agreement as people sign contracts nowadays. But he wore a seal-ring
which was used by people who could not sign their names, and this seal
he pressed into a piece of hot wax which was dropped on the agreement
where one would have signed.
John agreed in Magna Carta to give the barons some of the rights that
we think every human being should have anyway, without an agreement.
For instance, a person certainly has the right to keep the money that
he earns, and he has the right not to have it taken away from him
unlawfully. A person also has the right not to be put in prison or be
punished by the king or any one else unless he has done something wrong
and unless he has had a fair trial. These are two of the rights that
John agreed to in Magna Carta. There were quite a number of others.
John didn’t keep his agreement, however. He broke it the very first
time he had a good chance, as a person usually does when he is forced
to agree to something against his will. But John died pretty soon; and
so, as far as he was concerned, Magna Carta didn’t matter much. But
kings who came after him were made to agree to the same things. So ever
after 1215 the king in England was supposed to be the servant of the
people, and not the people servants of the king as they had been before
that time.
[Illustration]
55
A Great Story-Teller
Far away from England,
Far off in the direction of the rising sun,
’Way beyond Italy and Jerusalem and the Tigris and Euphrates and Persia
and all the other places we have so far heard about, was a country
called Cathay--C-A-T-H-A-Y.
If you looked down at your feet, and the world were glass, you would
see it on the other side.
Cathay is the same place we now call China. The people in Cathay
belonged to the yellow race, the same race to which the Chinese belong.
There had been people living in Cathay, of course, all through the
centuries that had passed, but little was known of this land or of its
people.
But in the thirteenth century or twelve hundreds, one of these tribes
of yellow people called Mongols or Tartars, arose out of the East, like
a black and terrifying thunderstorm, and it seemed for a while as if
they might destroy all the other countries whose histories we have been
hearing about. The ruler of these people was a terrible fighter named
Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan had an army of Tartar horsemen who were
terrific fighters. Genghis and his Tartars were a good deal like Attila
and his Huns--only worse. Indeed, some people think Attila and his Huns
were Tartars also.
Genghis usually found some excuse for making war on others, but if
he couldn’t find a good excuse he made up one, for he was bent on
conquering. He and his Tartars thought no more of killing than would
tigers or lions let loose.
So Genghis and his horsemen swept over the land from Cathay toward
Europe. They burned and destroyed thousands upon thousands of towns and
cities and everything in their way. They slew men, women, and children
by the million. No one was able to stop them. It seemed as if they
were going to wipe off of the face of the earth all white people and
everything that white people had built.
Genghis Khan had conquered the whole land from the Pacific Ocean to the
eastern part of Europe. But at last he stopped. With this kingdom he
seemed to be satisfied. And he might well have been satisfied, for it
was larger than the Roman Empire or that of even Alexander the Great.
Even when Genghis died, things were no better, for his son was just as
frightful as his father and conquered still more country.
But the grandson of Genghis Khan was much less ferocious than his
grandfather had been. He was named Kublai Khan, and he was quite
different from his father and grandfather. He made his capital at
a place in China now called Peking and ruled over this vast empire
that he had inherited from his father. Kublai’s chief interest was in
building magnificent palaces and surrounding himself with beautiful
gardens, and he made such a wonderful capital for himself that Solomon
in all his glory did not live in such splendor as did Kublai Khan.
Now, far, far off from Peking and the palace of Kublai Khan, in the
north of Italy was a city built on the water. Its streets were of
water, and boats were used instead of carriages. This city was called
Venice. About the Year 1300 there were living in Venice two men named
Polo. The Polos got an idea in their heads that they would like to see
something of the world. So these two Venetians, and the son of one
of them named Marco Polo, started off toward the rising sun looking
for adventure, just like boys in story-books who go off to seek their
fortunes. After several years of travel, always toward the east, they
at last came to the gardens and to the magnificent palace of Kublai
Khan.
When Kublai Khan heard that strange white men from a far-off place and
an unknown country were outside the palace, he wanted to see them.
So they were brought into his presence. They told Kublai Khan all
about their own land. They were good story-tellers, and they made it
interesting. They told him also about the Christian religion and many
other things that he had never heard of.
The emperor was so much interested in the Polos and in the stories they
told about their country that he wanted to hear more. So he persuaded
them to stay with him and tell him more. He gave them rich presents.
Then he made them his advisers and assistants in ruling his empire.
So the Polos stayed on for years and years and years and learned the
language and came to be very important people in Cathay.
At last after they had spent about twenty years in Cathay the Polos
thought it was about time to go home and see their own people again. So
they begged leave to return. Kublai Khan did not want them to go. They
were so useful to him and helped him so much in ruling that he didn’t
want to lose them. But in the end he did let them go, and they started
back to what once had been their home.
When they at last arrived in Venice, they had been away so long and had
been traveling so far that no one knew them. They had almost forgotten
how to speak their own language, and they talked like foreigners.
Their clothes had become worn out and ragged by their long trip. They
looked like tramps, and not even their old friends recognized them. No
one would believe that these ragged, dirty strangers were the same fine
Venetian gentlemen who had disappeared almost twenty years before.
The Polos told their townspeople all about their adventures and the
wonderfully rich lands and cities that they had visited. But the
townspeople only laughed at them, for they thought them story-tellers.
Then the Polos ripped open their ragged garments, and out fell piles
of magnificent and costly jewels, diamonds and rubies and sapphires
and pearls--enough to buy a kingdom. The people looked in wonder and
amazement and began to believe.
Marco Polo told his stories to a man who wrote them down and made a
book of them called “The Travels of Marco Polo.” This is an interesting
book for you to read even to-day, although we cannot believe all the
tales he told. We know that he exaggerated a great many things, for he
liked to amaze people.
Marco Polo described the magnificence of Kublai Khan’s palace. He told
of its enormous dining-hall, where thousands of guests could sit down
at the table at one time. He told of a bird so huge that it could
fly away with an elephant. He said that Noah’s Ark was still on Mount
Ararat, only the mountain was so high and so dangerous to climb on
account of the ice and snow with which it was covered that no one could
go to see if the ark really were there.
[Illustration]
56
“Thing-a-ma-jigger” and “What-cher-may-call-it” or a Magic Needle and a
Magic Powder
About this same time that Marco Polo returned from his travels, people
in Europe began to hear and talk about a magic needle and a magic
powder that did remarkable things, and some say that Marco brought
them back from Cathay, but this we doubt. The little magic needle when
floated on a straw or held up only at its middle would always turn
towards the north no matter how much you twisted it. Such a needle put
in a case was called a compass.
Now, you may not see why such a little thing was so remarkable. But
strange as it may seem, this little thing really made it possible to
discover a new world.
Perhaps you have played the game in which a child is blindfolded,
twisted around several times in the center of the room, and then told
to go toward the door or the window or some other point in the room.
You know how impossible it is for one who has been so turned round to
tell which way to go, and you know how absurd one looks who goes in
quite the opposite direction when he thinks he is going straight.
Well, the sailor at sea was something like such a blindfolded child. Of
course, if the weather were fine he could tell by the sun or the stars
which way he should go. But when the weather was cloudy and bad there
was nothing for him to go by. He was then like the blindfolded child.
He might easily become confused and sail in just the opposite direction
from the way he wanted to go without knowing the difference.
This was perhaps one of the chief reasons why sailors, before the
compass was used, had not gone far out of sight of land. They were
afraid they might not be able to find their way back. So only that part
of the world was known which could be reached by land or without going
far out of sight of land.
But, with the compass, sailors could sail on and on through storm and
cloudy weather and keep always in the direction they wanted to go. They
simply had to follow the little magnetic needle suspended in its box.
No matter how much the boat turned or twisted or tossed, the little
needle always pointed to the north. Of course sailors did not always
want to go north, but it was very easy to tell any other direction if
they knew which was north. South was exactly opposite, east was to the
right, and west was to the left. So all they had to do was to steer the
boat on the course in whatever direction they wished.
It was a long while, however, before sailors would use a compass.
They thought it was bewitched by some magic, and they were afraid
to have anything to do with such a thing. Sailors are likely to be
superstitious, and they were afraid that if they took the compass on
board it might bewitch their ship and bring them bad luck.
The other magic thing was gunpowder.
Never before 1300 had there been such things in Europe as guns or
cannons or pistols. All fighting had been done with bows and arrows or
swords or spears or with some such weapons. A sword can only be used on
a man a few feet away, but with guns an enemy may be killed and walls
battered down miles away. But after gunpowder was invented the armor
which the old knights wore was of course no longer of any use, for it
could not protect them from shot and shell. So gunpowder has changed
fighting completely and made war the terrible thing it has become.
Although Marco Polo was supposed to have told about gunpowder and its
use in cannons as he had seen it in the East, most people think that
an English monk named Roger Bacon knew about gunpowder and also about
the compass and perhaps invented them. The monk Bacon knew about so
many things which people at that time thought were magic that he was
supposed to be in league with the devil, and so he was put in prison.
Bacon was the wisest man of his time, but he was ahead of his time.
If he were living now he would be honored as a great scientist and
inventor. But people thought he knew _too_ much--that any one who knew
as much as he did was wicked--that he was prying into God’s secrets,
which God did not want any one to know.
Others, however, give the credit or the blame for the invention of
gunpowder to a German chemist named Schwarz. They say that one day
Schwarz was mixing some chemicals in an iron bowl with an iron mixer
called a _pestle_, such as druggists use, when, all of a sudden,
the mixture exploded and shot the iron pestle right up through the
ceiling. Schwarz was much surprised; he had had a narrow escape from
being killed; but this gave him an idea. Immediately he set to work
to think out a way to use the same mixture in battle to shoot iron
pestles at the enemy. Some people think it would have been far better
if the pestle had struck and killed Mr. Schwarz at the time, and if his
secret had been destroyed with him. We might then never have had the
terrible wars and the killing of millions of human beings which have
resulted from this discovery. It was quite a while, however, before
gunpowder was made strong enough to do much damage. In fact, it was
over a hundred years before fighting with guns entirely took the place
of fighting with bows and arrows.
[Illustration]
57
Thelon Gest Wart Hate Verwas
Is this another Latin heading?
No, it’s English.
Don’t you understand English?
It was 1338, and Edward III was king of England. Edward III wanted to
rule France as well as England. He said he was related to the former
king of France and had a better right to the country than the one who
was ruling. So he started a war to take France, and the war he started
lasted more than a hundred years. So this is known as the Hundred
Years’ War and it is:
The Longest War that Ever Was!
The English army sailed over from England and landed in France. The
first great battle was fought at a little place called Crécy. The
English army was on foot and was made up chiefly of the common people.
The French army were mostly knights clad in armor on horseback--the
society people.
The French knights on horseback thought themselves much finer than the
common English soldiers who were on foot, as a man in a motor-car is
likely to look down on the man who is walking.
The English soldiers, however, used a weapon called the _longbow_,
which shot arrows with terrific force, and they completely whipped the
French knights in spite of the fact that the knights were nobles, were
trained to be fighters, rode on horses, and were protected by armor.
Cannon were used by the English in this battle for the first time. The
cannon, however, did not amount to much nor do very much harm. They
were so weak that they simply tossed the cannon-balls at the enemy as
one might throw a basketball or football. They scared the horses of the
French but did little other damage. But this was the beginning of what
was before long to be the end of knights and armor and feudalism.
The battle of Crécy was only the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War.
The next year after the battle of Crécy a horribly contagious disease
called the Black Death attacked the people of Europe. It was like the
plague in Athens in the Age of Pericles, but the Black Death did not
attack just one city or country. It was supposed to have started in
Cathay, but it spread westward until it reached Europe. There was no
running away from it. It spread far and wide over the whole land and
killed more human beings than any war that has ever been. It was called
Black Death because black spots came out all over the body of any one
who caught it, and he was certain to die within a few hours or a day
or two. There was no hope. No medicine had any effect. Many people
committed suicide just as soon as they found they had the disease. Many
died just from fright, actually “scared to death.”
It lasted two years, and millions upon millions caught the disease.
Half of the people of Europe died of it. Whole towns were wiped out,
and in many places no one was left to bury the dead. Dead bodies
lay where they had fallen--on the street, in the doorway, in the
market-place.
The crops in the fields went to waste, for there was no one to gather
them. Horses and cows roamed over the country at will, for there was
no one to care for them. The plague attacked even sailors at sea, and
ships were found drifting about on the water with not a soul alive left
on board, with not even one left to steer the ship.
What if it had killed every last man, woman, and child in the world!
What then would have been the future history of the world?
But, as if there were not enough people dead already, the Hundred
Years’ War still went on year after year. The soldiers who had fought
at Crécy had been dead for years. Their children had grown up, fought,
and died; their grandchildren had grown up, fought and died, and their
great-grandchildren had done the same; and the English army was still
fighting in France. The French prince at that time was very young and
weak, and the French were almost in despair--hopeless--because they had
no strong leader to help them drive out the English after all these
many years.
Now, in a little French village there was living a poor peasant girl,
a shepherdess, called Joan of Arc. As she watched her flocks of sheep,
she had wonderful visions. She heard voices calling to her, telling her
she was the one who must lead the French armies and save France from
England. She went to the prince’s nobles and told them her visions.
But they did not put any faith in her or her visions, and they did not
believe she was able to do the things she thought she could.
To test her, however, they dressed up another man as the prince and put
him on the throne while the prince stood at one side with the nobles.
Then they let Joan into the room. When Joan entered the royal hall, she
gave one look at the man who was seated on the throne and dressed up as
prince. Then without hesitating she walked directly past him and went
straight to the _real_ prince. Before him she knelt and said, “I have
come to lead your armies to victory.” The prince at once gave her his
flag and a suit of armor, and she rode out at the head of all the army
and had him crowned king.
[Illustration: Joan of Arc at the stake.]
The French soldiers took heart again. It seemed as if the Lord had
sent an angel to lead them, and they fought so hard and so bravely that
they won many battles.
The English soldiers, however, thought that it was not the Lord but
the devil who had sent Joan and that she was not an angel but a witch,
and they were very much afraid of her. At last, the English made her
prisoner. The French king, whom she had saved, in spite of all she
had done for him, didn’t even try to save her. Now that things were
going his way, he didn’t like to have a woman running things, and the
soldiers didn’t like to have a woman ordering them around, and they
were glad to be rid of her.
The English tried her for a witch, judged her guilty of being a witch,
and then they burned her alive at the stake.
But Joan seemed to have brought the French good luck, to have put
new life into their armies, for from that time on, France increased
in strength, and after more than a hundred years of fighting at last
drove the English out of the country. In one hundred years of fighting
hundreds of thousands of people had been wounded and crippled and
blinded and killed, and after it all England was no better off, just
the same as when she started--all the fighting all for nothing.
58
Print and Powder or Off with the Old On with the New
Up to this time there was not a printed book in the whole world. There
was not a newspaper. There was not a magazine. All books had to be
written by hand. This, of course, was extremely slow and expensive, so
there were very few of even these handwritten books in all the world.
Only kings and very wealthy people had any books at all. Such a book as
the Bible, for instance, cost almost as much as a house, and so no poor
people could own such a thing. Even when there was a Bible in a church,
it was so valuable that it had to be chained to keep it from being
stolen. Think of stealing a Bible!
But about 1440 a man thought of a new way to make books. First he put
together wooden letters called type, and then smeared them with ink.
Then he pressed paper against this inky type and made a copy. After
the type was once set up, thousands of copies could be made quickly
and easily. This, as you of course know, was printing. It all seems so
simple, the wonder is that no one had thought of printing thousands of
years before.
It is generally believed that a German named Gutenberg made the first
printed books about 1440, so he is called the inventor of printing. And
what do you suppose was the first book ever printed? Why, the book that
people thought the most important book in the world--the Bible. This
Bible was not printed in English, however, nor in German, but in Latin!
The first book printed in English was made in England by an English
man named Caxton, and you would never guess what the English book was.
It was a description of the game of chess, the game that the Arabs had
invented.
[Illustration: Gutenberg at his press. Comparing a printed sheet with a
manuscript.]
Before this time few people, even though they were kings and princes,
knew how to read, because there were no books to teach them how to
read and few books for them to read if they had learned, and so what
was the use of learning.
You can see how difficult it must have been for people throughout the
Middle Ages, without books or newspapers or anything printed, to learn
what was going on in the world, or to learn about anything that one
wanted to know.
But, now that printing had been invented, all that was changed.
Story-books and school-books and other books could be made in large
numbers and very cheaply. People who never before were able to have
any books could now own them. Every one could now read all the famous
stories of the world and learn about geography, about history, about
anything he wanted to know. So the invention of printing was soon to
change everything.
The Hundred Years’ War had at last come to an end soon after the
invention of printing.
At the same time something else that was a thousand years old came to
an end.
The Mohammedans whom we haven’t heard of for a long time, had tried to
capture Constantinople in the seventh century, but had been stopped, as
I told you, by tar and pitch that the Christians poured down on them.
But in 1458 the Mohammedans once again attacked Constantinople. This
time, however, the Mohammedans were Turks, and they didn’t try to
batter down the walls of the city with arrows. They used gunpowder and
cannon. Cannon had been used at Crécy more than a hundred years before,
but they had done little damage. Since that time, however, they had
become greatly improved. Against the power of this new invention the
walls of Constantinople could not stand, and finally the city fell.
So Constantinople became Turkish, and the magnificent Church of Santa
Sophia, which Justinian had built a thousand years before, was turned
into a Mohammedan mosque. This was the end of all that was left of the
old Roman Empire--the other half of which had fallen in 476.
Ever after the downfall of Constantinople in 1453, wars were fought
with gunpowder. No longer were castles of any use. No longer were
knights in armor of any use. No longer were bows and arrows of any
use--against this new kind of fighting. There was a new sound in the
world, the sound of cannon-firing: “Boom! boom! boom!” Before this,
battles had not been very noisy except for shouts of the victors and
the moans of the dying. So 1453 is called the end of the Middle Ages,
and the beginning of the New Ages that were to follow.
Gunpowder had put an end to the Middle Ages. The invention of printing
and that little magic needle, the compass, did a great deal to start
the New Ages.
59
A Sailor Who Found a New World
What book do you like best?
“Alice in Wonderland”?
“Gulliver’s Travels”?
One of the first books to be printed and one that boys at that time
liked best was
“The Travels of Marco Polo”
One of the boys who loved to read these stories of those far-away
countries of the East with their gold and precious jewels was an
Italian named Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus was born in
the city of Genoa, which is in the top of the “boot.” Like a great many
other boys who were born in seaport towns, he had heard the sailors on
the wharves tell yarns of their travels, and his greatest ambition in
life was to go off to sea and visit all the wonderful lands of which
he had read and been told. At last the chance came, and, though only
fourteen years old, he made his first voyage. After that, Columbus made
many other voyages and grew to be a middle-aged man, but he never got
to these countries he had read about in “The Travels of Marco Polo.”