“It is not in the storm or in the strifeWe feel benumbed and wish to be no more;But in the after silence on the shore—When all is lost except a little life.”—Byron.
“It is not in the storm or in the strifeWe feel benumbed and wish to be no more;But in the after silence on the shore—When all is lost except a little life.”—Byron.
“It is not in the storm or in the strife
We feel benumbed and wish to be no more;
But in the after silence on the shore—
When all is lost except a little life.”—Byron.
Hannibal was only forty-five when he lost Zama. That flame of hatred toward Rome, kindled at the altar of Baal when he was a boy of only nine years, still raged within him inextinguishably. He had lost his right eye in the Roman campaign. His brave brothers, Mago, hero of Trebia, and Hasdrubal, hero of Metaurus, had fallen in battle. The second Punic War, the war of Rome against Hannibal, or rather of Hannibal against Rome, had after phenomenal successes, ended in the disastrous defeat at Zama and in the most humiliating conditions of peace imposed upon Carthage by world-conquering Rome. All, indeed, seemed lost except a little life; yet in this dull defeat-peace, this wearily sullen after-storm, the old hate fires insatiably raged.
Hannibal, unsupported and unappreciated by his own country, passed over into Asia. He wandered from Asiatic court to court ever striving to arouse enmity towards Rome or to incite the nations to battle against her. Rome steadily pursued her inveterate foe. From court to court he passed, and from country to country passed too, the paid assassins whose sole object in life was to bring Hannibal dead or alive to Rome.
And at the court of Prusias, king of Bythinia, Hannibal was at last hopelessly trapped. Hatefully grinning faces glared in upon him from corridors, doors, windows: Rome had won.
Hannibal’s presence of mind and proud dignity did not desert him even in that crucial hour, even when he toyed with death. Whilst adjusting his military robes in full presence of the leering faces at corridors, doors, and windows, he took from his finger a ring whose hollow setting contained a most potent poison. This he drank. And before any one of that self-gratulating victor-gang realized what was taking place, Hannibal fell forward dead.
The Catholic Church condemns suicide. The divine commandThou shalt not killhas as its complete predicateeither thyself oranother. No man can escape from God. Death only shifts the scene.
Stoicism advocated suicide; and many philosophies of the past taught that a man ought not to outlive honor.
When one considers not only the chagrin and humiliations and mental agonies, but also the rank physical tortures inflicted upon the vanquished in times past, the full meaning ofVae Victis(Woe to the vanquished!) is brought forcibly to the mind. Those were wild-beast times and the jungle-fights are ferocious. Plutarch speaking of the proscription list at the close of the civil war between Cæsar and Anthony says: “The terms of their mutual concessions were these: that Cæsar should desert Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Anthony, Lucius Cæsar, his uncle by his mother’s side. Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to his rage.” And we read in Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine” that this mighty despot, conqueror of many Asiatic kings, made use of these one time monarchs to draw him in his chariot: and that bridled and with bits in their mouths they fumed forward under the swishing wire-lash, while galling insults goaded on their pangs.
“Forward, ye jades!Now crouch, ye kings of greater Asia!*****Thro’ the streets with troops of conquered kings,I’ll ride in golden armor like the sun,And in my helm a triple plume shall springSpangled with diamonds, dancing in the air,To note me emperor of the threefold world.”
“Forward, ye jades!Now crouch, ye kings of greater Asia!*****Thro’ the streets with troops of conquered kings,I’ll ride in golden armor like the sun,And in my helm a triple plume shall springSpangled with diamonds, dancing in the air,To note me emperor of the threefold world.”
“Forward, ye jades!
Now crouch, ye kings of greater Asia!
*****
Thro’ the streets with troops of conquered kings,
I’ll ride in golden armor like the sun,
And in my helm a triple plume shall spring
Spangled with diamonds, dancing in the air,
To note me emperor of the threefold world.”
Whether this be only “Marlowe’s mighty line”, or whether it be the somewhat fantastic presentation of a dread reality—need not be known. The thoughtful student of history knows only too well just where to turn for human jungle-scenes. Andthere are many. From Assyrian cruelty boasting of pyramids of severed ears, lips, noses, and the deft art of flaying alive—down to Balkan-Turkish atrocities and Mexican murders the forest-way is long and dark and dreary. We hope light will yet shine upon this way. We dream that the black hags of war and of demon cruelty will not dare disport their hideousness in the future white-light. We would suspend judgment as to the past; we would not condemn Hannibal; we would play on the one-string lyre of hope—forlorn tho’ it be as Watts’ allegorical “Hope”—and we would wait kindly content with God’s plan for this world and for a better world to come.
In Germany, in the modern principality of the Lippe, may still be seen traces of the historic struggle between the Roman legions under Varus and the Germanic barbarians led by Arminius. The names “das Winnefeld” (the field of victory), “die Knochenbahn” (the bone-lane), “die Knochenleke” (the bone-brook), “der Mordkessel” (the kettle of slaughter), which still characterize various places in the gloomy Teutoberger Wald, are in themselves reminders of scenes of horror which were once dread realities; while scattered here and there may still be seen traces of the Roman camp—unmistakable evidence of the one time presence of the Roman eagles.
Perhaps all is fair in war, and the end justifies the means, and the eleventh commandment “Do to the enemy what he’d like to do to you”, being altogether heartless and godless is peculiarly applicable to war: nevertheless the victory won by treachery never sounds so clarionly joyous adown the ages as the victory following a fair fight; and the deadly defeat that came by treachery has in it a pathos that redeems defeat from disgrace. Time is just.
When Varus started out at the head of his legions to quell, as he thought, an insurrection of a few unimportant tribes scattered along the Weser and the Ems rivers, Germany seemed comparatively at peace; and Arminius, the most dreaded war-lordof the barbarians, seemed to have been won over by the blandishments of the Roman camp.
It was a gala day for the troops as with ample supplies, generous baggage-wagons, plenty of camp followers, jesters, entertainers, they turned away from the frontier and plunged into the Black Forest. There was nothing to indicate that concerted action on the part of the Germans was the cause of that far distant uprising against Roman authority, and that within their ranks were half-Romanized barbarians who would desert at a given signal and use their arms against their present comrades; above all, that Arminius had secretly instigated a general uprising and that the Black Forests were blackly alive with the foe.
On went the Roman troops following their treacherous guides who purposely led them into the dense marshy depths of the woods; and when thus lost and entangled, their cavalry unable to advance, and while all the troops were called upon to construct a rude causeway over which the horses might proceed—suddenly from the gloom encompassing them on all sides came deadly arrows, missiles, javelins hurled by an unseen foe.
Varus seems to have been unable to realize that he was the victim of a stratagem. His best men, officers and soldiers, were falling around him; his cavalry slipping in slimy blood lay floundering on the way; his light-armed auxiliaries, composed in great part of brawny German youth, were slinking away and becoming strangely one with the forces whence came the arrows, missiles, javelins. Still Varus urged on the work on the causeway, and still veterans advanced to the work as veterans fell and at last the gloomy march resumed.
The attack seemed over and Varus thought some isolated tribe of barbarians had taken advantage of their hour of disability to harass them on the march. On reaching a declivity of the woody plain Varus drew up his forces as best he could in battleline and thus awaited the coming of the foe. But Arminius was not prepared to meet the Romans in battle; his rude warriors were no match for the trained Roman soldiers fully protected by helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield. There could have been but one result to such an encounter—victory for the Romans, defeat for the cause of liberty and native land.
Arminius held in leash his blood-hounds all thro’ the night. The Romans halted on the slope and, perceiving no enemy near, pitched their camp with true Roman precision and then slept long and well the heavy sleep of worn out nature that last night of mortal life.
At early dawn, while the Roman camp yet lay moveless, undreaming of the savage blood-hounds around or the deadly ambush ahead,—Arminius despatched men to the farther end of the defile with orders to fell trees and erect an impassable barricade. He then sent troops to different points of advantage on either side of the defile thro’ which the fated army would advance; he gave instructions as to concerted action at the sound of the agreed-upon signal, and thus awaited the coming of morn and the renewed activities of the Roman camp.
There is something sternly terrible in the human heart which can thus joyfully contemplate the destruction of thousands upon thousands of one’s fellow mortals. And yet, in this case, these Roman soldiers were the concrete embodiment of a cause which would enslave Arminius’ native land, intrude deadly enervation into the integrity of a German home; and more—much more: Rome had deeply wronged Arminius, lover of liberty, lover of native land; but even more deeply had she wronged Arminius, the lover, and the man. His wife, Thusnelda, was held a captive in Rome and his child, a fair haired boy of only five years, had been made to grace a Roman triumph. Rivers of blood could not wash away such seared yet burning memories from the heart.
With fierce exultation did Arminius watch the waking of the camp, the taking up of pickets, formation of line, and the slow winding motion towards the way, the fatal way, he had foreseen they must go. Had Varus even then become suspicious of concerted treachery, he would have hastened back, would have plunged into the heart of the unknown wood, would have remained in camp, would have done anything under the sun rather than advance right into that narrow densely wooded way ambushed at every vantage point on both sides and shut in at the farther end by that barricade high as the tops of the trees. But he looked and knew not; Arminius saw and knew and exulted.
Fate is always on the winning side. As day advanced and the troops were all now fairly within the ravine, the heavens opened in streams of torrential rain. The Black Forest seemed to groan with impending doom: old Thor and Odin seemed fighting for their altars in the Druid wood, and Roman Jove was no match for this grim Teutonic Thor.
Arminius watched from the height; and just as the vanguard rounded the curve at the summit of which rose the barricade of trees, the signal for general assault all along the line arose clear and decisive from the height.
The slaughter was appalling. The bulk of the infantry, fourteen thousand men, were slain; while the cavalry which at first had numbered about eighteen hundred horsemen, partly Romans partly provincial, made here its last dread stand against the foe and—lost.
Numonius Vola, a Roman cavalry officer, seeing the utter uselessness of the attempt to continue the unfair strife, made a bold dash for deliverance. At the head of a small force, he turned away from the floundering mass of horses and men andplunged into the unknown forest. He was, however, soon surrounded by the Germans, and he and his soldiers were cut to pieces.
A brave band of Romans, last of that death-devoted multitude of men, gained a point of vantage on a hill slope and arranging themselves in a solid circle presented to the foe an almost impenetrable line of glittering points of spears. The Germans, tho’ outnumbering them a hundred to one, yet quailed before that steely welcome. Perhaps, too, being themselves brave men, they were in awe and admiration of that heroic despair; perhaps, being perfectly sure of their prey, they were loth to break the savage satisfaction of gloating upon its desperation; perhaps no Arnold Winkelreid opportunely came forth to offer himself in sacrifice upon those outstretched points and so wedge open the way; perhaps, and O most dread truth-perhaps! those wild children of the Druid wood saw safely entrenched behind that helpless steel—worthy victims for Odin. And thus the night passed—that awful last night upon earth for the last of the legions of Varus.
There is an open space on the flat top of an overhanging rock, darkly terrible even today and still the favorite haunt of century old oaks: and this place tradition points out as the spot upon which human sacrifices were of old offered to Thor and to Odin. And thither the blue eyed barbarians dragged those Roman soldiers, bravest of the brave, who had stood entrenched behind their helpless steel until exhaustion overcame them and who at last overpowered by sheer force of numbers, had been taken alive by the implacable foe and dragged to the altar of sacrifice.
Strange indeed is that delusion, so often inextricably assimilable with religious fanaticism, wherein a man makes himself believe that he honors or placates Deity by immolating thereto his own enemy! Truly the human-heart god is the deificationof its own desires. And that God-man upon the Cross who is essentially the everlasting antithesis of the desires of the human heart is not of man. We can understand Jove and Juno and Mars and Venus and even Odin and Thor—they are ourselves only more so: not so the Christ crucified on Calvary.
Fifteen thousand eight hundred men are estimated to have formed the army lost in the Teutoberger Wald. This irreparable loss gave to the heart of Cæsar Augustus its pathetic cry enduring even to the day of death, “Varus, Varus, give back my legions, Varus!”
Suetonius tells us that at the news of the Black Forest disaster, Augustus, in bitter grief, beat his head against the wall crying incessantly and inconsolably, “Bring back my legions, Varus”: and that after many years had passed and even to the day of his death he lamented the loss as irreparable. Not, indeed, because so many men had fallen; Rome was prodigal of human life; but because his prophetic eye saw in this defeat the beginning of the end of Roman supremacy; the change of policy from aggressive to defensive; the fatal turning of a tide which should roll down upon southern Europe in inundations of desolation.
Many other ancient writers attest the seriousness of this defeat to Rome and corroboratewhat Suetonius saysas to its effect upon Augustus. Dion Cassius says, “Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he had lost, and for terror respecting the Germans and the Gauls. And his chief alarm was, that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome; and there were no Roman youth fit for military duty that wereworth speaking of, and the allied populations that were at all serviceable had been wasted away.”
Florus also expresses its effects: “Hac clade factum est ut imperium quod in litore oceani non steterat, in ripa Rheni fluminis staret.” (The result of this disaster was that the empire which had not been content that it be bounded by the shore of ocean was forced to accept as its boundary the River Rhine).
There was an attempt made many years ago to erect a statue to the memory of Arminius. The site chosen for this imposing monument was, of course, the Teutoberger Wald. It was suggested that contributions be received only from the English and German nations and that the statue should stand as a memorial of the common ancestry and heritage of the German-English races.
Arminius is indeed more truly an English national hero than was Caractacus, if the Saxon genealogy be properly traced.
However, the project fell through. England and Germany are not yet amicably one under the tutelage of a far off German war-lord: and no colossal statue of Arminius—successful strategist and wholesale slaughterer—rises today in gloomy Teutoberger Wald from out the dark depths of Der Mordkessel.
Among the struggles of the past which seem decisively to have subverted the old order of things and ushered in the new, is the battle of Adrianople. There Valens, Emperor of Rome, was killed in battle with the Goths; and the proud Roman army hitherto deemed invincible, almost invulnerable, was defeated and destroyed.
How the wild-eyed children of the North must have gazed with astonishment upon one another as they stood victors on that field! They had not dared to hope that a Roman army would go down under their undisciplined assault; and that an Emperor of Rome should lie dead upon the battlefield was far beyond their wildest dream. Doubtless they felt within them that first awakening of brutal youth-strength: race-childhood was gone; race-manhood not yet come. And enervated old Rome; cultured, wily, effetely civilized Romans lay at the feet of these youthful, battle-flushed barbarians: and history yet hears the cries that arose as those feet advanced ruthlessly trampling.
If rivers could write history—what would the Nile tell us, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Granicus-Issus, the Metaurus, the Aufidus, the Tiber, the Danube, the Moskva, the Maritza?
Mysterious Nile—with sources for ages unknown; with inundations death-dealing, life-giving; with crocodiles and alligators and implacable river God: with Theban Karnak-Luxor and the Necropolis; with Memphis and the Pyramids and the greatSphinx; with dynastic silences perturbed by a few great names—Menes, Cheops, Rameses; with the barge of Cleopatra wafted by scent-sick breezes to a waiting Anthony; with cosmopolitan bad, sad, modern Memphis-Cairo.
Tigris-Euphrates valley—cradle of the human race! home of the Accadians, a pre-historic people that had passed away and whose language had become a dead classic tongue when Nineveh and Babylon were young. Who were the Accadians? Who were the Etruscans? The Euphrates and the Tiber will not tell.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon—world-wonder: Babylon as described by Herodotus—city of blood and beauty and winged power: city surfeited with the slaughter of Assyrian Nineveh: city of the great temple of Bel: city of palaces guarded by majestic colossi—Sphinxes, winged lions, man-head bulls; city of gold and precious stones and ivory edifices and streets of burnished brass: city of the fatal Euphrates, of Baltshazzar’s banquet and the dread hand-writing upon the wall: city of a destruction so tremendous, so terrible that the lamentation thereof, caught vibrantly in Biblical amber, rings on and ever on adown the ages, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen!”
“They say the Lion and the Lizard keepThe courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild AssStamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his sleep.”—Omar Khayyam.
“They say the Lion and the Lizard keepThe courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild AssStamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his sleep.”—Omar Khayyam.
“They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his sleep.”
—Omar Khayyam.
And the site of Babylon, that mighty Paris of the past, is not now authoritatively known. Does the river know; does it remember the glory and the horror-night and the gloom? Is the sad sighing of rivers caused by the sorrows they see as they flow? And is the eternal moan of ocean the aggregate of the throbs of woe that the rivers have felt as they flow? Does nature know of mortal woe, does she, indeed, lament with Moschus the death of pastoral Bion, with Shelley, the untimely departure of Keats, our “Adonais”?
Fact or fancy, suggestive silence or assertive sound, poet-dream or cynic-certainty—which draws nearer to truth? which shall prevail?
Granicus-Issus—bloody outlets of the wounds of the world when Macedonian Alexander made Europe and Asia bleed!
Was Alexander the Great great? Moralize as we may; shudder at the grim bloody outlets of a wounded world; wonder at the mad folly of the masses who, at the caprice of a magnetic madman, wildly slay and submit to be slain; see clearly, in the cut and statuary past, the dolt unreason of it all, the uselessness, the Pelion-Ossa horror: yet honestly recognize that deep down in the perverse human heart there lurks loving admiration for—Alexander the Great. Rameses, Cyrus, Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon—we cannot dissociate these men from their deeds; how then can we disapprove their deeds and approve these men? Why is it that a Shelley, Byron, De Musset, Swinburne, Omar—ad infinitum—enthrall us by the charm of their written words, even tho’ we disagree with them in their tenets, their philosophy of life, their conclusions: and we censure and condemn their private lives! Can men, as Catullus sings to Lesbia, both “adore and scorn” the same object at the same time? There are many replies to these questions, but no satisfactory answer. Psychologists, take note.
The military hero, the “chief who in triumph advances”, the Warrior Bold, the idols of history will continue to glimmer secure in cob-web fascination even when armaments shall have been banished from off the face of the earth and wars shall be remembered only as the myths of days that are no more. We forgive Granicus-Issus-Arbela for the sake of Alexander the Great.
And the conqueror of the world died, aged thirty-two, in Babylon. This cognizant old city and Accadian Euphrates weretoo wearily wise to wonder two thousand years ago. They had seen the rise and fall of many monarchs: and one more, this boy-wonder from the West, could arouse no throb of pitying surprise from scenes that dully remembered dead and gone dynasties. Why, death was old when Accadia was young ten thousand years ago; lament this stripling? No. And thus went out the conquered Conqueror of the world.
The little stream Metaurus witnessed perhaps the most momentous battle of history. Yet no magic name shines forth from that strife either as victor or vanquished. Nero, the Roman consul, victor; and Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, vanquished; are not the names of favorites of fame. As Byron says, of a thousand students hearing the nameNeronine hundred and ninety-nine recall the last Julian Emperor of Rome, and one laboriously remembers the hero of Metaurus. And yet were historians endowed with Platonic vision whereby the great is perceived in the small, doubtless the bloody conflict by the stream would be seen pivotal of history.
O hopes and fears and blasted dreams of so gigantic scale, played on a stage of Alpine eminence, no wonder you stand spectacular thro’ the ages!
“Carthagini jam non ego nuntiosMittam superbos. Occidit, occiditSpes omnis et fortuna nostriNominis, Hasdrubale interemto.”—Horace.
“Carthagini jam non ego nuntiosMittam superbos. Occidit, occiditSpes omnis et fortuna nostriNominis, Hasdrubale interemto.”—Horace.
“Carthagini jam non ego nuntios
Mittam superbos. Occidit, occidit
Spes omnis et fortuna nostri
Nominis, Hasdrubale interemto.”
—Horace.
“Alas, I shall not now send to Carthage proud bearers of good news,” said Hannibal, as he mournfully gazed at the severed head of his brother, hurled insolently into his camp, even as with impatient hope he awaited news of that brother’s coming and dreamed the dream of their successfully united forces, attack on Rome, victory, and the dispatch of proud messengers to Carthage. With prophetic gaze did the hero of Cannæ seein that bloodily dead face the negation of his eight years’ victory in Italy, his recall to Carthage, his defeat at Zama, his exile and bitter death, and the onward stride of world-conquering Rome over the ashes of Carthage.
Cities that have been and that are no more: Niobe-woe: rivers that know of that long ago and wearily sigh as they flow!
Old Tiber disdains the paragraph; a volume for it or—nothing.
Lordly dark Danube—so long the barrier between the known and the unknown, civilization and barbarism, the magic sun-gardens of Italy and the Teutoberger Wald!
“Varus, Varus, give back my legions, Varus”—that cry of Cæsar Augustus, Ruler of Rome, Mistress of the World, was the first wild note of a chorus of woe that arose in full diapason when Valens fell in the battle of Adrianople. From the victory of Arminius over the Roman troops under Quintilius Varus in the Black Forest of Germany (A. D. 9) to the decisive victory of the combined Gothic tribes over the veteran Roman army under Valens near the capital of the Empire, the sympathetic student of history may hear ever that losing cry of the Emperor-seer, “Give back my legions, Varus.”
Legend relates that on the Roman northern frontier there stood a colossal statue of Victory; it looked toward the North, and with outstretched hand pointing to the Teutoberger Wald, seemed to urge on to combat and victory: but the night following the massacre of the Roman troops in the Black Forest, and the consequent suicide of Varus, this statue did, of its own accord, turn round and face the South, and with outstretched hand pointing Romeward, seemed to urge on to combat and victory the wild-eyed children of the North. Thus did the Goddess of Victory forsake Rome.
The Moskva river is yet memory-lit with the fires of burningMoscow; and its murmuring ever yet faintly echoes the toll, toll, toll of the Kremlin bell. Three days and three nights of conflagration—and then the charred and crumbling stillness! Snow on the hills and on the plains; white, peaceful snow healing the wounds of Borodino, blanketing uncouth forms, hiding the horror; but within the fated city, no snow, nothing white, nothing peaceful; gaunt icicle-blackness o’er huge, prostrate Pan-Slavism.
Yet surely cognizant old Moscow, secure in ruins, sighed, too, o’er the gay and gallant Frenchmen caught fatefully in the trap of desolation. Perhaps, too, the compensating lamentation of distant Berezina mingled genially with the murmuring Moskva.
Little Nap Bonaparte met his Waterloo in Moscow: history to the contrary notwithstanding.
“The soldiers fight and the kings are called heroes,” says the Talmud. Of all that nameless host of ardent, life-loving men who entered Moscow, stood aghast amid the ruins, started back on that awful across-Continent retreat—the world knows only Napoleon, history poses Napoleon, Meissonier paints Napoleon, Byron apostrophizes Napoleon, Emerson eulogizes Napoleon, Rachmaninoff plays Napoleon, and the hero-lover loves Napoleon. Why? Is there any answer to ten thousand Whys perched prominently and grinning insolently in this mad play-house of the Planets? None.
“What hope of answer or redressBeyond the veil, beyond the veil!*****And yet we somehow trust that goodWill be the final goal of ill,That not a worm is cloven in vain;That not a moth with vain desireIs shriveled in a fruitless fireOr but subserves another’s gain.”*****
“What hope of answer or redressBeyond the veil, beyond the veil!*****And yet we somehow trust that goodWill be the final goal of ill,That not a worm is cloven in vain;That not a moth with vain desireIs shriveled in a fruitless fireOr but subserves another’s gain.”*****
“What hope of answer or redress
Beyond the veil, beyond the veil!
*****
And yet we somehow trust that good
Will be the final goal of ill,
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire
Or but subserves another’s gain.”
*****
The Maritza river, at one time called the Orestes river, is formed by the confluence of two unimportant streams. Adrianople is favorably situated, and ranks next to Constantinople in natural advantages.
Orestes, son of Agamemnon, built the city and gave his name both to the city and the principal river. Emperor Hadrian changed the name to Hadrianopolis (Hadrian’s city), thence our modernized Adrianople. One almost regrets that the name of the restless Orestes did not continue appropriately to designate the city of so varying fortunes and vivid vicissitudes.
Adrianople was the Turkish capital for nearly a hundred years; it was abandoned in 1453 when Constantinople came into Turkish control. The ruins of the palaces of the Sultans yet grace the ancient capital.
Adrianople is the faithful Moslem city of forty mosques. The mosque Selim II. is a close rival to Santa Sofia.
Greek and Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine, Christian and Moslem, Turk and Bulgarian, influences have in turn dominated the city of three rivers; each re-baptizing it with blood: and the end is not yet.
In 1713, Charles XII. of Sweden was a guest in the castle of Tumurtish. Little then did the valiant Madman of the North dream how ignominiously his own meteoric career would close: little did he see himself as fixed in fame, not by his combats and victories, not even by his gallant defeat at Pultowa, but by being the inspiration in the moralizing mind of Dr. Samuel Johnson of the following lines:
“He left a name—at which the world grew pale—To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
“He left a name—at which the world grew pale—To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
“He left a name—at which the world grew pale—
To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
The Vanity of Human Wishes is indeed exemplified not only in Charles XII. of Sweden, but also in many other favorites of fortune: not one of whom, perhaps, but would add to or alter his own peculiar setting in fame—if perchance he should be able to recognize himself at all in the historic figure masqueradingunder his name. How seldom does it chance that the world honors a man for what that man feels to be his best title to honor?
Would Julius Cæsar, red-hand conqueror of Gaul, know himself as the Shakespearean hero? And Nero, Louis XI., Wallenstein, Henry VIII., Roderick Borgia—would they claim even passing acquaintance with themselves as fame has fixed them? If these men took any of their fighting qualities with them into the Spirit Land, there must have been some flamy duelling when they met their respective biographers.
And so the blood of battle bathed Adrianople one thousand five hundred and thirty-five years ago and—last year (1913). And we talk learnedly about the defeat and death of the Roman Emperor Valens, and of the effect of that victory upon our respected barbarian ancestors with consequent doings of destiny, etc., etc.—because wedon’t know: and we say little about the Servian-Bulgarian-Turkish capture of Adrianople last year, because it is too near and—we know. Then, too, who can poetize or moralize or even sentimentally scribble over the yet hideously bleeding wounds of war? When they are healed, when the moaning is still, the mangled forms moveless, the cripples on crutches gone, the lamentations silenced, the last-lingering heartache soothed in Death—why, then, perhaps; but not now. Battle in the real is a human butchering: and there is no other delusion under the sun more diabolically sardonic than that which makes animal savagery seem patriotism and the red-hand slaughter-man a hero. From the Homeric Hector-Achilles, deliver the world, O Lord.
Strange, indeed, is the contrariety between the real of War and the ideal, the far away hero and the near Huerta, the blood spilled and stilled and the bright life-blood spilling, the sorrow silenced and the agonized cries that arise, the battle of Adrianople, 378 A. D., and the siege and capture and re-capture of Adrianople (1912-1913).
If, in the battle of Chalons, Attila and his Huns had been victorious over the combined forces of the semi-Christianized Visigoths under Theoderic and the Romans under Ætius—then Hungvari influence rather than Teutonic would have dominantly determined the progress of the civilized world.
Rome had fallen: effete in her withered hand lay the rod of empire: and swarming about her, now quarrelling among themselves and with her, now fraternizing, but always more or less in awe of her prostrate majesty were her barbarous children—Franks, Burgundians, Alans, Lombards, Gauls, Alemanni, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths. These had known Rome in the hour of her pride and power; they revered the Rome that was for the sake of the Rome that had been; they had imbibed something of her culture, her military discipline, her laws, her religion. Semi-civilized, semi-Christianized, with the bold Teutonic virtues yet pristine from the Black Forests of Germany,—they were the possible material of an excellence surpassing that of Rome, even when Rome could boast of excellence.
But about 450 A. D. hordes, innumerable hordes,velut unda supervenit undam(even as wave upon wave) of hideously ugly, lithe, little, wiry, imp-like men poured into Europe from the Asiatic lands north of the Black Sea. By their numbers, their lightning-like rapidity, their uncanny appearance, and their brute ferocity, they quickly swept the countries before them, put to flight the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes dwelling along the course of the Danube, and finally under their terribleleader Atzel (Attila), Scourge of God, they confronted the civilized and semi-civilized world in arms on the plain of Chalons.
From early dawn even until darkness frowned over the field the blood-feast flowed: and Death was satiated.
Attila withdrew to his camp. He left an effective guard around his wagons and outposts and made every thing ready for a prolonged and obstinate resistance to the attack anticipated at early dawn. Nevertheless he built for himself a massive funeral pile, placed upon it his most valued treasures and his favorite wives, and was fully prepared and resolute to apply the torch, ascend the pyre, and so perish in the flames—should defeat fall to his fortune on the following day.
Morning dawned. The awful work of death on the preceding day appalled both armies; miles upon miles of outstretched plain lay covered with carnage; the all-night-writhing mounds of men were ominously still. Sullenly did foe gaze upon foe; but each recoiled from renewal of the slaughter.
Still the advantage was with the allies; for Attila, so late the fierce aggressor, was barricaded in his camp—tho’ grimly awaiting attack indeed, and prepared to resist to the end and die like a lion in his den.
Did the Romans know of that funeral pile? They may not, indeed, have known the peculiar manner in which Attila would seek death, but they knew that he would die by his own hand—if the worst came. Cato had done so and Varus and Brutus and Cassius and Hannibal and Anthony and Cleopatra—ad infinitum.
Addison, in his tragedyCato, has graphically portrayed the conflicting thoughts and emotions in the mind of a man whofeels that life cannot longer be borne and yet shrinks back from the horror and the dread unknown.
Cato had lost the battle of Utica. He had been true to Pompey, he had fought the last battle for the cause of Pompey—and lost. And Cæsar was indeed god of this world, and the morrow held no place on all this so vast earth for Cato; this lost-battle night must end it all. He read Plato’s discourse on the immortality of the soul, and in the lines of Addison, thus soliloquized:
“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well:Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,This longing after immortality?Or whence this secret dread and inward horrorOf falling into naught? Why shrinks the soulBack on herself and startles at destruction?’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,And intimates eternity to man.*****The soul, secured in her existence, smilesAt the drawn dagger and defies its point.The stars shall fade away, the sun himselfGrow dim with age and nature sink in years;But thou shalt flourish in immortal youthUnhurt amidst the war of elements,The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well:Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,This longing after immortality?Or whence this secret dread and inward horrorOf falling into naught? Why shrinks the soulBack on herself and startles at destruction?’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,And intimates eternity to man.*****The soul, secured in her existence, smilesAt the drawn dagger and defies its point.The stars shall fade away, the sun himselfGrow dim with age and nature sink in years;But thou shalt flourish in immortal youthUnhurt amidst the war of elements,The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
“It must be so. Plato, thou reason’st well:
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
*****
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
But Attila did not mount his funeral pile. The day passed without attack upon Attila’s formidable position. King Theodoric lay dead upon the plain and his son Prince Thorismund, who had distinguished himself in the battle, was victoriously proclaimed King of the Visigoths.
Ætius, Valentinian’s able general, held in leash both the Romans and the Visigoths even while Attila slowly broke up camp and withdrew in long lines leading northward.
The effect was that of victory for the allies. Rome was saved from a fresh infusion of barbarism whilst her Teutonic elementwas still semi-barbarous. The German characteristics—love of liberty, independence, and reverential regard for women—thus dominated the Christian civilization which now began to flourish vigorously out from the decadence of pagan Rome.
If, as Byron says,
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
then also it may be said that Lucan laughed Rome’s gods and goddesses away. The laugh is the most insidiously potent of all destructive forces when the laugher is loved and the times are attuned to hear. Not satire, not personal bitterness, not even the withering invectives of a Juvenal are as sweepingly effective as the quills of ridicule, the inescapable miasma of the laugh. Once let the grin distort the frown of Zeus and majesty trembles, awe smiles, reverence dies.
And so the pagan deities were dead; their temples empty and meaningless; and thundering Jove and jealous Juno and murderous Mars and all the other deifications of the all too human heart of man were impotently silent under the spell of the solemn central figure of the new religion—Christ on the Cross.
And the Church in the name and with the power of that sublime Sufferer taught the reverse of all that paganism had taught; of all that the world had hitherto heard and heeded; of all that the all too human heart of man held as dearest and best. “Love your enemies,” said the Church to the men who had fought at Chalons. “Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the clean of heart, Blessed are the peacemakers”, reiterated the Church to her semi-barbarous children. And they understood only in part, and they did deeds of appalling atrocity even while acquiescing to her teachings: for the will to do good was, indeed, emotionally present with them, but the power so to do failed them crucially. Yet their sins were of surface-passionsnot of the inmost heart; for they were ever in reverential awe of the sublime Sufferer on the Cross; for he spoke as no man ever yet had spoken, and he lived what he said, and he died praying for his murderers: and all this is not of man—as none knew better than they who knew the naked human heart.
History has not done justice to Attila. History has not done justice to any lost cause. For the winners, not the losers, are the writers as well as the makers of history, and all forces combine to make them unjust to the lost cause.
Herodotus gives us the story of Marathon, Thermopylæ,Platæa, Salamis; Persia had no Herodotus: Homer extols the exploits of the Grecian army, the valor of Achilles; but Hector had no Homer: Roman historians tell the story of the Punic wars; Carthage from her desolate site sown with salt cares not what they say, whilst Hannibal, bravest of the brave, and supreme military genius, speaks on the historic page only from the lips of the hated Romans.
When Protestantism finally won in England and the long able reign of Elizabeth established it firmly upon a political basis, then were fulminated against the Church of Rome all those unjust accusations and gross misrepresentations which, crystallized in history and in literature, seem ineradicable as fate. But truth is older than history or literature, and more analytically powerful than the synthetic forces of crystallization, and patiently prevalent even over fate.
Elizabeth’s very legitimacy depended upon the establishment of Protestantism in England and the overthrow of Catholicity; and to this two-fold end the energies of the very astute daughter of Henry VIII. were undeviatingly directed.
It takes about three hundred years from the time of a cataclysmicupheaval of anykind before the minds of men can view it dispassionately or estimate it without bias. But what are three hundred years to age-old Truth?
Elizabeth possessed, in addition to the terse Tudor qualities, the rare gift of foresight. She knew the power of the pen and the possibilities for fame or infamy in the men of genius of her time. And so her court was open to the great men of that day and her smile of patronage was ever ready to welcome poet, artist, dramatist, politician, warrior, traveler, historian, and statesman: she became all to all and she won all.
AsGlorianain Spenser’s immortal “Færie Queen” she reigns forever. Bacon, Spenser, Sidney Smith, Raleigh, Voltaire—as Voices having a thousand echoes throughout the years—have amply rewarded that patient foresight and have fixed her in fame as—what she was to them—Good Queen Bess.
And so Attila and his Huns in low long sinuously winding northern lines left behind them the carnage strewn plain of Chalons, and the camp with its ominous pyre, and the dazed foe. And thus victory remained to Ætius, last of the Romans: and the field of Chalons which saved civilization and semi-civilization from an untimely intrusion of rank barbarism; which secured domination to the Teutonic race rather than to the Sarmatic; which freed Europe from Asia—was the last victory of imperial Rome.
Attila died two years later; some say as the victim of poison secretly mixed with his food by Ætius’ ever vigilant spies. With him his vast empire passed away: and the leader who once claimed as proud titles,—“Atzel, Descendant of the Great Nimrod. By the Grace of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes. The Dread of the World”—died ignominiously one carousal wedding night: and history, ever unjust to a lost cause, writes his name among theAlmostsand calmly commends the destiny by which Attila and his Hunnish hordes were defeated in the great battle of Chalons.
The battle of Tours had as result the dominance of the Aryan race over the Semitic in Europe; and of the Cross over the Crescent throughout the world. As Gibbon says speaking of the phenomenal conquests of the followers of Mohammed: “A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran might now be taught in the Schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man.” (Charles Martel).
Persia, Lydia, northern Africa, Spain, had successively fallen under the devouring zeal of the fanatics of the desert. Hot and arid and consuming as the sun o’er yellow sands was the inspiration of the Prophet fire-breathing thro’ the Koran. “The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of heaven. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God is of more avail than two months of fasting and prayer; whoso falls in battle, all his sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be as resplendent as vermillion and odoriferous as musk.” Hearts thus athirsting aflame had as their dream-goal, their vermillion glory—theconquest and subjugation of the city of the Cæsars, the city of the Church, Rome, Immortal Rome.
From the Bosphorus to the Gibraltar glowed the victor Crescent with extremities burning into Europe. Unsuccessful on the Bosphorus but successful on the Gibraltar, Spain was soon enveloped in its fanatic fire and its flame-tongues darted over the Pyrenees.
The Saracens of Spain were commanded by Abderame, favorite of the caliph Hashen, victor of many fields, idol of the army, and devout believer in the promises of the Prophet. Abderame was proud of his battle scars, not yet indeed resplendent as vermillion and odoriferous as musk, but potentially so and cherished accordingly. He would yet slay “many cut-throat dogs of misbelievers” and so gain more vermillion. One is here tempted to say, in the words of Virgil describing the sacrifice of Iphigenia,