastille. (_Views of Public Edifices in Paris_, by MM. Legard et
Testard)
Palace of Woodstock in 1714. (From a print of date)
Saint Louis of France. (Willemin's _Monumens Français inédits_)
Haunted House in Cock Lane. (Original sketch)
Room in the haunted house in Cock Lane. (Original sketch)
Sherwood Forest
Duel between Du Guesclin and Troussel
Duel between Ingelgerius and Gontran
Henry IV.
Gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau. (Sommerard's _Arts du Moyen Age_)
The Duke de Sully
Lord Bacon
[Illustration]
MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
THE CRUSADES.
They heard, and up they sprang upon the wing
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd all the realm of Nile,
So numberless were they. * * * *
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colours waving. With them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appear'd, and serried shields, in thick array,
Of depth immeasurable.
_Paradise Lost_.
[Illustration: E]
Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into
which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of
excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some
madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both
combined. Every one of these causes influenced the Crusades, and conspired
to render them the most extraordinary instance upon record of the extent
to which popular enthusiasm can be carried. History in her solemn page
informs us, that the Crusaders were but ignorant and savage men, that
their motives were those of bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway
was one of blood and tears. Romance, on the other hand, dilates upon their
piety and heroism, and portrays, in her most glowing and impassioned hues,
their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honour they acquired for
themselves, and the great services they rendered to Christianity. In the
following pages we shall ransack the stores of both, to discover the true
spirit that animated the motley multitude who took up arms in the service
of the cross, leaving history to vouch for facts, but not disdaining the
aid of contemporary poetry and romance, to throw light upon feelings,
motives, and opinions.
In order to understand thoroughly the state of public feeling in Europe at
the time when Peter the Hermit preached the holy war, it will be necessary
to go back for many years anterior to that event. We must make
acquaintance with the pilgrims of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries,
and learn the tales they told of the dangers they had passed and the
wonders they had seen. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land seem at first to have
been undertaken by converted Jews, and by Christian devotees of lively
imagination, pining with a natural curiosity to visit the scenes which of
all others were most interesting in their eyes. The pious and the impious
alike flocked to Jerusalem,--the one class to feast their sight on the
scenes hallowed by the life and sufferings of their Lord, and the other,
because it soon became a generally received opinion, that such a
pilgrimage was sufficient to rub off the long score of sins, however
atrocious. Another and very numerous class of pilgrims were the idle and
roving, who visited Palestine then as the moderns visit Italy or
Switzerland now, because it was the fashion, and because they might please
their vanity by retailing, on their return, the adventures they had met
with. But the really pious formed the great majority. Every year their
numbers increased, until at last they became so numerous as to be called
the "armies of the Lord." Full of enthusiasm, they set the dangers and
difficulties of the way at defiance, and lingered with holy rapture on
every scene described by the Evangelists. To them it was bliss indeed to
drink the clear waters of the Jordan, or be baptised in the same stream
where John had baptised the Saviour. They wandered with awe and pleasure
in the purlieus of the Temple, on the solemn Mount of Olives, or the awful
Calvary, where a God had bled for sinful men. To these pilgrims every
object was precious. Relics were eagerly sought after; flagons of water
from Jordan, or panniers of mould from the hill of the Crucifixion, were
brought home, and sold at extravagant prices to churches and monasteries.
More apocryphal relics, such as the wood of the true cross, the tears of
the Virgin Mary, the hems of her garments, the toe-nails and hair of the
Apostles--even the tents that Paul had helped to manufacture--were
exhibited for sale by the knavish in Palestine, and brought back to Europe
"with wondrous cost and care." A grove of a hundred oaks would not have
furnished all the wood sold in little morsels as remnants of the true
cross; and the tears of Mary, if collected together, would have filled a
cistern.
For upwards of two hundred years the pilgrims met with no impediment in
Palestine. The enlightened Haroun Al Reschid, and his more immediate
successors, encouraged the stream which brought so much wealth into Syria,
and treated the wayfarers with the utmost courtesy. The race of Fatemite
caliphs,--who, although in other respects as tolerant, were more
distressed for money, or more unscrupulous in obtaining it, than their
predecessors of the house of Abbas,--imposed a tax of a bezant for each
pilgrim that entered Jerusalem. This was a serious hardship upon the
poorer sort, who had begged their weary way across Europe, and arrived at
the bourne of all their hopes without a coin. A great outcry was
immediately raised, but still the tax was rigorously levied. The pilgrims
unable to pay were compelled to remain at the gate of the holy city until
some rich devotee arriving with his train, paid the tax and let them in.
Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, who, in common with
many other nobles of the highest rank, undertook the pilgrimage, found on
his arrival scores of pilgrims at the gate, anxiously expecting his coming
to pay the tax for them. Upon no occasion was such a boon refused.
The sums drawn from this source were a mine of wealth to the Moslem
governors of Palestine, imposed as the tax had been at a time when
pilgrimages had become more numerous than ever. A strange idea had taken
possession of the popular mind at the close of the tenth and commencement
of the eleventh century. It was universally believed that the end of the
world was at hand; that the thousand years of the Apocalypse were near
completion, and that Jesus Christ would descend upon Jerusalem to judge
mankind. All Christendom was in commotion. A panic terror seized upon the
weak, the credulous, and the guilty, who in those days formed more than
nineteen-twentieths of the population. Forsaking their homes, kindred, and
occupation, they crowded to Jerusalem to await the coming of the Lord,
lightened, as they imagined, of a load of sin by their weary pilgrimage.
To increase the panic, the stars were observed to fall from heaven,
earthquakes to shake the land, and violent hurricanes to blow down the
forests. All these, and more especially the meteoric phenomena, were
looked upon as the forerunners of the approaching judgments. Not a meteor
shot athwart the horizon that did not fill a district with alarm, and send
away to Jerusalem a score of pilgrims, with staff in hand and wallet on
their back, praying as they went for the remission of their sins. Men,
women, and even children, trudged in droves to the holy city, in
expectation of the day when the heavens would open, and the Son of God
descend in his glory. This extraordinary delusion, while it augmented the
numbers, increased also the hardships of the pilgrims. Beggars became so
numerous on all the highways between the west of Europe and
Constantinople, that the monks, the great almsgivers upon these occasions,
would have brought starvation within sight of their own doors, if they had
not economised their resources, and left the devotees to shift for
themselves as they could. Hundreds of them were glad to subsist upon the
berries that ripened by the road, who, before this great flux, might have
shared the bread and flesh of the monasteries.
But this was not the greatest of their difficulties. On their arrival in
Jerusalem they found that a sterner race had obtained possession of the
Holy Land. The caliphs of Bagdad had been succeeded by the harsh Turks of
the race of Seljook, who looked upon the pilgrims with contempt and
aversion. The Turks of the eleventh century were more ferocious and less
scrupulous than the Saracens of the tenth. They were annoyed at the
immense number of pilgrims who overran the country, and still more so
because they shewed no intention of quitting it. The hourly expectation of
the last judgment kept them waiting; and the Turks, apprehensive of being
at last driven from the soil by the swarms that were still arriving,
heaped up difficulties in their way. Persecution of every kind awaited
them. They were plundered, and beaten with stripes, and kept in suspense
for months at the gates of Jerusalem, unable to pay the golden bezant that
was to procure them admission.
When the first epidemic terror of the day of judgment began to subside, a
few pilgrims ventured to return to Europe, their hearts big with
indignation at the insults they had suffered. Every where as they passed
they related to a sympathising auditory the wrongs of Christendom. Strange
to say, even these recitals increased the mania for pilgrimage. The
greater the dangers of the way, the fairer chance that sins of deep dye
would be atoned for. Difficulty and suffering only heightened the merit,
and fresh hordes issued from every town and village, to win favour in the
sight of heaven by a visit to the holy sepulchre. Thus did things continue
during the whole of the eleventh century.
The train that was to explode so fearfully was now laid, and there wanted
but the hand to apply the torch. At last the man appeared upon the scene.
Like all who have ever achieved so great an end, Peter the Hermit was
exactly suited to the age; neither behind it nor in advance of it; but
acute enough to penetrate its mystery ere it was discovered by any other.
Enthusiastic, chivalrous, bigoted, and, if not insane, not far removed
from insanity, he was the very prototype of the time. True enthusiasm is
always persevering and always eloquent, and these two qualities were
united in no common degree in the person of this extraordinary preacher.
He was a monk of Amiens, and ere he assumed the hood had served as a
soldier. He is represented as having been ill favoured and low in stature,
but with an eye of surpassing brightness and intelligence. Having been
seized with the mania of the age, he visited Jerusalem, and remained there
till his blood boiled to see the cruel persecution heaped upon the
devotees. On his return home he shook the world by the eloquent story of
their wrongs.