The Boys' Book of Rulers
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“The whole surrounding country flocked to the capital to witness it, and Cæsar’s greatness and glory were signalized in the most conspicuous manner to all the world. After these triumphs, a series of splendid public entertainments were given, over twenty thousand tables having been spread for the populace of the city. Shows of every character and variety were exhibited. There were dramatic plays and equestrian performances in the circus, and gladiatorial combats, and battles with wild beasts, and dances and chariot races and every other amusement which could be devised to gratify a population highly cultivated in all the arts of life, but barbarous and cruel in heart and character. Some of the accounts which have come down to us of the magnificence of the scale on which these entertainments were conducted are absolutely incredible. It is said that an immense basin was constructed near the Tiber, large enough to contain two fleets of galleys, which had on board two thousand rowers each and one thousand fighting men. These fleets were then manned with captives, – the one with Asiatics, and the other with Egyptians, – and when all was ready, they were compelled to fight a real battle for the amusement of the spectators who thronged the shores, until vast numbers were killed, and the waters of the lake were dyed with blood. It is also said that the entire Forum and some of the great streets in the neighborhood, where the principal gladiatorial shows were held, were covered with silken awnings to protect the vast crowds of spectators from the sun, and thousands of tents were erected to accommodate the people from the surrounding country, whom the buildings of the city could not contain.”
All open opposition to Cæsar’s power was now put down. The Senate vied with the people to do him honor. He was first made consul for ten years, and then perpetual dictator. They conferred upon him the title of “The Father of his Country.” Cæsar now began to form plans for immense improvements which should benefit his empire. He completed the regulation of the calendar. “The system of months in use in his day corresponded so imperfectly with the annual circuit of the sun, that the months were moving continually along the year in such a manner that the winter months came at length in the summer, and the summer months in the winter. This led to great practical inconveniences. For whenever, for example, anything was required by law to be done in certain months, intending to have them done in the summer, and the specified month came at length to be a winter month, the law would require the thing to be done in exactly the wrong season. Cæsar remedied all this by adopting a new system of months which should give three hundred and sixty-five days to the year for three years, and three hundred and sixty-six for the fourth; and so exact was the system which he thus introduced that it went on unchanged for sixteen centuries. The months were then found to be eleven days out of the way, and a new correction was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII., and it will now go on three thousand years before the error will amount to a single day. Cæsar employed a Greek astronomer to arrange the system he adopted, and for this improvement one of the months was called July, after Julius Cæsar. Its former name was Quintilis.”
Cæsar commenced the collection of vast libraries; formed plans for draining the Pontine Marshes, and for bringing great supplies of water into the city by an aqueduct; and he intended to cut a new passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea. He also planned a road along the Apennines, and a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, and intended to construct other vast works which should make Rome the wonder of the world.
But in the midst of all these grand projects he was suddenly stricken down. Although the Romans disliked the thought of being ruled by a king, they preserved certain statues of their kings in some of the public buildings, and the ambition of Cæsar led him very foolishly to place his own statue among them. He also had a seat prepared for himself in the Senate in the form of a throne. On one occasion, when the members of the Senate were to come to him in a temple to announce certain decrees they had passed to his honor, Cæsar received them sitting upon a magnificent chair, which seemed a throne, so gorgeous was it; and he did not even rise to welcome them, as was the usual custom, thus showing that he would receive them as a monarch, who never rises in the presence of inferiors. This incident, small as it may seem, aroused much indignation. His statue was also found adorned with a laurel crown, to which was fastened a white fillet, which was an emblem of royalty. On another occasion, at a public entertainment, an officer placed a diadem upon the head of Cæsar, who pretended to be disinclined to receive it, and taking it off, it was offered twice again, and refused, when Cæsar sent the diadem to a temple near by as an offering to Jupiter. Although he thus appeared to reject the honor, his manner indicated that he only desired to be more warmly pressed to receive it. There was now formed a strong conspiracy against Cæsar, headed by Cassius, who had for a long time been Cæsar’s enemy. Cassius at last succeeded in persuading Marcus Brutus to join him. The plan was then divulged to such men as the conspirators thought most necessary to the success of their plot. It was agreed that Cæsar must be slain. They at length decided that the Roman Senate was the proper place. As it had been rumored that Cæsar’s friends were about to attempt to crown him as a king on the Ides of March, that day was chosen by the conspirators as a fitting one on which Julius Cæsar should meet his doom. Cæsar received many warnings of his approaching fate, and the soothsayers reported many strange omens which betokened some portentous event. One of these soothsayers informed Cæsar that he had been warned, by certain signs at a public sacrifice, that some terrible danger threatened his life on the Ides of March; and he besought him to be cautious until that day should have passed. The Senate were to meet on the Ides of March in a new and magnificent edifice, which had been erected by Pompey. In this Senate Chamber was a statue of Pompey. The day before the Ides of March, some birds of prey from a neighboring grove came flying into this hall, pursuing a little wren which had a sprig of laurel in its beak. The birds tore the poor wren to pieces, and the laurel fell from its bill to the marble pavement below. As Cæsar had been crowned with laurel after his victories, and always wore a wreath of laurel on public occasions, this event was thought to portend some evil to him. The night before the Ides of March, both Cæsar and his wife Calpurnia awoke from terrible dreams. Cæsar dreamed that he ascended into the skies and was received by Jupiter, and Calpurnia, awakening with a wild shriek, declared that she had dreamed that the roof of the house had fallen in, and that her husband had been stabbed by an assassin. When morning came, Calpurnia endeavored to persuade Cæsar not to go to the Senate, and he had consented to comply with her wish, until one of the conspirators, who had been appointed to accompany Cæsar to the Senate, came to the house of Julius Cæsar, and by his declarations that the people were waiting to confer upon their dictator the title of king throughout all the Roman dominions excepting Italy alone, he at length persuaded Cæsar to go with him. On the way to the Senate, a Greek teacher, having learned something of the plot, wrote a statement of it, and as Cæsar passed him he gave it to him, saying, “Read this immediately; it concerns yourself, and is of the utmost importance.” Cæsar made the attempt to do so, but the crowd of people who pressed towards him and handed him various petitions, as was the usual custom when a state officer appeared in public, prevented Cæsar from thus learning of the dreadful fate awaiting him. There was one warm friend of Cæsar, named Marc Antony, whom the conspirators feared might interfere with the successful completion of their plot, and so it was arranged that one of their number should engage the attention of Antony, while the petitioner chosen should advance and make his appeal to Cæsar, which should be the signal for the bloody deed. This conspirator made a pretence of asking Cæsar for the pardon of his brother, which request, as they had expected, Cæsar declined to grant. This occasioned an outburst of pretended fury, under cover of which the conspirators rushed upon Cæsar and stabbed him with their swords. Cæsar at first attempted to defend himself, but as Brutus, his former friend, also plunged his dagger into his side, he exclaimed, “And you, too, Brutus?” and drawing his mantle over his face, he fell at the feet of Pompey’s statue and expired. Now again the city of Rome was in wild tumult.
The conspirators marched boldly through the streets with their bloody swords. They boasted of their shocking deed, and announced that they had delivered their country from a tyrant. The people, stunned by the daring of this terrible act, knew not what to think or do. Some barricaded their houses in fear; others hurried through the streets with blanched faces; and still others excitedly seized any kind of weapon near at hand, and joined a mob, which threatened to break out in awful violence, to avenge the death of Cæsar, their idol.
During all this time the body of Cæsar lay unheeded at the foot of Pompey’s statue, pierced with twenty-three wounds, made by the hands of men he thought were his friends. Three slaves were his only guardians; and at last they lifted the poor bruised, bleeding, and ghastly corpse, and carried it home to the distracted Calpurnia. The next day, Brutus and the other conspirators called the people together in the Forum, and there addressed them, endeavoring to persuade them that the deed had been committed only in the interests of the people, to rid them of a tyrant. But the subsequent famous funeral speech of Marc Antony, roused the people to such a wild frenzy of revenge, that the conspirators were only saved from death with great difficulty by the intervention of the Senate.
The Field of Mars had been chosen as the place for the funeral pile; but after the speech of Marc Antony in the Forum, where the body of Cæsar had been placed on a gilded bed covered with scarlet and cloth of gold, under a gorgeous canopy made in the form of a temple, the people in their wild outbursts of love for Cæsar, as they had then learned from his will, which Antony read aloud to them, of his munificent bequests to the Roman citizens, became ungovernable in their desires to do him reverence. As a crier, by Antony’s order, read the decrees of the Senate, in which all honors, human and divine, had been been ascribed to Cæsar, the gilded bed upon which he lay was lifted and borne out into the centre of the Forum; and two men, having forced their way through the crowd, with lighted torches set fire to the bed on which the body of Cæsar lay, and the multitudes with shouts of enthusiastic applause, seized everything within reach and placed them upon the funeral pile. The soldiers then threw on their lances and spears; musicians cast their instruments into the increasing flames; women tore off their jewels to add to the gorgeous pile, and all vied with each other to contribute something to enlarge the blazing funeral pile. So fierce were the flames that they spread to some of the neighboring buildings, and a terrible conflagration which would have given Cæsar the most majestic funeral pile in the annals of the world, for it would have been the blazing light from the burning city of Rome itself, was only prevented by the most strenuous efforts.
Some time after, Octavius Cæsar, the successor of Julius Cæsar, and Marc Antony, waged war with Cassius and Brutus; and at the battle of Philippi, where Cassius and Brutus were defeated, and while they were fleeing from the field, hopeless of further defence, they both killed themselves with their own swords.
Cæsar died at the age of fifty-six. The Roman people erected a column to his memory, on which they placed the inscription, “To the Father of His Country.” A figure of a star was placed upon the summit of this memorial shaft, and some time afterwards, while the people were celebrating some games in honor of Cæsar’s memory, a great comet blazed for seven nights in the sky, which they declared to be a sign that the soul of Cæsar was admitted among the gods.
CHARLEMAGNE
742-814 A.D
“To whom God will, there be the victory.”Shakespeare.THERE was great terror and dismay among the inhabitants of the city of Paris, called in those early days, Lutetia.
The Gauls, who dwelt in that part of the country, were now menaced by a foe even more terrible than the Roman soldiers led by the famous Julius Cæsar, who had invaded their land about 500 years before, and made their country a Roman province.
But now a fearful war-cry rings through the air; and as the frightened Gauls hastily arm themselves for resistance, a horde of Teutonic giants, with light complexions, long yellow hair waving in the wind, and eyes so bright and cat-like that they fairly shone with a green glare of animal-like ferocity, which was heightened by their clothing made of the skins of the bear, the boar, and the wolf, making them look in the distance like a herd of wild beasts, came rushing like an avalanche of destruction over the peaceful homes of the Gauls. These hordes advanced in a mighty wedge-like phalanx, formed of their bravest warriors, each man carrying in his right hand a long lance, and in the left a buckler, or skin-covered shield, while his girdle held a sharp two-edged axe, which became, with dexterous handling, a most dangerous weapon, and was hurled from a distance with marvellous aim. With mounted warriors protecting the wings of this invincible phalanx, on came this fierce, wild tribe, charging to battle with a terrible war-whoop, which they made more shrill by placing the edge of the buckler to the mouth.
In vain the Gauls looked to Rome for help. There was too much trouble in Italy for the Roman government to help any one. So these giant Franks came rushing unchecked on to Paris, while the frightened Gauls were powerless to resist them. The leader of this horde was called Hilperik, the son of Meerwig; and having taken possession of Paris, and several surrounding provinces, he founded the kingdom afterwards called France, from this tribe who were called Franks.
The story of kings is too often a story of blood and cruelty, and the kingdom which the great Charlemagne inherited had been the scene of fearful and continual conflicts.
The Goths, one of the fierce German nations, had conquered a large part of Gaul after it had become a Roman province, and in the year 451, the Huns, a more terrible nation still, whose chief was the famous Attila, who called himself the “Scourge of God,” invaded Gaul with his army, – horrible looking men, whose faces had been gashed by their savage parents in their infancy, that they might look more dreadful. The poor Gauls thought rightly, that it was more fearful to fall into their hands than into those of the Franks; but the Huns came no further than Orleans, where an army, composed of Gauls, Franks, Goths, Burgundians, all under the Roman general Ætius, attacked the Huns at Châlons-sur-Marne, beat them, and drove them back. Châlons was the last victory in Gaul, won under the Roman banners, and now the poor Gauls were obliged to meet their enemies alone. The chief tribes of those warlike races, who swarmed over Europe, both north and south, were the Goths who conquered Rome, and settled in Spain; the Longbeards or Lombards, who spread over the north of Italy; the Burgundians, or town-livers, who held all the country around the Alps; the Swabians and Germans, who stayed in the middle of Europe; the Saxons, who dwelt south of the Baltic, and finally conquered South Britain; the Northmen, who found a home in Scandinavia; and the Franks, who had been long settled on the rivers Sale, Meuse, and Rhine. Their name meant freemen, and they were noted for using an axe, called after them. Of the Franks there were two noted tribes, – the Salian, from the river Sale, and the Ripuarian. They were great horsemen, and the Salians had a family of kings, who were supposed to have descended from one of their warlike gods, called Odin. Although the Franks were a ferocious and sometimes cruel race, they were in some respects superior to the other barbaric tribes, and were liked better by the Gauls than any other of those various nations.
After Cæsar’s conquest many of the Romans had remained in Gaul, and had built and conquered cities, and lived under Roman laws. They taught the Gauls to speak Latin, and organized many schools and colleges among them. The Gauls adopted the Roman dress and religion. The religion of the ancient Gauls had been taught to the people by priests, called Druids. Druidism was a confusion of mingled ideas of Oriental dreams and traditions, borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North; and although it was degraded by barbaric practices such as human sacrifices in honor of the gods or of the dead, it possessed one germ of truth, for the Druids believed in the immortality of the soul. Their priests were old and wise men, who had studied often for twenty years before they were considered wise enough to become “Men of the Oak,” as the chief Druids were called. They made laws for the people and settled questions of dispute. Once every year the Druids went out to look for the mistletoe, which they considered a sacred plant. When a mistletoe was found growing upon an oak, the people came from all parts of the country and stood around the tree. Then a Druid, clothed in white, climbed up the oak-tree, and cut off the sacred mistletoe with a golden sickle, and the much prized plant was caught by the other Druids below, in a white cloth, and was carried away to be preserved as a great treasure.
But the Gauls living in those provinces conquered by the Romans, had given up their old Druidical religion, and adopted that of their conquerors, which was no improvement, for it was also a paganism, and was such a mass of superstition and idolatry, derived from Grecian mythology and old traditions, that it did not even possess the vital force of the Druidical belief. For the Druids worshipped, as they thought, living deities, while the Græco-Roman paganism was a dead religion, with only dead gods, buried beneath their still standing altars. Such were the superstitions and false religions with which the Christians of the early centuries had to contend in laboring to convert the then known world to the worship of the one true and living God and His Son Jesus Christ, who had already lived his holy life upon this earth, and given himself a sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. Already the disciples of Christ had founded Christian churches in Asia Minor and Palestine, and many of them had died as martyrs for the faith. St. Paul had preached at Athens and at Rome, and having finished his glorious work he had received his crown of martyrdom. And all down these early centuries teachers had been sent out by the Christian churches, to endeavor to convert the heathen world around to a belief in the one true and only religion which could secure the salvation of the immortal soul. The Roman emperors had all persecuted the Christians and sought to uphold paganism. But when B.C. 312, the Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian, “paganism fell, and Christianity mounted the throne.” Previous to the conquest of Gaul by the Franks, the Gauls had adopted Christianity, and when Hilperik, king of the Franks, conquered Paris and the surrounding country, and at his death left this kingdom to his son, named Hlodwig, or Clovis, there were many Christians and churches and monasteries in Gaul. Clovis conquered many of the surrounding provinces, and at last became the ruler of nearly the whole of Gaul. Clovis had married a Burgundian maiden, named Clothilda, and as she was a Christian he allowed her to worship God in the Christian churches. But in the great battle of Tolbiacum, which Clovis fought with the Germans, when it seemed as though the Franks would be defeated, Clovis took an oath that if the God of his wife would give him the victory he would become a Christian. The Franks were victorious, and Clovis was baptized with all his chief warriors.
When Clovis died, he left four sons, among whom he divided his kingdom. One was the king of Paris; another, king of Orleans; a third, king of Soissons; and the fourth, who reigned over that part of Gaul nearest Germany and the Rhine, was called king of Metz. In a battle with the Burgundians, the king of Orleans, Clodomir, was killed, leaving three young sons who were placed in the care of their grandmother Clothilda. At length the kings of Paris and Soissons became jealous of these children of their elder brother Clodomir, and sent for the children, under pretence of placing them upon the throne of their father. But as soon as they had them in their cruel power, they sent a pair of scissors and a sword to Clothilda, with a message, saying: “We wait thy wishes as to the three children; shall they be slain or shorn?” meaning, shall they be killed or shut up in monasteries? Clothilda, in despair, cried out: “Slain, rather than shorn!” and the messengers, not waiting to hear her further words, returned to the cruel kings, and announced that they had secured the consent of Clothilda for the shocking deed. The wicked kings then hastily entered the room where the three helpless boys were imprisoned, and having slain the eldest, the second one clung to the knees of his uncle Childebert, king of Paris, who was for a moment moved with pity, and asked his brother Clotaire to spare the boy. But the wicked Clotaire, king of Soissons, exclaimed in wrath, “Thrust him away or thou diest in his stead!” Whereupon, Childebert tried no more to save him, and Clotaire seized the poor boy, who was now shrieking with terror, and plunged a hunting-knife into his side, as he had his brother’s, and slew him. These murdered children were only ten and seven years old. The third brother was snatched up by some brave friends, and hidden away where the cruel uncles could not find him. He was afterwards placed in a monastery, and became a monk, and founded a monastery near Paris, called after him, St. Cloud. After the sons of Clovis there followed a line of kings in France called the Meerwings, or long-haired kings, known in history as the Merovingians; and only two of them are important enough to be mentioned, and those only on account of their crimes. One of the sons of Clovis left four sons; and two of these, named Hilperik and Siegbert, married the two daughters of the king of the Goths, in Spain. These sisters were called Galswinth and Brunehild. Hilperik loved a slave girl he owned, named Fredegond, and either with or without his consent, his wife Galswinth was found strangled in her bed, and he afterwards married the murderess, Fredegond, who, though most atrociously wicked, became a powerful queen. Brunehild persuaded her husband Siegbert to make war upon Hilperik, to avenge the death of her sister. Hilperik was defeated, but the Queen Fredegond contrived to have Siegbert murdered, and afterwards killed her husband’s other children, thus leaving her own son heir to the throne. She then ordered her husband also to be put to death, so that she could reign alone in the name of her infant son. The four kingdoms left by Clovis had been now merged into three, – Neustria, which is now the north of France; Austrasia, which is now the north-east corner of France, and part of Belgium, and part of the western side of Germany; and the third kingdom was called Burgundy. The Neustrians and the Austrasians were usually at war with each other, the Burgundians taking now one side of the quarrel and now the other. Queen Fredegond’s part of Gaul was Neustria, while Queen Brunehild governed Austrasia. But Brunehild quarrelled with the chiefs of the country; and after many years of wars, plots, and murders, she was at last brutally killed by the son of Fredegond, who became king of all the Franks; and in Neustria every one obeyed him; but in Austrasia the great chiefs and bishops were opposed to him. The bishops had by this time become rich and powerful, for a great amount of land had been left to the church by the wills of dying Christians, or as gifts from kings and chiefs. When Clotaire, son of Fredegond, died, he left two sons; one of them named Dagobert made himself master of Neustria and Austrasia, and gave his brother land in the south part of the country, which had not been visited before by a Frankish king. Dagobert took Paris for his chief town; he made himself a splendid court, took journeys through his kingdom, doing justice to his subjects, and encouraged the building of churches, and had copies of the old Frankish laws written out and sent throughout his kingdom. The people liked him; but the powerful chiefs and the bishops, who had become so worldly that they thought a great deal more about piling up riches than in turning the people to Christianity, were filled with dismay to have so wise and just a king, who was fast gaining a great power over the people. After ten years Dagobert died and left two sons; one was king of Austrasia; and the younger king of Neustria. After these, there followed three more kings in Neustria, and four in Austrasia, but they had no power, and were only called kings, while the government was really in the hands of a new set of men, from which line the illustrious Charlemagne sprang. The chief man next the king in these countries was called the Mayor of the Palace. He had the chief command in times of war, and at last became in truth the sovereign ruler; and they only put up one of their do-nothing kings as a figure-head. After the death of Dagobert, there was no other Frankish king of any importance in the line of the Merovingians. The Fainéants, or do-nothing kings, as they were called, sat on the throne and pretended to rule, but the mayor of the palace told them what they must say to the people and what they must do. This went on for nearly a hundred years. When Dagobert died, the mayor of the palace was named Pepin, and through several reigns he really governed both Austrasia and Neustria. He made war against the Germans, and sometimes when they were very troublesome he went with an army and subdued them; and at other times he sent monks to try and convert them to Christianity. When Pepin died, his son Karl became the mayor of the palace. Now Karl wished to secure money to give to his chiefs, so that they would fight for him, and so he took away from the bishops the rich lands which belonged to the church, and gave them to his warriors. Karl had first to fight the Saxons, whom he defeated, and then there appeared a new foe. The Arabs lived in Arabia, on the east side of the Red Sea, in Asia.