Thou shalt never go as hostage for my faith, O daughter, nor carry out
this hazardous plan.”
“I have pledged my word and thine, O King,” said Helena. “Surely a
Briton’s pledge should be as binding as a Roman’s.”
So she carried her point, and, in five days’ time, she, with twenty of
the boys and girls of Camalodunum, went as hostages to the Roman camp in
London.
“Here be thy hostages, fair Princess,” said Constantius the prefect as
he received the children; “and this is well. But remember the rest of
thy compact. Deliver to me now, according to thy promise, the chief
rebel against Rome.”
“She is here, O Prefect,” said the intrepid girl. “I am that
rebel--Helena of Britain!”
The smile upon the prefect’s face changed to sudden sternness.
“Trifle not with Roman justice, girl,” he said, “I demand the keeping of
thy word.”
“It is kept,” replied the princess. “Helena of Britain is the cause and
motive of this revolt against Rome. If it be rebellion for a free prince
to claim his own, if it be rebellion for a prince to withstand for
the sake of his people the unjust demands of the conqueror, if it be
rebellion for one who loveth her father to urge that father to valiant
deeds in defence of the liberties of the land over which he ruleth as
king, then am I a rebel, for I have done all these, and only because
of my words did the king, my father, take up arms against the might and
power of Rome. I am the chief rebel. Do with me as thou wilt.”
And now the prefect saw that the girl spoke the truth, and that she had
indeed kept her pledge.
“Thy father and his city are pardoned,” he announced after a few moments
of deliberation. “Remain thou here, thou and thy companions, as hostages
for Britain, until such time as I shall determine upon the punishment
due to one who is so fierce a rebel against the power of Rome.”
So the siege of Camalodunum was raised, and the bloodless rebellion
ended. Constantius the prefect took up his residence for a while within
King Coel’s city, and at last returned to his command in Gaul and Spain,
well pleased with the spirit of the little maiden whom, so he claimed,
he still held in his power as the prisoner of Rome.
Constantius the prefect came again to Britain, and with a greater
following, fully ten years after King Coel’s revolt, for now, again,
rebellion was afoot in the island province.
Carausius the admiral, biding his time, sought at last to carry out his
scheme of sole supremacy. Sailing with his entire war-fleet to Britain,
he won the legions to his side, proclaimed himself Emperor of Britain,
and defied the power of Rome.
So daring and successful was his move that Rome for a time was
powerless. Carausius was recognized as “associate” emperor by Rome,
until such time as she should be ready to punish his rebellion, and for
seven years he reigned as emperor of Britain.
But ere this came to pass, Helena the princess had gone over to Gaul,
and had become the wife of Constantius the prefect,--“Since only thus,”
said he, “may I keep in safe custody this prisoner of Rome.”
The imperial power of Carausius was but short-lived. Crafty himself,
he fell a victim to the craft of others, and the sword of Allectus,
his chief minister and most trusted confidant, ended his life when
once again the power of Rome seemed closing about the little kingdom of
Britain.
Constantius became governor of Britain, and finally caesar and emperor.
But, long before that day arrived, the Princess Helena had grown into a
loyal Roman wife and mother, dearly loving her little son Constantine,
who, in after years, became the first and greatest Christian emperor of
Rome.
She bestowed much loving care upon her native province of Britain. She
became a Christian even before her renowned son had his historic
vision of the flaming cross. When more than eighty years old she made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There she did many good and kindly deeds,
erected temples above the Sepulchre of the Saviour, at his birthplace
at Bethlehem, and on the Mount of Olives. She is said, also, to have
discovered upon Calvary the cross, upon which had suffered and died the
Saviour she had learned to worship.
Beloved throughout her long and useful life she was canonized after her
death, and is now recognized one of the saints of the Romish church.
To-day in the city of London you may see the memorial church reared to
her memory--the Church of Great St. Helena, in Bishopgate. A loving,
noble, wonderful, and zealous woman, she is a type of the brave young
girlhood of the long ago, and, however much of fiction there may be
mingled with the fact of her life-story, she was, we may feel assured,
all that the chroniclers have claimed for her--“one of the grandest
women of the earlier centuries.”
PULCHERIA of CONSTANTINOPLE: THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN HORN
(Afterward known as “Pulcheria Augusta, Empress of the East.”) A.D. 413.
There was trouble and confusion in the imperial palace of Theodosius
the Little, Emperor of the East. Now, this Theodosius was called “the
Little” because, though he bore the name of his mighty grandfather,
Theodosius the Great, emperor of both the East and West, he had as yet
done nothing worthy any other title than that of “the Little,” or “the
Child.” For Theodosius emperor though he was called, was only a boy of
twelve, and not a very bright boy at that.
His father, Arcadius the emperor, and his mother, Eudoxia the empress,
were dead; and in the great palace at Constantinople, in this year
of grace, 413, Theodosius, the boy emperor, and his three sisters,
Pulcheria, Marina, and Arcadia, alone were left to uphold the tottering
dignity and the empty name of the once mighty Empire of the East, which
their great ancestors, Constantine and Theodosius, had established and
strengthened.
And now there was confusion in the imperial palace; for word came in
haste from the Dacian border that Ruas, king of the Huns, sweeping down
from the east, was ravaging the lands along the Upper Danube, and with
his host of barbarous warriors was defeating the legions and devastating
the lands of the empire.
The wise Anthemius, prefect of the east, and governor or guardian of
the young emperor, was greatly disturbed by the tidings of this new
invasion. Already he had repelled at great cost the first advance of
these terrible Huns, and had quelled into a sort of half submission the
less ferocious followers of Ulpin the Thracian; but now he knew that his
armies along the Danube were in no condition to withstand the hordes of
Huns, that, pouring in from distant Siberia, were following the lead
of Ruas, their king, for plunder and booty, and were even now encamped
scarce two hundred and fifty miles from the seven gates and the triple
walls of splendid Constantinople.
Turbaned Turks, mosques and minarets, muftis and cadis, veiled eastern
ladies, Mohammedains and muezzins, Arabian Nights and attar of roses,
bazars, dogs, and donkeys--these, I suppose, are what Constantinople
suggests whenever its name is mentioned to any girl or boy of
to-day,--the capital of modern Turkey, the city of the Sublime Porte.
But the greatest glory of Constantinople was away back in the early days
before the time of Mohammed, or of the Crusaders, when it was the centre
of the Christian religion, the chief and gorgeous capital of a Christian
empire, and the residence of Christian emperors,--from the days of
Constantine the conqueror to those of Justinian the law-giver and of
Irene the empress. It was the metropolis of the eastern half of the
great Roman Empire, and during this period of over five hundred years
all the wealth and treasure of the east poured into Constantinople,
while all the glories of the empire, even the treasures of old Rome
itself, were drawn upon to adorn and beautify this rival city by the
Golden Horn. And so in the days of Theodosius the Little, the court of
Constantinople, although troubled with fear of a barbarian invasion
and attack, glittered with all the gorgeousness and display of the most
magnificent empire in the world.
In the great daphne, or central space of the imperial palace, the
prefect Anthemius, with the young emperor, the three princesses, and
their gorgeously arrayed nobles and attendants, awaited, one day, the
envoys of Ruas the Hun, who sought lands and power within the limits of
the empire.
They came, at last,--great, fierce-looking fellows, not at all pleasant
to contemplate--big-boned broad-shouldered, flat-nosed, swarthy,
and small-eyed, with war-cloaks of shaggy skins, leathern armor,
wolf-crowned helmets, and barbaric decorations, and the royal children
shrunk from them in terror, even as they watched them with wondering
curiosity. Imperial guards, gleaming in golden armor, accompanied them,
while with the envoys came also as escort a small retinue of Hunnish
spearmen. And in the company of these, the Princess Pulcheria noted a
lad of ten or twelve years--short, swarthy, big-headed, and flat-nosed,
like his brother barbarians, but with an air of open and hostile
superiority that would not be moved even by all the glow and glitter of
an imperial court.
Then Eslaw, the chief of the envoys of King Ruas the Hun, made known his
master’s demands So much land, so much treasure, so much in the way of
concession and power over the lands along the Danube, or Ruas the king
would sweep down with his warriors, and lay waste the cities and lands
of the empire.
“These be bold words,” said Anthemius the prefect. “And what if our lord
the emperor shall say thee nay?”
But ere the chief of the envoys could reply, the lad whose presence
in the escort the Princess Pulcheria had noted, sprang into the circle
before the throne, brandishing his long spear in hot defiance.
“Dogs and children of dogs, ye dare not say us nay!” he cried harshly.
“Except we be made the friends and allies of the emperor, and are given
full store of southern gold and treasure, Ruas the king shall overturn
these your palaces, and make you all captives and slaves. It shall be
war between you and us forever. Thus saith my spear!”
And as he spoke he dashed his long spear upon the floor, until the
mosaic pavement rang again.
Boy emperor and princesses, prefect and nobles and imperial guards,
sprang to their feet as the spear clashed on the pavement, and even
the barbarian envoys, while they smiled grimly at their young comrade’s
energy, pulled him hastily back.
But ere the prefect Anthemius could sufficiently master his astonishment
to reply, the young Princess Pulcheria faced the savage envoys, and
pointing to the cause of the disturbance, asked calmly:
“Who is this brawling boy, and what doth he here in the palace of the
emperor?”
And the boy made instant and defiant answer:
“I am Attila, the son of Mundzuk, kinsman to Ruas the king, and deadly
foe to Rome.”
“Good Anthemius,” said the clear, calm voice of the unterrified girl,
“were it not wise to tell this wild young prince from the northern
forest that the great emperor hath gold for his friends, but only iron
for his foes? ‘T is ever better to be friend than foe. Bid, I pray, that
the arras of the Hippodrome be parted, and let our guests see the might
and power of our arms.”
With a look of pleased surprise at this bold stroke of the Princess, the
prefect clapped his hands in command, and the heavily brocaded curtain
that screened the gilded columns parted as if by unseen hands, and the
Hunnish envoys, with a gaze of stolid wonder, looked down upon the great
Hippodrome of Constantinople.
It was a vast enclosure, spacious enough for the marshalling of an
army. Around its sides ran tiers of marble seats, and all about it rose
gleaming statues of marble, of bronze, of silver, and of gold--Augustus
and the emperors, gods and goddesses of the old pagan days, heroes of
the eastern and western empires. The bright oriental sun streamed down
upon it, and as the trumpets sounded from beneath the imperial balcony,
there filed into the arena the glittering troops of the empire, gorgeous
in color and appointments, with lofty crests and gleaming armor, with
shimmering spear-tips, prancing horses, towering elephants, and mighty
engines of war and siege, with archers and spearmen, with sounding
trumpets and swaying standards and, high over all, the purple labarum,
woven in gold and jewels,--the sacred banner of Constantine. Marching
and counter-marching, around and around, and in and out, until it seemed
wellnigh endless, the martial procession passed before the eyes of the
northern barbarians, watchful of every movement, eager as children to
witness this royal review.
“These are but as a handful of dust amid the sands of the sea to the
troops of the empire,” said the prefect Anthemius, when the glittering
rear-guard had passed from the Hippodrome. And the Princess Pulcheria
added, “And these, O men from the north, are to help and succor the
friends of the great emperor, even as they are for the terror and
destruction of his foes. Bid the messengers from Ruas the king consider,
good Anthemius, whether it were not wiser for their master to be the
friend rather than the foe of the emperor. Ask him whether it would not
be in keeping with his valor and his might to be made one of the great
captains of the empire, with a yearly stipend of many pounds of gold, as
the recompense of the emperor for his services and his love.”
Again the prefect looked with pleasure and surprise upon this wise young
girl of fifteen, who had seen so shrewdly and so well the way to the
hearts of these northern barbarians, to whom gold and warlike display
were as meat and drink.
“You hear the words of this wise young maid,” he said. “Would it not
please Ruas the king to be the friend of the emperor, a general of the
empire, and the acceptor, on each recurring season of the Circensian
games, of full two hundred pounds of gold as recompense for service and
friendship?”
“Say, rather, three hundred pounds,” said Eslaw, the chief of the
envoys, “and our master may, perchance, esteem it wise and fair.”
“Nay, it is not for the great emperor to chaffer with his friends,” said
Pulcheria, the princess. “Bid that the stipend be fixed at three hundred
and fifty pounds of gold, good Anthemius, and let our guests bear to
Ruas the king pledges and tokens of the emperor’s friendship.”
“And bid, too, that they do leave yon barbarian boy at our court as
hostage of their faith,” demanded young Theodosius the emperor, now
speaking for the first time and making a most stupid blunder at a
critical moment.
For, with a sudden start of revengeful indignation, young Attila the
Hun turned to the boy emperor: “I will be no man’s hostage,” he cried.
“Freely I came, freely will I go! Come down from thy bauble of a chair
and thou and I will try, even in your circus yonder, which is the better
boy, and which should rightly be hostage for faith and promise given
“How now!” exclaimed the boy emperor, altogether unused to such
uncourtier-like language; “this to me!” And the hasty young Hun
continued:
“Ay, this and more! I tell thee, boy, that were I Ruas the king, the
grass should never grow where the hoofs of my war-horse trod; Scythia
should be mine; Persia should be mine; Rome should be mine. And look
you, sir emperor, the time shall surely come when the king of the Huns
shall be content not with paltry tribute and needless office, but with
naught but Roman treasure and Roman slaves!”
But into this torrent of words came Pulcheria’s calm voice again. “Nay,
good Attila, and nay, my brother and my lord,” she said. “‘T were not
between friends and allies to talk of tribute, nor of slaves, nor yet
of hostage. Freely did’st thou come and as freely shalt thou go; and let
this pledge tell of friendship between Theodosius the emperor and Ruas
the king.” And, with a step forward, she flung her own broad chain of
gold around the stout and swarthy neck of the defiant young Attila.
So, through a girl’s ready tact and quiet speech, was the terror of
barbarian invasion averted. Ruas the Hun rested content for years with
his annual salary of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, or over
seventy thousand dollars, and his title of General of the Empire; while
not for twenty years did the hot-headed young Attila make good his
threat against the Roman power.
Anthemius the prefect, like the wise man he was, recognized the worth
of the young Princess Pulcheria; he saw how great was her influence over
her brother the emperor, and noted with astonishment and pleasure her
words of wisdom and her rare common-sense.
“Rule thou in my place, O Princess!” he said, soon after this interview
with the barbarian envoys. “Thou alone, of all in this broad empire, art
best fitted to take lead and direction in the duties of its governing.”
Pulcheria, though a wise young girl, was prudent and conscientious.
“Such high authority is not for a girl like me, good Anthemius,” she
replied. “Rather let me shape the ways and the growth of the emperor
my brother, and teach him how best to maintain himself in a deportment
befitting his high estate, so that he may become a wise and just
ruler; but do thou bear sway for him until such time as he may take the
guidance on himself.”
“Nay, not so, Princess,” the old prefect said. “She who can shape the
ways of a boy may guide the will of an empire. Be thou, then, Regent and
Augusta, and rule this empire as becometh the daughter of Arcadius and
the granddaughter of the great Theodosius.”
And as he desired, so it was decided. The Senate of the East decreed
it and, in long procession, over flower-strewn pavements and through
gorgeously decorated streets, with the trumpets sounding their loudest,
with swaying standards, and rank upon rank of imperial troops, with
great officers of the government and throngs of palace attendants,
this young girl of sixteen, on the fourth day of July, in the year 414,
proceeded to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and was there publicly
proclaimed Pulcheria Augusta, Regent of the East, solemnly accepting the
trust as a sacred and patriotic duty.
And, not many days after, before the high altar of this same Church
of the Holy Apostles, Pulcheria the princess stood with her younger
sisters, Arcadia and Marina, and with all the impressive ceremonial
of the Eastern Church, made a solemn vow to devote their lives to the
keeping of their father’s heritage and the assistance of their only
brother; to forswear the world and all its allurements; never to marry;
and to be in all things faithful and constant to each other in this
their promise and their pledge.
And they were faithful and constant. The story of those three determined
young maidens, yet scarcely “in their teens,” reads almost like a page
from Tennyson’s beautiful poem, “The Princess,” with which many of my
girl readers are doubtless familiar. The young regent and her sisters,
with their train of attendant maidens, renounced the vanity of
dress--wearing only plain and simple robes; they spent their time
in making garments for the poor, and embroidered work for church
decorations; and with song and prayer and frugal meals, interspersed
with frequent fasts, they kept their vow to “forswear the world and its
allurements,” in an altogether strict and monotonous manner. Of course
this style of living is no more to be recommended to healthy,
hearty, fun-loving girls of fifteen than is its extreme of gayety and
indulgence, but it had its effect in those bad old days of dissipation
and excess, and the simplicity and soberness of this wise young girl’s
life in the very midst of so much power and luxury, made even the worst
elements in the empire respect and honor her.
It would be interesting, did space permit, to sketch at length some
of the devisings and doings of this girl regent of sixteen. “She
superintended with extraordinary wisdom,” says the old chronicler
Sozemon, “the transactions of the Roman government,” and “afforded the
spectacle,” says Ozanam, a later historian, “of a girlish princess of
sixteen, granddaughter and sole inheritor of the genius and courage of
Theodosius the Great, governing the empires of the east and west, and
being proclaimed on the death of her brother, Augusta, Imperatrix, and
mistress of the world!”
This last event--the death of Theodosius the Younger--occurred in
the year 449, and Pulcheria ascended the golden throne of
Constantinople--the first woman that ever ruled as sole empress of the
Roman world.
She died July 18, 453. That same year saw the death of her youthful
acquaintance, Attila the Hun, that fierce barbarian whom men had called
the “Scourge of God.” His mighty empire stretched from the great wall
of China to the Western Alps; but, though he ravaged the lands of both
eastern and western Rome, he seems to have been so managed or controlled
by the wise and peaceful measures of the girl regent, that his
destroying hordes never troubled the splendid city by the Golden Horn
which offered so rare and tempting a booty.
It is not given to the girls of to-day to have any thing like the
magnificent opportunities of the young Pulcheria. But duty in many a
form faces them again and again, while not unfrequently the occasion
comes for sacrifice of comfort or for devotion to a trust. To all such
the example of this fair young princess of old Constantinople, who,
fifteen centuries ago, saw her duty plainly and undertook it simply and
without hesitation, comes to strengthen and incite; and the girl who
feels herself overwhelmed by responsibility, or who is fearful of her
own untried powers, may gather strength, courage, wisdom, and will from
the story of this historic girl of the long ago--the wise young Regent
of the East, Pulcheria of Constantinople.
CLOTILDA OF BURGANDY: THE GIRL OF THE FRENCH VINYARDS
(Afterward known as “St. Clotilda,” the first Queen of France.) A.D.
485.
It was little more than fourteen hundred years ago, in the year of our
Lord 485, that a little girl crouched trembling and terrified, at the
feet of a pitying priest in the palace of the kings of Burgundy. There
has been many a sad little maid of ten, before and since the days of
the fair-haired Princess Clotilda, but surely none had greater cause for
terror and tears than she. For her cruel uncle, Gundebald, waging war
against his brother Chilperic, the rightful king of Burgundy, had with a
band of savage followers burst into his brother’s palace and, after the
fierce and relentless fashion of those cruel days, had murdered King
Chilperic, the father of little Clotilda, the queen, her mother, and
the young princes, her brothers; and was now searching for her and her
sister Sedelenda, to kill them also.
Poor Sedelenda had hidden away in some other far-off corner; but even as
Clotilda hung for protection to the robe of the good stranger-priest Ugo
of Rheims (whom the king, her father, had lodged in the palace, on his
homeward journey from Jerusalem), the clash of steel drew nearer and
nearer. Through the corridor came the rush of feet, the arras in the
doorway was rudely flung aside, and the poor child’s fierce pursuers,
with her cruel uncle at their head, rushed into the room.
“Hollo! Here hides the game!” he cried in savage exultation. “Thrust her
away, Sir Priest, or thou diest in her stead. Not one of the tyrant’s
brood shall live. I say it!”
“And who art thou to judge of life or death?” demanded the priest
sternly, as he still shielded the trembling child.
“I am Gundebald, King of Burgundy by the grace of mine own good sword
and the right of succession,” was the reply. “Trifle not with me, Sir
Priest, but thrust away the child. She is my lawful prize to do with as
I will. Ho, Sigebert, drag her forth!”
Quick as a flash the brave priest stepped before, the cowering child,
and, with one hand still resting protectingly on the girl’s fair hair,
he raised the other in stern and fearless protest, and boldly faced the
murderous throng.
“Back, men of blood!” he cried. “Back! Nor dare to lay hand on this
young maid who hath here sought sanctuary!”(1)
(1) Under the Goths and Franks the protection of churches and priests,
when extended to persons in peril, was called the “right of sanctuary,”
and was respected even by the fiercest of pursuers.