had been wrongfully taken away from her. So she began quietly and
secretly to get ready for another war against Frederick. Quietly and
secretly she got other countries to promise to help her. But Frederick
heard of what she was doing, and suddenly he attacked her again, and
for seven long years this next war went on. So this was called the
Seven Years’ War. Frederick kept on fighting until he had beaten
Austria for good and until he had gained his purpose, which was to make
his little country of Prussia the most powerful country in Europe.
He still held on to the part of Austria that he had at first taken
away. Maria Theresa was a great queen, and she would have won against
Frederick had he been an ordinary king. But she had too strong a ruler
against her. Frederick was one of the world’s smartest generals and too
much for her.
The Seven Years’ War, strange to say, was fought out not only in
Europe but in far-off America, also. England had taken Frederick’s
side. France and other countries had taken sides against him. So the
English settlers in America, who were on Frederick’s side, fought the
French settlers, who were against him. When, therefore, Frederick
won in Europe, the English in America also won against the French in
America. I am telling you all this because that is why we in America
speak English instead of French to-day. If Frederick had lost, France
would have won, and we here in America would probably now speak French
instead of English.
Frederick, like some other kings we have heard of before, thought
nothing of lying or cheating or stealing if he had to in order to
get the better of other countries. Fair means or foul means made no
difference to him. But his own people he treated as if they were his
children and did everything he could for them. Like a lioness with her
cubs, he fought for his family, even with the world against him.
There was a mill close by Frederick’s palace that belonged to a poor
miller. As it was not a pretty thing to be so near, the king wanted
to buy it in order to tear it down and get rid of it. But the miller
would not sell. Although Frederick the Great offered the miller a large
sum of money, he refused. A great many kings would simply have taken
the mill and perhaps put the miller in jail or put him to death, but
Frederick did neither, for he thought his lowliest subject had his
rights and that if he didn’t want to sell he shouldn’t be made to. So
he left the miller undisturbed, and the mill stands to-day as it did
then, close to the palace.
Though Frederick was a German, strange to say, he hated the German
language. He thought it the language of the uneducated. He himself
spoke French and wrote in French and only spoke German when he had to
talk to his servants or those who did not understand French.
[Illustration]
71
America Gets Rid of Her King
Did you know that we once had a king?
His name was George.
No, George Washington wasn’t a king.
This was another George.
You remember the Stuarts in England--James, Charles, and the rest of
the family who ruled England for a hundred years from 1600 to 1700.
Well about 1700 England ran out of Stuarts--there were no more Stuart
children.
As England had to have another king, they asked a distant relative of
the royal family over from one of the German states to rule England.
Yes, from Germany to rule England. His name was George, and the English
called him George I. George couldn’t even speak English. He was German
and loved his own country much better than England, but he had agreed
to come and rule over England, and he did so. You can imagine what sort
of a king he was. His son, George II ruled after him, although he,
too, was more German than English. But when the grandson, George III,
came to the throne he was a born and bred Englishman. It was in this
grandson’s reign, in the reign of George III, that our own country, the
United States, was born.
When a wheel turns over we call it a _revolution_, which is a big name
for a little thing.
When a _country_ turns over we also call it a revolution, which is a
big name for a big thing.
Our country had started with the two little settlements, or colonies,
as they were called, of Jamestown and Plymouth. But it had grown and
grown until there were now a number of settlements along the coast
of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the people who had settled here were
English, and the king of England ruled over them. The king asked all
these people to send him money, which was called taxes. Now, the money
collected from taxes was not, of course, for the king to put in his
pocketbook to use as he liked. It was supposed to be spent on the
people who were taxed, to be used for roads, schools, police, and such
things that are for the good of all.
So these people along the coast who were paying money or taxes to the
king far off across the water thought they ought to have a vote to say
how this money should be spent and on what it should be spent. But they
did not have a vote, and so they thought they ought not to have to pay
taxes to the king away off in England.
One of the leading citizens of America at this time was a man named
Benjamin Franklin. He was the son of a candlemaker, but from a poor boy
who had once walked the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread
under each arm he had risen to a very honored position in the country.
He had learned to be a printer and had started one of the first and
best newspapers in the United States. He was a great thinker and had
invented a stove and a lamp and had succeeded in getting electricity
from the lightning in the clouds by flying a kite with a wire during a
storm. He was one of the Wise Men of the West.
Franklin was sent over to England to try to get the king to change his
mind about taxing the colonies or to bring about some sort of agreement
with him. But King George was hardheaded, and Franklin was unable to
stop the king from doing what he had made up his mind to do.
So the people in America, finding that talking did no good, started in
to fight. They raised an army. Then they tried to find a good man to
command the army. Such a leader must be honest and brave; he must have
a good mind; he must love his country; and he must be a good fighter.
So they looked around for a man who had all these qualities, and they
found one. The man they picked was honest and brave, for when he was a
boy, he had cut down a favorite tree of his father’s just to try a new
hatchet he had been given. In those days to cut down a cherry-tree was
a crime for which by law a man could be put to death. When this boy was
asked by his angry father if he had done it he said, “I cannot tell a
lie; I did.” Of course, now you know who it was--George Washington.
[Illustration: George Washington surveying Lord Fairfax’s farm.]
George learned to be a surveyor--that is, a man who measures land--and
when only sixteen years old he was employed to survey the large farm
of Lord Fairfax in Virginia; that showed he had a good mind. He then
had been a soldier and had fought the Indians bravely and well; that
showed that he loved his country and was a good fighter. So George
Washington was chosen to lead the American army against the English.
The Americans did not at first think of starting a new country. They
simply wanted the same rights that Englishmen in England had. But
they soon found out that there was only one way to get those rights,
and that was to start a new country independent of England. So a man
named Thomas Jefferson wrote a paper which was called a Declaration of
Independence--can you say it?--because it declared that the colonies
were going to be independent of England. There were fifty-six Americans
chosen by the people to sign it. Each one of the signers would have
been put to death as a traitor to England if the United States had not
won, and each signer knew it, yet he signed it nevertheless. But just
signing this paper didn’t make England give up the colonies. Oh, no!
King George’s armies tried to stop the colonies from getting away from
the rule of England.
Washington had a very small army with which to fight the English army,
and very little money with which to pay the soldiers or to supply them
with food or clothes or powder and shot. One winter the soldiers nearly
froze and starved to death, for they had little clothing and hardly any
food but carrots, and it seemed as if the war could not go on unless
they got help. Yet Washington kept up their spirits.
Benjamin Franklin was sent across the ocean, not to England this time
of course, but to France to see if he couldn’t get some help from that
country. France hated England because she had lost part of America,
Canada, in the Seven Years’ War, but at first France would not help.
She took little interest in the fight for Washington’s army had lost a
number of battles against the English, and people don’t like to back a
loser. But the year after the Declaration of Independence the American
army beat the English badly at a place called Saratoga in New York
State. Then the king of France became more interested, and then he sent
help to the colonies to carry on the war. A young French nobleman named
Lafayette hurried over from France and fought under General Washington
and did so well that he has made a great name for himself.
England, seeing that things were going against her, now wanted to make
peace with the Americans and give them the same rights that English
citizens had, but it was then too late. At the beginning of the war the
Americans would have agreed to this and been glad to agree, but now
they would agree to nothing less than entire independence of England;
and so the War went on, for England would not let the colonies go.
The English had been beaten by the Yankees, as they called them in the
North, at a place called Saratoga. So then they sent their general,
Lord Cornwallis, to the south of our country to see if he could beat
the people there. General Greene was put in command of the Southern
American soldiers. Lord Cornwallis tried to fight Greene, but Greene
led Cornwallis a merry chase round the country until he was all tired
out and finally went into a little place called Yorktown in Virginia.
Here Cornwallis and his army were caught fast so that they could not
get out. On one side was the American army, and on the water side were
the French war-ships that had been sent over to help. So Cornwallis had
to surrender.
King George then said, “Let us have peace”; and in 1783 the war was
ended by a treaty of peace, eight years after it had started, and the
colonies were independent of England. This was called the Revolutionary
War, and after it was over our country was called the United States.
There were just thirteen of these original colonies that joined as
partners in this Union. That is why there are just thirteen stripes in
our flag. Some people think thirteen is an unlucky number; but our flag
with its thirteen stripes still waves over the land, and it has brought
us good luck; don’t you think so?
Washington was made the first President, and so he is called the Father
of His Country; the First in War, the First in Peace, and the First in
the Hearts of his Countrymen.
[Illustration]
72
Upside Down (header upside down)
Measles and Mumps are very catching.
So are Revolutions.
Just a little later than the Revolution of the thirteen colonies, the
people in France had a Revolution, too. They saw how successful the
Americans had been in their fight against the king of England, and so
they rebelled against their own king and queen in France. This was
called the French Revolution.
The reason the French people rebelled against their king was because
they had very little, and the king and his royal family and nobles
seemed to have everything. Both the Americans and the French rebelled
against paying taxes. With the Americans, however, it was a matter of
principle more than anything else. Their taxes were not very large,
but they thought them unjust. The French taxes, however, not only were
unjust but they took almost everything away from the people.
I have already told you how bad things were under Louis XIV, and they
got worse until the people could stand it no longer.
At this time the king of France was Louis XVI, and his queen was
named Marie Antoinette. Although the people were so poor they had
hardly anything to eat except a very coarse and bad-tasting kind of
bread called black bread; they were compelled to pay the king and the
nobles money so that they could live in fine style and have “parties”;
and they had to do all sorts of work for them for nothing or next to
nothing. If any one complained he was put in a great prison in Paris
called the Bastille and left there to die. In spite of the fact that
all the people were so terribly poor, the king and the queen and their
friends lived in luxury and extravagance with everything in the world
they wanted, all paid for by the poor people.
Neither the king nor his wife was really wicked. They were simply young
and thoughtless. They meant well, but like a great many well-meaning
people they lacked common sense and did not know how others lived. They
didn’t seem to understand that people _could_ be poor, for they had so
much themselves. Marie Antoinette was told that her subjects had no
bread to eat. “Then why don’t they eat cake?” she is said to have asked.
To right the wrongs of the people, a body of many of the best men from
all France gathered together and, calling themselves the National
Assembly, tried to work out some plan to do away with all the injustice
the people had been suffering. They wanted to make every one free and
equal and give everybody a “say” in the government.
But the poor had become so furiously mad at the way they had been
treated by the rich that they would stand things no longer and a wild
and angry mob of them attacked the old prison of the Bastille. They
battered down the walls and freed the prisoners and killed the guards
of the Bastille simply because they were servants of the king. Then
they cut off the heads of the guards and stuck them on poles and,
carrying them aloft, paraded through the streets of Paris. There were
only about half a dozen prisoners in the old jail, so that freeing them
didn’t matter much, but this attack was to show that the people would
no longer allow the king to imprison them.
The Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789. This is the beginning of
what is called the French Revolution, and this day is celebrated in
France in almost the same way that our Fourth of July is, for it is the
French Declaration of Independence against kings.
Lafayette, who was now back in France, the same Lafayette who had
helped the Americans fight their king, sent the key of the Bastille
over to George Washington as a souvenir that his own country had now
overthrown its king and declared its independence.
The king and queen were living in the beautiful palace at Versailles,
the palace that Louis XIV had built. All the king’s nobles, when they
heard what was taking place in Paris, became frightened and, deserting
their king and queen, took to their heels and left the country. They
knew pretty well what was going to happen, and they didn’t wait to see.
Meanwhile the National Assembly drew up what was called a Declaration
of the Rights of Man, which was something like our Declaration of
Independence. It said that all men were born free and equal, that the
people should make the laws and the laws should be the same for all.
Soon after the Declaration of Rights had been made, the mad mob from
Paris, ragged and wild-looking, carrying sticks and stones, and
crying, “Bread, bread!” marched out the ten miles to Versailles, where
Louis and Marie Antoinette were still living. Up the beautiful grand
staircase of the palace they rushed. The few guards remaining round
the king were unable to hold them back. They captured the king and
queen and took them prisoners to Paris. There they kept Louis and Marie
Antoinette prisoners for several years. Once the king and queen tried
to escape in disguise but were caught before they could get out of the
country and brought back.
Then it was that the National Assembly drew up a Constitution--a set
of rules by which the country should be justly governed. This the king
agreed to and signed.
[Illustration: French revolution crowd and guillotine.]
But that still wasn’t enough. The people wanted no king at all to rule
over them. So about a year later they started a real republic like our
own, and the king was sentenced to death. A Frenchman had invented
a kind of machine with a big knife for chopping off heads. This was
called the guillotine, and it was used instead of an ax, for it was
quicker and surer. So the king was taken to the guillotine, and his
head was cut off.
But the people did not settle down quiet and contented when they had
got rid of their king. They were afraid that those who were in favor
of kings might start another kingdom. The people chose red, white, and
blue as their colors and the “Marseillaise” as their national song; and
everywhere they marched they carried the tricolor, as they called the
three-colored flag, and as they marched they sang the “Marseillaise.”
Then began what is called the Reign of Terror, and this is a tale of
blood. A man named Robespierre and two of his friends were leaders in
this Reign of Terror. Any one whom the people suspected of being in
favor of kings they caught and beheaded. The queen was one of the first
to have her head cut off. If any one even whispered, “there’s a man,
or there’s a woman, or there’s a child who is in favor of kings,” that
man, woman, or child would be rushed to the guillotine. If any one
simply hated another and wished to get rid of him, all he had to do was
to point him out as in favor of kings, and off he would be taken to the
guillotine. No one was sure of his life for a day. He never knew what
moment some personal enemy might accuse him. Hundreds, then thousands,
of suspected people were beheaded, and a special sewer had to be built
to carry off the blood. But the guillotine, fast as it was, was too
slow for the Terrorists. It could cut off but one head at a time, and
so prisoners were lined up and shot down with cannons.
People seemed to have gone wild, crazy, mad! They insulted Christ and
the Christian religion. They put a pretty woman called the Goddess of
Reason on the altar of the beautiful Church of Notre Dame and worshiped
her instead of the Lord. They pulled down statues and pictures of
Christ and the Virgin Mary. In their places they put statues and
pictures of their own leaders. The guillotine was put up in place of
the cross. They did away with Sundays. They made a week ten days long,
and every tenth day they made a holiday instead of Sunday. They stopped
counting time from Christ’s birth, because they didn’t want anything
that had to do with Christ, and they began to call the year when the
republic was started in 1792 the year 1.
But Robespierre wished to rule alone, and he plotted against his two
friends. One of these he had beheaded, and the other was killed in his
bath-tub by a girl named Charlotte Corday, who was in a rage at what he
had done. So Robespierre was left alone. At last the people, in fear of
this man who was such a monstrous and inhuman tyrant, rose up against
him. When he found that he too, was to be put to death, he tried to
commit suicide, but, before he could do so he was caught and taken to
the guillotine, where he went to the same death to which he had sent
countless others, and the Reign of Terror was ended. It was a pity that
he hadn’t a thousand lives with which to pay for the thousands of lives
he had taken away.
[Illustration]
73
A Little Giant
At last the Revolution was stopped.
It was stopped by a young soldier only about twenty years old and sixty
inches tall.
The Government was holding a meeting in the palace while a mad mob in
the streets outside were trying to attack the palace. A young soldier
had been given a few men and told to keep the mob away. The young
soldier pointed cannons down each street that led to the palace, and
no one dared to show himself. This young soldier was named Napoleon
Bonaparte. He made such a fine record that people wanted to know who he
was and where he came from.
Napoleon had been born on a little island called Corsica in the
Mediterranean Sea. He was born just in time to be a Frenchman, for the
island of Corsica had belonged to Italy and had only just been given to
France a few weeks before he was born. As soon as he was old enough,
he was sent off to a military school in France. There his French
schoolmates looked upon him as a foreigner and didn’t have much to
do with him. But Napoleon made high marks in arithmetic, and he loved
hard problems. Once he shut himself up in his room to work over a hard
problem, and there he stayed for three days and nights until he had
found the answer.
Napoleon showed by the way he put an end to the French Revolution that
he was going to be a fine soldier, and so when he was only twenty-six
years old he was made a general.
Now, at this time all the other countries of Europe had kings. France
had caught the fever of revolution from the Americans all the way
across the ocean and had got rid of her kings. The kings of these other
countries were afraid their people might catch the fever of revolution,
too. So all of these other countries became enemies of France because
France had put an end to her kings.
Napoleon was sent off to fight Italy. He had to cross the Alps, which
Hannibal in the Punic Wars had crossed long before. But Hannibal had no
heavy cannons when he crossed; it seemed impossible for Napoleon’s army
to cross with cannons. Napoleon asked his engineers, the men who were
supposed to know about such things, if it could be done. They said they
thought it was impossible.
“Impossible,” Napoleon angrily replied, “is a word found only in the
dictionary of fools.” Then he shouted:
“There shall be no Alps!” and went ahead and crossed them. His army won
in Italy, and when he returned to France he was greeted by the people
as a conquering hero. But the men who were then governing France were
afraid of him. They feared he might try to make himself king because
he was so popular with the people. Napoleon, however, asked to be sent
to conquer Egypt because he had an idea he could get the better of the
English there. He thought he might then cut England off from India, the
new country that they had won in the reign of James I. England had lost
America, but she didn’t want to lose India.
The French Government was very glad to get rid of Napoleon, and so they
sent him off to Egypt as he asked. He quickly conquered Egypt as Julius
Cæsar had done, but there was no Cleopatra to upset his plans. While
he was conquering Egypt, his fleet, which was waiting for him at the
mouth of the Nile, was caught and destroyed by the English fleet under
a great admiral, if not the greatest that ever lived. His name was Lord
Nelson.
Napoleon had no way to take his army back to France. So he left his
army in Egypt under command of another. He himself, however, managed
to find a ship to take him back home. When he reached France he found
that the men who were supposed to be governing were quarreling among
themselves, and, seeing his chance, he had himself made one of three
men chosen to rule France. He was called first consul; and there were
supposed to be two assistant consuls, but the assistants were little
more than clerks to do Napoleon’s bidding. It was only a very short
time before he was next made first consul for life. Then, not long
after that, he became emperor of France and also king of Italy.
The other countries of Europe began to fear that Napoleon would conquer
them, too, and make them also a part of France. So all the other
countries joined together to beat him. Napoleon planned to conquer
England first, and he got ready a fleet to cross over to England. But
his fleet was caught off Spain near a point called Trafalgar by the
same English admiral, Lord Nelson, who had beaten him in Egypt. Before
this battle, Nelson said to his sailors, “England expects that every
man will do his duty,” and they did it. Napoleon’s fleet was utterly
destroyed, though Nelson himself was killed.