Kinneir, Fraser and other observers speak unfavourably of the Mazandarani people, whom they describe as very ignorant and bigoted, arrogant, rudely inquisitive and almost insolent towards strangers. The peasantry, however, are far from dull, and betray much shrewdness where their interests are concerned. In the healthy districts they are stout and well made, and are considered a warlike race, furnishing some cavalry (800 men) and eight battalions of infantry (5600 men) to government. They speak a marked Persian dialect, but a Tūrkiidiomclosely akin to the Turkoman is still current amongst the tribes, although they have mostly already passed from the nomad to the settled state. Of these tribes the most numerous are the Modaunlū, Khojehvand and Abdul Maleki, originally of Lek or Kurd stock, besides branches of the royal Afshār and Kājār tribes of Tūrki descent. All these are exempt from taxes in consideration of their military service.The export trade is chiefly with Russia from Meshed-i-Sar, the principal port of the province, to Baku, where European goods are taken in exchange for the white and coloured calicoes, caviare, rice, fruits and raw cotton of Mazandarān. Great quantities of rice are also exported to the interior of Persia, principally to Teheran and Kazvin. Owing to the almost impenetrable character of the country there are scarcely any roads accessible to wheeled carriages, and the great causeway of Shah Abbas along the coast has in many places even disappeared under the jungle. Two routes, however, lead to Teheran, one by Firuz Kuh, 180 m. long, the other by Larijan, 144 m. long, both in tolerably good repair. Except where crossed by these routes the Elburz forms an almost impassable barrier to the south.The administration is in the hands of a governor, who appoints the sub-governors of the nine districts of Amol, Barfarush, Meshed-i-Sar, Sari, Ashref, Farah-abad, Tunakabun, Kelarrustak and Kujur into which the province is divided. There is fair security for life and property; and, although otherwise indifferently administered, the country is quite free from marauders; but local disturbances have latterly been frequent in the two last-named districts. The revenue is about £30,000, of which little goes to the state treasury, most being required for the governors, troops and pensions. The capital is Sari, the other chief towns being Barfarush, Meshed-i-Sar, Ashref and Farah-abad.
Kinneir, Fraser and other observers speak unfavourably of the Mazandarani people, whom they describe as very ignorant and bigoted, arrogant, rudely inquisitive and almost insolent towards strangers. The peasantry, however, are far from dull, and betray much shrewdness where their interests are concerned. In the healthy districts they are stout and well made, and are considered a warlike race, furnishing some cavalry (800 men) and eight battalions of infantry (5600 men) to government. They speak a marked Persian dialect, but a Tūrkiidiomclosely akin to the Turkoman is still current amongst the tribes, although they have mostly already passed from the nomad to the settled state. Of these tribes the most numerous are the Modaunlū, Khojehvand and Abdul Maleki, originally of Lek or Kurd stock, besides branches of the royal Afshār and Kājār tribes of Tūrki descent. All these are exempt from taxes in consideration of their military service.
The export trade is chiefly with Russia from Meshed-i-Sar, the principal port of the province, to Baku, where European goods are taken in exchange for the white and coloured calicoes, caviare, rice, fruits and raw cotton of Mazandarān. Great quantities of rice are also exported to the interior of Persia, principally to Teheran and Kazvin. Owing to the almost impenetrable character of the country there are scarcely any roads accessible to wheeled carriages, and the great causeway of Shah Abbas along the coast has in many places even disappeared under the jungle. Two routes, however, lead to Teheran, one by Firuz Kuh, 180 m. long, the other by Larijan, 144 m. long, both in tolerably good repair. Except where crossed by these routes the Elburz forms an almost impassable barrier to the south.
The administration is in the hands of a governor, who appoints the sub-governors of the nine districts of Amol, Barfarush, Meshed-i-Sar, Sari, Ashref, Farah-abad, Tunakabun, Kelarrustak and Kujur into which the province is divided. There is fair security for life and property; and, although otherwise indifferently administered, the country is quite free from marauders; but local disturbances have latterly been frequent in the two last-named districts. The revenue is about £30,000, of which little goes to the state treasury, most being required for the governors, troops and pensions. The capital is Sari, the other chief towns being Barfarush, Meshed-i-Sar, Ashref and Farah-abad.
(A. H.-S.)
MAZARIN, JULES(1602-1661), French cardinal and statesman, elder son of a Sicilian, Pietro Mazarini, the intendant of the household of Philip Colonna, and of his wife Ortensia Buffalini, a connexion of the Colonnas, was born at Piscina in the Abruzzi on the 14th of July 1602. He was educated by the Jesuits at Rome till his seventeenth year, when he accompanied Jerome Colonna as chamberlain to the university of Alcala in Spain. There he distinguished himself more by his love of gambling and his gallant adventures than by study, but made himself a thorough master, not only of the Spanish language and character, but also of that romantic fashion of Spanish love-making which was to help him greatly in after life, when he became the servant of a Spanish queen. On his return to Rome, about 1622, he took his degree as Doctorutriusque juris, and then became captain of infantry in the regiment of Colonna, which took part in the war in the Valtelline. During this war he gave proofs of much diplomatic ability, and Pope Urban VIII. entrusted him, in 1629, with the difficult task of putting an end to the war of the Mantuan succession. His success marked him out for further distinction. He was presented to two canonries in the churches of St John Lateran and Sta Maria Maggiore, although he had only taken the minor orders, and had never been consecrated priest; he negotiated the treaty of Turin between France and Savoy in 1632, became vice-legate at Avignon in 1634, and nuncio at the court of France from 1634 to 1636. But he began to wish for a widerspherethan papal negotiations, and, seeing that he had no chance of becoming a cardinal except by the aid of some great power, he accepted Richelieu’s offer of entering the service of the king of France, and in 1639 became a naturalized Frenchman.
In 1640 Richelieu sent him to Savoy, where the regency of Christine, the duchess of Savoy, and sister of Louis XIII., was disputed by her brothers-in-law, the princes Maurice and Thomas of Savoy, and he succeeded not only in firmly establishing Christine but in winning over the princes to France. This great service was rewarded by his promotion to the rank of cardinal on the presentation of the king of France in December 1641. On the 4th of December 1642 Cardinal Richelieu died, and on the very next day the king sent a circular letter to all officials ordering them to send in their reports to Cardinal Mazarin, as they had formerly done to Cardinal Richelieu. Mazarin was thus acknowledged supreme minister, but he still had a difficult part to play. The king evidently could not live long, and to preserve power he must make himself necessary to the queen, who would then be regent, and do this without arousing the suspicions of the king or the distrust of the queen. His measures were ably taken, and when the king died, on the 14th of May 1643, to everyone’s surprise her husband’s minister remained the queen’s. The king had by a royal edict cumbered the queen-regent with a council and other restrictions, and it was necessary to get the parlement of Paris to overrule the edict and make the queen absolute regent, which was done with the greatest complaisance. Now that the queen was all-powerful, it was expected she would at once dismiss Mazarin and summon her own friends to power. One of them, Potier, bishop of Beauvais, already gave himself airs as prime minister, but Mazarin had had the address to touch both the queen’s heart by his Spanish gallantry and her desire for her son’s glory by his skilful policy abroad, and he found himself able easily to overthrow the clique of Importants, as they were called. That skilful policy was shown in every arena on which the great Thirty Years’ War was being fought out. Mazarin had inherited the policy of France during the Thirty Years’ War from Richelieu. He had inherited his desire for the humiliation of the house of Austria in both its branches, his desire to push the French frontier to the Rhine and maintain a counterpoise of German states against Austria, his alliances with the Netherlands and with Sweden, and his four theatres of war—on the Rhine, in Flanders, in Italy and in Catalonia.
During the last five years of the great war it was Mazarin alone who directed the French diplomacy of the period. He it was who made the peace of Brömsebro between the Danes and the Swedes, and turned the latter once again against the empire; he it was who sent Lionne to make the peace of Castro, and combine the princes of North Italy against the Spaniards, and who made the peace of Ulm between France and Bavaria, thus detaching the emperor’s best ally. He made one fatal mistake—he dreamt of the French frontier being the Rhine and the Scheldt, and that a Spanish princess might bring the Spanish Netherlands as dowry to Louis XIV. This roused the jealousy of the United Provinces, and they made a separate peace with Spain in January 1648; but the valour of the French generals made the skill of the Spanish diplomatists of no avail, for Turenne’s victory at Zusmarshausen, and Condé’s at Lens, caused the peace of Westphalia to be definitely signed in October 1648. This celebrated treaty belongs rather to the history of Germany than to a life of Mazarin; but two questions have been often asked, whether Mazarin did not delay the peace as long as possible in order to more completely ruin Germany, and whether Richelieu would have made a similar peace. To the first question Mazarin’s letters, published by M. Chéruel, prove a complete negative, for in them appears the zeal of Mazarin for the peace. On the second point, Richelieu’s letters in many places indicate that his treatment of the great question of frontier would have been more thorough, but then he would not have been hampered in France itself.
At home Mazarin’s policy lacked the strength of Richelieu’s. The Frondes were largely due to his own fault. The arrest of Broussel threw the people on the side of the parlement. His avarice and unscrupulous plundering of the revenues of the realm, the enormous fortune which he thus amassed, his supple ways, his nepotism, and the general lack of public interest in the great foreign policy of Richelieu, made Mazarin the especial object of hatred both by bourgeois and nobles. The irritation of the latter was greatly Mazarin’s own fault; he had tried consistently to play off the king’s brother Gaston of Orleans against Condé, and their respective followers against each other, and had also, as hiscarnetsprove, jealously kept any courtier from getting into the good graces of the queen-regent except by his means, sothat it was not unnatural that the nobility should hate him, while the queen found herself surrounded by his creatures alone. Events followed each other quickly; the day of the barricades was followed by the peace of Ruel, the peace of Ruel by the arrest of the princes, by the battle of Rethel, and Mazarin’s exile to Brühl before the union of the two Frondes. It was while in exile at Brühl that Mazarin saw the mistake he had made in isolating himself and the queen, and that his policy of balancing every party in the state against each other had made every party distrust him. So by his counsel the queen, while nominally in league with De Retz and the parliamentary Fronde, laboured to form a purely royal party, wearied by civil dissensions, who should act for her and her son’s interest alone, under the leadership of Mathieu Molé, the famous premier president of the parlement of Paris. The new party grew in strength, and in January 1652, after exactly a year’s absence, Mazarin returned to the court. Turenne had now become the royal general, and out-manœuvred Condé, while the royal party at last grew to such strength in Paris that Condé had to leave the capital and France. In order to promote a reconciliation with the parlement of Paris Mazarin had again retired from court, this time to Sedan, in August 1652, but he returned finally in February 1653. Long had been the trial, and greatly had Mazarin been to blame in allowing the Frondes to come into existence, but he had retrieved his position by founding that great royal party which steadily grew until Louis XIV. could fairly have said “L’État, c’est moi.” As the war had progressed, Mazarin had steadily followed Richelieu’s policy of weakening the nobles on their country estates. Whenever he had an opportunity he destroyed a feudal castle, and by destroying the towers which commanded nearly every town in France, he freed such towns as Bourges, for instance, from their long practical subjection to the neighbouring great lord.
The Fronde over, Mazarin had to build up afresh the power of France at home and abroad. It is to his shame that he did so little at home. Beyond destroying the brick-and-mortar remains of feudalism, he did nothing for the people. But abroad his policy was everywhere successful, and opened the way for the policy of Louis XIV. He at first, by means of an alliance with Cromwell, recovered the north-western cities of France, though at the price of yielding Dunkirk to the Protector. On the Baltic, France guaranteed the Treaty of Oliva between her old allies Sweden, Poland and Brandenburg, which preserved her influence in that quarter. In Germany he, through Hugues de Lionne, formed the league of the Rhine, by which the states along the Rhine bound themselves under the headship of France to be on their guard against the house of Austria. By such measures Spain was induced to sue for peace, which was finally signed in the Isle of Pheasants on the Bidassoa, and is known as the Treaty of the Pyrenees. By it Spain recovered Franche Comté, but ceded to France Roussillon, and much of French Flanders; and, what was of greater ultimate importance to Europe, Louis XIV. was to marry a Spanish princess, who was to renounce her claims to the Spanish succession if her dowry was paid, which Mazarin knew could not happen at present from the emptiness of the Spanish exchequer. He returned to Paris in declining health, and did not long survive the unhealthy sojourn on the Bidassoa; after some political instruction to his young master he passed away at Vincennes on the 9th of March 1661, leaving a fortune estimated at from 18 to 40 million livres behind him, and his nieces married into the greatest families of France and Italy.
The man who could have had such success, who could have made the Treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, who could have weathered the storm of the Fronde, and left France at peace with itself and with Europe to Louis XIV., must have been a great man; and historians, relying too much on the brilliant memoirs of his adversaries, like De Retz, are apt to rank him too low. That he had many a petty fault there can be no doubt; that he was avaricious and double-dealing was also undoubted; and hiscarnetsshow to what unworthy means he had recourse to maintain his influence over the queen. What that influence was will be always debated, but both hiscarnetsand the Brühl letters show that a real personal affection, amounting to passion on the queen’s part, existed. Whether they were ever married may be doubted; but that hypothesis is made more possible by M. Chéruel’s having been able to prove from Mazarin’s letters that the cardinal himself had never taken more than the minor orders, which could always be thrown off. With regard to France he played a more patriotic part than Condé or Turenne, for he never treated with the Spaniards, and his letters show that in the midst of his difficulties he followed with intense eagerness every movement on the frontiers. It is that immense mass of letters that prove the real greatness of the statesman, and disprove De Retz’s portrait, which is carefully arranged to show off his enemy against the might of Richelieu. To concede that the master was the greater man and the greater statesman does not imply that Mazarin was but a foil to his predecessor. It is true that we find none of those deep plans for the internal prosperity of France which shine through Richelieu’s policy. Mazarin was not a Frenchman, but a citizen of the world, and always paid most attention to foreign affairs; in his letters all that could teach a diplomatist is to be found, broad general views of policy, minute details carefully elaborated, keen insight into men’s characters, cunning directions when to dissimulate or when to be frank. Italian though he was by birth, education and nature, France owed him a great debt for his skilful management during the early years of Louis XIV., and the king owed him yet more, for he had not only transmitted to him a nation at peace, but had educated for him his great servants Le Tellier, Lionne and Colbert. Literary men owed him also much; not only did he throw his famous library open to them, but he pensioned all their leaders, including Descartes, Vincent Voiture (1598-1648), Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654) and Pierre Corneille. The last-named applied, with an adroit allusion to his birthplace, in the dedication of hisPompée, the line of Virgil:—“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.”(H. M. S.)Authorities.—All the earlier works on Mazarin, and early accounts of his administration, of which the best were Bazin’sHistoire de France sous Louis XIII. et sous le Cardinal Mazarin, 4 vols. (1846), and Saint-Aulaire’sHistoire de la Fronde, have been superseded by P. A. Chéruel’s admirableHistoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV., 4 vols. (1879-1880), which covers from 1643-1651, and its sequelHistoire de France sous le ministère de Cardinal Mazarin, 2 vols. (1881-1882), which is the first account of the period written by one able to sift the statements of De Retz and the memoir writers, and rest upon such documents as Mazarin’s letters andcarnets. Mazarin’sLettres, which must be carefully studied by any student of the history of France, have appeared in theCollection des documents inédits, 9 vols. For hiscarnetsreference must be made to V. Cousin’s articles in theJournal des Savants, and Chéruel inRevue historique(1877), see also Chéruel’sHistoire de France pendant la minorité, &c., app. to vol. iii.; for his early life to Cousin’sJeunesse de Mazarin(1865) and for the careers of his nieces to Renée’sLes Nièces de Mazarin(1856). For the Mazarinades or squibs written against him in Paris during the Fronde, see C. Moreau’sBibliographie des mazarinades(1850), containing an account of 4082 Mazarinades. See also A. Hassall,Mazarin(1903).
The man who could have had such success, who could have made the Treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, who could have weathered the storm of the Fronde, and left France at peace with itself and with Europe to Louis XIV., must have been a great man; and historians, relying too much on the brilliant memoirs of his adversaries, like De Retz, are apt to rank him too low. That he had many a petty fault there can be no doubt; that he was avaricious and double-dealing was also undoubted; and hiscarnetsshow to what unworthy means he had recourse to maintain his influence over the queen. What that influence was will be always debated, but both hiscarnetsand the Brühl letters show that a real personal affection, amounting to passion on the queen’s part, existed. Whether they were ever married may be doubted; but that hypothesis is made more possible by M. Chéruel’s having been able to prove from Mazarin’s letters that the cardinal himself had never taken more than the minor orders, which could always be thrown off. With regard to France he played a more patriotic part than Condé or Turenne, for he never treated with the Spaniards, and his letters show that in the midst of his difficulties he followed with intense eagerness every movement on the frontiers. It is that immense mass of letters that prove the real greatness of the statesman, and disprove De Retz’s portrait, which is carefully arranged to show off his enemy against the might of Richelieu. To concede that the master was the greater man and the greater statesman does not imply that Mazarin was but a foil to his predecessor. It is true that we find none of those deep plans for the internal prosperity of France which shine through Richelieu’s policy. Mazarin was not a Frenchman, but a citizen of the world, and always paid most attention to foreign affairs; in his letters all that could teach a diplomatist is to be found, broad general views of policy, minute details carefully elaborated, keen insight into men’s characters, cunning directions when to dissimulate or when to be frank. Italian though he was by birth, education and nature, France owed him a great debt for his skilful management during the early years of Louis XIV., and the king owed him yet more, for he had not only transmitted to him a nation at peace, but had educated for him his great servants Le Tellier, Lionne and Colbert. Literary men owed him also much; not only did he throw his famous library open to them, but he pensioned all their leaders, including Descartes, Vincent Voiture (1598-1648), Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654) and Pierre Corneille. The last-named applied, with an adroit allusion to his birthplace, in the dedication of hisPompée, the line of Virgil:—
“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.”
(H. M. S.)
Authorities.—All the earlier works on Mazarin, and early accounts of his administration, of which the best were Bazin’sHistoire de France sous Louis XIII. et sous le Cardinal Mazarin, 4 vols. (1846), and Saint-Aulaire’sHistoire de la Fronde, have been superseded by P. A. Chéruel’s admirableHistoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV., 4 vols. (1879-1880), which covers from 1643-1651, and its sequelHistoire de France sous le ministère de Cardinal Mazarin, 2 vols. (1881-1882), which is the first account of the period written by one able to sift the statements of De Retz and the memoir writers, and rest upon such documents as Mazarin’s letters andcarnets. Mazarin’sLettres, which must be carefully studied by any student of the history of France, have appeared in theCollection des documents inédits, 9 vols. For hiscarnetsreference must be made to V. Cousin’s articles in theJournal des Savants, and Chéruel inRevue historique(1877), see also Chéruel’sHistoire de France pendant la minorité, &c., app. to vol. iii.; for his early life to Cousin’sJeunesse de Mazarin(1865) and for the careers of his nieces to Renée’sLes Nièces de Mazarin(1856). For the Mazarinades or squibs written against him in Paris during the Fronde, see C. Moreau’sBibliographie des mazarinades(1850), containing an account of 4082 Mazarinades. See also A. Hassall,Mazarin(1903).
MAZAR-I-SHARIF,a town of Afghanistan, the capital of the province of Afghan Turkestan. Owing to the importance of the military cantonment of Takhtapul, and its religious sanctity, it has long ago supplanted the more ancient capital of Balkh. It is situated in a malarious, almost desert plain, 9 m. E. of Balkh, and 30 m. S. of the Pata Kesar ferry on the Oxus river. In this neighbourhood is concentrated most of the Afghan army north of the Hindu Kush mountains, the fortified cantonment of Dehdadi having been completed by Sirdar Ghulam Ali Khan and incorporated with Mazar. Mazar-i-Sharif also contains a celebrated mosque, from which the town takes its name. It is a huge ornate building with minarets and a lofty cupola faced with shining blue tiles. It was built by Sultan Ali Mirza aboutA.D.1420, and is held in great veneration by all Mussulmans, and especially by Shiites, because it is supposed to be the tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet.
MAZARRÓN,a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Murcia, 19 m. W. of Cartagena. Pop. (1900), 23,284. There are soap and flour mills and metallurgic factories in the town, and iron, copper and lead mines in the neighbouring Sierra de Almenara. A railway 5 m. long unites Mazarron to its port on the Mediterranean, where there is a suburb with 2500 inhabitants (mostly engaged in fisheries and coasting trade), containing barracks, a custom-house, and important leadworks. Outside of the suburb there are saltpans, most of the proceeds of which are exported to Galicia.
MAZATLÁN,a city and port of the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, 120 m. (direct) W.S.W. of the city of Durango, in lat. 23° 12′ N., long 106° 24′ W. Pop. (1895), 15,852; (1900), 17,852. It isthe Pacific coast terminus of the International railway which crosses northern Mexico from Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, and a port of call for the principal steamship lines on this coast. The harbour is spacious, but the entrance is obstructed by a bar. The city is built on a small peninsula. Its public buildings include a fine town-hall, chamber of commerce, a custom-house and two hospitals, besides which there is a nautical school and a meteorological station, one of the first established in Mexico. The harbour is provided with a sea-wall at Olas Altas. A government wireless telegraph service is maintained between Mazatlán and La Paz, Lower California. Among the manufactures are saw-mills, foundries, cotton factories and ropeworks, and the exports are chiefly hides, ixtle, dried and salted fish, gold, silver and copper (bars and ores), fruit, rubber, tortoise-shell, and gums and resins.
MAZE,a network of winding paths, a labyrinth (q.v.). The word means properly a state of confusion or wonder, and is probably of Scandinavian origin; cf. Norw.mas, exhausting labour, also chatter,masa, to be busy, also to worry, annoy; Swed.masa, to lounge, move slowly and lazily, to dream, muse. Skeat (Etym.Dict.) takes the original sense to be probably “to be lost in thought,” “to dream,” and connects with the rootma-man-, to think, cf. “mind,” “man,” &c. The word “maze” represents the addition of an intensive suffix.
MAZEPA-KOLEDINSKY, IVAN STEPANOVICH(1644?-1709), hetman of the Cossacks, belonging to a noble Orthodox family, was born possibly at Mazeptsina, either in 1629 or 1644, the latter being the more probable date. He was educated at the court of the Polish king, John Casimir, and completed his studies abroad. An intrigue with a Polish married lady forced him to fly into the Ukraine. There is a trustworthy tradition that the infuriated husband tied the naked youth to the back of a wild horse and sent him forth into the steppe. He was rescued and cared for by the Dnieperian Cossacks, and speedily became one of their ablest leaders. In 1687, during a visit to Moscow, he won the favour of the then all-powerful Vasily Golitsuin, from whom he virtually purchased the hetmanship of the Cossacks (July 25). He took a very active part in the Azov campaigns of Peter the Great and won the entire confidence of the young tsar by his zeal and energy. He was also very serviceable to Peter at the beginning of the Great Northern War, especially in 1705 and 1706, when he took part in the Volhynian campaign and helped to construct the fortress of Pechersk. The power and influence of Mazepa were fully recognized by Peter the Great. No other Cossack hetman had ever been treated with such deference at Moscow. He ranked with the highest dignitaries in the state; he sat at the tsar’s own table. He had been made one of the first cavaliers of the newly established order of St Andrew, and Augustus of Poland had bestowed upon him, at Peter’s earnest solicitation, the universally coveted order of the White Eagle. Mazepa had no temptations to be anything but loyal, and loyal he would doubtless have remained had not Charles XII. crossed the Russian frontier. Then it was that Mazepa, who had had doubts of the issue of the struggle all along, made up his mind that Charles, not Peter, was going to win, and that it was high time he looked after his own interests. Besides, he had his personal grievances against the tsar. He did not like the new ways because they interfered with his old ones. He was very jealous of the favourite (Menshikov), whom he suspected of a design to supplant him. But he proceeded very cautiously. Indeed, he would have preferred to remain neutral, but he was not strong enough to stand alone. The crisis came when Peter ordered him to co-operate actively with the Russian forces in the Ukraine. At this very time he was in communication with Charles’s first minister, Count Piper, and had agreed to harbour the Swedes in the Ukraine and close it against the Russians (Oct. 1708). The last doubt disappeared when Menshikov was sent to supervise Mazepa. At the approach of his rival the old hetman hastened to the Swedish outposts at Horki, in Severia. Mazepa’s treason took Peter completely by surprise. He instantly commanded Menshikov to get a new hetman elected and raze Baturin, Mazepa’s chief stronghold in the Ukraine, to the ground. When Charles, a week later, passed Baturin by, all that remained of the Cossack capital was a heap of smouldering mills and ruined houses. The total destruction of Baturin, almost in sight of the Swedes, overawed the bulk of the Cossacks into obedience, and Mazepa’s ancient prestige was ruined in a day when the metropolitan of Kiev solemnly excommunicated him from the high altar, and his effigy, after being dragged with contumely through the mud at Kiev, was publicly burnt by the common hangman. Henceforth Mazepa, perforce, attached himself to Charles. What part he took at the battle of Poltava is not quite clear. After the catastrophe he accompanied Charles to Turkey with some 1500 horsemen (the miserable remnant of his 80,000 warriors). The sultan refused to surrender him to the tsar, though Peter offered 300,000 ducats for his head. He died at Bender on the 22nd of August 1709.
See N. I. Kostomarov,Mazepa and the Mazepanites(Russ.) (St Petersburg), 1885; R. Nisbet Bain,The First Romanovs(London, 1905); S. M. Solovev,History of Russia(Russ.), vol. xv. (St Petersburg, 1895).
See N. I. Kostomarov,Mazepa and the Mazepanites(Russ.) (St Petersburg), 1885; R. Nisbet Bain,The First Romanovs(London, 1905); S. M. Solovev,History of Russia(Russ.), vol. xv. (St Petersburg, 1895).
(R. N. B.)
MAZER,the name of a special type of drinking vessel, properly made of maple-wood, and so-called from the spotted or “birds-eye” marking on the wood (Ger.Maser, spot, marking, especially on wood; cf. “measles”). These drinking vessels are shallow bowls without handles, with a broad flat foot and a knob or boss in the centre of the inside, known technically as the “print.” They were made from the 13th to the 16th centuries, and were the most prized of the various wooden cups in use, and so were ornamented with a rim of precious metal, generally of silver or silver gilt; the foot and the “print” being also of metal. The depth of the mazers seems to have decreased in course of time, those of the 16th century that survive being much shallower than the earlier examples. There are examples with wooden covers with a metal handle, such as the Flemish and German mazers in the Franks Bequest in the British Museum. On the metal rim is usually an inscription, religious or bacchanalian, and the “print” was also often decorated. The later mazers sometimes had metal straps between the rim and the foot.
A very fine mazer with silver gilt ornamentation 3 in. deep and 91⁄2in. in diameter was sold in the Braikenridge collection in 1908 for £2300. It bears the London hall-mark of 1534. This example is illustrated in the articlePlate: see alsoDrinking Vessels.
A very fine mazer with silver gilt ornamentation 3 in. deep and 91⁄2in. in diameter was sold in the Braikenridge collection in 1908 for £2300. It bears the London hall-mark of 1534. This example is illustrated in the articlePlate: see alsoDrinking Vessels.
MAZURKA(Polish for a woman of the province of Mazovia), a lively dance, originating in Poland, somewhat resembling the polka.It is danced in couples, the music being in3⁄8or3⁄4time.
MAZZARA DEL VALLO, a town of Sicily, in the province of Trapani, on the south-west coast of the island, 32 m. by rail S. of Trapani. Pop. (1901), 20,130. It is the seat of a bishop; the cathedral, founded in 1093, was rebuilt in the 17th century. The castle, at the south-eastern angle of the town walls, was erected in 1073. The mouth of the river, which bears the same name, serves as a port for small ships only. Mazzara was in origin a colony of Selinus: it was destroyed in 409, but it is mentioned again as a Carthaginian fortress in the First Punic War and as a post station on the Roman coast road, though whether it had municipal rights is doubtful.1A few inscriptions of the imperial period exist, but no other remains of importance. On the west bank of the river are grottoes cut in the rock, of uncertain date: and there are quarries in the neighbourhood resembling those of Syracuse, but on a smaller scale.
See A. Castiglione,Sulle cose antiche della città di Mazzara(Alcamo, 1878).
See A. Castiglione,Sulle cose antiche della città di Mazzara(Alcamo, 1878).
1Th. Mommsen inCorpus inscr. lat.(Berlin, 1883), x. 739.
1Th. Mommsen inCorpus inscr. lat.(Berlin, 1883), x. 739.
MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE(1805-1872), Italian patriot, was born on the 22nd of June 1805 at Genoa, where his father, Giacomo Mazzini, was a physician in good practice, and a professor in the university. His mother is described as having been a woman of great personal beauty, as well as of active intellect and strong affections. During infancy and childhood his health was extremely delicate, and it appears that he was nearly six years of age before he was quite able to walk; but he had already begun to devour books of all kinds and to show other signs of great intellectual precocity. He studied Latin with his first tutor,an old priest, but no one directed his extensive course of reading. He became a student at the university of Genoa at an unusually early age, and intended to follow his father’s profession, but being unable to conquer his horror of practical anatomy, he decided to graduate in law (1826). His exceptional abilities, together with his remarkable generosity, kindness and loftiness of character, endeared him to his fellow students. As to his inner life during this period, we have only one brief but significant sentence; “for a short time,” he says, “my mind was somewhat tainted by the doctrines of the foreign materialistic school; but the study of history and the intuitions of conscience—the only tests of truth—soon led me back to the spiritualism of our Italian fathers.”
The natural bent of his genius was towards literature, and, in the course of the four years of his nominal connexion with the legal profession, he wrote a considerable number of essays and reviews, some of which have been wholly or partially reproduced in the critical and literary volumes of hisLife and Writings. His first essay, characteristically enough on “Dante’s Love of Country,” was sent to the editor of theAntologia fiorentinain 1826, but did not appear until some years afterwards in theSubalpino. He was an ardent supporter of romanticism as against what he called “literary servitude under the name of classicism”; and in this interest all his critiques (as, for example, that of Giannoni’s “Exile” in theIndicatore Livornese, 1829) were penned. But in the meantime the “republican instincts” which he tells us he had inherited from his mother had been developing, and his sense of the evils under which Italy was groaning had been intensified; and at the same time he became possessed with the idea that Italians, and he himself in particular, “couldand thereforeoughtto struggle for liberty of country.” Therefore, he at once put aside his dearest ambition, that of producing a complete history of religion, developing his scheme of a new theology uniting the spiritual with the practical life, and devoted himself to political thought. His literary articles accordingly became more and more suggestive of advanced liberalism in politics, and led to the suppression by government of theIndicatore Genoveseand theIndicatore Livornesesuccessively. Having joined the Carbonari, he soon rose to one of the higher grades in their hierarchy, and was entrusted with a special secret mission into Tuscany; but, as his acquaintance grew, his dissatisfaction with the organization of the society increased, and he was already meditating the formation of a new association stripped of foolish mysterious and theatrical formulae, which instead of merely combating existing authorities should have a definite and purely patriotic aim, when shortly after the French revolution of 1830 he was betrayed, while initiating a new member, to the Piedmontese authorities. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Savona on the western Riviera for about six months, when, a conviction having been found impracticable through deficiency of evidence, he was released, but upon conditions involving so many restrictions of his liberty that he preferred the alternative of leaving the country. He withdrew accordingly into France, living chiefly in Marseilles.
While in his lonely cell at Savona, in presence of “those symbols of the infinite, the sky and the sea,” with a greenfinch for his sole companion, and having access to no books but “a Tacitus, a Byron, and a Bible,” he had finally become aware of the great mission or “apostolate” (as he himself called it) of his life; and soon after his release his prison meditations took shape in the programme of the organization which was destined soon to become so famous throughout Europe, that ofLa Giovine Italia, or Young Italy. Its publicly avowed aims were to be the liberation of Italy both from foreign and domestic tyranny, and its unification under a republican form of government; the means to be used were education, and, where advisable, insurrection by guerrilla bands; the motto was to be “God and the people,” and the banner was to bear on one side the words “Unity” and “Independence” and on the other “Liberty,” “Equality,” and “Humanity,” to describe respectively the national and the international aims. In April 1831 Charles Albert, “the ex-Carbonaro conspirator of 1821,” succeeded Charles Felix on the Sardinian throne, and towards the close of that year Mazzini, making himself, as he afterwards confessed, “the interpreter of a hope which he did not share,” wrote the new king a letter, published at Marseilles, urging him to take the lead in the impending struggle for Italian independence. Clandestinely reprinted, and rapidly circulated all over Italy, its bold and outspoken words produced a great sensation, but so deep was the offence it gave to the Sardinian government that orders were issued for the immediate arrest and imprisonment of the author should he attempt to cross the frontier. Towards the end of the same year appeared the important Young Italy “Manifesto,” the substance of which is given in the first volume of theLife and Writingsof Mazzini; and this was followed soon afterwards by the society’sJournal, which, smuggled across the Italian frontier, had great success in the objects for which it was written, numerous “congregations” being formed at Genoa, Leghorn, and elsewhere. Representations were consequently made by the Sardinian to the French government, which issued in an order for Mazzini’s withdrawal from Marseilles (Aug. 1832); he lingered for a few months in concealment, but ultimately found it necessary to retire into Switzerland.
From this point it is somewhat difficult to follow the career of the mysterious and terrible conspirator who for twenty years out of the next thirty led a life of voluntary imprisonment (as he himself tells us) “within the four walls of a room,” and “kept no record of dates, made no biographical notes, and preserved no copies of letters.” In 1833, however, he is known to have been concerned in an abortive revolutionary movement which took place in the Sardinian army; several executions took place, and he himself was laid under sentence of death. Before the close of the same year a similar movement in Genoa had been planned, but failed through the youth and inexperience of the leaders. At Geneva, also in 1833, Mazzini set on footL’Europe Centrale, a journal of which one of the main objects was the emancipation of Savoy; but he did not confine himself to a merely literary agitation for this end. Chiefly through his agency a considerable body of German, Polish and Italian exiles was organized, and an armed invasion of the duchy planned. The frontier was actually crossed on the 1st of February 1834, but the attack ignominiously broke down without a shot having been fired. Mazzini, who personally accompanied the expedition, is no doubt correct in attributing the failure to dissensions with the Carbonari leaders in Paris, and to want of a cordial understanding between himself and the Savoyard Ramorino, who had been chosen as military leader.
In April 1834 the “Young Europe” association “of men believing in a future of liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind, and desirous of consecrating their thoughts and actions to the realization of that future” was formed also under the influence of Mazzini’s enthusiasm; it was followed soon afterwards by a “Young Switzerland” society, having for its leading idea the formation of an Alpine confederation, to include Switzerland, Tyrol, Savoy and the rest of the Alpine chain as well. ButLa Jeune Suissenewspaper was compelled to stop within a year, and in other respects the affairs of the struggling patriot became embarrassed. He was permitted to remain at Grenchen in Solothurn for a while, but at last the Swiss diet, yielding to strong and persistent pressure from abroad, exiled him about the end of 1836. In January 1837 he arrived in London, where for many months he had to carry on a hard fight with poverty and the sense of spiritual loneliness, so touchingly described by himself in the first volume of theLife and Writings. Ultimately, as he gained command of the English language, he began to earn a livelihood by writing review articles, some of which have since been reprinted, and are of a high order of literary merit; they include papers on “Italian Literature since 1830” and “Paolo Sarpi” in theWestminster Review, articles on “Lamennais,” “George Sand,” “Byron and Goethe” in theMonthly Chronicle, and on “Lamartine,” “Carlyle,” and “The Minor Works of Dante” in theBritish and Foreign Review. In 1839 he entered into relations with the revolutionary committees sitting in Malta and Paris, and in 1840 he originated a workingmen’s association, and the weekly journal entitledApostolato Popolare, in which the admirable popular treatise “On the Duties of Man” was commenced. Among the patriotic and philanthropic labours undertaken by Mazzini during this period of retirement in London may be mentioned a free evening school conducted by himself and a few others for some years, at which several hundreds of Italian children received at least the rudiments of secular and religious education. He also exposed and combated the infamous traffic carried on in southern Italy, where scoundrels bought small boys from poverty-stricken parents and carried them off to England and elsewhere to grind organs and suffer martyrdom at the hands of cruel taskmasters.
The most memorable episode in his life during the same period was perhaps that which arose out of the conduct of Sir James Graham, the home secretary, in systematically, for some months, opening Mazzini’s letters as they passed through the British post office, and communicating their contents to the Neapolitan government—a proceeding which was believed at the time to have led to the arrest and execution of the brothers Bandiera, Austrian subjects, who had been planning an expedition against Naples, although the recent publication of Sir James Graham’s life seems to exonerate him from the charge. The prolonged discussions in parliament, and the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the matter, did not, however, lead to any practical result, unless indeed the incidental vindication of Mazzini’s character, which had been recklessly assailed in the course of debate. In this connexion Thomas Carlyle wrote toThe Times: “I have had the honour to know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, practise what is meant by that.”
Mazzini did not share the enthusiastic hopes everywhere raised in the ranks of the Liberal party throughout Europe by the first acts of Pius IX., in 1846, but at the same time he availed himself, towards the end of 1847, of the opportunity to publish a letter addressed to the new pope, indicating the nature of the religious and national mission which the Liberals expected him to undertake. The leaders of the revolutionary outbreaks in Milan and Messina in the beginning of 1848 had long been in secret correspondence with Mazzini; and their action, along with the revolution in Paris, brought him early in the same year to Italy, where he took a great and active interest in the events which dragged Charles Albert into an unprofitable war with Austria; he actually for a short time bore arms under Garibaldi immediately before the reoccupation of Milan, but ultimately, after vain attempts to maintain the insurrection in the mountain districts, found it necessary to retire to Lugano. In the beginning of the following year he was nominated a member of the short-lived provisional government of Tuscany formed after the flight of the grand-duke, and almost simultaneously, when Rome had, in consequence of the withdrawal of Pius IX., been proclaimed a republic, he was declared a member of the constituent assembly there. A month afterwards, the battle of Novara having again decided against Charles Albert in the brief struggle with Austria, into which he had once more been drawn, Mazzini was appointed a member of the Roman triumvirate, with supreme executive power (March 23, 1849). The opportunity he now had for showing the administrative and political ability which he was believed to possess was more apparent than real, for the approach of the professedly friendly French troops soon led to hostilities, and resulted in a siege which terminated, towards the end of June, with the assembly’s resolution to discontinue the defence, and Mazzini’s indignant resignation. That he succeeded, however, for so long a time, and in circumstances so adverse, in maintaining a high degree of order within the turbulent city is a fact that speaks for itself. His diplomacy, backed as it was by no adequate physical force, naturally showed at the time to very great disadvantage, but his official correspondence and proclamations can still be read with admiration and intellectual pleasure, as well as his eloquent vindication of the revolution in his published “Letter to MM. de Tocqueville and de Falloux.” The surrender of the city on the 30th of June was followed by Mazzini’s not too precipitate flight by way of Marseilles into Switzerland, whence he once more found his way to London. Here in 1850 he became president of the National Italian Committee, and at the same time entered into close relations with Ledru-Rollin and Kossuth. He had a firm belief in the value of revolutionary attempts, however hopeless they might seem; he had a hand in the abortive rising at Mantua in 1852, and again, in February 1853, a considerable share in the ill-planned insurrection at Milan on the 6th of February 1853, the failure of which greatly weakened his influence; once more, in 1854, he had gone far with preparations for renewed action when his plans were completely disconcerted by the withdrawal of professed supporters, and by the action of the French and English governments in sending ships of war to Naples.
The year 1857 found him yet once more in Italy, where, for complicity in short-lived émeutes which took place at Genoa, Leghorn and Naples, he was again laid under sentence of death. Undiscouraged in the pursuit of the one great aim of his life by any such incidents as these, he returned to London, where he edited his new journalPensiero ed Azione, in which the constant burden of his message to the overcautious practical politicians of Italy was: “I am but a voice cryingAction; but the state of Italy cries for it also. So do the best men and people of her cities. Do you wish to destroy my influence?Act.” The same tone was at a somewhat later date assumed in the letter he wrote to Victor Emmanuel, urging him to put himself at the head of the movement for Italian unity, and promising republican support. As regards the events of 1859-1860, however, it may be questioned whether, through his characteristic inability to distinguish between the ideally perfect and the practically possible, he did not actuallyhindermore than he helped the course of events by which the realization of so much of the great dream of his life was at last brought about. If Mazzini was the prophet of Italian unity, and Garibaldi its knight errant, to Cavour alone belongs the honour of having been the statesman by whom it was finally accomplished. After the irresistible pressure of the popular movement had led to the establishment not of an Italian republic but of an Italian kingdom, Mazzini could honestly enough write, “I too have striven to realize unity under a monarchical flag,” but candour compelled him to add, “The Italian people are led astray by a delusion at the present day, a delusion which has induced them to substitute material for moral unity and their own reorganization. Not so I. I bow my head sorrowfully to the sovereignty of the national will; but monarchy will never number me amongst its servants or followers.” In 1865, by way of protest against the still uncancelled sentence of death under which he lay, Mazzini was elected by Messina as delegate to the Italian parliament, but, feeling himself unable to take the oath of allegiance to the monarchy, he never took his seat. In the following year, when a general amnesty was granted after the cession of Venice to Italy, the sentence of death was at last removed, but he declined to accept such an “offer of oblivion and pardon for having loved Italy above all earthly things.” In May 1869 he was again expelled from Switzerland at the instance of the Italian government for having conspired with Garibaldi; after a few months spent in England he set out (1870) for Sicily, but was promptly arrested at sea and carried to Gaeta, where he was imprisoned for two months. Events soon made it evident that there was little danger to fear from the contemplated rising, and the occasion of the birth of a prince was seized for restoring him to liberty. The remainder of his life, spent partly in London and partly at Lugano, presents no noteworthy incidents. For some time his health had been far from satisfactory, but the immediate cause of his death was an attack of pleurisy with which he was seized at Pisa, and which terminated fatally on the 10th of March 1872. The Italian parliament by a unanimous vote expressed the national sorrow with which the tidings of his death had been received, the president pronouncing an eloquenteulogy on the departed patriot as a model of disinterestedness and self-denial, and one who had dedicated his whole life ungrudgingly to the cause of his country’s freedom. A public funeral took place at Pisa on the 14th of March, and the remains were afterwards conveyed to Genoa.