“In advance or retreat,In success or defeat,Ever conscious and great,Ever watchful to see,From foreign dominion he made us free!”
“In advance or retreat,In success or defeat,Ever conscious and great,Ever watchful to see,From foreign dominion he made us free!”
“In advance or retreat,In success or defeat,Ever conscious and great,Ever watchful to see,From foreign dominion he made us free!”
In translating Goethe’s inscription on the famous Blücher monument at Rostock we were strongly impressed with the fact that it was even better adapted for a monument of the great Prince of Orange than for that of the indomitable, but rather reckless, “Marshal Vorwärts.”
The King of Spain had from the first day of his accession known the powerful influence which the Prince of Orange exerted in the Netherlands. The Prince stood without a rival at the head of the nobility, and his eminent talents enhanced the authority which his illustrious birth had secured for him. The King was also informed by his special representatives—the Duchess Regent, Granvella, the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria, and others—that this authority was steadily increasing, that the great mass of the people idolized the Prince, that his wish was a law for the burghers, and that practically the revolt, its failure or success, depended on him. The exalted character of the Prince precluded the very idea of winning him over to the other side by means of high distinctions or honors, much less by pecuniary bribes or corruption, and nothing remained therefore for the King to do, if he wanted to get rid of the dangerous popular leader, who held a number of the provinces entirely under his sway, than to place him beyond the pale of the law and to offer a high reward for his head. This method of removing rivals or enemies was not unusual in those days; andit should cause no surprise that the monarch who is, and very likely justly, suspected of having ordered the murder of his half-brother, Don Juan d’Austria, and also that of his own son, Don Carlos, was perfectly willing to adopt this method of getting rid of the Prince of Orange, who in his eyes was not only a rebel, but also a heretic, and as such deserved death a hundredfold. The price he put on the Prince’s head—twenty-five thousand ducats—showed sufficiently the importance he attached to his life, and how willing he was to tempt assassins by the enormous sum of the reward.
The King, who evidently had experience in such matters, had not miscalculated the temptation, for several attempts were made on the Prince’s life in consequence; but they always failed, and it would almost seem as if that life was under the special protection of Providence that it might carry out the plans predestined for it. In 1582, Juan Jaureguy, a young man in the employ of a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, and a religious fanatic, fired a pistol shot at the Prince which came very near killing him. The ball entered the head under the right ear, passed through the roof of the mouth, breaking several teeth, and came out under the left jaw-bone. For a while the Prince’s life was despaired of, but he finally rallied and recovered. His would-be assassin was immediately killed, and his accomplices, of whom there were several, were publicly strangled and quartered. In order to deter others from making attempts on the Prince’s life, the ghastly remains of these accomplices, one of them a Dominican monk, were nailed to the gates of Antwerp. The joy at the Prince’s recovery was general, and thanksgiving days, with divine service in the churches and publichalls, were held in a number of the provinces. Unfortunately neither these public demonstrations of gratitude and delight, nor the terrible warnings addressed to assassins were sufficient to protect a life so valuable to his country and to the world.
Another assassin was more successful than Jaureguy. The scene of the murder, which took place on the tenth day of July, 1584, was the city of Delft in Holland. Shortly after the noon hour of that day a common-looking man, who had found access to the Prince’s residence for the purpose of securing a passport, approached the Prince as he came from the dining-hall and fired three shots at him, one passing through the stomach and causing his death after a very short while. The assassin was a man still young, less than thirty years of age. He was a Frenchman, Balthasar Gérard by name, who had come from his home in Franche-Comté or Burgundy to carry out his hellish design, which was inspired by religious fanaticism and encouraged by Jesuits of the College of Trèves. Through these he was introduced to the Duke of Parma, then Governor-General of the Netherlands, who promised him the royal reward in case of success, and other royal favors besides. Gérard had made his preparations for the murder with considerable circumspection; these preparations were very similar to those which Booth made for his escape after the murder of Abraham Lincoln, and just like Booth, Gérard stumbled and fell in making his escape and hurt himself, and this led to his arrest.
After having undergone the most terrible tortures, his joints having been wrenched and his body nearly roasted alive, he was executed in the most cruel manner imaginable.His right hand was burnt off with red-hot irons; the flesh was torn from half a dozen different parts of his body, which was then broken on the wheel. Gérard was still alive; his vitality was wonderful. The executioners then disembowelled and quartered him; tore out his heart and flung it in his face. It was then only that the unfortunate man breathed his last. His head was then cut off and placed on a pike of a gate in the rear of the Prince’s residence, and the four parts of his body were fastened to the four gates of the city. This cruel mutilation and dismemberment of the assassin’s body was hardly sufficient to satisfy the vengeance of the people; the certainty that the King of Spain stooped even to murder of the basest sort to recover his sovereignty over the Netherlands exalted their desire for absolute and lasting national independence to a sort of religious dogma which made all hope of peace illusory.
When the assassin’s hand cut short the life of the Prince of Orange, he had not completed the great work for which he had toiled, fought, suffered and died. But part of that work had been done, and it had been done so well and so thoroughly that the Republic stood on a firm foundation ready to receive the other provinces which were still in the power of Spain as a fitting superstructure. For this reason history recognizes William the Silent as the founder of the Dutch Republic and of the independence of the United Provinces.
To Americans the character of William the Silent is of special interest because it bears, in many respects, a striking resemblance to that of George Washington. Both were the principal figures in wars for the independence of their countries; both were soldiers and statesmen of ahigh order. If Washington was very likely the greater general, William the Silent was very likely the greater statesman, and the success of the American cause would have been as impossible without Washington as the failure of the Dutch struggle would have been certain without William of Orange. Both were sterling patriots and subordinated their own interests to those of the nations they represented; but in this respect Washington was, perhaps, superior to William, who had an eye on the possibilities which might arise after a successful issue of the war. It should be remembered, however, that William of Orange was a prince and sovereign before he was made the head of the Netherlanders rising in revolt against Spain, and that, as a sovereign, it was natural for him to look after the interests of his family and dynasty. As far as mental and moral qualifications are concerned, both men were distinguished by that perfect equilibrium of powers of the mind and powers of the soul, which is but rarely found in men of the highest rank. Neither of these statesmen had the capacity of immediately conceiving and executing plans of a decisive character. Their minds, although full of resources, worked slowly in elaborating such plans; they weighed and hesitated before taking action; but as soon as their minds had been made up and a plan had been resolved upon, they acted without wavering, and held on to it until success or failure resulted from it. The great respect in which Washington has been always held by British historians and statesmen is, perhaps, the noblest tribute that can be paid to his character and abilities. The fact that Philip the Second relied less on his splendid armies, led by some of the ablest generals of Europe, and on his powerful navy, thanon the death of William the Silent is, perhaps, the greatest eulogy which can be given to the great founder of the Dutch Republic. Unquestionably the Spanish monarch considered the twenty-five thousand gold pieces which he offered for the assassination of William of Orange, although an enormous sum for those times, but a very cheap equivalent for the life of a man who had been the very life and soul, the inspiring genius of the rebellious Dutch provinces. If monuments of foreign statesmen and rulers are to be erected on American soil, no fitter and no worthier man can be found for that honor than William the Silent.
image unavailable: IVAN THE TERRIBLEIVAN THE TERRIBLE
RUSSIAN history abounds in instances of famous assassinations. Sometimes these murders were committed by the rulers of Russia, at other times these rulers themselves were the victims. Ivan the Fourth, whose very surname, “the Terrible,” sufficiently indicates his character, was one of the most cruel and inhuman monarchs who ever ruled over a nation, either in ancient or modern times. It is therefore not one famous assassination which we wish to describe, but a series of monstrous crimes, unparalleled in history as the acts of one individual.
Ivan was only three years old when his father died. A regency was formed, composed of his mother and a council of boyars, belonging to different factions, who were constantly at war with one another. At no time had Russia been more poorly governed. As Ivan grew up, he was despised and maltreated by the haughty nobility; his favorites were abused. In order to divert his mind from nobler occupations and keep him in profound ignorance of public affairs, he was amused and entertained with coarse and brutal games which developed his innate cruelty and ferocity, and made him, at an earlyage, the terror of those who were subordinated to him. He delighted in torturing and slowly killing domestic animals, and also in crippling and killing old men and old women whom he encountered in the streets while riding fast horses or driving a carriage like a madman, without looking either right or left. He was a mere boy yet—hardly fourteen—when the boyars began to fear him and predicted a reign of terror when he should assume the reins of government.
At seventeen, he dissolved the regency and declared his intention to reign for himself. He also wanted to get married, and sent out messengers to the different provinces of the Empire to pick out the most beautiful young girls and send them to the capital, that he might choose a wife from among their number. Many noblemen hid their handsome daughters, or sent them far away from home on hearing of the Czar’s intention. His reputation for excessive cruelty had reached already the remotest parts of the Empire, and nearly every boyar trembled at the mere idea of becoming his father-in-law. But the messenger succeeded nevertheless in bringing together several hundred young girls of extraordinary beauty, and sent them to the capital. Ivan then chose from their number Anastasia Romanowna, a young girl of great beauty and great brilliancy of mind. He fell desperately in love with her, and through the superiority of her mind she gained a great influence over him, and succeeded even in keeping his cruelty in check.
Ivan was a man of natural ability. He had some striking qualities, and might have been a great ruler if his education had been entrusted to competent and wise teachers. At an early age he learned the art of dissemblingto perfection, and possessed the rare faculty of keeping his plans and intentions secret even from his closest friends. It was only after the conquest of Kasan that he threw off the mask. Until then he had been exceedingly friendly and kind to a number of the powerful noblemen, who considered themselves almost his peers in rank and birth. But when that conquest had added to his power and authority, he suddenly said to his boyars: “At last I am free! God has made me the master over all. Beware!” Again it was his wife, Anastasia Romanowna, who with rare political sagacity prevented him from too openly showing hostility and impatience at their pretentious conduct. He was very young, and could afford to wait. But in 1560, when Ivan was only twenty-nine years old, Anastasia, his best friend and his ablest counsellor, died, and he found no loving hand to restrain his passions and keep his cruelty and ferocity in check. Nevertheless, for some time after her death the softening influence of his wife (whom he had really loved) over his cruel nature made itself felt, and for the next four years he proceeded rather cautiously. He considered all the boyars his enemies and traitors; and he commenced murdering them, one at a time.
In 1564 he threw off all restraint. He suddenly disappeared with all his soldiers and servants, and rumors were circulated that he intended to abdicate the crown and to retire from public life. The abject fear in which the people had lived for thirty years had fully demoralized them. Boyars, clergymen, and the great mass of the people went nearly crazy at the idea that their “dear little father” would no longer rule over them. At lastthey discovered his place of retirement, and the manifestations of public delight at this discovery were almost boundless. Delegation after delegation waited upon him and implored him on their knees that he might return to his capital and continue to govern them. At last Ivan consented to return, but he consented conditionally. He demanded—and they all cheerfully agreed to the demand—that he should have full and absolute power to punish all his enemies and all traitors by banishment or death and confiscation of their property, without being interfered with, even by the clergy. It was a regularcoup d’état. From this act dates the absolute rule of the emperors of Russia, and Ivan the Fourth thenceforth took the official title of “Czar of all the Russias,” which his successors have retained to the present day.
Ivan had carefully matured his plan. He took possession of a certain number of cities and country districts, expelled the proprietors from them, declared them territory forfeited to the government, and distributed them among certain of his own adherents upon whose fidelity he could count. These adherents generally were taken from the lowest classes of the people, knew no other law than the will of their master, and obeyed him blindly. While confiscating all these estates without mercy or hesitation, on the most trivial or far-fetched pretexts, he was shrewd enough to respect constitutional rights in other parts of the Empire. His plan was to increase the imperial private domains gradually to enormous proportions by dispossessing year after year the legitimate proprietors of the soil, and by this method to destroy the power of the nobility. In order to accomplish this purposehe did not hesitate to employ the most cruel and disreputable means for the conviction and punishment of his intended victims.
One of his favorite ways for entrapping and punishing a rich boyar was to order one of the servants employed in the imperial household to steal jewelry or other valuables, and then to seek refuge in the boyar’s residence. Of course, the fugitive was closely pursued by the Czar’s guards, drawn from his hiding-place, and then massacred together with the boyar and his family, who, the Czar pretended to believe, were the thief’s accomplices and deserved death as well as the offender. But much oftener the terrible Czar rushed down, with a numerous suite of his followers, upon the residence of a wealthy boyar, put all the men, the children and the old women of the domain to the sword, carried off the young women and girls, and abandoned them on the highways after he and his gang had satisfied their desires on them. On the trumped up charge that Grand Duke Wladimir, his own cousin, as well as the Grand Duke’s wife and grown daughters had participated in a conspiracy against the Czar’s life, he forced him to commit suicide by drinking poison, while the Grand Duchess and her beautiful young daughters, and all their ladies of honor and female servants, were divested of their garments, exposed in a state of complete nudity on the market space of the town adjacent to their domain, and afterwards butchered in cold blood. Wladimir’s immense wealth and all his real estate were confiscated by the crown. In this manner Ivan succeeded in overpowering the boyars, one after another, in a very short time, and acquiring immense wealth. He visited thedifferent provinces and departments in succession, and wherever he appeared he left a track of desolation, rapine, and murder. From the capital of each province he organized marauding tours in all directions, placing each under the command of an officer on whose devotion to himself and ferocity to others he could count. But the most terrible expeditions were those which he commanded himself. It can truthfully be said that wherever Ivan “visited,” he destroyed everything in sight,—not only the human inhabitants, but also the farm and domestic animals, even dogs and cats. He took also a pleasure in draining ponds and creeks, so as to cause the fish to die, and after having killed or mutilated all things living, he ordered the buildings to be set on fire, and left the scene of his cruelty and lust amidst the wild huzzas of his comrades. No civilized, or half-civilized country had ever witnessed such atrocities on the part of its own ruler.
If Ivan was not travelling and marauding he resided generally in the Alexandrowna Convent, which he had strongly fortified. This convent, situated in the neighborhood of Moscow, and surrounded by dense forests, was not only the scene of his bestial orgies and excesses, and of his more than beastly cruelty, but also of his hypocritical zeal for religion and divine service. The convent, although transformed into a palace, remained still a convent. Ivan’s most abject and infamous favorites were acting as monks, while Ivan himself performed the functions of the pontiff. He also acted as a bell-ringer for the church. Quite early in the morning, at four o’clock, mass was read and public service was held in the church, lasting till seven o’clock. Regularly everyevening, from seven to eight o’clock, there was again divine service. The time intervening between the dinner and the last church service was employed by him in going to the torture rooms of the palace where his victims—and there was always a number of them—were subjected to the most excruciating pain, and in many cases tortured to death. To be invited to these scenes of horror was a mark of imperial favor.
Ivan was never in better humor or happier than after having witnessed the tortures or the execution of a man whom he had sacrificed to his greed for wealth or to his vindictiveness. It is reported that one day when one hundred and twenty persons were to be executed—either strangled, hung, beheaded, or quartered—at Moscow, and when the inhabitants of the streets near the place of the execution had fled in horror from the neighborhood, the Czar sent out his soldiery and compelled thousands of citizens to be spectators of the wholesale butchery. He sat there himself on an elevated stage applauding the torturers and executioners when, in his opinion, they had done their task well and had prolonged the agony of the victim as much as possible. When the cruel spectacle was over, he rose to his feet and addressed the spectators as follows: “My loyal subjects! You have seen torture and death! Some of you are horror-struck at what you have witnessed! My punishment is severe, but it is just. All these men and women were traitors to their Czar, and deserved to die. Answer me, was I right in punishing them?” And the tremendous audience, almost frightened to death, as with one voice replied: “Glory and long life to the Czar! Death to the traitors!” The sight of blood, of suffering and of death seemed to havean intoxicating effect on this unparalleled monster, and he never tired of it to the day of his death.
The high dignitaries of the Church fared no better at Ivan’s hands. Whenever they stood in the way of his ambition, or whenever they presumed to criticise him for his crimes, he treated them with the same cruelty and inflicted the same punishments upon them as upon the boyars. In that way he imposed silence on the clergy, and caused them even to sanction his worst misdeeds. But one day, after an especially atrocious marauding expedition of the Czar, the Metropolitan of Moscow mustered sufficient courage to reprimand him publicly. On the twenty-second of March, 1568, Ivan entered the cathedral, expecting the blessing of the high-priest. The latter did not stir, but kept his eyes fixed upon a picture representing Christ in all his glory. “Holy Father,” said one of the boyars to the Metropolitan, “the Czar is here; bless him!” “I do not recognize the Czar!” replied the Metropolitan. “Since this world was created and the sun was placed in the skies, it has never been known that a Czar has committed such atrocities and crimes in his own state as ours has. Here in this church we offer our prayers to God, and beyond its walls the blood of innocent Christians is shed in torrents.” Then turning to Ivan, he said in a loud voice: “The very stones under thy feet will rise against thee and cry out against thy crimes and atrocities! God has bidden me tell you and warn you, even if I should suffer death for my boldness!” And death was his punishment, although not at the very moment. As a rebel, he was sentenced to imprisonment for life at Twer. But it happened so that Ivan, the year after, passed through Twer on oneof his marauding expeditions. It was then that he remembered Philip, the Metropolitan, who had accosted him so boldly. He sent half a dozen of his soldiers to the prison, and they strangled the Metropolitan without previous notice. This assassination paved the way for many others among the clergy, until Ivan had so intimidated them that thenceforth not even a whisper was heard among them against his cruelties.
It then became apparent how readily the example of an infamous ruler is followed by his courtiers and attendants. The boyars and officers accompanying him on his expeditions of murder and pillage tried to surpass him in iniquity; in their very appearance they showed their true character, adorning themselves with symbols of their ferocity. When they started on their marauding tour, they attached a bleeding dog’s-head and a broom to the neck and saddle of each horse, signifying by these decorations that they would bite like savage dogs and sweep off the ground all they could find. Whomsoever they found on the highways they would arrest and hang as traitors to the Czar, and in the villages and towns on their route they would commit the most horrid excesses, sparing neither sex nor age. If the inhabitants had fled at their approach, they reported them to the Czar as his enemies who were plotting against his life, and he issued decrees of vengeance declaring their property confiscated and their lives forfeited. In this way they kept the inhabitants at home waiting in terror for the arrival of their tormentors.
After having decimated and terrorized the nobility and the clergy, Ivan turned his attention principally to themerchants and wealthy citizens. The commercial centres, in which a great amount of capital had accumulated, were the special objects of his greed, especially if they showed a spirit of independence. Prominent among these was Novgorod, the ancient and wealthy city, proud of her free institutions and her honored name. It was this pride and her great wealth which pointed out Novgorod as a victim for Ivan’s wrath and cupidity, and the manner in which he planned and executed his evil designs on the city shows his diabolical genius at its height. Never has tyrant or despot conceived a more sinister and treacherous plot for the ruin of a great city and for the assassination of its inhabitants. The horrors of St. Bartholomew’s night pale in comparison.
A Polish vagabond, on the personal command of Ivan, wrote a petition, with the forged signatures of the Archbishop of Novgorod and a large number of leading and wealthy citizens and addressed to the King of Poland, in which the latter was supplicated to assume the sovereignty over Novgorod and the province in which it was situated, and to assist the citizens in their desire of shaking off the yoke of Ivan. By Ivan’s direction this petition was concealed in the great cathedral, behind a picture of the Holy Virgin. The Polish vagabond, after having executed the task dictated to him, came to Moscow and charged the city of Novgorod with treasonable designs against the Czar. Upon this information the Czar immediately sent messengers with the Polish vagabond to Novgorod, where, as a matter of course, the forged petition was found hidden behind the picture of the Holy Virgin in the cathedral. This was considered proof sufficient to condemn the whole city. No furtherinvestigation was deemed necessary. Ivan kept quiet, but the inhabitants knew what was in store for them. They trembled and waited. They had not to wait a long time. Two weeks after the discovery, on the twenty-first day of January, 1570, the first detachments of an imperial army, commanded by some of Ivan’s most trusted and most cruel lieutenants, entered the city. They immediately proceeded to seal the doors of all the churches and chapels, and took possession of the residences of the wealthy inhabitants, where they established their headquarters. All traffic was suspended. No citizen was permitted to leave the city, nor could goods of any kind be shipped from it. A dead silence and fear hung over the city. Nobody knew what the Czar intended to do, but that he would do something horrible, everybody felt, and also that there was no escape from him.
At last he came. He took up his residence in the Archbishop’s palace. He treated the priests and the Archbishop himself like servants; he drank and feasted with his boyars, while the priests had to wait upon him at table. And then suddenly, when he rose, he uttered a loud shout of triumph, and this was the signal for his lieutenants to order a general pillage throughout the city. Without any control by their superiors, the soldiers committed plunder, murder, violence, and outrages of all kinds. The treasures accumulated in the churches and large business houses Ivan had reserved for himself, and his orders were strictly observed; nobody touched what he had designated for his share. The palace of the Archbishop became the scene of the most beastly orgies and excesses. The wives and daughters of thenoblest families were dragged before Ivan, and after having picked out the most beautiful for his own use, he turned the others over to his lieutenants and companions. Many of the unfortunate women committed suicide, many others died from the effects of the terrible abuse to which they had been subjected. The Czar knew no pity. “Such scenes of horror, iniquity, and inhumanity,” says a foreign eye-witness, “had not been seen in the world since the destruction of Jerusalem.”
The work of devastation, pillage, murder, violence, and incendiarism lasted five weeks. At last the Czar thought it was time to stop the bloody carnival. The measure was full to overflowing,—not only the measure of misery, affliction, distress, and death for the unfortunate and innocent inhabitants of Novgorod, but also the measure of lust and cruelty for himself. The constant indulgence in voluptuous excesses told upon his constitution; he was worn out and surfeited with animal gratification; his eyes had a vague, almost lifeless expression; his herculean frame commenced to tremble, his legs to totter. No less than twenty-seven thousand persons, men, women, and children, had perished; there was not a family which did not lament one or more dead among its members. The corpses were thrown into the river, and at some points they had been thrown in in such numbers that the river was impeded in its current. On the first day of the sixth week, Ivan called citizens living in all the different streets of the city together and addressed them as follows: “Men of Novgorod, and all of you who are still alive, pray to God and thank him for your escape from peril; thank your Czar too, for it is to hismercy and his fear of God that you owe your safety; and thank also his soldiers, whose humane treatment saved you from death. Pray to God that he may give us power and strength to vanquish all our enemies! Much blood has been shed for the punishment of traitors. These traitors are responsible to God for all that has happened here during the last five weeks. May God have mercy on them. And now stop your crying and weeping! Live and be happy, and may your city grow and prosper!”
Cæsar Borgia could not have done better than this brutal monster of the North. He was the genius of cruelty and hypocrisy personified in one man.
image unavailable: HENRY IV.HENRY IV.
RELIGIOUS wars—that is to say, civil wars for religious causes—had desolated France for half a century, and tranquillity and apparent harmony had finally been restored only by the genius of one man—Henry the Fourth. He it was who issued the Edict of Nantes, conferring equal religious and political rights upon the professors of both religions, the Protestant and the Catholic.
A short time after Martin Luther had inaugurated the great movement of religious reform in Germany, a similar movement had also been organized in France; but it was only since 1536 and through the influential and energetic agitation of John Calvin that it had assumed large dimensions and acquired a really national importance. After the disastrous battle of Pavia and after his release from Spanish captivity, King Francis the First had ordered a cruel persecution against the Protestants for political reasons, but it had utterly failed to put a stop to this movement. On the contrary, a great many noblemen had joined the new church and the originally purely religious movement had gradually assumed a pronounced political character. But this change of tendency onlyadded fuel to the flame of intolerance and persecution. Not only were hundreds of professors of the new church most cruelly executed on the gallows or burnt alive for heresy, but among the Waldenses in Provence and in the valleys bordering on Savoy a wholesale massacre was inaugurated, which aimed at nothing less than their entire extirpation. On account of their peaceful and industrial habits, these people had for a long time enjoyed toleration in spite of their dissenting religious opinions. No less than twenty flourishing villages were destroyed and burned to the ground, and their entire population, men, women and children, were butchered in the most barbarous manner. But it seemed as if the very horror which such acts of inhumanity inspired, and the heroic constancy and bravery with which these unfortunate victims of religious fanaticism had sealed their convictions with their blood, had rather increased than diminished the ranks of the Protestants. The French translation of the Bible, which was secretly circulated throughout the kingdom, proved also a powerful means of propagandism for the principles of reform among the better educated and thinking classes.
Francis the First died in 1547 and was succeeded by his son, Henry the Second, who considered the Protestant movement merely a political question, and treated it as such. In Germany he supported the Protestant princes in their fight against Charles the Fifth, but at home, in France, he persecuted the adherents of Calvin even more persistently and cruelly than his father had done. Hundreds of excellent citizens were sent to the gallows or to the stake for heresy, and even the possession or sale of a French Bible was deemed a sufficient crime to warrantthe death punishment. Henry the Second died after a reign of twelve years, in 1559, from a wound received in a tournament and inflicted accidentally by the captain of his own body-guard. His successor, Francis the Second, the husband of Mary, Queen of Scotland, was entirely under the control of his wife’s uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. For the Protestants matters grew worse and worse. Francis the Second, who was merely a boy, died after a reign of less than two years, and was succeeded by his brother Charles the Ninth, of bloody St. Bartholomew Night’s memory. He was succeeded by Henry the Third, who after an inglorious reign, in which torrents of blood had flowed without quenching the fire of religious fanaticism, was assassinated in 1589 by Jacques Clément, a young Dominican monk, who had become exasperated at the concessions which the King had made to the Protestant Church. Before expiring, King Henry the Third recognized the young King of Navarre as his successor, who then ascended the throne of France under the name of Henry the Fourth.
The wars which devastated France during the preceding three reigns were waged almost without interruption; they were of a semi-religious and semi-political character. These wars must be largely ascribed to the pernicious influence of Catherine de Médicis, the wife of Henry the Second, and the mother of his three sons, Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth and Henry the Third. Her name stands in history as a synonym for an astute, unscrupulous, cruel, and intriguing ruler and politician. At the time of Henry the Third’s assassination, he was investing the city of Paris, which was in the hands of hisenemies, the League, under the command of the Duke of Mayenne, who himself was aspiring to the throne. It was therefore not an easy matter for the new King to assume the reins of government, the half of his kingdom being in arms against him, and the royal army itself, in whose ranks he was fighting, being hostile to the religion he (as a Protestant) professed.
But Henry the Fourth was equal to the difficult task. In fact, he was one of the most remarkable men who ever sat on a European throne. His career up to that day had been extremely stormy; his escape from death and perils innumerable was wonderful and stamped him as a man of destiny. It is reported of him that when he was present one day as a very young man at a brilliant reception at the French court, where nearly all the prominent men of the French capital were assembled, he strongly impressed the foreign ambassadors with the brilliancy of his wit and the sagacity of his observations. One of them said: “In this whole assemblage of dukes, princes and great dignitaries, I see but one man fit to rule either as king or emperor,” and pointing to Henry of Navarre he continued: “It is that young man with the eye of an eagle!”
Henry the Fourth was born in 1553, the son of Antony of Bourbon. His mother was Jeanne d’Albret, only child of Henry the Second, King of Navarre, and of his wife, Queen Margaret of Navarre, who has won a lasting place in literature by her famous collection of novels, known as the “Heptameron.” Much of the genius andespritwhich distinguished the grandmother was inherited both by her daughter and her grandson. Jeanne d’Albret was not only an excellent woman and mother, but she was also anenthusiastic admirer and supporter of the Calvinistic doctrine, and brought up her son in that faith. On account of her religion both Philip the Second of Spain and Catherine de Médicis, Queen of France, hated her intensely, and it seems that at an early day a sort of rivalry arose between Catherine and the mother of the boy concerning his education. Catherine maintained that, inasmuch as Henry was a royal prince and might be called upon some day to ascend the throne of France, it was absolutely necessary to educate him in the Catholic faith in order to make him worthy to rule over a Catholic country and occupy a throne whose occupant had for centuries been honored with the noble title of the “eldest son of the Church.”
In this contest over the boy the mother remained victorious, and, true to her religious convictions, she surrounded him with Protestant professors. But Catherine de Médicis was not a woman to abandon a scheme which she had formed and in which politics played a large part. She therefore concocted a plan for the abduction of young Henry, which would have succeeded and would have placed him under the immediate control of Philip the Second of Spain, had it not been betrayed to Henry’s mother, the Queen of Navarre. Henry was thereupon hurried off to La Rochelle, the headquarters of the Protestant army, where he was soon placed in nominal command of all the Protestant forces, although the famous Admiral Coligny was its real leader.
We may fitly pass without comment the stormy years preceding Henry’s elevation to the throne of France. In order to reconcile the Protestant and the Catholic branches of the reigning dynasty, Catherine de Médicis was successfulin her plan of a marriage between Henry of Navarre and her own daughter Marguerite, although the Pope hesitated a long time in giving his permission to this family alliance, which was in every respect a very unfortunate one. As far as Catherine de Médicis was concerned, her principal intention in planning it was the hope of continuing under Henry the Fourth’s reign (if he ever should become king) the absolute rule which she had so successfully maintained under the reign of her sons. Far from using her influence and authority to secure, if possible, the happiness of the young couple, she held out to both all possible temptations to lead them astray, and openly advanced Henry’s liaisons with other beautiful ladies of the court. It is also pretty well established by historical evidence that Catherine, in order to withdraw Henry from the beneficial influence of his mother, caused her death by poison in the very year of his marriage. At the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night, Henry escaped death by abjuring Protestantism, King Charles the Ninth having left him the choice between going to mass and suffering death. Henry preferred the former and professed Catholicism as his religion until 1576, when he suddenly and secretly left the court, and, retracting his forced abjuration, placed himself once more at the head of the Protestant party.
In 1584 the death of the Duke of Anjou made Henry the legitimate heir to the crown of France, and five years later, the death of Henry the Third made him King. But only the southern provinces and the Protestants recognized him as their king. The Catholics vehemently protested against this heretical king, and refused obedience to him. The League, which kept an army of 30,000 menin the field against him, and which was supported by the King of Spain, not only refused to recognize him, but proclaimed an aged uncle of his, the Cardinal de Bourbon, King of France, and Spain adhered to this decision. The civil war between the contending factions continued with greater fury and obstinacy than ever, and it was in this campaign, in which Henry always fought against tremendous odds, that he displayed his wonderful ability and tact as a political and military leader. Finally his second conversion to Catholicism on the twenty-third of July, 1593, which was simply a political measure and not at all dictated by religious motives, decided the succession to the throne in his favor, although it took years of warfare and diplomatic negotiation to secure his recognition by Spain and the leaders of the League.
Henry the Fourth’s greatest political achievement, by which he manifested his far-seeing ability as a statesman, was the Edict of Nantes, promulgated on the thirteenth of April, 1598. It guaranteed freedom of conscience and equality before the law to Catholics and Protestants; and it was the first great manifesto of religious toleration issued by any ruler. But noble and high-minded as it was, even if inspired only by political motives, the fanatics of the Catholic Church would not forgive him. Unquestionably it was the Edict of Nantes which caused his assassination,—an act of revenge with which the Church paid back the injury it supposed it had received at his hands.
Henry, with the assistance of his great minister, the Duke of Sully, devoted the first few years, after peace had been restored, to building up the prosperity of the country, which had been distracted by war for nearlyforty years. In this he admirably succeeded. With wonderful rapidity the monarchy recovered from the disasters and calamities of the religious and civil wars. Without Henry’s success, late as it came, this national improvement would have been impossible, and France would have sunk into the same condition of intellectual lethargy and material decay from which Spain has suffered for three centuries. But Henry’s ambition went much beyond the borders of his kingdom. The house of Hapsburg, a branch of which ruled Spain, appeared to him too dangerous for the security and greatness of France. He supported the German Protestant princes in their opposition to Austria, which wanted to take possession of Juliers-Cleves, two German principalities, and sent an army of ten thousand men to their assistance. Henry wanted to join personally this army on the nineteenth of May, 1610. On the thirteenth of May he published a decree appointing the Queen, Mary de Médicis, Regent of the kingdom, and her coronation was celebrated on the same day with great pomp.
On the fourteenth of May, the day after the coronation, the King was assassinated by Francis Ravaillac in the Ferronière Street at Paris, where his carriage had stopped a few minutes. It was this short delay which gave Ravaillac a chance: he climbed upon the hind-wheel of the carriage and stabbed the King twice with a long poniard, with deadly effect. It was thus that the greatest King France has produced died at the hands of a miserable fanatic, at a moment too when, according to the statement of Sully, who knew him better than any other man, he had formed a plan of establishing a great European confederation, founded on the civil equality of Catholicsand Protestants and on an equilibrium of power among the great nations of Europe. Ravaillac was executed with revolting barbarity on the twenty-seventh of May, but not even the repeated application of the torture elicited the least information as to the motives or the accomplices which he may have had in his crime. Henry’s death was a cruel loss not only for France, but for the whole world.
The assassination of Henry the Fourth ended in France the era of famous political murders, which during the religious wars had taken off Coligny, Henry of Guise, and the two kings, Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth, all during one generation. But of these only the assassination of Henry the Fourth has made a lasting and profound impression on his contemporaries as well as on posterity. It has enhanced his reputation and glory by enshrining his name among the great martyrs of history. It was one of the most patriotic and high-minded thoughts of Voltaire to make Henry the Fourth the hero of his epic poem “La Henriade,” which although not ranking with the great poems of Milton, Tasso, and Virgil, in poetic merit, is still a noble hymn of liberty and a glorification of religious toleration, as well as of Henry, its representative. It is uncertain whether the profound horror which the assassination of Henry caused throughout the world, or the terrible punishment inflicted on Ravaillac, caused assassins to desist from their nefarious work, but certain it is that no new assassination of a king or any member of the royal family of France took place from the death of Henry the Fourth to the assassination of the Duc de Berry, the presumptive heir of Charles the Tenth, in 1820. Not that no attemptson the life of any or all of the French monarchs since the days of Henry the Fourth were made; but all such attempts had failed, and instead of killing the rulers, had only led to the cruel and horrible execution of the conspirators.
Most remarkable among these was the assault of Damiens on King Louis the Fifteenth, one of the most dissolute and worthless monarchs,—one who in the gratification of his lusts was utterly oblivious of common decency and shame. Louis the Fifteenth came nearer reviving the atrocious immorality of Claudius, Caligula, Caracalla, Heliogabalus in the palace of the Cæsars of ancient Rome, than any other modern monarch had done. It was the age of Madame de Pompadour and the monstrosities of the “deer park.” The French nation blushed at the excesses of the court, which paved the way for the great Revolution, already dimly foreseen by some ingenious observers, as one of the necessities of the future. It was at this time, when public indignation, not to say public disgust, had reached its culminating point, that an attempt on the life of the King was made.
It was on the fifth of January, 1757, at six o’clock in the evening, on a cold and dark day, that he stepped out of the doorway of the palace of Versailles and went up to a carriage waiting for him to take him to Trianon. All at once he felt that somebody had run against him, and at the same time that he was bleeding from a wound in the side. He uttered a cry of pain and alarm, and when the torch-bearers drew near and surrounded him, the King noticed a man who alone among all those present had kept his hat on. “This man has assaulted and wounded me!” exclaimed the King, pointing to the man whosehead remained covered. “Arrest him, but do not harm him!” It makes almost a painful impression to find that an embodiment of vice and debauchery like Louis the Fifteenth should at such a moment have been inspired with feelings of mercy toward his assassin, and should have used almost the identical words which fell from the lips of the pure and high-minded President McKinley after Czolgosz had fatally wounded him! But history records them, and we must give even the devil his due.
The attempt on the King’s life caused a tremendous sensation in Paris, where immediately the most exaggerated reports concerning the fatal wounding of the King and the discovery of a widespread conspiracy to assassinate him were circulated. Damiens was treated with the greatest severity. As though the crime which he had tried to commit had been really committed, and as though the stab he had given to the King had had fatal effect, the criminal was treated as a regicide, and the terrible machinery of the law provided for in such cases, and in France not employed since the trial of Ravaillac, was put in operation. Even during his transportation from Versailles to Paris measures of precaution were used, as if a state prisoner of the most dangerous character and of the greatest importance were to be guarded. Regiments of soldiers surrounded his carriage, and six sergeants with drawn swords marched on each side. Strict orders had been issued to the citizens of Paris not to go out on the streets or appear at the front windows of their houses. Everything had been done to create the impression of a conspiracy against the government which counted many influential men among its membersand of which the assassin was merely the tool, while those who were directing him and using his arm against the King, had to be sought in the highest classes of the aristocracy, and especially among the enemies of Madame de Pompadour. Great efforts were made to get a full confession from Damiens. Who was he? How had he formed the plan to assassinate the King? Who had instigated him to commit the act? Who were his accomplices? These were the questions to be solved by the French police authorities, and for whose solution they did not hesitate to apply the most cruel measures known to them. But the result of their painstaking investigation was far from realizing their expectations. It was found that Damiens belonged to the lower classes of the people. He had learned the trade of a locksmith, but had preferred to enter the service of rich lords and ladies as a domestic. Being of a very restless and quarrelsome disposition, he had changed his positions as often as Gil Blas had changed his masters. He had been in the houses of parliamentarians, clergymen, noblemen, orthodox Catholics, Jansenists, Molinists, Protestants, free thinkers. Often he had served at the table of the great lords and ladies of the kingdom and had listened to the conversation of the guests; and invariably the subject of the conversation had turned on the disgraceful conduct of the King, on his excesses, on the shameful orgies of the court, on the mysteries of the “deer park,” where not only the virtue of young girls of the people was ruthlessly sacrificed, but also the money extorted from the sweat of the people criminally squandered. Wherever he had gone he had heard the same story, and it had made a deep impression upon him. Damiens had always been of an eccentricturn of mind; he had even had spells of religious exaltation, and for three years he had seriously meditated on the possibility of rescuing the King from his sinful excesses and debauches.
He finally had come to the conclusion that the only possibility of turning the King’s mind away from his vicious habits and arousing his soul to sentiments of honor and duty might come through fear, by placing him in the immediate presence of death. This thought preyed so incessantly and so strongly on his mind that he resolved to become the instrument of the King’s redemption, by attacking and wounding, but not killing him. The attempt on the King’s life was therefore the result of a psychological process which was, perhaps, based on wrong and extravagant premises, but which, if all the circumstances are taken into consideration, was rather meritorious than criminal in its aim. The assassin had acted strictly in accord with his preconceived theory. He had in his possession a knife with two blades, one of which was very long, sharp and pointed like a dagger, while the other was quite short and sharp. It seemed to be impossible to inflict a mortal wound with the short blade, and Damiens had used it in wounding the King. He had no accomplices. At first, very likely to mitigate his punishment, he had hinted at the existence of a widespread conspiracy, contemplating the assassination of the King, the Dauphin, and others, but he soon retracted these statements, and even the most severe application of the torture could not elicit from him any other declaration than this: that he had no accomplices, that nobody, not even his wife and his young daughter, had known anything of his intention; that he did not intend to kill theKing, though he could easily have done so; that he had only intended to wound him for the purpose of frightening and warning him; that his act had been inspired by the wish of saving France and the dynasty.
But all these statements, which could not be controverted by conflicting evidence, made no impression upon judges who had fully made up their minds beforehand, and who looked upon the man that wanted to touch even the King’s finger with the same horror as upon a regicide who might have stabbed him through the heart and killed him. The sentence passed upon Damiens was therefore in conformity with their preconceived opinion, and cruel in the extreme. It was based upon the sentence carried out against Ravaillac for having killed the greatest of kings and one of the benefactors of mankind. Though Damiens was an eccentric ponderer, a foolish dreamer, who had but slightly wounded a heartless voluptuary that had deserved death a hundred times, his sentence was terrible beyond description, and was actually carried out in the presence of an immense multitude. At first his right hand, in which was placed the knife with which he had struck the King, was burned to the bone. Thereupon his arms, his legs, his breast, his back and his feet were lacerated with burning tongs; molten lead, boiling oil, burning sulphur, rosin, and wax were poured into the open wounds; and finally, while he was still suffering unimaginable pain, four strong horses, hitched to his arms and legs, tried for half an hour with all their might to tear out his limbs. After that time only one arm remained in the body, and it took another five minutes’ work to pull it out of its socket. The body of the unfortunate man had been pulled to almost double itslength and width, and its power of resistance amazed all the spectators. When at last the cruel execution was over, the bleeding trunk and the arms and legs were thrown upon a pile of wood near the scaffold and destroyed by fire. The spectacle had struck terror into the hearts of the beholders.
But even with this terrible act of revenge the criminal justice of France was not satisfied; it reached out for the innocent family of the criminal. His father, his wife, and his daughter were banished from France for life, not to return there on penalty of death, while his brothers, sisters, and other relatives had to change their names. The house in which he was born was burned to the ground, and any other trace which he might have left was carefully obliterated. The crime of Damiens was not one of the famous assassinations in history, but it caused such a sensation in Europe, and it was punished so cruelly, that we thought his attempt on the life of Louis the Fifteenth might very properly be recorded in this book.