The Fall of Granada

Spain—1492

One day in the year 1478, a Spanish cavalier arrived at the gates of Granada. He was well mounted, armed at all points, and followed closely by a retinue of mounted servants. Now Granada, though in Spain, belonged to the Moors, or Spanish Arabs. Once possessors of nearly the whole of Spain, war after war had left them less and less of their country, till at last the beautiful and powerful kingdom of Granada alone remained to them.

This "queen of kingdoms" was most beautiful. Situated in the south of Spain, bordering on the blue Mediterranean, it was bounded on the land side by high, rugged mountains. In the centre lay the city of Granada itself, sheltered, as it were, in the lap of the Sierra Nevada, or Snowy Mountains. The city stood on two lofty hills. One of these hills was crowned by the royal palace and fortress of the Alhambra, which was capable of containing forty thousand men within its walls and towers. With its glorious position, its beautiful colonnades of marble, its domes and ceilings glowing with colour, its great airy halls, its numberless fountains, the royal stronghold was the pride of the Moors. On the other hill opposite was the fortress of Alcazaba. On this hill was a great plain covered with houses, separated by narrow streets and small squares, after the fashion of other Moorish cities.

These houses had each its court and gardens, refreshed by fountains and running streams, and set out with oranges, lemons, and pomegranates; so that, as the city rose tier upon tier up the side of the hill, the effect was that of a large and beautiful garden with a background of the great snowy mountains.

While other cities panted with stifling and sultry heat, fresh breezes played through the marble halls of Granada It was a city the poets loved to sing of.

"Though high doth rise the Alhambra's hill, A neighbouring summit, higher still, Adorned with terraces and bowers, Looks down upon its ruddy towers. A lovely plain lies spread below Girded by mountains crowned with snow; Its surface like an emerald gleams, Bright with a thousand silver streams; And countless gardens, groves, and bowers, And fields and foliage, fruits and flowers; There the pomegranate, tinged with red, Its flowering branches wide doth spread; Beside the olive's dusky green The citron and the fig are seen. If earth contains a paradise, It is beneath Granada's skies."

Indeed this was the Moors' favourite idea; so beautiful the earth, so pure the air, that they imagined the paradise of their prophet Mahomet to be in that part of the heaven which overhung the kingdom of Granada.

This was the beautiful city to which the Spanish cavalier was riding. As he passed through the gate of Elvira with his small but proud array of Spanish chivalry, the Moors puzzled their heads as to the reason of his coming. Up the long hill he rode to the palace of the Alhambra, where he was ushered into the presence of the Moorish king, who was awaiting him in the luxury of his marble halls. The Spaniard related his errand: he had come from the King of Spain, Ferdinand, to demand the Moors' tribute money.

A bitter smile passed over the face of the fierce Moorish monarch, as he answered firmly,—

"Tell your king that the kings of Granada, who used to pay tribute in money to the Spanish crown, are dead. Our mint at present coins nothing but blades of scimitars and heads of lances."

The Spaniard retired. As he rode away with his retinue, he took note of the force and situation of the Moors. He saw they were well prepared for hostilities Their walls and towers were of vast strength, in complete repair; their magazines were well stored; they had a mighty host of foot-soldiers, together with squadrons of cavalry. The Christian warriors of Ferdinand noted these things without dismay. As they slowly pranced through the streets of Granada, they looked round on its stately palaces and mighty mosques, on its bazaars crowded with silks and cloth of silver and gold, with jewels and precious stones, and they longed for the day, which could not be far off now, when they should attack the Moor and enter the fair city of Granada as conquerors.

The war note had been struck, but Ferdinand was too much engaged in a war with Portugal to open up hostilities with such stubborn foes as he knew the Moors of Granada would prove.

THE ALHAMBRA

And so it was not till the year 1490 that Ferdinand sent to demand a complete surrender of the capital, Granada. The towns of Alhama (known as the "key of Granada") and Malaga, belonging to the Moors, had already fallen into the hands of the Christians. Granada itself was thronged with refugees from the captured towns. The time had come when Ferdinand saw his way to conquering this last stronghold of the unhappy Moors, and seating himself on the throne of the Alhambra.

But the Moors were not going to surrender their beautiful city without a blow. It was an idea worse than death itself that Granada, illustrious Granada, for ages the seat of Moorish grandeur and delight, should become the abode of the Christians.

Among the proudest of the Moorish cavaliers was one Muza. He was the idol of the army, a type of a loyal Moor. When he heard of Ferdinand's demand that they should deliver up their arms, his eyes flashed fire.

"Does the Christian king think that we are old men," he cried, "and that staffs will suffice us? or that we are women, and can be contented with distaffs? Let him know that a Moor is born to the spear and the scimitar, to career the steed, bend the bow, and throw the javelin; deprive him of these, and you deprive him of his nature. If the Christian king desires our arms, let him come and win them, but let him win them dearly. For my part, sweeter were a grave beneath the walls of Granada, on the spot I had died to defend, than the richest couch within her palaces earned by submission to the Christian."

The words of Muza were received with shouts by the warlike Moors. Granada once more awoke as a warrior, and a reply was dispatched to Ferdinand declaring that the Moors would sooner suffer death than surrender themselves and their fair city.

Ferdinand made preparations to attack this last stronghold of the Moors. The city of Granada resounded with the stir of war. Muza was given command of the cavalry. He was surrounded by the noblest youth of Granada; while the common soldiers, devoted to him, were ready to follow him in his most desperate enterprises.

The gates of Granada once more poured forth legions of light cavalry, which scoured the country up to the very gates of the Christian fortresses, sweeping off flocks and herds. The sight of Muza's glistening legion returning across the plains with their booty was hailed by the Moors as a revival of their ancient triumphs, and when the Christian banners were borne into their gates as trophies their joy was beyond all bounds.

The winter passed, the spring came, and still Ferdinand delayed to take the field. He knew the city was too strong to be taken by assault, too full of provisions to be reduced by siege.

"We must have patience," said Ferdinand. "By ravaging the country this year, we shall produce a scarcity next, and then we can attack the city."

An interval of peace followed. The green pastures of the plains were covered with flocks and herds, the blooming orchards gave promise of abundant fruit, the open plain was waving with ripening corn. The time was at hand to put in the sickle and reap the golden harvest, when suddenly "a torrent of war came sweeping down from the mountains," and Ferdinand with his Christian army of five thousand horse and twenty thousand foot appeared before the walls of Granada. Leaving his queen and daughter at a neighbouring fortress, the king led his son, Prince John, a boy of twelve, into the field for the first time, and knighted him before the attack. Then he proceeded to send out devastating parties on all sides; villages were burned, sacked, and destroyed, and the lovely fields of corn were laid waste with fire and sword. The ravage was carried so close to Granada that the city was wrapt in the smoke of its hamlets and gardens. The dismal cloud rolled up the hill and hung about the towers of the Alhambra.

And what was Muza doing with his reckless cavalry? He split them up into small squadrons, each led by a daring commander. He taught them to hover round the Christian camp, to harass the army by cutting off supplies, to lurk among the rocks and passes of the mountains, in the hollows and thickets of the plain, and to practise a thousand stratagems. Nor did Muza hesitate to defy the Christians in the open field, and, still the standard of Mahomet waved defiance to the Christians from the red towers of the Alhambra.

For thirty days was the Vega overrun by Christian forces, and that vast plain, lately so luxuriant and beautiful, was become a wild scene of desolation. Having accomplished its task, the destroying army passed over the bridge and wound up into the mountains, bearing away spoils of town and village, and driving off flocks and herds in long dusty columns.

As the sound of the last Christian trumpet died away over the mountains, the Moors prepared yet more ardently for the attack which they knew was coming.

Now, shut up in the palace of the Alhambra was one Boabdil. He had been King of the Moors, but had been defeated in a battle against the Christians some years before and taken prisoner by Ferdinand. He had made friends with Ferdinand, and when he returned to his kingdom at Granada, he was received with hisses and execrations by his once loyal Moorish subjects, and shut up in the Alhambra as a traitor to his people.

From the windows of the palace the helpless monarch had looked down at the desolation being effected by the man who had once been his friend, but he dared not show himself to the populace again. Now, however, the Moors gathered under the walls of the Alhambra, and hailed Boabdil as their only hope; he was brought forth from his captivity and received with rapture, his past offences were forgotten or excused, and Boabdil buckled on his armour with triumph, and sallied forth to take the field against the Christians.

When the populace beheld him in arms against his late ally, they thronged with zeal to his standard, and even the hardy Moors from the chain of snow-capped mountains which rise behind Granada descended from their heights and hastened to the city gates to offer their services to their youthful king.

Scarcely was Boabdil settled once more in his capital, when Ferdinand at the head of his troops appeared again in the Vega, to make a second ravage round the walls of devoted Granada. For fifteen days the work of destruction went on, until hardly a green thing or a living animal was left on the face of the land, and Granada, once the queen of gardens, stood in her proud position surrounded by a desert.

Once more Ferdinand moved away to make urgent preparations for the last campaign, which was to decide the fate of Granada.

"How is thy strength departed, 0 Granada!" such was the lament of the Moors; "how is thy beauty withered and despoiled, O city of groves and fountains! The commerce that once thronged thy streets is at an end; the merchant no longer hastens to thy gates with the luxuries of foreign lands. The Alhambra still rears its ruddy towers from the midst of groves; but melancholy reigns in its marble halls, and the monarch looks down from his lofty balconies upon a naked waste, where once extended the blooming glories of the Vega."

It was on April 11, 1492, that Ferdinand and Isabella set out for the Moorish frontier, determined to lay close siege to Granada, and never to quit its walls till the flag of the Christians waved from the Alhambra heights.

From the windows of the palace Boabdil beheld the Christian squadrons glistening through clouds of dust, as in overwhelming numbers they poured along the Vega. Even old Moorish warriors trembled, and the harassed citizens grew pale, as they besought Boabdil to surrender, and trust to the mercy of the Christian king.

When Muza heard this, he rose in righteous wrath.

"What reason have we to despair?" he cried. "The blood of those illustrious Moors, the ancient conquerors of Spain, still flows in our veins. Let us be true to ourselves, and fortune will again be with us. We have a veteran force, the flower of our chivalry, and twenty thousand young men in the fire of youth. Do we want provisions? Our horses are fleet, and our horsemen are daring. Let them make inroads into the lands of our enemies; they will return with booty to our gates and to the soldier. There is no morsel so sweet as that wrested with hard fighting from the foe."

Even Boabdil caught a glow of enthusiasm from the brave words of Muza.

"Do what is needful," he cried to his commanders; "into your hands I confide the common safety. You are the protectors of the kingdom; and, with the aid of Allah, we will revenge the insults to our religion, the deaths of our friends and relations, and the sorrows and sufferings heaped upon our land."

Nothing was heard in the city but the din of arms and the bustle of preparation. The Moorish spirit was aflame. All that remained of high-born chivalry was here; all that was loyal and patriotic was roused to activity by the common danger. Granada was formidable enough in this her hour of despair. On the first appearance of the Christian army, the gates of the city had been closed and secured with heavy chains. Now Muza ordered them to be thrown open.

"To me and my cavaliers is entrusted the defence of the gates; our bodies shall be their barriers!" he cried.

Ferdinand saw that to reduce the city by main force would be too perilous a proceeding; accordingly, he determined to reduce it by famine, burning the cities and villages on which it now depended for its supplies. His camp was divided into streets, as a city; and when all was ready, the queen, Isabella, with Prince John and the princesses, came to be present at the siege. This was intended to show to the Moors the determination of the king and queen to reside in camp till Granada was theirs. The queen herself personally inspected every part of the camp; from time to time she would appear on the field dressed in complete armour.

At last the besieged city began to suffer from famine. Its supplies were cut off. Autumn arrived and brought them no harvest. The Moors shut themselves up gloomily within their walls. They remembered with anguish the prophecy so lately uttered by one in their midst—"Woe, woe, woe to Granada! Its fall is at hand. Desolation shall dwell in its palaces; its strong men shall fall beneath the sword; its children and maidens shall be led into captivity."

Boabdil grew alarmed by the determination of Ferdinand. In one of the halls of the Alhambra he called a council; officers and sages flocked in. Despair was written on every face.

"What shall be done?" asked the Moorish king.

"Surrender!" was the answer. "Of what avail is our defence when the enemy is determined to persist in the siege? What remains to us but to surrender or die?"

Boabdil sat in gloomy silence. But the loyal Muza arose.

"It is too early," he cried enthusiastically, "to talk of surrender. Our means are not exhausted; we have yet one source of strength remaining—it is our despair! Let us rouse the mass of the people; let us put weapons in their hands; let us fight the enemy to the last, till we rush upon the points of their lances. I am ready to lead the way into the thickest of their squadrons. And much rather would I be numbered among those who fell in the defence of Granada than among those who survived to capitulate for her surrender!"

But Muza's fiery words fell on the ears of broken-spirited and heartless men. Heroic as they were, the despairing Moors turned a deaf ear to him. "Surrender! surrender!" they moaned.

And Boabdil listened and yielded.

The old governor was sent to Ferdinand to treat for terms. The city waited in trembling anxiety for his return. This was his news: the Spaniards agreed to peace for seventy days, at the end of which time, if no help came to the Moorish king, the city should be surrendered. Boabdil was to take an oath of fealty to the Spanish crown, and the Moors were to become subjects of the Spanish kings.

When the members of the council found that the awful moment had arrived when they must blot themselves out as a nation, all their firmness deserted them, and they gave way to piteous tears.

Muza alone was firm.

"Leave this weeping to the women and children!" he cried. "We are men; we have hearts—not to shed tender tears, but drops of blood. Let us die defending our liberty and avenging the woes of Granada! Allah forbid that it should be said that the nobles of Granada feared to die in her defence!"

As Muza's voice stopped, there was dead silence. Boabdil looked anxiously round, but enthusiasm was dead; the careworn men were beyond even Muza's chivalrous appeals.

"Allah achbad!" (God is great!) cried the Moorish king at last. "It is vain to struggle against the will of heaven. Too surely was it written in the book of fate that I should be unfortunate, and the kingdom die under my rule."

Muza saw that it was hopeless to contend any longer. He rose angrily as Boabdil was about to sign the agreement.

"Do not deceive yourselves," he cried, "nor think the Christians will keep their promises! Death is the least we have to fear. It is the plundering and sacking of our city, the profanation of our mosques, the ruin of our homes, cruel oppression, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake,—these are the miseries we must see and suffer—at least those grovelling souls will see them who now shrink from an honourable death. For my part, I will never witness them!"

COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA

They were the Moor's last words. Angrily he left the council chamber, strode gloomily through the court of the lions and the outer halls of the Alhambra. Silently he went to his house, armed himself at all points, mounted his favourite war-horse, and issuing forth from the city by the gate of Elvira, was never seen or heard of more!

December had nearly passed away. The famine became extreme, and Boabdil determined to surrender the city on the second of January.

The night of the first was passed in doleful lamentations within the walls of the Alhambra, for the household of Boabdil were preparing to take a last farewell of their beautiful palace. All the royal treasures were hastily packed on mules, and before the dawn of day a mournful little procession passed through one of the back gates of the Alhambra, and departed through one of the most retired quarters of the city. It was composed of the royal family, sent off in secrecy to avoid the derision and triumph of the enemy. Boabdil's mother rode on in silence, with downcast face and despair written on every feature; but his wife wept bitterly as she cast a last glance at her beautiful palace, now a mass of gloomy towers behind.

The city was yet buried in sleep as they passed through its silent streets. The guards at the gate shed tears as they opened them for the weeping women.

At a hamlet some distance from the city they halted to await the arrival of the dethroned king Boabdil.

The sun had scarcely begun to shed its beams upon the summits of the snowy mountains above Granada, when the Christian camp was in motion.

The longed-for day had dawned at last, when the beautiful city of Granada should be theirs.

The whole Christian court and army advanced across the Vega. The king and queen, with Prince John and the princesses, took the lead, accompanied by different orders of monks and friars, and surrounded by bodyguards in splendid array. A detachment had meanwhile gone on to take possession of the Alhambra. It was not till the silver cross borne by Ferdinand throughout the crusade was seen sparkling in the morning sun on the great watchtower of the Alhambra that the royal procession moved forward. Beside it was hoisted the royal standard, and a mighty shout, "For King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!" resounded across the Vega. The whole host took up the shout, the choristers of the royal chapel broke forth into a Te Deum, the king and queen fell on their knees to thank God for their great triumph. Granada had fallen at last.

The joyful procession had not yet reached the city when it was met by poor Boabdil with some fifty Moorish cavaliers. As he drew near, he would have dismounted to do homage to Ferdinand; but the king stopped him doing this, and embraced him with every mark of sympathy and regard. Boabdil then gave up the keys of the Alhambra to his conqueror.

"Those keys," he said miserably, "are the last relics of the Moorish empire in Spain. Thine, O king, are our trophies, our kingdom, and our person. Such is the will of God!"

Having thus surrendered his last symbol of power, Boabdil journeyed on that he might not behold the entrance of the Christians into his capital. His devoted band of cavaliers followed in gloomy silence, but heavy sighs burst from them as shouts of joy fell on their ears from the victorious Christian army.

Having joined his family, Boabdil set forward with a heavy heart, until they reached the hill which commanded the last view of Granada. Here the little band of heart-broken Moors involuntarily paused to take a last farewell of their beloved city, which a few steps more would shut from their sight for ever.

Never had it looked so lovely in their eyes! The sunshine lighted up every tower and minaret, and rested gloriously on the crowning battlements of the great Alhambra.

The Moorish cavaliers gazed with a silent agony of tenderness and grief upon that fair scene, till a light cloud of smoke burst forth from the citadel, and a peal of artillery, faintly heard, told that the city was in possession of the Christians. The throne of the Moorish kings was gone for ever.

The heart of Boabdil, softened by trouble and over-charged with grief, could bear it no longer.

"Allah achbad!" (God is great!) he groaned; and, as the words died on his lips, he burst into a flood of tears.

His mother, the old sultana, was indignant at his weakness.

"You do well," she said, "to weep like a woman for what you failed to defend like a man!"

Others tried to console him, but the unhappy monarch was beyond comfort. His tears continued to flow.

"Allah achbad!" he sobbed; "when did misfortunes ever equal mine?"

The ridge commanding the last view of Granada is known among the Spaniards to this day as "The last Sigh of the Moor."

How the Good Knight Kept the Bridge

France—1501

"The Good Knight, without fear and without reproach." This was the name by which the Chevalier Bayard was always known, the name he had earned for himself not only by a series of exploits and adventures, but by his gentleness, his courteous behaviour to rich and poor alike, his generosity and goodness when times were very evil.

As quite a little boy he began to earn this name for himself. He lived with his father and mother and three brothers in an old castle in France.

One day the old lord of Bayard, his father, feeling that he had not much longer to live, called his four sons to him. He had been renowned for his great height and strength, but he had been badly wounded some years before, and he wanted to settle his sons in life before he died.

In the presence of his wife and other relations, the old lord asked the lads one by one what they wished to do in life.

"My wish," said the eldest, "is never to leave the family house, but to wait upon my lord of Bayard to the end of his days."

"Very well, George," answered the old man. "Since thou lovest the old house, thou shalt remain."

He then turned to the second boy, Pierre, afterwards the Good Knight. He was a bright, laughing boy of thirteen.

"My lord and father," he replied smiling, "although filial love maketh it a bounden duty in me to forego all things for the sake of serving you to the end of your life, yet so deeply graven in my heart are all your good dis¬courses of the noble men of days past, especially those of our house, that I will be, if it pleases you, of the same profession as yourself and your predecessors, that of arms; and I hope, by the grace of God, to do you no dishonour."

Tears rolled down the old man's cheeks as he answered,—

"My child, may God's grace be with thee! Already thou dost resemble in face and figure thy grandfather, who was in his time one of the most accomplished knights in Christendom. I will do my best to further thy wishes."

The other boys expressed their desires and retired.

Then the old lord of Bayard sent for his brother-in-law, the Bishop of Grenoble, who lived some sixteen miles away, to beg him to come. The good bishop, "never in all his life weary of obliging any one," set out at once and arrived at the Castle Bayard. He found the old lord seated in an armchair by the fire.

"My son Pierre tells me he would be a soldier," began the old man, "and this gives me special pleasure, for he resembles altogether in appearance my lord, my late father; and if he will resemble him as well in conduct and character, he cannot but be a great man. But I must, as a first step, place him in the family of some prince or lord that he may learn to conduct himself honourably, and when he is a little taller acquire the science of arms. I pray you, therefore, to advise me where I may best place him."

Then said one of the party, "Send him to the King of France."

"No, to the family of Bourbon," suggested another. But last of all the bishop spoke.

"Send him to the Duke Charles of Savoy," he said firmly. "He is our fast friend, and will, I think, gladly take him as one of his pages. He is hard by, and if it seem good to you and the company I will take him to the duke to-morrow morning, after having put him in complete trim and supplied him with a good little charger which I got a few days since."

The old lord of Bayard took the bishop's advice, and delivering up the boy to his uncle, he said,—

"Take him, my lord; and I pray God that he may do you honour in his life."

The bishop at once sent to the town to order his tailor to come and bring velvet, satin, and other materials to make a suitable outfit for the boy Pierre. The tailor came and worked all night long, so that by next morn¬ing everything should be ready. And everything was ready.

So the next morning, after breakfast, the boy mounted his new charger and presented himself to those who were in the courtyard, dressed as if he were just going to be presented to the Duke of Savoy.

But the horse, feeling such a light weight on his back, and, moreover, being pricked by the child, proud of his new spurs, made three or four plunges. The people looking on in the courtyard feared that the boy should be thrown. But instead of his calling for help as they expected, he bravely spurred his horse again and again, galloped round the courtyard, and brought the charger to a standstill, as if he had been a grown-up man.

The old lord of Bayard was watching his boy. Smiling with joy, he said,—

"But were you not afraid, my son, seeing you have left school but a fortnight?"

"My lord, I hope, with God's help, before six years are over, to spur him in a more dangerous place," answered the boy fearlessly. "For here I am among friends, and I may then be among the enemies of the master whom I shall serve."

"Come, come," said the good bishop, who was impatient to set out; "my friend nephew, do not dismount, but take leave of all the company."

The boy turned to his father with a smile, as he said,—

"My lord and father, I pray God to grant you a happy and a long life, and to give me such grace that before He takes you out of this world you may hear good things of rue."

"God grant it, boy I" said the old man.

Meanwhile his mother was weeping alone in a tower of the old castle. She was glad he should go with good prospects before him, but parting with him was causing "her tender heart great pain."

At last they came to tell her that the boy was on horseback and ready to depart with his uncle. So the gentle lady of Bayard went down to say good-bye.

"Pierre, my boy," she said before he went, "you are just going into the service of a noble prince. I want you to observe three things which will enable you to pass through life with honour. The first is, that before all things you love, fear, and serve God; for without Him and His grace we can do no good thing in this world. Every morning and every evening commit yourself to Him, and He will aid you. The second is, that you be gentle and courteous to all, putting away all pride. Be humble and obliging to everybody. Be sober and temperate. Avoid envy; it is a mean vice. Be true and loyal in word and deed. Keep your promises. Help poor widows and orphans, and God will reward you. The third is, that of the goods which God shall give you, you be charitable to the poor and needy. This is all I have to charge you with. Your father and I shall not live much longer; God grant that while we live, we may always have a good report of you!"

Then, young as he was, the boy answered,—

"My lady mother, I thank you most humbly for your good counsel, and hope so well to follow it that you shall be content. And so humbly commending myself to your good favour, I take my leave."

Then his mother drew out of her sleeve a little purse, in which were six crowns in gold and one in silver. These she gave to her son. Then calling one of the bishop's servants, she gave into his keeping a small valise, in which was some linen for her son, begging him to look after the boy a little until he was older.

So the happy boy rode away to his uncle, and the same evening they arrived at Chambery, where the Duke of Savoy resided.

Here young Bayard lived as page for six months, during which time he made himself beloved by great and small. There was neither page nor lord who could compare with him. He could leap and wrestle and ride better than any other boy of his age, and the duke loved him as a son.

Such was the boyhood of the Good Knight.

How he shared his money with his poorer friends, how he was ever ready to help those in trouble, of his courage, his chivalry, his charity, it would take too long to tell. Was he in possession of a crown? all shared it. So that at his death he was no richer than at his birth.

Now Bayard was but five-and-twenty when the French and Spanish were at war over the kingdom of Naples. The two armies had been encamped for some time on opposite sides of the river Garigliano, north of Naples, and Bayard, always to the front, was quartered near the little narrow bridge over the river with one friend, Le Basco by name.

Now the Spanish captain, one Pedro de Pas, a little hump-backed man whose head barely showed above his saddle when on horseback, took it into his head to give an alarm to the French by making for this little bridge.

So all of a sudden, one day Bayard saw some two hun¬dred Spanish horsemen, all well armed and equipped, riding toward the bridge under their little, hump-backed leader. Now the bridge was so narrow, that only two men-at-arms could pass side by side at a time; the river Garigliano ran strong and deep below.

If the Spaniards could pass over that little bridge, the French army could be practically destroyed. Bayard, the Good Knight, saw the danger of the position.

On rode the two hundred Spaniards—on towards the little bridge.

The Good Knight was alone with Le Basco. It was but the work of a few minutes to arm and mount their horses.

"My friend," said Bayard hurriedly, "I pray you, run as fast as you can to our people, and bring them to guard this bridge against the passage of this great sea of armed men that are coming toward us. While waiting for you, I will do my best to keep the enemy at bay and guard the bridge. But, I pray you, make haste."

Away went Le Basco as fast as he could, and the Good Knight, without fear indeed, took his lance in his hand and rode on to the little bridge.

On came the Spaniards, confident of victory. Were they not two hundred to one?

They were already near the bridge.

Then Bayard, like a furious lion, put his lance in rest and charged the Spanish troop. He was in deadly earnest, and soon overthrew the first four Spaniards; two fell over into the river, for the parapet was low, and the stream being strong and deep they were drowned. The Spaniards were amazed at such strength and courage. On they came again. But the Good Knight backed his horse against the barrier of the bridge that they might not get in his rear, and, like a "chafed tiger," defended himself so well that the Spaniards could make no way. He hurled them into the river one after another, and, the banks of the river being high and the water muddy, neither man nor horse could scramble out again. Seeing themselves thus shamed by a Frenchman, the Spaniards charged with their pikes, lances, and other weapons. But to no effect; the knight repulsed them all. For a whole hour he stuck to his post—one man against two hundred!

Then to his relief he heard Le Basco with a hundred men-at-arms coming to his help.

"Follow me, my friends!" he cried aloud.

The French obeyed, and the whole body, with Bayard at their head, forced back the Spaniards and pursued them for nearly a mile, till they saw some seven or eight hundred horsemen coming to the enemy's support.

"Stop! stop, my friends!" cried Bayard, "for I see a large body of horsemen coming to help our enemies. Gentlemen, we have done enough to-day in having saved the bridge. Let us retreat in as compact a body as pos¬sible."

So they retreated at a good pace, the Good Knight bringing up the rear and receiving every charge of the enemy himself.

At last he found himself very hard pressed; his poor horse was failing him through very weariness, for he had fought on him all day. At this moment the Spaniards made a fresh charge on him. The Good Knight's horse was driven backward into a ditch. It was too tired to struggle out. He was surrounded, and cries of "Yield, signor, yield!" fell on his ear. He still fought on, but the Spaniards overpowered him.

"Sir," cried the Good Knight at last, addressing one of those nearest to him, "there is not much honour in fifty fighting against one, but if there be any one of you who will fight me, I am ready."

"Frenchman," cried the Spaniard, "how can you speak like that? Do you think to escape us now?"

"No, indeed; I am too tired just now to defend myself against so many," said Bayard.

"Tell me, are you of gentle birth?" asked the Spaniard. "Indeed I am," answered Bayard.

"Tell me your name," said the Spaniard, "and I will save your life."

Now Bayard knew if he told them his real name, they would probably kill him at once.

"My name is Champion," answered the knight, not untruthfully.

"Let us guard him well," said the Spaniard to his companions. "We have gained one prisoner; let him not escape us."

Meanwhile the French were riding toward the bridge, believing the Good Knight to be yet with them, when suddenly the report spread through their ranks that he was missing.

"Oh, gentlemen," cried one, an old friend and neighbour of Bayard, "we have lost all! The good Captain Bayard is dead or a prisoner, for he is not with us. And to-day he has led us so well, and brought us so much honour. Even if I go alone, I will go back. I may be slain or taken prisoner, but I must have some news of him."

Every man in the little French troop was filled with sorrow when they found the Good Knight was indeed gone.

"We must win him back," they said.

Then each man dismounted, looked to and tightened his girths, then remounted, and with renewed courage turned round and set off full gallop for the Spaniards; for would they not do anything to save their good knight, the man who had just saved the French army by his bravery and strength? It was only owing to his tired horse that he had been taken at all. They must and they would win him back again.

The Spaniards were leading off their prisoner without having the least idea that it was the great knight Bayard, or they would assuredly have disarmed him, for his fame had spread far and wide.

Suddenly the little French troop was seen galloping towards them.

"See, the French are coming on fiercely!" they cried. When Bayard heard this, his heart beat fast.

Meanwhile the French had arrived.

"France! France!" they cried. "Let this prisoner go, or it shall cost you dear. You shall not carry off the flower of knighthood thus."

The Spaniards were astounded at the cry. Had they really taken the great Bayard prisoner and left him his arms? They would have taken his life surely had they known, for he was their most formidable enemy.

The French charged again, and one by one the Span¬iards fell. Suddenly Bayard saw his chance. He needed but a fresh horse to ensure his escape. He saw a Spanish gentleman fall from his charger. Without putting his foot into the stirrup the Good Knight bounded on to the horse.

"France! France!" he cried, performing wonderful feats of arms as he sat on the Spanish charger.

"'Tis Bayard, Bayard you have let escape. You have had in your very hands the man you have long wished for. Spaniards, you have lost your character for shrewdness to-day!"

When the Spaniards realized what they had done, how they had let slip their prisoner Bayard, they were nearly out of their minds with wrath.

"Let us away to our camp," they said. "We shall do no more to-day. It is an evil hour in which we have lost this man, for none ever did so much harm to Spain as this Bayard. If France had many such, no nation could resist France."

"And yet," said others, "God always guards good people and their honour. It would have been a pity if he had been kept prisoner, because he is known to be a knight ` without reproach,' and well has he shown it this day."

THE DEATH OF BAYARD

Even his enemies spoke well of him, though they were mightily disgusted at having let him go. So the Span¬iards turned and fled, and the French, both men and horses, were too tired and hungry to think of following them. Besides, had they not saved their Good Knight, and got him back in their midst once more?

Overjoyed, the French returned merrily enough to their quarters, where, the story says, they talked of nothing else for a whole week but their brilliant adventure, and the feats of the Good Knight, without fear and without reproach.

After a life of unblemished renown, Bayard was killed in an engagement with the Spaniards. In a retreat, be¬ing placed in the post of honour, he was struck by a ball from an arquebuse. His squire laid him under a tree, and Bayard was praying, when the Constable de Bour¬bon, who had gone over to the enemy, approached and expressed his grief. "Pity is not for me, my lord," replied Bayard, "for I die like a man of honour; but I pity you, who bear arms against your prince, your country, and your oath."

Montezuma

Mexico—1520

Montezuma! The very name calls up one of the most pathetic scenes in history. From out the past rises the majestic figure of a heathen king in the prime of his life, standing aloft, for the last time, on the central turret of his palace. His mantle of blue and white flowed over his shoulders, his feet were shod with golden sandals, his dark brows covered with the Mexican tiara, while the jewels on his imperial robes glistened in the June sunshine. A deathlike silence reigned amid the masses of his subjects, standing below in slavish awe, broken only by the sound of the king's voice. Then a murmur of disapproval in the crowd, a cloud of stones and arrows directed at the central turret, and Montezuma fell.

Montezuma had been made king in 1502, elected in preference to his two brothers for his wisdom and ability. Naturally a grave and silent man, the few words he used to say in the council of the chiefs impressed every one, and when the throne of Mexico became vacant, all eyes turned to Montezuma as the right man to fill it. When Montezuma heard this, he hid himself in a temple, for he was a devout and religious man, thinking the responsi¬bility of governing the people too heavy a burden for him. At last they found him, and with proclamations of joy they took him to the council chamber, where the Mexicans received him as their chosen king. Sadly and gravely he accepted; indeed his very name signified sadness.

They attired him with royal ornaments, pierced his nostrils to hang a rich emerald, and seated him on his throne. Then speeches began.

"Rejoice, O happy land!" cried a neighbouring king, "to whom the Creator hath given a prince, as a firm pillar to support thee, who shall be thy father in distress, who will be more than a brother to his subjects. Thou hast a king not given up to amusements, one who will neither eat nor sleep till he has worked for your good. And thou, noble young man, and our most mighty lord, be confident and of a good courage, that seeing the Lord of things created hath given thee this charge, He will also give thee force and courage to manage it."

Montezuma listened attentively to every word, but he was so troubled that three times he tried to answer and could not speak for his tears. At last he recovered himself.

"I were too blind, good king," he said, "if I did not know that what thou hast spoken unto me was spoken out of mere kindness; and, in truth, I find myself so incapable of so great a charge that I know not what to do, but to beseech the Creator of all created things that He will favour me, and I entreat you all to pray unto Him for me."

Having uttered these words the new king began to weep.

Montezuma's first efforts were crowned with success; he led an expedition in person against a rebel province, and brought back in triumph a throng of captives.

He had a great idea of his regal dignity. He never set foot on the ground in public, but was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen; whenever he alighted, they laid down rich tapestry for him to tread on. No man, under rank of a knight, might look in his face; if he did, he was at once put to death. So Montezuma "laboured to be respected and worshipped as a god." His magnifi¬cence must have made a great impression on the public mind.

He never put on the same garment twice, he never ate or drank out of the same dish more than once, his servants were numberless. He was very careful to have his laws well observed, and punished with death those who broke them. He was very fond of patrolling the streets of Mexico disguised from head to foot, in order to see for himself any abuses. He built temples, brought water into his capital by a new channel, established a hospital for sick soldiers, and generally improved the city.

So Montezuma reigned over his kingdom for many years in great prosperity, which so "put up his conceit," says the old story, "that the Almighty Lord began to chastise him, suffering even the very devils whom he worshipped to tell him heavy tidings of the ruin of his kingdom, and to torment him by visions," which made him yet more sad and melancholy than usual.

Now the Mexicans had a curious, old tradition that the god of the air, whom they worshipped next to the "Supreme Creator," should one day return and rule the kingdom. This god with his white skin, dark hair, and flowing beard had sailed away in a wizard ship, made of serpents' skins, to an unknown shore; but the people never forgot his promise to return. It was about this time that many strange things happened, and the Mexicans remembered the words of their god.

In 1510, the great lake near suddenly began to swell without any sign of wind or earthquake, and the waves broke with such fury that all the buildings near fell down to the ground. At the same time there was the sound of many voices, crying, "Oh, my children, the time of your destruction is come."

Then there was a comet seen in the daytime, with a long tail and three heads.

Again, a great flame of fire, in the shape of a pyramid, appeared in the sky at midnight, and went on mounting till the sun rose in the morning, when it vanished away.

And there was another story, yet more conclusive than these to the Indian mind.

A labourer at his work was taken up by a great eagle, and carried by him to a cave where a figure lay appa¬rently asleep with royal ensigns and flowers in his hand.

"It is King Montezuma," cried the labourer.

"Thou sayest true," said a voice. "Behold he lies asleep, careless of the great miseries prepared for him. It is time that he pay the great number of offences he hath done to God, and that he receive punishment for his tyrannies and great pride."

All these omens troubled Montezuma more and more, and he became excessively heavy and sad.

It was the fourteenth year of Montezuma's reign, when there appeared off the coast ships that roused the curi¬osity of the natives. Taking with them meats and stuffs they sailed out in their canoes to these ships, which they discovered to be Spanish. The Spaniards received them well, gave them chains of false stones—red, blue, green, and yellow—which the Indians thought were very precious, asked the name of their king, and promised to come and visit him the following year. The Indians returned to the king with pictures on cloth of all they had seen—pictures of the ships, the Spaniards, and some precious stones.

Montezuma was very sad when he saw the pictures, and ordered that this visit of the Spaniards should be kept a secret, though he took the precaution of setting watches along all the sea-coast.

The following year the Spanish fleet appeared again, this time with the great Spanish explorer Cortes on board. The news troubled Montezuma; he called his council to¬gether, and they all agreed that it could be none other than the god of the air, the old Lord Queztzalcoalt, come back again to his kingdom.

So Montezuma sent ambassadors with rich presents to congratulate the god on his return, and to deliver dutiful messages from the "servant Montezuma" to the great god. The Spaniards had on board a Mexican slave woman, Marina, who interpreted Montezuma's messages to Cortes. Cortes was gratified with his magnificent presents and messages, and desired to see the owner of all this wealth.

To impress the Mexican officers with his power, he had his artillery discharged from the ships. This troubled the natives terribly, for they were "unaccustomed to hear such music."

This was not their Lord Queztzalcoalt, but his repre¬sentative.

The splendid treasure displayed before the Spaniards made them determined to visit the capital, and it increased their desire to possess a country which contained such boundless stores of wealth. Sending back to the king a few holland shirts, a goblet, and some toys of little value, Cortes sent also an urgent message that he could not return to Spain without having accomplished the object of his voyage—namely, to see the great king Montezuma, and to enter his capital. A week later the ambassadors returned, this time with a glorious sum of gold, but with a firm message that Montezuma refused to see them, and forbade them to enter his capital; he hoped they would return at once to Spain.

Cortes received the answer coldly.

"This is a rich and powerful prince indeed," he cried to his officers, "but it shall go hard if we will not one day pay him a visit in his capital!"

On August 16, 1519, Cortes started for his march to Mexico, just to see "what sort of a being the great Montezuma was, of whom they had heard so much,"—this tyrannical king, before whom every subject trembled, who declined to be looked on by the Spaniards. From time to time messengers reached him from Montezuma urging him to return to his own country; but to all these Cortes firmly replied, "It is my duty to the King of Spain," and passed on.

As a last hope Montezuma sent out wizards and sorcerers to waylay Cortes; but when they returned to him, having failed, he only broke into weeping and lamentations, bemoaning the fate of his country, and ending with words of calm despair: "We are born; let that come which must come."

With the first faint streak of dawn on the eighth of November, Montezuma's beautiful city of Mexico was reached by Cortes and his Spanish army. With beating hearts they gathered under their respective banners, their trumpets sounding, their eyes straining over the gorgeous sight that met their view. The sacred flames on the altars, dimly seen through the grey mists of the morning, showed the site of temples and towers. The palace was soon revealed in the glorious morning sunshine as it rose and poured over the wondrous valley.

Mexico was one of the most beautiful cities of the world. Situated on a great salt lake, but slightly divided from a large fresh-water lake, the city seemed to sit upon the waters with her diadems of gleaming towers, her expanse of flowery meadows, her circle of mountains, all reflected in the innumerable mirrors framed by her courts, her palaces, her temples.

No wonder the Spaniards looked with envy on the fair city, no wonder they coveted the boundless wealth of this uncivilized country. On they went, those seven thousand Spaniards, on to within half a league of the capital, where at a solid wall of stone twelve feet high they were stopped by some hundred Mexican chiefs, who an¬nounced that the great Montezuma had come out to meet them. Amid a crowd of nobles, preceded by three officers of state bearing golden wands, the Spaniards saw the royal palanquin, blazing with gold. It was borne on the shoulders of barefooted nobles, who walked slowly, with eyes bent down on the ground. Over it was a canopy of gaudy feather-work, powdered with jewels and fringed with silver. Suddenly it stopped, the great king alighted, the ground was spread with tapestry that the imperial feet should not be soiled, and with the canopy carried over his head the monarch advanced in all his regal majesty. His subjects lined the way, bending forward with their eyes fixed on the ground as he passed. He was dressed in an ample, square cloak sprinkled with pearls and precious stones, on his feet he wore sandals with soles of gold, on his head plumes of the royal colour green.

Cortes descended from his horse, and showed profound respect to Montezuma. He threw round his neck a collar made of false pearls and diamonds, while Montezuma returned this somewhat poor present by presenting the Spanish general with two collars of shells adorned with golden pendants. Then with colours flying and music playing the Spaniards followed the great king into his capital. Cortes himself was to lodge in the royal palace. "This palace belongs to you and your brethren," said the king. "Rest after your fatigues, and in a little while I will visit you again."

That evening the Spaniards celebrated their arrival in Mexico by a great discharge of guns. The thunder shook the buildings of the city and echoed away among the hills, the smoke rolled up in volumes, the hearts of the Indians were filled with dismay. They had those in their midst who could spread destruction through their fair city, who could call down thunderbolts to consume them.

The following day Cortes returned the visit to Monte¬zuma. Passing through courts where fountains of crystal water played by night and day, under ceilings hung with feather draperies glowing with colour, over mats of palm-leaf, through clouds of incense and intoxicating perfumes, the Spaniards were at last ushered into the royal pre¬sence.

Cortes soon entered on the subject which was uppermost in his thoughts—the conversion to Christianity of Montezuma and his people.

Eloquently he spoke to the heathen king, always inter¬preted by Marina, of the wrong he did in worshipping idols and strange gods; eloquently he begged him to accept the new religion he was sent from Spain to teach.

Patiently the sad king listened to the Spaniard's words. Then he answered, "My lord, if you believe that it is your business to say such bad things of my gods, I will not show them to you. To us they are good gods; they give us health and rain, fine weather and victories. We must sacrifice to them."

Nevertheless Montezuma himself conducted Cortes and his officers to the great temple, and showed him the sanc¬tuaries and shrines of his gods. There was the great image of the god of war, wielding a bow and golden arrows, and three fresh human hearts lay on the altar before him; there was the image of a milder deity, with five bleeding hearts on a golden platter on his altar, and the Spaniards turned away in disgust.

Cortes now saw clearly that neither conquest nor conversion could take place in Mexico as long as the great king Montezuma sat on the Mexican throne.

To take the king's person was the only course open.

Having gained an audience of the king, Cortes talked playfully for a time, receiving presents from. Montezuma and gaining favour. Suddenly he changed his tone, accused the king of having been the author of a skirmish between the Mexicans and the Spaniards, when a great many of the latter were killed, and begged him to come quickly into their palace to assure all of his innocence.

As the full meaning of Cortes' words dawned on Monte¬zuma he became pale as death, then his face flushed as he cried angrily, "When was it ever heard that a great prince like myself voluntarily left his own palace to become a prisoner in the hands of strangers?"

The great king sat stupefied. The request was audacious. Here was a man into whose face other men did not ven¬ture to look, before whom crowds bent low and nobles bowed, worshipped as a god, feared as a king.

"And if I should consent to such a degradation," he continued firmly, "my subjects never would."

It seemed in vain to urge, in vain to plead, in vain to waste two long hours in argument. The king was firm. But Cortes was firmer.

"Why do we waste time on this barbarian?" cried one impatient Spaniard. "Let us seize him, and, if he resists, plunge our swords into his body."

The fierce tone of the Spaniard alarmed Montezuma. If death were the alternative, then he must go. He looked round for sympathy or support, his eye wandered over the stern faces and iron forms of the Spaniards; he felt his hour was come; his courage sank, and he feebly consented to go. His litter was called for. And so in sorry manner, borne on by his weeping nobles, and in deep silence, Montezuma left his palace, never to return. Though housed in comfort and allowed his servants, and a certain amount of pomp and luxury, he was virtually a prisoner. The fact was proclaimed to his subjects by the appearance of some sixty men patrolling outside the palace day and night. Soon the king's humiliation was complete by fetters being fastened to his feet.

He was speechless under this new insult. He was as one struck down by a heavy blow—he offered no resist¬ance, he spoke no word, but from time to time low moans expressed his anguish.

His servants, bathed in tears, offered him what poor comfort they could; they tenderly held his feet in their hands, and tried to insert shawls and mantles to save him from the pressure of the iron. But the fact re¬mained—he was a king no longer. Yet he was so firmly convinced that Cortes was but an ambassador from the great god Queztzalcoalt, whose will it was he should undergo this torment, that he consented to each new demand of the Spaniards without opposition.

At last came the demand that the king and his lords should swear allegiance to Spain and consent to pay tribute.

Montezuma obediently assembled his lords and nobles, and addressed them with great emotion.

They must all remember, he said, the old tradition of the great being who once ruled the land, who had sailed away to an unknown land with a promise that he would return. That time had come. The white men had come from the quarter beyond the ocean where the sun rose to which their god had gone. For his part, he was ready to acknowledge the authority of the ancient god.

"You have been faithful subjects," he continued; "I now ask that you will show me this last act of obedience, by acknowledging the great king beyond the waters, and that you will pay him tribute as you have done to me."

As he concluded, his voice broke and tears fell down his cheeks. At the sight of his distress, his lords were deeply moved. His will had always been their law, they said. It should be so still, they asserted amid their sobs. Their humiliation seemed complete, and as they took the oath of allegiance in presence of the Spaniards, they felt that they, the greatest people upon earth," had sold themselves to a small body of unknown men, and broke into loud lamentations.

Even among the triumphant Spaniards there was not a dry eye that day.

The tribute consisted of three great heaps of gold. "Take it," sobbed Montezuma, "and let it be recorded in your annals that the king sent this present to your master."

Not satisfied with this, Cortes went a step further. The temple must be given up for Christian worship.

"Why, why will you urge matters to an extremity?" cried Montezuma, who through all his troubles turned to his gods and his oracles. "Why will you bring down the vengeance of our gods and stir up rebellion among my people, who will never consent to this profanation of their temple?"

But this too had to be conceded.

Nevertheless, as time went on, it became evident to Cortes that he had pushed things too far. The people had borne with patience all the injuries and affronts put on them by the Spaniards; they had seen their mighty king dragged from his palace, fettered, deposed; humiliated; they had seen their temple profaned by Christian worship. They could not bear much more. Signs of discontent began to show themselves among the Mexicans, and the Spaniards grew uneasy.

"Go!" said Montezuma; "if you have any regard for yourselves, go without delay. You have enraged my gods and trampled on my priests. I have but to raise my finger and every Mexican will rise against you."

These words were spoken in May. It was the middle of June when they came true.

The Mexicans had a festival in honour of their great war-god. Montezuma was forbidden to take part in it, but some six hundred of his people, dressed in their gaudy gala costumes, with mantles of feather-work and collars of gold, were dancing their sacred dance, when a party of Spaniards rushed on them with drawn swords, and without pity or mercy slew them to a man. Not one was left alive.

The news spread like wildfire. Every feeling of long-smothered hostility, all the pent-up hatred of the Spaniards, burst forth in one great cry for revenge. The city rose in arms to a man. Before the Spaniards could secure themselves in their defences, they were assaulted with desperate fury by the Mexicans. With a hideous yell, or rather the shrill whistle used in war by these nations, they rained a very tempest of stones, darts, and arrows into the palace. A discharge of guns from the Spaniards mowed them down by hundreds, and for a moment they stood aghast at the slaughter, but only for a moment. Over the dead bodies of their comrades they struggled, with piercing cries of fury and revenge, only to be killed and driven back by the Spaniards' volleys. In their despair they at last set the palace on fire, but the building was of material that defied fire.

With fury on both sides the fight grew frantic; it was the battle of barbarian against civilized, of heathen against Christian, of rude weapons against scientific warfare. Night only brought rest. With dawn the contest was renewed, till late in the day the Spanish commander drew off his men and sounded a retreat.

Meanwhile, what was Montezuma doing?

From his quarters he had witnessed the tragic scenes in his capital; distressed, angry, hopeless, he could only moan, "I desire only to die."

His desire was soon enough to be fulfilled.

At the request of the Spaniards, he at last consented to expostulate with his subjects.

Mounting one of the battlements of his palace, the king appeared for the last time among his people. To make his presence more emphatic, he put on his imperial robes; his mantle of blue and white flowed over his shoulders, held together by his rich green clasp, emeralds of uncommon size set in gold shone on his dress. His feet were shod with golden sandals, his head surmounted by the Mexican diadem. Surrounded by a guard of Spaniards and by a few of his own nobles, preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of his kingly position, the Mexican monarch ascended the central turret of his palace.

MONTEZUMA'S APPEAL

His presence was instantly recognized, and as the royal retinue advanced along the battlements, a change, as if by magic, came over the scene.

The clang of instruments, the fierce cries were hushed, and a deathlike silence reigned over the whole crowd. Many prostrated themselves on the ground, others bent the knee; all eyes turned towards the king whom they had been taught to reverence with slavish awe, from whose face they had been taught to turn away as too divine to look upon.

Once more Montezuma felt himself a king, as with his old authority he spoke to them for the last time.

"Why do I see my people here in arms against the palace of my fathers? Is it that you think your king is a prisoner, and wish to release him? If so, you have acted rightly. But you are mistaken. I am no prisoner. The strangers are my guests. I remain with them only from choice, and can leave them when I like. Return to your homes, then. Lay down your arms. Show your obedience to me, who have a right to it. The white men shall go back to their land, and all shall be well again."

Then Montezuma was the friend of the hated Spaniards after all! A murmur of contempt ran through the crowd. Did he not care for the insults and injuries their great nation had received? It was intolerable. The blood of the Mexicans was up, passion and revenge urged them on.

"Base! base woman! coward!" Such words were flung at the unhappy monarch. They were followed by a cloud of stones and arrows, and Montezuma fell senseless to the ground.

He was borne below by his faithful nobles; but he had nothing more to live for. He had tasted the last drop in his cup of bitterness—his own people had turned against him.

In vain did Cortes try to soothe the anguish of his spirit; in vain did his attendants try to nurse him back to life; he tore the bandages from his bead, he refused comfort. He sat in gloomy silence brooding over his fallen fortunes.

And on June 30, 1520, he died.

The Eve of St. Bartholomew

France—1572

About four hundred years ago there was a small kingdom, spread over the cliffs and ravines of the western Pyrenees, called Navarre. Its half-million of inhabitants caught fish in the coves of the Bay of Biscay, or trimmed vines upon the sunny slopes of the moun¬tains—an independent, frugal, happy people. In this little kingdom one day in midwinter, 1553, Henry the Fourth, destined to be not only King of Navarre but of all France, was born.

The old King of Navarre, his grandfather, was still alive. He at once assumed entire control of the boy. As soon as the child was born the old man rubbed his lips with a clove of garlic, and made him suck wine out of a golden cup, to make him strong and vigorous. By his command the young prince was brought up in an old castle in the Pyrenees. It was craggy and gloomy, dark firs grew up the hillsides, eagles screamed overhead, a foaming torrent swept by the walls. In this storm-battered castle the future king of France was nurtured as a peasant boy. Bareheaded and barefooted he ran about the mountains, with the mountain lads he climbed cliffs and waded torrents; he lived on brown bread, beef, cheese, and garlic; his face was bronzed by sun and wind.

When he was yet young his grandfather died, leaving his mother Queen of Navarre. Henry was recalled from his mountain home to the palace at Navarre, where his father and mother lived, there to learn the courtly graces which distinguished him through life.

When eight years old Henry was taken to Paris to attend with his parents the wedding of Mary Stuart with Francis, son of the King of France. The boy's vigorous beauty attracted the attention of the king.

"Will you be my son?" he asked, drawing the boy toward him.

"No, sire," cried the boy in his mountain patois. "That is my father," he added, pointing to the King of Navarre.

"Well, then, will you be my son-in-law?" continued the King of France.

"Oh, with all my heart!" answered the sturdy little fellow, and from that time a marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret, the little French princess, only four years old at the time, was agreed upon.

It was this marriage that, years afterwards, brought matters to a crisis in France, and was the immediate cause of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The annals of the world are filled with stories of crime, but this terrible massacre of the Huguenots is, perhaps, without a parallel, the greatest crime recorded in history. The victims were invited to Paris under the guise of friendship and goodwill, received with solemn oaths of peace and protection, to rejoice at the union of Henry and Margaret, only to be murdered in cold blood before those wedding festivities were over.

Now at the close of the sixteenth century all Europe was agitated by the great controversy raging between Protestants and Catholics.

In France the Protestants, locally known as the Hugue¬nots, though not very numerous, were powerful in rank, and were headed by some of the noblest families in France, including the Prince of Conde, Admiral de Coligny, and the House of Navarre.

In 1560, Francis, King of France, died, and his brother Charles, a delicate boy of twelve years old, succeeded to the throne. The government was conducted by his mother, Catherine de Medici, and she, to serve her own ends, determined to crush the Protestants in France and get rid of them altogether.

Now the Queen of Navarre was a Protestant, but the king was a Catholic. As the strife between the parties grew warmer, they agreed to separate, and the king took Henry to Paris with a Protestant tutor. The queen took leave of her son in tears, begging him never to abandon his faith.

Henry's temptations at the French court were very great. Catherine de Medici disliked the boy's energetic spirit and his devotion to the Protestant faith, and put every temptation in his path.

When the King of Navarre was killed soon after this, and the boy was left alone at the French court, the Queen of Navarre grew anxious, and urged Catherine to allow her son to return to Navarre. But Catherine refused. Henry was to marry her daughter Margaret one day, and he must abandon his Protestant religion and become a Catholic. At last the Queen of Navarre travelled to Paris in order to persuade Catherine to let the boy return with her to Navarre.

Catherine received her with lavish affection, but she took care that the queen should be carefully guarded and virtually kept her a prisoner at the court.

When the Queen of Navarre found out Catherine's intentions she planned her escape. One day there was a hunting-party, at the close of which the queen and her people separated themselves from the rest of the company. The horses were all tired, but fresh horses had been pro¬vided at an appointed place. The queen and her son quickly mounted the fresh horses, and, turning their faces south, they rested neither day nor night until the clatter of their horses' hoofs resounded among the mountains of Navarre.

The whole of Europe had taken up the controversy between Protestants and Catholics. The fleet of England crossed the Channel, the Pope summoned his legions to the field, and squadrons poured through the defiles of the Alps on to the plains of France. Catholic Spain shouted the war-cry, and the blast of bugle and tramp of men sounded amid the fastnesses of the Pyrenees. Protestant Germany sprang to arms, and all met on the battlefield of Jarnac.

Henry of Navarre was there heading the Huguenots, with the Prince of Conde. In his first battle he was destined to defeat. Conde was killed, and the Huguenots were defeated.

After the battle the Huguenots hailed the young Prince Henry as their commander-in-chief.

Meanwhile the marriage between Henry and Margaret, sister of King Charles the Ninth of France, was being urged on by both Protestants and Catholics. The Queen of Navarre was very reluctant to hasten on a match she strongly objected to. But Coligny saw advantages in it. "It will be a seal of friendship with the king," he wrote confidently to Navarre.

The young King of France, too, was anxious, "I have made up my mind to give my sister Margaret to my good brother Henry," he said, "for by this means I hope to marry the two religions.

Still the Queen of Navarre doubted the sincerity of the French court.

"I pray you gratify the extreme desire we have to see you among us," wrote Catherine to the reluctant queen. "You will be loved and honoured as you deserve to be."

At last the Queen of Navarre gave way. In February 1572, she started for Blois, and travelling slowly reached that city early in March. She was received by Catherine de Medici and the king with every mark of affection. The king called her his "dear good aunt, his best beloved, his darling," till the gossiping historian at the French court says "every one was astonished."

In the evening, when the queen had retired for the night, Charles turned to his mother laughing.

"Now, mother, confess that I play my little part well." "Yes," she answered anxiously, "you play it well enough, but you must keep it up."

"Trust me for that," said the king; "you shall see how I will lead them on."

Early in May the Queen of Navarre moved on to Paris, where preparations for the wedding were being urged on. The move proved fatal to her. In less than a month she sickened and died. So ostentatious were the lamentations of Catherine, so frantic the apparent grief of Charles the king, that it was suggested the queen had been poisoned. Be that as it may, the wedding preparations went on, though the death of the queen increased the distrust with which many of the Huguenots looked on these favours so lavishly bestowed on their party.

Admiral Coligny was an exception. From every quarter he received warnings and cautions, but he trusted the young king's word, his promise of protection; he believed that Charles was really anxious to bring about a union of Protestants and Catholics; and he refused to listen to the murmurs of treachery in the court.

It was the eighth of July when Henry, now King of Navarre, entered Paris attended by the young Prince of Conde, Admiral Coligny, and some eight hundred of the most distinguished men in France. The Protestants were all dressed in mourning garments; they formed a strik¬ing contrast to the gaily-dressed Catholic gentlemen who went out to meet them.

At the gate of St. Jacques a magnificent train of nobles and officers attached to the court met the Protestant party, the corporation of the city attended in their scarlet robes, the Duke of Guise and the king's two brothers, all were there to welcome the bridegroom, the young King of Navarre.

In deadly silence the procession passed through the crowded streets of Paris to the Louvre. No voice was raised to greet the Huguenot princes, only murmurs of disapproval ran through the crowd from time to time, and muttered cries of "Guise "and "Anjou." The King of Navarre alone found favour, as he rode along between the two Catholic princes of France, his handsome face and winning smile attracting all alike.

The betrothal took place on the seventeenth of August at the Louvre, and the following day the wedding took place at Notre Dame.

It was a glorious summer day, this morning of the eighteenth of August. Cannons roared, bells rang out from every steeple, thousands of people crowded every roof and balcony whence a view of the procession might be obtained. Banners, pennants, ribbons waved in the air and hung festooned from window to window, from roof to roof.

A raised covered platform led from the bishop's palace, where the bride was staying, to the pavilion where the ceremony was to take place. A magnificent platform had been raised on the open space fronting the cathedral of Notre Dame, canopied with tapestry.

It was yet early in the day when Henry led forth his bride. He was dressed in pale yellow satin, embroidered with silver, and adorned with pearls and precious stones. To show his close affection, Charles, King of France, was dressed like him, for "my brother of Navarre loves me and I love him," the young king had said but shortly before.

Margaret, too, was gorgeously dressed: brilliants flamed among her hair, her dress was of cloth of gold, her stomacher was sprinkled with pearls to resemble a silvery coat of mail, the train of her large blue mantle was four ells long.

Along the raised platform walked the bishops and archbishops, leading the way in copes of cloth of gold. Then came the cardinals, resplendent in scarlet, knights of St. Michael with their orders, and the great officers of state; some one hundred and twenty ladies, brilliant in silks, brocades, and velvets, attended the Princess Mar¬garet. The whole procession was magnificent.

After the wedding ceremony had been performed in the pavilion, Henry led his bride into the church of Notre Dame to hear mass; then on to the bishop's palace, where a magnificent dinner had been prepared for them, only to be followed by a supper at the Louvre for the whole wedding-party.

The next three days were spent in festivities, balls and banquets, masques and tourneys, in which both Huguenots and Catholics took part. All seemed peace and good will, all old feuds and enmities forgotten and buried in the past.

In all the amusements Henry of Navarre distinguished himself; he had a kind word for everybody, was ready with jest and humour, and Charles seemed fonder of him than ever. Admiral Coligny, too, seemed high in favour at the French court; the more Charles saw of him, the more pleased he seemed with the loyalty and honesty of the old Huguenot warrior.

But things were reaching a crisis.

Catherine saw that the strong old Huguenot was gain¬ing influence with Charles, and determined to get rid of him as a dangerous rival.

It was the twenty-second of August.

Coligny had gone to the Louvre on business, and was on his way home when he met the young king Charles. With him he stopped to watch a tennis match till past ten o'clock, when he turned homewards. He was reading a petition that had just been placed in his hands, when suddenly he staggered back. A cry escaped him, "I am wounded!" It was true. He was hit with two bullets; one carried off the first finger of his right hand, the other wounded him in the left arm. "Go and tell the king," he said as they carried him to his hotel.

The news spread like wildfire. A messenger, all breathless, burst into the tennis court shouting, "The admiral is killed! the admiral is killed!"

Charles threw down his racket angrily.

"What!" he cried, "shall I never have a moment's quiet? Must I have fresh troubles every day?"

Vowing to avenge the admiral, the king withdrew. Something must be done at once to preserve the public peace, which at that moment was in greater danger from the enraged Huguenots than from the astonished Catholics.

The guards were mustered, posts were strengthened, the sentries at the gates were doubled, and no person was allowed to come armed into the streets.

The King of Navarre, accompanied by some seven hundred Huguenots, visited the old admiral, threatening vengeance on the murderer. No wonder the queen-mother Catherine was in a panic. If the admiral recovered, as seemed likely, her part in the plot could not be concealed; the blow had failed. There was danger all around; the Huguenots were angry and suspicious, mur¬muring crowds filled the streets, an outbreak seemed imminent. Steps must be taken, and at once. Coligny, the old Huguenot warrior, must die.

It was after dinner on the night of the twenty-third of August that Catherine led the king, with some three or four others, into the private garden of the Tuileries, there to unfold her plans. The time, she said, was ripe. Eight thousand Huguenots were in the city breathing vengeance, though, as yet, unarmed; the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde were in the Louvre and could not escape; the admiral was in bed unable to move; their enemies were caught, and in one hour the whole hated sect of Huguenots might be abolished. They ought no longer to resist the will of God, but give reins to the popular fury.

So said Catherine. Her own mind was made up, but to get Charles's sanction to the murder of Coligny was no easy matter.

All next day Paris was in a restless state. It seemed as if some great catastrophe were pending, suspicion was in the air, the wildest stories were afloat.

In vain did Catherine urge on Charles the immense importance of killing the Admiral Coligny. Bursting into one of his fits of passion, he swore that Coligny should not be touched.

"Woe to any one who injures a hair of his head!" he cried. "He is the only true friend I have, except my brother of Navarre."

Still Catherine did not flinch. Argument after argu¬ment did she use to convince her son of the danger of their present position.

"France will be again torn by civil war, and there is but this one way of escape," she urged.

The king sat moody and silent, biting his nails as usual He would not consent.

At last Catherine, in her despair, used her last argu¬ment.

"Perhaps, sire," she whispered in his ear, "perhaps you are afraid!"

As if struck by an arrow, Charles started from his chair. Storming like a madman, he bade her be quiet.

"Kill the admiral then if you like," he screamed, "but kill all the. Huguenots with him—all—all—all, so that not one be left to reproach me hereafter. See to it at once—at once! do you hear?"

So saying he dashed furiously out of the room. The conspirators were aghast at his violence. But there was no time to be lost. He had spoken the word, he might change his mind, the Huguenots might get wind of the plot. The murderous scheme must be carried out at once, that very night.

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

The Duke of Guise was summoned to the Louvre and given command of the undertaking. The different parts of the tragedy were quickly arranged.

"It is the will of our lord the king," said the duke, "that every good citizen should take up arms to purge the city of that rebel Coligny and his heretic followers. The signal will be given by the great bell of the Palace of Justice. Then let every true Catholic tie a white band on his arm, and put a white cross in his cap, and begin the vengeance of God."

So the preparations, aided by the darkness of a starless night, went forward. Soldiers assembled, guards were stationed to cut off flight, citizens were armed with sabres and muskets.

Shortly after midnight Catherine entered her son's chamber. She found him pacing the room in one of his fits of passion, swearing the Huguenots should not die.

"It is too late to retreat, even were it possible," declared Catherine.

It was the eve of St. Bartholomew. In feverish agony they waited for the appointed signal. Fearing lest Charles's resolution should utterly fail, Catherine ordered the alarm bell to be struck at once. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower, rousing all Paris from its slumbers. It was the knell of death roll¬ing over the unconscious city. The first stroke of the bell had not ceased to vibrate, when the uproar began. The sound of clanging bells, crashing doors, musket shots, and the rush of armed men was followed in another moment by the shrieks of the victims, and high over all the yells of the mob, "more pitiless than hungry wolves," till the stoutest hearts quailed and the strongest trembled.

The sound which roused Catherine to frenzy froze the very blood of the young king. Trembling in every limb, he shouted for the massacre to be stopped, for the admiral's life to be spared.

It was too late! Already beacon-fires and alarm-bells had sent the signal throughout France.

And Coligny? He was in bed when the uproar began. A loud knock at the outer gate roused him. "Open in the king's name" was the cry outside, and soon armed men were rushing up the stairs. Coligny, who by this time had risen, knew what it meant. He sent away a few faithful servants who wished to defend him.

"I have long prepared to die," murmured the old warrior. "No one can defend me now. I commend my soul to God."

"Are you the admiral?" shouted the ruffians, as they entered the room.

"I am," answered Coligny.

These were his last words. A sword was thrust through his body, and the old Huguenot was dead, his body being thrown into the street below.

DEATH OF ADMIRAL COLIGNY

Old men, young girls, helpless children were alike smitten down. The shouts of the assailants, the shrieks of the wounded as blow upon blow fell, the incessant report of muskets and pistols, the tramp of soldiers, created a scene of terror such as human eyes have rarely seen.

"Let not a single Protestant be spared to reproach me with this deed." These were the king's orders as the morning slowly dawned on this ghastly scene.

In vain did Charles order the massacre to be stopped at the end of one day. The blood of the Catholics was up, and the massacre continued for a week, till some eighty thousand Protestants were slain in France.

Nevertheless the massacre was in vain. True, the Huguenots lost their best leaders, with the exception of Henry of Navarre; they were stunned, scattered, weak¬ened, but by no means crushed.

Charles died some two years afterwards. After the fatal night of St. Bartholomew he suffered from extreme nervous agitation, and on his death-bed he endured agonies of remorse for what he had done. But the horrid deed was done, and must ever be remembered as one of the greatest blots in the history of Europe.

The Siege of Leyden

Netherlands—1574

"Better a drowned land than a lost land."

Leyden was one of the most beautiful cities in the Netherlands. In the very centre of the city was an old ruined tower, standing high above the surround¬ing country. From it could be seen the broad, fertile fields reclaimed from the sea, the little villages with their bright gardens and fruitful orchards, the numbers of little canals into which the river had been divided, and the hundred and forty-five bridges over those watery streets.

All through the hot, dry summer of 1574 little groups of half-starved men might have been seen going up to the top of this ruined tower. They did not go to look at the little canals and bridges, at the bright little gardens or smiling villages, but away, far away beyond all this! Their eyes were anxiously strained over the sea—the distant German Ocean that washed their broken coast—watching to see whether yet that ocean had begun to roll over their land. And why should the ocean roll over their land, that land they had with such long years of toil reclaimed from the sea?

"Better a drowned land than a lost land," would have been their despairing cry.

For their city, Leyden, was in a state of siege. Holland was fighting for her liberty, for freedom from Spanish oppression, under the leadership of William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

And now some eight thousand of the enemy had sur¬rounded their city, a force which would surely be increased as the days wore on; and there were but a small corps of "freebooters "and five companies of the burgher-guard inside. No troops, no food, no reinforcements!

"The fate of your country depends on you," wrote their leader. "You are not contending for yourselves alone; you have the nation in your hands. Eternal glory will be your portion if you display a courage worthy of your race, and of the sacred cause of religion and liberty."

If they could only hold out for three months, he would devise all the means in his power to help them from without. He little thought then to what extremities he would be brought, even to drowning the land.

The citizens knew they could depend on the untiring energy of their prince. He was young, he was brave, he was their hero, "he went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrow on his shoulders," he would not fail them now. But his task was a gigantic one.

Meanwhile the king, Philip the Third of Spain, to whom the Netherlands belonged, held out a tempting bait to the starving citizens. He offered all his erring subjects full forgiveness for all past offences if they would all yield and be his loyal subjects for the future.

For the moment the prince feared lest this pardon might have some effect on the wearied men inside the city of Leyden. For himself he had already made answer, "As long as there is a living man left in the country we will contend for our liberty and our religion."

He need not have feared for the men of Leyden. They, too, turned a deaf ear to the message of mercy; they received with contempt forgiveness at the price of defeat, pardon at the cost of their country. Though some of their countrymen who belonged to the king's party, and were called "Glippers," wrote letter after letter to their rebel friends inside Leyden, though they were implored to "take pity on their poor old fathers, their daughters, and their wives," they were firm.

"The best pity we can show," they said, "is to keep our old fathers and daughters and wives from the clutches of the Spanish soldiery!"

And the "Glippers" were silenced.

Soon after the siege began, the citizens had taken stock of all their provisions. By the end of June each citizen was put on a strict allowance of food: half a pound of meat and half a pound of bread was allowed for each full-grown man, and a few weeks later even this small allow¬ance had to be reduced. So closely was the town guarded by the enemy that only a few carrier-pigeons and skilful messengers could carry news to the outside world. Fierce combats took place daily, for a reward had been offered to any man who could bring into the city gates the head of a Spaniard. Many a head had been brought in; but such intense excitement was caused by these conflicts that the reward had to be stopped, and a proclamation was issued by sound of the church bell that no citizen should leave the city gates.

Now the country of the Netherlands lies low, and the ocean is only kept from flowing over the land by means of dikes and sluices. The prince was in possession of a certain important fortress that lay between Leyden and the sea. This fortress the Spaniards had attacked in vain. By this means he held in his hand the key with which he could unlock the ocean gates and let the waters rush in over the land. "Better a drowned land than a lost land." If nothing else could save the city, the dikes could be opened. Leyden was not upon the sea, but he could send the sea to Leyden; an army could not be raised to attack the besieging force, but the ocean waves could besiege them.

The prince had counted the cost. The damage to the fields, the villages, and crops would be enormous; the land, so patiently reclaimed from the sea, would be ren¬dered useless again! On the other hand, if Leyden fell, Holland fell too. The decision was made. In person the prince superintended the boring of the dikes in sixteen places. The great water-gates were opened, and the sea began to flow slowly over the land.

It was the twelfth of August when a letter from the prince found its way into Leyden, begging the citizens to hold on a little longer. The starving people were grow¬ing impatient; they had finished all their bread, and malt-cake they found but a poor substitute. But "we have fulfilled our promise," they wrote to him a few days later; "we have held out for two months with food, and for one month without food. Human strength can do no more!"

Even their malt-cake would last but four days more, then starvation stared them in the face! The same day another letter came to them from the prince. He lay in bed at Rotterdam racked with fever, his mind nearly breaking down under the strain of the past few months, his heart torn for the starving citizens of Leyden, ever scheming and planning for the deliverance of the people. But he told them nothing of this. The letter simply told of the boring of the great dikes, and the rising of the water. The letter was read aloud in the market-place, and unspeakable joy broke forth among the faithful burghers. The city musicians walked about the streets playing their liveliest airs, cannon were fired, and the starving city put on a holiday aspect, to the astonish¬ment of the besiegers.

But the water was rising slowly. Now it had risen to ten inches. The besiegers began to realize that their position was uncomfortable; to be surrounded by a stronger power than man's was a somewhat alarming state of affairs. They consulted the Glippers, who knew their country well, knew every dike and sluice and fortress from the coast to Leyden. The Glippers laughed at the wildness of the scheme. The plan was futile, they said.

The days wore on. The first gleams of hope had given place to dull distrust. The dikes were indeed opened, but the water did not rise.

"Go up to the tower, ye beggars," laughed the besiegers—"go up to the tower, and tell us if you can see the ocean coming over the dry land to your relief."

And day after day they crept up the old ruined tower, and strained their eyes out over the sea, "watching, hoping, praying, fearing, and at last almost despairing of relief by God or man."

On the twenty-seventh they sent out of the city a despairing letter. "The city has been forgotten," they cried, "in its utmost need. Rather will we see our whole land and all our possessions perish in the waves than forsake thee, Leyden. We know full well, moreover, that with Leyden all Holland must perish also."

The prince was growing worse. In his fever he seemed to hear the cries of the starving citizens! Then a rumour reached his bedside that they had given up. His fever rose, and his life was in great danger. Then came the contradiction—Leyden was still holding out. From that time he grew better. He ordered more active measures to be taken for their relief.

On the first of September, Admiral Boisot arrived with a small fleet of flat-bottomed vessels and eight hundred veteran sailors. A wild and ferocious crew were those eight hundred Zealanders. Scarred and maimed from past conflicts, they were known never to give or to take quarter. Wild and fierce as they were, they were in a state of the highest discipline, and as seamen unrivalled in skill. Among those flat-bottomed boats was one commonly called the "Ark of Delft," a vessel with neither oars nor sails, moved only by means of a wheel worked by twelve men.

The little fleet made its way over the fifteen miles of flooded country between Leyden and the coast.

By the first week in September the relieving force had come to within five miles of the city. Here were more dikes, through which the sea had not yet passed. Under the very eyes of the enemy, the old sailors pierced through the great dike. The sea rolled in, and the fleet sailed through the gaps—sailed on to within three-quarters of a mile of Leyden. Here was another long dike called the "Greenway," rising a foot or so above the waters, again unprotected by the Spaniards. It did not take long to level it with the ground. Triumphantly the little fleet, now consisting of some two hundred boats, passed over it.

But Leyden was not reached yet, and it was to be almost another month before the city could be relieved.

A large fresh-water lake had yet to be passed. And now another obstacle presented itself. Up to this time the sea had borne on the fleet, thanks to a favourable wind. Now the wind changed round to the east, and the water began to sink! Here, too, was a bridge, held by the enemy in large numbers. The admiral, with his heaviest artillery and bravest sailors, attacked it, but they were driven back, despairing.

It was now a whole week since the great dike had been pierced, the fleet still lay in shallow water, the east wind was causing the sea rather to sink than to rise, impassable barriers seemed to lie between the fleet and the city. The starving citizens of Leyden crawled up to their ruined tower and beheld the shallow waves with sinking hearts. They could not hold out much longer!

Everything looked dark till the eighteenth, when the wind once more shifted to north-west, and for three days blew a gale. The waters began to rise, the boats were afloat once more, and the crews were filled with hope. By this time the admiral had found a way round without having to pass the bridge. The rising ocean tide, now deepening every hour with the rising wind, alarmed the Spaniards. Brave as they were on land, they were no sailors. Vague and mysterious dangers threatened them; they lost their presence of mind, and fled inland towards Leyden.

So the fleet sailed on in triumph, the enemy fleeing as it advanced always nearer and nearer to Leyden. As the admiral arrived at the outlying villages, he ordered them to be set on fire. The flames lit up the desolate waste of waters, and the watchers on the tower at Leyden hailed with joy the approaching fleet.

THE WATCHERS ON THE TOWER

Surely in a few days now they would be relieved. But once more the wind changed to the east, and instead of sailing on to the besieged city, the fleet was stranded in nine inches of water!

Day after day the ships lay motionless, helpless in the shallow sea.

The prince by this time had so far recovered as to be able to stand. He now came on board the fleet. He inspired the desponding men with fresh hope; he gave orders for the last important barrier to be destroyed; he rebuked the impatient sailors, who were mad for revenge and chafed against the enforced delay.

Meanwhile, Leyden was at its last gasp. The citizens realized but too clearly what a change of wind meant to the advancing fleet. As day by day the east wind blew, they stood on tower and house-top, knowing they looked in vain for the longed-for flood. They were literally starving now. Bread, malt-cake, horse-flesh, dogs, cats, rats—all had been consumed!

A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their milk, still remained, but now a few had to be killed daily and distributed in small bits to the starving people. Some ate vine leaves mixed with salt and starch, others boiled the leaves of trees, roots, or chaff; they eagerly devoured the skins of the beasts, they cooked every living herb—but nothing could avert starvation. Women and children dropped dead in the streets; the burghers could hardly drag their weary limbs to the walls. To hasten death, a dreadful plague broke out, to which six thousand people fell easy victims.

Still they would not yield to the foreign foe, though they died at their posts; and they felt little hopes now of the fleet arriving in time to save them.

"Leyden was sublime in its despair."

True, from time to time, there were some who mur¬mured against the firm decision of the magistrates, some who had grown faint-hearted through the intensity of the suffering. A number of these came one day to the old burgomaster, Peter Vanderwert.

"Give us food," they cried, "or treat with the Span¬iards."

The old burgomaster was passing through the streets, when he thus found himself alone, surrounded by a crowd of faithless citizens clamouring for freedom.

"What would ye, my friends?" he cried, waving his broad-brimmed hat for silence. "Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards? a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I tell you, I have made an oath to hold the city, and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so that of the city entrusted to my care. I know we shall starve, if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonoured death which is the only alternative!"

The old man stood in a triangular place in the centre of the city; above him rose the church of St. Pancras, with its high brick tower and its two pointed turrets. He was a tall, gaunt figure; his face was stern and dark, his whole presence calm but commanding. "My life is at your disposal," continued the old man. "Here is my sword; plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger; but expect no surrender as long as I remain alive."

A shout of applause, mingled with murmurs of defiance, rose from the starving citizens. The stirring words of the stanch old burgomaster filled them with new hope and courage. They vowed they would be true to their charge, true to their prince, true to their country; and they returned to their several duties, determined to conquer or to die.

"So long," they cried from the ramparts to the enemy, "so long as ye hear dog bark or cat mew within the walls, ye may know that the city holds out. And when all have perished but ourselves, be sure that we will each devour our left arms, retaining our right to defend our women. When the last hour has come, with our own hands we will set fire to the city and perish—men, women, and children together in the flames—rather than suffer our homes to be taken and our liberties to be crushed."

The Spaniards knew that Leyden's only chance of relief lay with the successful flooding of the land. And the fleet was still stranded. "As well," shouted the angry Spaniards, "as well can the Prince of Orange pluck the stars from the sky as bring the ocean to the walls of Leyden to your relief."

On the night of the first of October a violent gale swept over the waste of waters from the north-west. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising over the land and sweeping over the ruined dikes with ever-increasing power.

In the course of the next twenty-four hours the fleet had more than two feet of water. In the midst of storm and darkness the relieving force sailed on. A few of the enemy's sentinel-vessels challenged the fleet, and at midnight a fierce naval battle took place. The roar of cannon and the howling of the wind over the great waste of dark waters told the sleepless citizens inside Leyden that help was very near now.

The enemy's vessels were sunk, and their crews hurled into the waves. There were but two forts now before the fleet reached Leyden, but they were known to be strongly garrisoned by the enemy.

Yet again now, as before, the rapidly rising waters proved a greater terror to the Spaniards than the two hundred vessels with their crews of fierce sailors. Hardly were the ships in sight than, in the early morning, the Spaniards poured out of the fortress and fled along a road towards the Hague. The wild sailors, mad with revenge, sprang from their vessels and drove their retreat¬ing foes yet further into the sea. They plunged into the waves after them in keen pursuit, and killed them with boat-hook and dagger.

So the first fortress was seized and set on fire.

There was yet another, and this a more formidable one. Swarming with soldiers and bristling with artillery, it seemed impossible for the fleet either to carry it by storm or to pass under its guns into the city. It seemed, after all, as if Leyden must perish within sight of help!

The fleet anchored, and the admiral spent the day in examining the fort, which seemed only too strong. He resolved to attack it next morning; and if driven back, as seemed more than likely, then, he said, in something like despair, "We must wait for another gale of wind to carry us round to the other side of the city."

Meantime, the citizens had grown wild with alternate hopes and fears. A dove had been dispatched by the admiral with a message informing them of his position and intentions.

The old burgomaster mounted the ruined tower.

"Yonder," he cried, "behind that fort, are bread and meat, and our brethren in thousands. Shall all this be destroyed by the Spanish guns, or shall we rush to the help of our friends?"

"We will tear the fortress to fragments with our teeth and nails," cried the maddened citizens, "before the relief so long expected shall be wrested from us."

They resolved to make a sortie next morning and help the admiral against the besieging army.

But the sea had done its work!

Strange sights and sounds occurred during the night. A long line of lights was seen to flit across the black face of the waters at dead of night. Suddenly, in the darkness, too, the whole of the city wall fell with a loud crash.

The citizens were filled with terror. Were the Span¬iards within their walls at last? Had help arrived too late? All was vague and mysterious.

"Day dawned at length after the feverish night," and all prepared for the assault. Within the fortress all was still.

Suddenly a man was seen, wading breast high through the waters, going from the fortress to the fleet. At the same time, one solitary boy was seen waving his cap from the summit of the fort. The mystery was solved.

During the darkness, alarmed at the waste of rising waters and the advancing fleet, the Spaniards had fled in a panic. The lights which had been seen moving during the night were the lanterns of the retreating army. One boy alone had seen it all, and had the courage at daybreak to go alone to the fort and wave the signal.

Thus the Spaniards had retreated at the very moment when, by accident, the wall of the city had fallen in, and they might have entered the starving town in triumph.

The noise of the falling wall had only increased their alarm as they fled in the darkness from the rising flood.

Thus on the morning of the third of October the little fleet sailed past the forsaken fort and entered the city. Leyden was saved!

"The City of the Heavens"

Denmark—1576

In the Sound, between Sweden and Denmark, is a little island, Hven by name. With its high, white cliffs it rises steeply out of the sea, a conspicuous enough object in the surrounding country.

All sorts of traditions and legends are connected with this island, in the middle of which Tycho Brahé, the great astronomer, built his famous castle and observatory, known as "the City of the Heavens."

The Danes had a story that the island was of great importance. They said that a king of England should pay as much scarlet cloth as would cover the island, with a rose-noble at each corner of the cloth, should he wish to possess it.

Another story says that the island was once sold to a merchant. When he came to take possession the people scoffed at him, and bid him take away the "earth he had bought."

A more curious legend, to be found in all the Danish popular ballads, is this:—

The island belonged to a Lady Grimhild, who made a great festival, to which she invited her brothers Helled Haagen and Folker the minstrel, both well-known figures in Danish ballads. She intended to slay the two brothers, with whom she had quarrelled. While they were crossing the Sound, they were warned, first by a mermaid and then by a ferryman, of their sister's intentions. Helled Haagen was so angry with them that he had both of them beheaded. On arriving, the brothers were well received by the Lady Grimhild; but soon she persuaded her man to challenge the brothers to mortal combat. Helled Haagen was made to promise that if he should merely stumble, he would own himself defeated. To bring about this result, the Lady Grimhild had the lists covered with hides on which peas were strewn. Helled Haagan at once slipped, and true to his vow he remained lying and was at once slain. His brother Folker was likewise killed.

Now when Helled Haagen's son Ranke was grown up, he revenged his father's death by shutting up the Lady Grimhild in a castle, and leaving her to die of hunger. He called the island after his mother Hvenhild.

Another tradition says that Hvenhild was a giantess, who carried pieces of Seeland in her apron over to Sweden; but her apron strings bursting on the way, she dropped a piece into the sea, which formed the island of Hven.

And Tycho Brae? Why should he have this little island of Hven to build his observatory on, and to live as a king on this lonely height above the sea?

Tycho Brahe was a Dane of noble birth. He had had a somewhat curious career up to the time of his living on this little island of Hven. One of ten children, his uncle took a fancy to him as a baby. He asked to adopt him as his own, but this request was refused by Tycho's parents. However, when a second son was born, the uncle, George Brahe, having no children of his own, came one day and stole the boy away, and seeing how well the child was treated by his uncle, his parents allowed him to stay.

The child had a good' education. But when, at the age of seven, the boy began to learn Latin, his parents objected strongly, thinking it most undesirable that a boy of high birth should be qualified for high offices in the state.

But his uncle was determined the boy should. study law, and at thirteen he sent him to the university at Copenhagen. It was not till he was sixteen that any special taste for astronomy showed itself. One day, it was August 21, 1560, an eclipse of the sun took place. The astronomers had predicted it, and the whole world watched its arrival with a feverish interest. Tycho shared the prevailing excitement, and when he saw the sun darkened on the very day it was predicted, all the strong love of the marvellous, which all through his after life was one of his characteristics, drew him to a study of that science that was able to give its students glimpses into the future of nature.

From this time forth all his energy, all his enthusiasm was thrown into the study of astronomy. Outwardly he studied law, but his heart was in the heavens, he spent all his pocket money in books on astronomy and such instruments as were within his means.

At night, while his tutor slept, he used to watch the stars with the help of a little globe of the heavens no bigger than his fist.

But his studies, when they became known, met with great opposition from his relations. They rebuked him severely for neglecting his study of law, and laughed at him for following science—a pursuit they regarded as altogether beneath the dignity of a family that for generations had never stooped to intercourse with the learned.

Tycho himself was by no means free from pride in his aristocratic birth and training, as the story of how he lost his nose very plainly shows.

It was December 10, 1566, when he was present at a marriage feast in Germany. Here he met a countryman of his own, and a quarrel sprang up as to which of them knew most mathematics. So fierce did the quarrel become that a duel was arranged and fought with swords in total darkness, at seven o'clock in the evening of the twenty-ninth. In the course of the fight, Tycho's nose, which from his portraits would seem to have been somewhat large, was cut off. In a short time, however, he appeared with a new nose. Some said it was made of gold, some silver, some brass, and others putty—anyhow he appeared with some sort of metal resembling human flesh glued on to his face. We are told that he constantly carried about with him a box of ointment, which had to be applied whenever the nose came off, as it periodically did. A great deal of admiration was bestowed on this false nose, and many people thought much more of this clever invention of Tycho Brahe's than of his far more important discoveries in astronomy.

But he was making a name for himself as an astronomer. When he returned from Germany to his relations, his fame had gone before him, and he found himself received with open arms. He was taken to the court and presented to the king, and generally made much of.

One day, it was the evening of November 11, 1572, Tycho Brahe had spent some time in the laboratory, and was returning home for supper, when he chanced to look up into the sky. He was startled by noticing a very bright star in a part of the heavens where never before had star been seen. Thinking he must have made some mistake, he turned round to some servants who accom¬panied him, and asked whether they saw the star. Yes, they saw it too. Thsa he shouted to some passing peasants. Could they see it? Yes, they too saw a very bright star just where Tycho had described.

The star increased in brightness from day to day, until in about three months it was brighter than Jupiter; then it slowly died out, and two years later it had dis¬appeared.

But it troubled the astronomers. To what region of space did it belong? Was it a planet, or a fixed star?

Tycho Brahe set to work, and after long and laborious study he declared to the world that it belonged to "the region of the fixed stars." He wrote and published a book on the subject, after which he intended to go abroad and leave his native land for ever. He travelled to Germany and Switzerland, and finally determined to set up his observatory at Basle.

But in the meantime great things were preparing for him at home. It was represented to Frederick the Second, King of Denmark, that the work of such a man as Tycho Brahe would reflect honour on the country, and that it was the king's duty to aid his plans, and not to let him go out of the country.

Accordingly, the king offered the astronomer several castles for a residence, but Tycho refused them all. King Frederick, however, was fond of learning, and anxious to keep in his kingdom so promising a man. So soon after he sent off a messenger with orders to travel day and night, till he could deliver into Tycho's own hands the letter he bore from the king. It was one winter day, the eleventh of February, early in the morning, as Tycho was lying in bed turning over in his mind the plan of leaving the kingdom, when a youth of noble family was announced, and was at once brought to his bedside to deliver the king's letter. In it the king commanded Tycho to come over and see him without delay.

The astronomer started at once, and arrived the same evening at the king's hunting-lodge near Copenhagen.

"I have heard from my courtiers that you are thinking of returning to Germany," said the king, when Tycho stood before him. "Have you refused the royal castle fearing to be disturbed in your studies by affairs of court and state?"

The king went on to say that when he had been at Elsinore lately, building his castle of Kronberg, his eye had fallen on the little island of Hven in the Sound, and that it had occurred to him that this lonely little spot might make a suitable home for the astronomer, where he could live perfectly undisturbed. The king offered him the island, and promised at the same time to supply him with means to build a house there. Tycho must think the matter over for a few days. If he accepted, the king would at once give orders for a sum of money to be handed over for the building.

Having returned home, he was strongly advised to accept the king's liberal offer, which he did a week later, and the king granted him five hundred thalers, to be paid every year, with the following document:—

"We, Frederick the Second, make known to all men, that we of our special favour and grace have conferred and granted in fee to our beloved Tycho Brahe, our land of Hven, with all our tenants and servants who thereon live, with all rent and duty which comes from that, to have, enjoy, use, and hold, quit and free, without any rent, all the days of his life, and as long as he lives and likes to continue and follow his studies. But he must keep the tenants who live there under law and right, and injure none of them against the law, and in all ways be faithful to us and the kingdom, and attend to our welfare in every way, and guard against danger and injury to the kingdom."

Money was then paid over to Tycho to build his house on the island. He himself was to find building materials.

Nearly in the centre of the little island, some one hundred and sixty feet above the level of the sea, Tycho selected a site for his new house and observatory. It was to be called "Uraniborg," or the City of the Heavens, as it was to be devoted to the study of the stars.

On the eighth of August the foundation stone was laid by the French minister. It was very early in the morn¬ing when several friends and men of rank and learning assembled. "When the sun was rising with Jupiter, and the moon in Aquarius was setting," said Tycho, the stone was put in its place at the south-east corner of the house, and success to the undertaking was drunk with various wines.

The building rose quickly, but it took four years to complete, so elaborate was the whole structure. The house itself was surrounded by a square wall, each side being three hundred feet long. The four corners pointed to the four points of the compass. Half-way along each wail was a semicircular bend, each enclosing an arbour around which were beautiful flower gardens.

At the east and west angles were gates, and in small rooms built over these gates English mastiffs were kept, in order that they might announce the arrival of strangers by barking.

At the north and south angles were small buildings, in the same style, used for printing office and as accom¬modation for servants. Under one of these was the castle prison, used for refractory tenants. This is now one of the few parts left of Tycho's buildings.

Inside the great walls were orchards, with some three hundred trees; and inside these, separated by a wooden paling, flower gardens. Four roads ran through the orchards and gardens from the four angles to the open circular space in the middle, where the castle itself stood on a higher level.

Uraniborg was built of red bricks, with sandstone ornaments, in Gothic renaissance style. Its slender spires and tastefully-decorated gables were, indeed, in better harmony with the peaceful life of a student of the heavens than the old severe Gothic style; and the pictures, inscriptions, and ornaments scattered through the' interior spoke at every step of the taste of its astronomer owner.

The central part was crowned by a pavilion, with a dome with clock dials east and west, and a spire with a gilt vane in the shape of a Pegasus. Here was an octagonal room, with a dial in the ceiling showing the time and direction of the wind. Galleries round the towers gave means of observing with small instruments in the open air.

A south-east room on the ground floor was the sitting-room of the family in winter; for Tycho had married a peasant girl, to the annoyance of his aristocratic relations, and by this time had a family of small children. Then there were guest rooms—the "red" room, the "blue" room, the "yellow "room, the "green "room, a long and beautiful one, with the ceiling covered with pictures of flowers and plants. Tycho tells us there was a glorious view from this room of the numerous sails passing through the Sound.

TYCHO BRAHE

At the top of the castle were eight little rooms or garrets for students and observers. For as time went on Tycho gathered round him at Hven a school of young astronomers, to whom he taught the use of his instru¬ments, and who in return helped him with his observa¬tions. Many of these were chosen from among the lowest of the people, but they were treated ever with the same consideration as the greatest ones who visited him.

There was one of Tycho's pupils, Christen Longberg, son of a poor farmer, who lived at Uraniborg for upwards of twenty years; there was Elias Olsen, who was sent by his master on an astronomical expedition of some import¬ance, and who helped Tycho with his great meteorological diary written every day, with short notes about the weather, whether clear or cloudy, hot or cold, rainy or dry.

When Uraniborg was finished, Tycho built an observa¬tory on a neighbouring hill. Here all his instruments were placed in underground rooms, of which the roofs only rose above the ground. The entrance was on the north side, and a door and some stone steps led down to the study. Over the portal were three crowned lions hewn in stone, with the inscription:—

"Wealth and power may decay, The sceptre of Art alone will last."

Other inscriptions in these crypts charged posterity to preserve this building for the glory of God and the furtherance of this divine art, the honour of the country. Going down some steps to one crypt were some verses composed by Tycho, expressing the surprise of Urania at finding this cave, but promising even here, in the bowels of the earth, to show the way to the stars. On the walls hung the portraits of the eight greatest astronomers, with inscriptions setting forth their merits. Tycho's portrait was included. He was represented as pointing up to his system of the world, which was sketched on the ceil¬ing; while the other hand held a slip of paper with the question, "Quid si, sic?"

Here it was, then, that the great astronomer spent twenty years, the happiest and most active of his life. Working diligently in his temple of science, he discov¬ered a new cornet, and exploded many accepted fallacies by bringing them to the test of accurate observation. Surrounded by his family and pupils, honoured by men of distinction both from Denmark and abroad, he worked away by day and by night, loving his work for its own sake, and longing to see previous research corrected and reformed.

Tycho could not bear any pretence or sham. He took delight in exposing to ridicule the mistakes of royal pretenders to knowledge they did not possess. It is even said that he took the trouble to make a number of foolish toys—mice running round in cages, models of the sky that moved by clockwork, little windmills, and so on. To the most ignorant of his great guests he showed these as his instruments, and they went away quite happy in their ignorance. He could only trust himself to reveal his true instruments to serious, hard-working men, who would look on them as something more than a nine days' wonder.

To the rich and noble, Tycho appeared a red-haired, fiery, rude, contradictory little man, with a false nose and a violent temper. But there was another side to the picture, known only to his own family and the poor of Hven. Day after day this fierce, proud astronomer would watch by the side of some sick peasant, devoting all his medical knowledge, all the patience learned from his long hours of observation, to healing those whose lives were little thought of in those days.

One curious inmate of his household was a maniac called Lep, who was supposed to have the power of predicting future events. At the great banquets at Uraniborg, Lep was always present, and whenever he spoke all had to keep silence and listen.

The king highly approved of all Tycho's work. He looked on him not only as a great man whose work conferred honour on the country, but as a confidential servant whom he delighted to honour and befriend. He presented him with a double gold chain with an elephant suspended from it; he had a great bell cast at Copen¬hagen to be used at Hven; he ordered a "good new ship or pilot boat, with all necessary tackle," to be sent to Tycho for conveying him and his visitors across the Sound to the mainland. But the twenty happy years at Uraniborg were over for Tycho Brahé.

In 1588 his friend Frederick, King of Denmark, died, and Christian, a mere boy only eleven years old, succeeded to the throne.

The young prince was most anxious to visit Tycho on his island, having heard of the wonders of his observatory and the beauty of his great castle. He was greatly delighted with his visit, and reluctantly crossed the Sound to Copenhagen "long before supper." James the First of England also visited Hven, and presented the astronomer with two splendid deerhounds on leaving.

Still Tycho was making enemies all round. The courtiers hated him because all the great folk of Europe passed them by to pay homage at Hven; the doctors hated him for ministering to the sick and poor without a fee; the chancellor hated him because he spoke somewhat freely when that great man had brutally kicked one of the deerhounds presented to Tycho by King James. So as the years passed on the tide set against him.

For some time past Tycho had considered the desir¬ability of a change. He darkly hinted in his letters that he might have to leave Hven after all, but comforted himself with the thought that every land is the home of a great man, and wherever he went the blue sky would still be over his head.

In 1597 his pension was taken away. This brought things to a crisis. He could no longer live at Hven—¬could no longer afford to keep up the large staff of printers, observers, and assistants. He must leave the obscure little island, which had become the wonder of the age—leave the City of the Heavens, which had been the delight of crowned heads and men of learning.

In the meteorological diary for March 21, 1597, this pathetic entry was made by one of his pupils: "We catalogued all the squire's books." Then came the moving of the great instruments, the printing press, the furniture—the desolation of Uraniborg.

With many a sad regret must Tycho, his family, and his sorrowing pupils have sailed for the last time from the island of Hven.

He only lived three years longer, and his last cry was an illustration of his whole life's work: "Oh, that I may not be found to have lived in vain!"

The Death of Gustavus Adolphus

Germany—1632

"His sword in his hand, the word of command be¬tween his lips." So died Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, the hero of the Thirty Years' War. The story of how he fought against the great Wallenstein on the battlefield of Lutzen, how he lost his life, and how his army fought recklessly on without him and won the day, is one of the most thrilling in history. A greater contrast than these two great commanders never existed. They had never met before on the field of battle. They were never to meet again.

Wallenstein, gloomy, silent, proud, ambition was the ruling power of his life; all stood in awe of him. Whole nights spent in a starry watch-tower with his astrologer had made him superstitious. He could not forget a pro¬phecy, based on the appearance of a new star, that "a northern prince should arise, who should greatly advance the interests of the more pure religion." The fulfilment of the prophecy was to take place in this very year 1632. As the year advanced, and his enemy Gustavus carried all before him, Wallenstein became yet more gloomy; none dared approach him. "Hang the beast!" were his brief orders to enforce military discipline, which none dared disobey.

Gustavus Adolphus, on the other hand, was open as the day; blue-eyed, frank, fearless, he was a man to whom guile and treachery were unknown. He had two objects in view—the growth of Protestantism, and the good of Sweden. He was respected by all, adored by his soldiers, and loved by his wife and children.

It was on the twenty-eighth of October that Gustavus advanced with his army to Erfurt. It was Wallen¬stein's intention to establish himself firmly in Saxony; but Gustavus had resolved that he should not.

About a mile from Erfurt he drew up his army, reviewed every brigade, appointing their places and giving his orders. The same afternoon a deputation came from Erfurt to invite his majesty into the city, for his wife had already arrived to meet him there. But this was no time for royal processions, and it was not till night fell that the king made his entry privately into Erfurt. His first act was to go and visit one of the royal princes who had been ill a long time; then he hastened to the queen's lodgings.

The queen, Eleanora, with her train of ladies,' received him in the market square. Seeing her at a distance, the king dismounted, led the queen tenderly indoors, and gave himself up to military business. He felt strongly that the fate of Germany was approaching a great crisis. Allowing himself only half an hour for supper with the queen, he returned to his letters, and spent the greater part of the night in writing letters of importance to several princes, and dispatching messages to all troops that could reach him in ten days' time. He got up very early next morning, and, after taking a slight breakfast with the queen, he saw some of the city magistrates, who were waiting to see him. He spoke to them seriously, and ended his speech thus: "You know, gentlemen, that in human affairs there is no certainty. Some mischance may happen to me; and if God Almighty should please this, let me earnestly desire you to continue faithful to my dear queen, as becomes upright and honest men, and so I heartily pray to God to bless and preserve you." Then turning to his queen, Eleanora, he murmured, "God bless you!" and leaving them all in tears, he silently mounted his horse and rode off quickly to overtake his army, by this time in full march towards Saxony.

In three days, by easy marches of some twelve miles a day, the king and his army reached Nuremberg, and entered the city before Wallenstein could make himself master of the place, as he intended.

The inhabitants of the surrounding country flocked in crowds to look upon the Swedish hero. His presence among them gave them a feeling of security; he was as a saviour to men flying from the barbarities of Wallen¬stein's camp. Shouts of joy everywhere attended his progress. The people knelt before him, struggling for the honour of touching the sheath of his sword or the hem of his garment.

Gustavus disliked this tribute.

"Is it not," he said, "as if this people would make a god of me? I fear—I fear that because every man doth so adore and honour me that God Almighty will punish me for it, at one time or other. My God knoweth that I take no delight in it, nor am I desirous of it. Soon enough shall be revealed to this deluded multitude my human weakness and mortality."

The next day the king in person examined all the passes and roads around Nuremberg, though as yet he had not made up his mind to attack Wallenstein.

Meanwhile Wallenstein determined to take up his winter quarters in Saxony, even at the risk of a battle. There had been a rumour that he was unwilling to measure his powers with the hero of the north; he had declined a battle with him once. This could not be repeated. Besides, his astrologer had read in the stars that the good fortune of Gustavus should leave him in November. He called a council of war. His generals were against an attack at present—the winter was coming on, the army in need of rest. All voices were in favour of ending the campaign, and Wallenstein yielded. He felt so secure that he dispatched his general Pappenheim with a great part of the army away towards Cologne.

This was the news that was brought to Gustavus Adolphus one Sunday morning while he was yet at Nuremberg: Wallenstein had moved into winter quarters His army was divided. "Both these circumstances gave Gustavus uncommon joy," says the old story.

He at once called the Duke Bernard and other generals to his own room, and explained carefully to them the position of affairs. He did not disguise from them his longing to fight.

"Verily, God has given our enemies into our hands," he cried.

"Ho, brave occasion!" cried one of the dukes.

"Now God bless us, 'tis a happy chance!" cried others. The opportunity had arrived; it should not be missed. "How far is it to Lutzen?" asked the King of Sweden of the country gentlemen.

"There, sire, there it lies directly under your eye," they replied.

But this was a mistake. The country was almost level, and the tall church and castle of Lutzen could be plainly seen. Moreover the ground chiefly consisted of corn-fields freshly ploughed, and the way to Lutzen was much longer and more tedious than the Swedish army had any idea of.

It was not long before the whole army was advancing rapidly towards Lutzen.

"The army advanced stoutly and doubled their march, but their legs found it a longer way than their eyes, it being a sad country, full eight English miles of ground to Lutzen. Besides all this," says the old story, "there was a filthy pass in the way at a bridge over a river, where but one or two men could go abreast, which hindered the army full two hours going."

So it was almost night before the army could get within two English miles of Lutzen. Had he had two hours more of daylight, Gustavus declared, he would have taken Wallenstein asleep.

Having crossed the bridge, they met two of the emperor's regiments of horse. These made as if they would dispute the king's passage; but they did not, and the Swedish army passed on.

At last it became too dark to go on any longer, and the king was forced to encamp in the open fields. He himself with some of his officers passed the night in his coach, and every regiment lay down in their marching order, with their arms beside them.

On one point Gustavus had made up his mind—he would give the enemy battle two hours before the break of day, before Wallenstein's forces could be ready.

Meanwhile Wallenstein's army "was in a terrible hubbub at the king's coming over the pass," says the old story. The alarm caused by Gustavus's march spread like wildfire. On pain of death every man was ordered to march to Lutzen with all possible speed. Pappenheim was sent for at once, and Wallenstein began to plan out his defence.

Across the plain of Lutzen ran a road, the highway to Leipsic, ornamented on each side with middle-aged willow trees; and the soil being moist, deep, and rich, a trench had been cut on either hand to prevent wayfarers from crossing the corn-fields.

That part of the plain occupied by Gustavus was level, but on Wallenstein's side was a bit of rising ground where some windmills stood. Here, about nine o'clock at night, he fixed two large batteries of heavy artillery, casting up trenches of earth around them.

At ten in the evening he ordered his soldiers to deepen and widen the ditches on the road side, and at this they worked till the battle began next morning.

The night was very dark.

Two hours before daylight Gustavus ordered his drums to beat. "Arm, arm! repair to your colours, stand to your arms!" This was the morning summons, this the awaken¬ing from the cold, hard ground.

With the first streaks of dawn it became evident that no orders for attack could be given yet, for an inpenetrable fog covered the plain and nothing could be seen at two pikes' length.

Kneeling down in front of his lines, the king offered up his morning prayer, and the whole army at the same moment, dropping on their knees, burst into Luther's hymn, to the accompaniment of brazen trumpets, "God is a strong tower." The king joined in his own battle song:—

"Be not dismayed, thou little flock, Although the foe's fierce battle-shock Loud on all sides assail thee. Though o'er thy fall they laugh secure, Their triumph cannot long endure; Let not thy courage fail thee. "Thy cause is God's—go at His call And to His hand commit thy all, Fear thou no ill impending; His Gideon shall arise for thee, God's word and people manfully In God's own time defending. "Our hope is sure in Jesus' might; Against themselves the godless fight, Themselves, not us, distressing. Shame and contempt their lot shall be; God is with us, with Him are we; To us belongs His blessing."

And as if with some forebodings of the coming slaughter they sang of the "Saviour who was the conqueror of death."

The king was asked to take some breakfast, but he declined. He was also asked to clothe himself in steel, according to the custom of the age.

"The Lord is my armour!" he cried, throwing aside his cuirass in an enthusiasm of heroism. Having lately re¬ceived a wound in one of his shoulders from a musket-ball, the pressure of his cuirass was very painful. So he only changed his yesterday's clothes, and wore a new plain cloth coat and an elk-skin buff waistcoat, which is still to be seen at Vienna.

About eight o'clock the sun broke through the mist and gave promise of a fine November day, but only to show an unforeseen difficulty to the Swedish king. For in a straight line on which the Swedish left wing meant to advance was a deep ditch, too deep for the troops to cross, so that Gustavus had to edge his whole army to the right.

This movement took some time, and it was nine o'clock before he rode down the lines, addressing first to the Swedes, then to the Germans, two of the noblest orations before a battle that history records.

"My dear brethren," he cried to the Swedish soldiers, "carry yourselves bravely this day. Fight valiantly in God's name for your religion and for your king. This if you do, God's blessing and the people's praises shall be your reward, and you shall ever be laden with honour and glory, nor will I forget to reward you nobly. But if you think of flight, I here call God to witness that not a bone of you shall ever return again into Sweden."

Turning to the German troops, he slightly lowered his tone of authority.

"Friends, officers, and soldiers of the German nation," he began, "fight manfully against your enemies this day, both with me and for me. Be not faint-hearted in the battle, nor for anything discouraged. Set me before your eyes, and let me be your great example, even me, who fearlessly adventure life and blood for your cause, to the utmost danger. If you do this, there is no doubt but that God Himself will from heaven reward you with a most glorious victory. If you do not this, farewell for ever to your religion; your liberties must for ever remain enslaved."

These speeches were accompanied by the clashing of armour, and one shout passed from regiment to regiment—where their hero led they would follow. "And now, my hearts, let us on bravely against our enemies, and God prosper us."

Then drawing his sword, and waving it above his head, he advanced, the foremost of all his army, with the Swedish war-cry on his lips: "God with us!"

It had been his watchword at the battle of Leipsic; it was a good omen for Lutzen.

"I thank God I have both wind and sun to favour me," said the king joyously, as he rode forward.

Wallenstein's army far outnumbered his; the front of the enemy extended some two miles from one wing to the other. Wallenstein had a bad attack of gout in his feet, and though his stirrups were padded with silk, he could not ride on this famous November day, but had to be carried in a litter.

"It will now be shown whether I or the King of Sweden is to be master of the world," he said, shortly before the battle.

The battle began. As the fog lifted, the village of Lutzen was seen to be in flames, having been set on fire by Wallenstein, to prevent his being outflanked on that side. The cannonade soon began to grow extremely violent, for Wallenstein's artillery was exceedingly heavy, and Gustavus had only field-pieces and small, portable cannons.

The whole Swedish army had to cross the ditches, which were well lined with musketeers, and had been made five feet deep, which rendered them most dangerous for cavalry and infantry alike to cross; so much so indeed that four of the Swedish brigades, the finest body of infantry then in the world, found such difficulty in crossing under a severe fire that at one time they seemed to fall back.

Gustavus was some considerable distance off, but seeing them pause, he flew to them in an instant, dismounted, seized a pike from one of the officers, and proceeded to lead them over the ditch.

"If," he said, in a tone of severity, as he marched along, "if, having passed so many rivers, scaled numberless fortresses, and fought so many battles, your old courage has deserted you, stand firm at least some minutes longer and have the curiosity to see your master die in the manner he ought and in the manner he chooses."

"Stop, sire!" cried his soldiers, as with one voice, "stop, for heaven's sake, and spare that valuable life of yours. Distrust us not, we will do this business well."

Springing his horse across the ditch, he rode recklessly forwards. The horsemen he had ordered to follow him struggled in vain to keep up with the long strides of their master's horse.

Suddenly the fog came thickly down once more. The king, left almost alone in the darkness, dashed unawares into a regiment of the enemy's cuirassiers. One shot passed through his horse's neck. A second shattered his own left arm.

At this moment his squadron came hurrying up. "The king bleeds, the king is shot!" they cried in confusion. Terror and consternation spread through the ranks.

"It is nothing—follow me!" cried Gustavus, collecting his whole strength together.

But he was overcome by pain.

"Cousin," he cried to a young duke by his side, "I am sore wounded; help me to make my retreat."

The young duke held the wounded king up in his saddle while they turned round to retreat.

At this moment one of the enemy's officers, who knew the king by sight, came up.

"Who are you?" he cried.

"I was the King of Sweden," replied Gustavus. "I seal with my blood the Protestant religion and the liberties of Germany."

"This is the right bird," remarked the cuirassier, and drawing his pistol he shot the king.

"Alas, my poor queen, my poor queen!" murmured the king, as he fell wounded in five places. Then with his last strength he whispered, "My God, my God!" and the King of Sweden was dead.

His white charger, flying without his rider, and covered with blood, soon made known to the Swedish cavalry the fate of their king. They rushed madly forward to rescue his precious remains from the hands of the enemy, and a fearful conflict ensued over his body, till it was buried beneath a heap of slain.

As the mournful tidings ran through the Swedish army, far from destroying the courage of those brave troops, it excited them wildly. Life had lessened in value now that the most sacred life of all was gone; death had no terrors for the lowly since the royal head was not spared.

With the fury of lions the Swedes rushed a second time upon the left wing of the enemy, and drove it entirely from the field.

Duke Bernard made a grand leader, and the spirit of Gustavus seemed still among them. For nine long hours they fought, until the mist fell again, and sunset found Wallenstein and his troops making their retreat.

The Swedes had won. But it was a dear conquest, a dearer triumph. It was not till the fury of the contest was over that the full weight of the king's death came over his soldiers. The shout of triumph died away into the silence of a gloomy despair. He who had led them to the charge could never return; he lay upon the field he had won, his body slain with those of his men.

The "Stone of the Swede" is the name given to a great stone which fifty peasants, "with much toil and sweat," dragged towards but not up to the place where the warrior lay. On it are inscribed the words, "Our faith is the victory which overcometh the world."

It was a bitter cold night that the remains of the Swedish army spent on the battlefield of Lutzen, and in the words of the old story, which so faithfully records every detail of the king's last days, "All this night there was a pitiful crying heard."

The Relief of Vienna

Austria—1683

"I will not rest till Vienna and the whole of Chris¬tendom are under my subjection."

Such was the saying of the Grand Vizier of Turkey some hundred and fifty years before; such was the spirit in which the Grand Vizier of 1683 made his preparations for the second siege of Vienna. In vain was he dissuaded from this vast undertaking. Let him rather reduce other strong places still held by Christians in Hungary, urged the pashas. "A king," related the aged Ibrahim Pasha in allegorical terms, "once placed a heap of gold in the middle of a carpet, and offered it to any one who could take it up without treading on the carpet. One wise man rolled up the carpet from the corner, and thus obtained possession of the gold."

But the Grand Vizier declined to be that one "wise man;" he would get the gold from the centre, somehow. Vienna should be his; the march thither should begin without delay. Accordingly, burning villages on the way, destroying towns, and taking Christians into captivity, the mighty Turkish army advanced nearer and nearer to Austria's capital—Vienna.

Meanwhile the news was spreading quickly. Vienna was to be besieged, and Vienna was totally unprepared for a siege! To whom could the Austrians look for help? Reluctantly, if anxiously, they turned to one John Sobieski, the great King of Poland, a well-known champion of the Christians, a well-known hater of the Turks.

Almost feverishly Sobieski's reply was awaited, the fate of Austria hung on it.

Yes, Sobieski would come and help them. And flinging his powerful frame into the saddle, and his great soul into the cause, the King of Poland began eagerly to recruit his scattered army.

Leopold, Emperor of Austria, was no soldier; he would have been but a hindrance in the besieged city; so he removed himself and his court some fifteen miles away from the scene of action. It was the evening of the seventh of July, when a long line of imperial carriages might have been seen wending their way out of the capital, conveying into safety the emperor, his wife, the empress-mother, and court. Many of the wealthy citizens took the same opportunity of escaping, and all through the long night they made their way across the Tabor Bridge over the Danube, lighted only by the flames of the Carmelite convent on the heights of the Kahlenberg.

This tremendous exodus greatly reduced the number of those capable of bearing arms in the defence of the city. Vienna had no garrison, some mounted police were their only troops at this moment. But troops soon began to file into the city, and all were encouraged by the appear¬ance of Count Stahremberg, to whom the emperor had confided the command and defence of the city.

Instantly he set all hands to work. Roused to a sense of their danger, men, women, and children worked with a will, even the old burgomaster might have been seen trundling his wheelbarrow with loads for the fortifications. Students of the university armed themselves, merchants and wholesale dealers formed a company of some two hundred and fifty men, officials and servants of the emperor's household formed a corps, butchers, brewers, bakers, shoemakers, all drilled with might and main by night and day, so that some twenty thousand men were under arms when the dreaded moment arrived four days later. Flames of burning villages told of the near approach of the invaders. There was no time to be lost.

"Set fire to the suburbs," ordered Stahremberg in supreme haste. "They shall not serve as cover to the enemy."

The flames rose round the city, a high wind sprang up at the same time, and it required all the efforts of those within the city to prevent Vienna itself from being burned to the ground. Then the gates were closed, built up, and barricaded.

WORKING AT THE FORTIFICATIONS

At sunrise next morning the main force of the enemy appeared on the plain in front of Vienna. Their camp was formed in the shape of a half moon. In a few hours thousands of Turkish tents had sprung up from the ground, and the place was alive with bustle and excite¬ment. The tents of the Grand Vizier were pitched on high ground. They were made of green silk worked with gold and silver, and were gorgeous to behold. Within they were adorned with pearls and precious stones and beautiful Eastern carpets. Around were baths, fountains, flower-gardens, and even a menagerie of animals.

Here, in his gorgeously embroidered robes, he used to sit during the progress of the siege. From time to time he was carried out in a litter, made shot-proof by plates of iron, to inspect the works. He would punish the idle with his own hands, and threaten the young and timid with his drawn sabre.

Meanwhile the siege was beginning in real earnest. Assault followed assault; the Turkish mines, cleverly and cunningly devised, were deadly; still the Turkish scimitar was no match for the German scythe and battle-axe. Day by day Stahremberg, wounded and ill as he was, climbed up to a stone seat in the lofty fretted spire of the cathedral church of St. Stephen's, right in the heart of the great city. Many an anxious hour did he spend there, looking gloomily away to the Turkish camp, watching every movement, observing every preparation, and feeling something like despair seize him as he could no longer disguise from himself the fact that the enemy was gaining ground inch by inch.

By the beginning of August, sickness had broken out in the city, owing partly to the constant use of dried and salted meat, partly to the toil and anxiety of the defence. Stahremberg, too weak to walk, was carried about in a chair from place to place, wherever his presence seemed most required.

To sickness followed famine. Cats became so valuable that a chase after them over the roofs at night was a recognized form of sport. They were humorously sold in the market as "roof hares!"

And where was Sobieski all this time, and his relieving army? On the sixth of August a messenger arrived in the city bearing a ciphered letter well sealed. It con¬tained news of the relieving army, and assured those within the besieged city that help would soon come now. The messenger had bravely swum across an arm of the Danube at the risk of his life to bring this important message, but he was less fortunate in his return. He was taken by the Turks and brought before the Grand Vizier. He was closely questioned as to the condition of the city. Cunningly he invented a tale of despair.

"The defenders are at their last gasp," he said; "they are on the verge of surrender."

The invention saved his life. The Vizier proclaimed the glad tidings through his camp. He caused an arrow to be shot back into the city bearing a message to say there was no need to write in cipher, their wretched condition was known to the world at large; it was but their just punishment for rousing the wrath of the Sultan.

But the bravest among the messengers was Stahrem¬berg's servant, a Pole, Kolschitzki. Stepping forward he offered to take news to the Christian army, though he went through fire and water. Dressed in Turkish costume he slipped out of the city, and soon found himself amidst the enemy. Still too near Vienna not to excite suspicion, he hid himself in the cellar of a ruined house near by. By-and-by when all seemed quiet, he emerged, and singing a Turkish song as naturally as he could, he passed idly by the lines of Turkish tents. Hearing familiar strains, a Turkish soldier invited him into his tent, gave him coffee, listened to his songs, and cautioned him against wandering too far and falling into Christian hands. Kolschitzki thanked him for his good advice, and passed on with safety right through the enemy's camp. Once through he made quickly for the Danube, and at last delivered his dispatch safely.

"I must tell your Highness," said Stahremberg's letter, "that we have up to this moment disputed the works with the enemy foot by foot, and they have not gained an inch of ground without paving for it dearly. As in duty bound, I assure your Highness that to show myself worthy of the confidence which your Highness reposes in my small services, I shall never yield the place but with the last drop of my blood."

The daring messenger returned, and after some hair-breadth escapes from Turkish sentries, he brought news back to Stahremberg. The Duke of Lorraine was ready with his armies, and only waiting for the arrival of the Polish forces commanded by Sobieski in person to attack the Turkish army. They must hold out a little longer yet.

Pitiful were the entries made day by day by Stahrem¬berg in the garrison record: now the bread has failed, now some much-prized life is taken, now some false report makes them all lose heart. In vain did Stahrem¬berg gaze from his stone seat in the fretted spire of St. Stephen's for any signal from the Kahlenberg, any sign of the approaching army. How had the long delay arisen?

John Sobieski had left Poland as early as the eighteenth of July, only a few days after the siege had begun, accom¬panied by his son James, a boy of sixteen. He was gouty, he was rheumatic, he was very stout for riding; nobody thought he would ever get to Vienna with his army. But Sobieski hated the Turks; he believed the words he addressed later to his soldiers: "We have to save not a single city, but the whole of Christendom, of which the city of Vienna is the bulwark."

By the third week in August he had reached the Silesian frontier, and soon after he arrived at the headquarters of Lorraine in safety, with his two thousand cavalry.

It must have been a curious meeting. In past years, Charles of Lorraine had competed with Sobieski for the crown of Poland; now the old rivals met face to face, ready to fight together against a common foe.

"The duke," wrote Sobieski to his wife, "is modest, stooping, plain, marked with smallpox, and with a hooked nose. He is clad in an old grey coat, with a fair wig, ill-made, a hat without a band, boots of yellow leather, or rather what was yellow three months ago!"

Rather a contrast to Sobieski, who went into action before Vienna in a sky-blue doublet!

Lorraine spoke with anxiety of the coming contest.

"Be of good cheer," replied Sobieski, "we are within five leagues of the Turkish camp, and have already con¬structed a bridge. The Vizier is a man of no capacity."

Besides Lorraine, Sobieski found a number of German princes awaiting his arrival. There were John George of Saxony, speaking no French and very little German; Maximilian of Bavaria, only twenty-one at this time; there was the prince who afterwards became George the First of England; there were veterans of the Thirty Years' War; and last and youngest, Eugene of Savoy. The eyes of all Europe were turned toward this brilliant assembly, these princely heads of the great Christian army, all united in a common cause.

It was determined to attack the Turks from the Kahlenberg, if indeed it might be unguarded by them. To discover this was a somewhat difficult task. But on the night of the tenth, Sobieski and some of the soldier princes set out to plan the attack. It took them so long struggling up the precipices and through the dense forests, that the greatest alarm was excited in the Christian camp, lest the king, their commander-in-chief, should have fallen into the hands of the Turks.

The crest of the Kahlenberg, with its castle and its chapel, was found unoccupied. The Turks, just awaking to the fact of its importance, were moving towards it, when the firing of guns from the summit told them it was already occupied by the enemy. The difficulty of getting the guns up was enormous, and the carrying of the army up the Kahlenberg a stupendous task. The country had been wasted by the Turks; there was no food for the men, no forage for the horses. Indeed the horses had to be given the leaves of the trees on the mountain side to eke out supplies!

It was the night of the tenth of September that the rockets rose from the Kahlenberg heights, telling the city that help was at hand.

Mingled joy and deep anxiety crept into the hearts of the Viennese citizens. Some spent the night in the churches, praying for their deliverance; some on the roofs of towers and houses, watching for the first gleam of the Christian weapons as they issued from the wooded heights. It was a night of agonizing suspense to all. As evening closed in, Stahremberg dispatched a mes¬senger, who delivered the letter to Lorraine. The words were few and despairing: "No time to be lost!—no time indeed to be lost!"

The message was acknowledged by a cluster of rockets.

The night of the eleventh of September closed in upon the troubled scene, for the doom of Vienna was yet uncertain. At sunrise on the twelfth, the crest of the Kahlenberg was hidden by a thick autumn mist; it almost obscured the woods at its base, and rested heavily on the shores of the river below. The spire of St. Stephen's rose faintly above a sea of mist.

It was Sunday morning. The army of the Christians began their day with a solemn service at the little chapel on the heights of the Kahlenberg. As the bell for service tolled, the clang of arms and the noises of the march were silenced. On a space kept clear round the chapel, a standard with a white cross on a red ground was unfurled, as if to bid defiance to the blood-red flag planted in front of the Vizier's tent. One great shout arose as this emblem of their holy war was unfurled; then all was hushed again as the gates of the castle were flung open, and the princes of the empire, with other leaders of the Christian host, moved forward to the chapel.

Among the foremost was the Polish king, John Sobieski. He had been in the saddle since three in the morning; indeed, the roar of Turkish cannon all night had made sleep impossible. His sky-blue doublet, his height and breadth of shoulder, his lively gestures and dark beard, marked him out above his fellows; he was indeed the soldier king, the scourge and dread of the Moslem.

On his left was his young son, Prince James, armed with breastplate and helmet, sword and broad-bladed sabre; on his right was Charles, Duke of Lorraine.

The service having been performed, the distant thunder of the Turkish batteries forming a strange accompaniment to the Christian choir, the king stepped forward and conferred the honour of knighthood on his son, Prince James. Then he addressed the troops:—

"Warriors and friends! yonder in the plain are our enemies. We have to fight them on a foreign soil, but we fight for our own country, and under the walls of Vienna we are defending those of Warsaw and Cracow. The war is a holy one. There is a blessing on our arms, and a crown of glory for him who falls. You fight not for your earthly sovereign, but for the King of kings. His power has led you unopposed up the difficult access to these heights, and has thus placed half the victory in your hands. I have but one command to give you—Follow me. The time is come for the young to win their spurs!"

The shouts of thousands greeted these words, and as they closed five cannon shots gave the signal for a general advance.

To descend the wooded slopes of the Kahlenberg towards Vienna, in the face of the Turkish army, re¬nowned for their courage, was no easy task. A sultry autumn day had followed the long, anxious night; the heat was intense.

Behind the veil of smoke, Stahremberg and his gallant garrison could barely guess how their deliverers were getting on. Tidings from the watch-tower of St. Stephen's would spread alternate hope and fear among the citizens. The fate of Vienna yet trembled in the balance.

The Vizier's preparations for the fight were very different from those of his Christian opponents. He began by slaughtering in cold blood thirty thousand captives who were confined in his camp, the majority being women.

The butchering ended, he posted his men. But to the Grand Vizier the news had been swiftly brought, the news he had hitherto refused to believe.

"By Allah, the king is really here," was the cry.

And as the words were spoken, the shout, "Long live Sobieski!" rolled along the Christian lines. There was no time to be lost.

From a field-tent of crimson silk the Vizier gave his orders. In overwhelming numbers the Turks fought bravely, for with all their faults, cowardice in battle was unknown to them; but the Turkish infantry without pikes, their cavalry without heavy armour, could not withstand the shock of the heavy German soldiers, could not arrest the rush of the Polish nobles, whose spears, it was said, "could uphold the heavens should they fall." The king at their head, they came down like a whirlwind, shouting, "God save Poland!"

The Turks went down before them, or turned and fled in headlong confusion. One old pasha, reputed to be the greatest of the Turkish warriors, had already fled.

"Can you not help me?" cried the Vizier in despair, turning to the Khan of the Crimea.

"No," was the answer. "I know the King of Poland well. It is impossible to resist him; think only of flight." The panic became general.

Away through the wasted borders of Austria, away to the frontier of Hungary, poured the Turkish soldiers. The Vizier himself was hurried along with the stream. Weeping and cursing by turns, he had neither time to think nor power to command.

His charger, too heavily ornamented for rapid flight, was still held by a slave at the entrance when Sobieski took possession of his gorgeous tent. Quickly cutting off one of the golden stirrups, he sent it to his queen as a token of the defeat and flight of its late owner.

By seven o'clock communication was opened with Stahremberg, and the little garrison sallied forth to join the relieving army in the slaughter of the Turkish soldiers who had been left forgotten in the trenches. Even then, one miner was found doggedly toiling beneath the ramparts, ignorant of the flight or death of his companions. Vienna was saved.

The spoil from the Turkish camp that fell into the hands of the Christians was enormous—310 pieces of cannon, 20,000 animals, 125,000 tents, 9,000 carriages.

These were but a few of the riches. In the Vizier's tent, carpets and furs, jewelled arms and quivers studded with rubies and pearls, fell into Sobieski's hands.

Among the menagerie, the king found a starving lion¬ess, which he ordered to be fed and cared for. With his own hands, the Vizier had beheaded his favourite ostrich, to prevent it falling into the hands of the Chris¬tians.

At sunrise, on the thirteenth, the Viennese rushed forth in crowds, after their two months' imprisonment. There was only one gate open, but it was soon clogged with the crowds who were eager to pass through, and a vast number clambered over the rubbish of the breaches, eager to get their share of plunder from the Turkish camp.

At ten o'clock, Stahremberg himself came out of the city to greet his deliverers. John Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine returned to Vienna with him, amid the shouts of the troops. People pressed forward to kiss the king's hand, and to welcome him as the saviour of their city. Then all went to church for a solemn thanksgiving service. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John," was the text chosen by the preacher. Service over, a salute of three hundred guns proclaimed the victory far and wide, and the shouts of "Long live Sobieski!" that filled the city, out-thundered the thunder of the cannon.

Sobieski had saved Austria's capital. "How will the emperor receive him?" was the question which ran from lip to lip.

"With open arms, since he has saved the empire," said Lorraine decidedly.

But the emperor was jealous; Sobieski had earned the applause that he should have earned, had saved the capital that he should have saved. A few cold words in Latin were all he could find to say out of his jealousy to the deliverer of his people.

The great King of Poland saw how matters stood.

"I am happy, sire," he said, with his characteristic courtesy, "to have been able to render you this slight service." Then turning his horse, he saluted, and rode away.

Mazeppa, The Hetman of the Cossacks

Russia—1709

Mazeppa is known to history mainly by reason of his marvellous ride tied on to a wild horse, which bore him swiftly away over miles and miles of country, finally carrying him into the land of the Cossacks.

But there is a great deal more that is interesting about his life than this. Many and varied were the scenes of his life: first he was page in the court of Warsaw to the King of Poland; then came the unwilling ride to the land of the Cossacks, and his life there as statesman; finally the curtain drops on Mazeppa, the traitor and deserter!

With all his faults, it is hard not to admire his chivalrous character, though the man who alone knew how to rule the wild hearts of the lawless Cossacks was the same man who played false to his friend Peter the Great, in order to throw in his lot with the greater king, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Yet, with all his treachery, he never realized the dream of his life, which was to make the land of the Cossacks an independent kingdom.

Mazeppa's first appearance was at the court at Warsaw in 1660. He was of Russian origin, but of his boyhood nothing is known. He was made page by the King of Poland, and lived quietly at court for six years. But he was hot-headed and impetuous, and with his Russian blood he could not get on with the haughty Polish courtiers. As time went on, he began to quarrel, and soon swords were drawn in the palace. This, according to the ideas of the time, was high treason; young Mazeppa was obliged to leave the court, and live in exile in Russia.

Not far from where he settled lived an old Polish count, who had married a young and very beautiful wife. Mazeppa was handsome, brilliant at sports, a good rider, attractive, and withal young. He spent a great deal of his time at the count's house, and the old man grew very jealous of him.

One night he waylaid him in the road, and accused him of paying too much attention to the young countess.

"Seize him! strip him of his clothes, and set him on a horse!" cried the enraged husband to his servants.

Mazeppa was seized and stripped. Then a splendid horse was brought forward, a "Tartar of the Ukraine breed." The animal had only been caught and brought in the day before; he was as wild as the wild deer, un¬trained, unmanageable: There he stood, snorting and struggling, while the count ordered Mazeppa to be bound on to his back.

With cords and thongs he was tightly tied on; then suddenly the maddened animal was loosened. The noise of firearms and lashes from the servants' whips started it off at a tearing pace, with young Mazeppa tied help¬lessly on its back.

Away and away they darted, fiery steed and half fainting rider!

"'Twas scarcely yet the break of day, And on he foamed—away—away."

All human dwellings were soon left behind—so the poet Byron tells the story—towns, villages disappeared, and ever the wild horse made its way toward a vast plain bounded by black forests—on towards its native land, the land of the Ukraine, where the Cossacks lived. Byron tells the story graphically—

"The sky was dull and dim and grey And a low breeze crept moaning by, I could have answered with a sigh, But fast we fled—away—away, And I could neither sigh nor pray, And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain Upon the courser's bristling mane; But, snorting still with rage and fear, He flew upon his far career. Meantime my cords were wet with gore, Which, oozing through my limbs, ran o'er; And in my tongue the thirst became A something fierier than flame."

On went the horse, furious and untired, on towards the wide and boundless forest studded with short, sturdy trees and narrow footpaths. At last the wild animal dashed into a river, swam across, struggled up the steep bank, up on to the silent shore, and rushed on again as before.

"And all behind was dark and drear, And all before was night and fear."

Across another boundless plain, and then the horse's strength failed, his pace slackened. Slowly the sun rose, and the "mists were curled back from the solitary world." Still there were no signs of human life, not an insect, not a bird to break the silence of those dreary plains. The weary brute still staggered on. But at last it could go no further; one convulsive effort, and then it fell down—dead!

Mazeppa was yet bound to the dead horse; together they lay helpless on the ground. There he lay the whole day, unable to move hand or foot, faint and bleeding, till the sun again went down, and he lost consciousness.

He awoke to find himself in a peasant's cottage, with Cossacks to look after him, and they soon nursed him back to life again.

Now this is the legend of Mazeppa.

That he found his way to the land of the Cossacks is true; whether he was carried thither, as Byron describes, is uncertain.

Exiled from court and from his own estates, Mazeppa lived for a time among the Cossack peasants. Now the Cossacks lived in a vast tract of land in South Russia, bordering on the Crimea. They were an independent people, but they were surrounded by foes.

"We are not strong enough to stand without a master among so many great kingdoms," cried the leader or "hetman" of the Cossacks one day when he had called them together. "We have four neighbours, to any of which we may give ourselves—the King of Poland, the Sultan of Turkey, the Khan of the Crimea, or the Tsar of Russia. Which do you choose?"

"The Tsar of Russia," cried the Cossacks with one accord, and a treaty with Russia was concluded.

And this was the condition of the Cossacks when Mazeppa first came to live among them.

He soon won his way into their hearts. They discovered that he was a man of learning—he spoke Russian, Polish, and Latin with ease—and before long he was made a sort of foreign secretary to the hetman.

He was sent on various missions, which he fulfilled cleverly, though on one occasion he nearly lost his life. The Cossacks were beginning to feel the oppression of Russia, and Mazeppa was sent to ask help from the Grand Vizier of Turkey. Somehow he fell into the enemy's hands, and was seized and sent to Moscow. Others would have paid dearly for this accident in this land of sus¬picion, but Mazeppa won over his judges, and somehow regained his liberty. He gradually rose in importance, till the day came which was to see him proclaimed hetman of the Cossacks.

It was the twenty-fifth of July, when, by a deeply-laid plot, the old hetman was suddenly and falsely accused of tyranny, treason, and many other crimes. He was seized on his way from church, placed in a dilapidated old cart, and brought before a made—up tribunal. He appeared before his accusers, leaning on his silver-headed staff. They all spoke at once, and a tumult ensued. In vain the hetman tried to speak and defend himself. His accusers threw themselves on him to prevent his speaking, and in another moment blows would have followed.

One voice rose above the rest: "Exile him to Siberia!" The old man's sentence was spoken. He was not the first Cossack hetman doomed to this fate.

"Choose another hetman, according to your ancient custom," cried one in authority standing on a bench.

On a table in the tent was placed the hetman's standard, mace, and pennon of horses' tails.

For a moment there was silence. Then cries of "Mazeppa! Mazeppa!" filled the air.

And so, on July 25, 1687, Mazeppa was proclaimed hetman of the Cossacks.

It was no easy task to rule over those lawless Cossacks, and the new hetman was ambitious, grasping, cruel. To raise the country to an independent position, to gain liberty for the oppressed people, now became the dream of his life; and further dreams of seeing himself a king over them induced him to stoop, as stoop he did, to base intrigue and treachery.

He lived in great luxury at the capital, Batourin, the usual residence of the hetmans, on the border of the great forests which still cover that part of Russia.

He dressed in the style of a Polish count, with rich Oriental caftan, carved sabre, plumed bonnet, and head and face shaven except for a long moustache. He formed a company of bodyguards, entertained his friends at splendid banquets, and lived as a king among his subjects.

Openly Mazeppa avowed his passionate devotion to Russia, his loyalty to the Tsar, Peter the Great, whose servant he was; at heart he was still a Pole. On the other hand, Peter the Great, so slow to confide in any .one, had given his whole confidence to Mazeppa; nothing shook his trust in the Cossack hetman. Though secret letters appeared from time to time, though evil reports were poured into the ever-open ears of the secret police at Moscow, the trustful Tsar only sent the letters lightly back to Mazeppa, as if the contents were but some light sport.

If Mazeppa could manage to trace the writer of these secret letters, a gibbet was quickly erected at Batourin, and the wretch was nailed up as a warning to others.

On the other hand, Mazeppa forwarded to the Tsar letters from the King of Poland and other enemies of Russia begging for Cossack help, and he was rewarded with great presents of land and money from his confid¬ing ruler.

One day he was at table with the Tsar at Moscow on the most friendly terms, when the Tsar proposed to him that he should try to make his people more dependent on Russia, more disciplined and quiet.

"The position of the Ukraine and the genius of the Cossacks make this impossible," answered Mazeppa. The Tsar was over-heated with wine.

"Traitor! traitor!" he cried excitedly.

The hetman hurried back to the Ukraine. The idea long dreamt of should be a dream no more! He planned out his long-cherished design—the ruin of the Tsar, the independence of the Ukraine.

Mazeppa has been compared to Brutus, disguising his wishes and flattering his master for twenty long years, in order to strike more surely when the moment came. Yet this was a rough and barbarous age, and Russia was a land of intrigue and suspicion.

His power of deception defied all. If he wanted to find out a secret of the Russian court, he would stoop to any strategy. Sometimes he would feign illness, and doctors attended him night and day. Such was his appa¬rent weakness that he could neither rise nor walk; lying in bed covered with plasters, ointments, and bandages, he would groan as one at the point of death. The crisis past, he would recover quickly. He could abuse his friends and praise his enemies, till he succeeded in getting some profound secret disclosed.

And so the hetman lived and planned to undermine the Tsar's power.

It is somewhat of a relief to turn for a moment from these dark passages in the hetman's life, to find that he had yet some tender feelings left. And these were for his godchild, Matrena, the daughter of his secretary of state.

"My little heart, my rosebud! my heart is grieved at the idea that I cannot see thy eyes and little, fair face. With this letter I salute thee, and embrace all thy little person.

But Matrena's father was not pleased at the old hetman's love for his little daughter, and he took every opportunity of undermining Mazeppa's power.

One day Mazeppa was away on an expedition, and his secretary was taking his place, when a party of monks passed through Batourin on their way back to Russia after a pilgrimage to the south. Weary with their day's journey, they were resting on a bench near the hetman's house, when a Cossack peasant suggested to them to see the vice-hetman, who was known to be charitable to pilgrims. He was right. The monks were generously entertained at the hetman's house, and just as they were going, the vice-hetman called one of them back. Draw¬ing him to a tent under the trees in the garden, he whispered,—

"Art thou trustworthy? We wish to confide a secret to thee. Art thou the man to keep it?"

The monk swore to reveal nothing.

"As God died for us, we should be ready to die for the Great Tsar," cried the vice-hetman.

The monk agreed with him.

"The hetman Mazeppa designs to betray the Great Tsar and pass over to the Poles," continued the vice-¬hetman. "He is planning the ruin of Russia and the slavery of the Ukraine. Thou must depart immediately and carry these words to Moscow."

Pressing seven gold florins into the monk's hand he departed. Arrived in Moscow, he went straight to the "Informers' Office." But Peter the Great was busy with other matters. Moreover, he still believed implicitly in Mazeppa, and would hear of nothing against him. So the poor monk was sent to prison for his pains.

Again and again did the vice-hetman try to get his news to the ears of the unsuspecting Tsar. At last the latter grew so tired of these repeated complaints against his favourite that he begged Mazeppa to seize the informers, which he did with pleasure. Five hundred Cossacks were sent to arrest the vice-hetman and his wife, and one July day, 1708, their heads were chopped off before the whole Cossack army. A few weeks later things reached a crisis.

Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, who had hitherto swept all before him, was threatening Moscow.

"Call out your forces and join me with all speed," was the urgent message from Peter the Great to his favourite.

"I am suffering from the gout," was the hetman's answer; "and further, the troubled state of the country will not allow me to be absent from home."

The "gout" did not prevent his writing to Charles the Twelfth. He arranged to meet the King of Sweden on the Cossack frontier at the head of thirty thousand men. His time had come. He had cherished the notion for twenty long years—had played his double game. The Tsar should not call him traitor any more on baseless grounds, the whole world would cry traitor soon. But his dream would be realized; the Cossacks would have an independent kingdom, and he, Mazeppa, their hetman, would be their king. He called together a council of Cossack elders, and appeared before them irresolute. He placed the alternatives before them.

"We must obey the call of the Tsar," he said, with apparent loyalty.

"Go not to him," cried the chiefs, "or thou wilt ruin. us and the Ukraine together. Send to Charles, who awaits us."

"Is this your counsel?" asked Mazeppa. "I alone, then, will join his Imperial Majesty; as for you, you will all perish!"

Then suddenly he changed his manner.

"Shall we send some one to the king?" he said, softly, as if it was a new idea. "Yes or no?"

"Send without delay," they cried in chorus.

So the hetman wrote his note in Latin and sent it to Charles.

At the same time he took to his bed, wrote to the Tsar's general that he was extremely ill, and felt the end was near.

Hearing of the serious illness of Mazeppa, the Russian general hastened to Batourin to confer with the hetman. Arrived at the castle, he found the drawbridge up, and was refused admission. While waiting in astonishment at this unlooked-for change, he was informed that, far from being ill and about to die, Mazeppa was at that moment on his way to the Swedish camp to join forces with Charles the Twelfth, the Swedish hero.

When the news of the hetman's treason reached the Tsar, he plunged into one of those outbursts of rage that made his courtiers tremble. He at once marched to Batourin, stormed the hetman's residence, and reduced it to ashes. Then he sent his general in pursuit of Mazeppa.

Meanwhile Mazeppa had arrived at the banks of the river with some sixty thousand Cossacks yet ignorant of his treachery. Forming them round him in a circle, he addressed them in a loud voice. He went over the services that he had rendered to their nation, the zeal with which he had defended their rights; he showed them to what slavery Peter the Great was scheming to reduce them.

"Will you submit to this humiliating yoke that has already crushed the Russians, will you tolerate "the changes in your army, will you bear the taxes which are imposed on you?" he cried. "No; let us seize the grand opportunity of passing under the colours of a hero who will grant us independence."

As the full import of these words dawned on the Cossack soldiers, they became stupefied and immovably silent. Then they began to murmur. "Treason, treason," was whispered through the ranks. With one accord they made their way back to the Ukraine. Only two regi¬ments remained loyal to Mazeppa.

Meanwhile Charles of Sweden was marching to the banks of the river where Mazeppa had arranged to meet him. He intended to take up his winter quarters in the Ukraine, and having secured the affection of the Cossacks and united his army with Mazeppa's, to conquer Russia in the spring. He was fearfully delayed on his way, and his army was reduced by hunger and fatigue before it arrived at the river bank. And then, instead of finding Mazeppa with a great Cossack army at his back, he found him with his two regiments only; more a fugi¬tive than an ally, more an adventurer than the would-be Cossack king. His only hope of helping the Swedish king now was by his knowledge of the country, unknown to the Swedes.

But before any active measures could be taken, the terrible winter of 1709 set in. It was so cold that "the very birds froze in the air," said Peter the Great. But Charles was indefatigable. He insisted on making long marches through the Ukraine, during one of which two thousand men fell dead with cold before his very eyes. Most of the men had no boots or shoes; they were forced to make stockings of the skins of wild beasts as best they could; and the famous Swedish army that had once carried all before it, was now perishing with cold and hunger.

It was during this winter that the Tsar offered pardon to his favourite Mazeppa if he would only return. But Mazeppa's answer was firm.

"Only to save my nation from the yoke of Russia," answered the hetman, "have I joined the King of Sweden. As for me, I am old, wifeless, childless; I would sooner have retreated to some unknown corner to spend my last few years. But having governed the Ukraine for twenty years, I cannot see the tyranny of Russia without wishing to deliver my country."

THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA

It was in July 1709 that the armies of Peter the Great and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden met at Pultowa. The King of Sweden and the hetman of the Cossacks were reckless. They had little chance against the great Russian army. Charles, too, had been badly wounded shortly before, and had to lead his army carried in a litter.

The battle began at half-past four in the morning. Before night Charles and Mazeppa were in full flight, nine thousand Swedes and Cossacks had been killed, and some six thousand taken prisoners.

"We will never be prisoners to the Russians. Come, let us go to the Turks," said Charles, as the defeated men made their escape.

Horse after horse broke down under the fugitives, for the Russians were in pursuit. The night after the battle they spent in a wood at the foot of a tree, in danger every moment of being taken by the enemy. Charles was in high fever from his wound.

Next day they had to cross the river Dnieper. Charles was lifted into the boat, almost unconscious now. Mazeppa entered the boat with him, but the current was very strong. The Cossack threw out the few treasures with which he had escaped, to lighten the boat and save the king's life and his own. Suddenly a great wind sprang up from the desert, the horizon became covered with clouds; a storm was brewing. Waves rose as on the sea; other boats sank. It seemed as if the Swedish king and the Ukraine hetman must perish now.

But they managed to get ashore, and plunged at once into the desert on their way to Turkey. It was a vast solitude they had to cross; there was no water, no trees, no grain, no trace of vegetation, no animals; the dry sand made the heat of the sun more burning, the cold of the nights more keen.

After five terrible days of marching they arrived on the Turkish frontier, and sought refuge with the Turks. But they were not safe here. The Tsar demanded that Mazeppa should be given up to him.

Mazeppa was old now, and broken with disappoint¬ment; and at the moment when he was about to be given up to his enemies he died—died at the age of eighty, leaving the Cossack nation that he had found large and powerful a mere shadow of its former self.

And the Cossacks? They survived their great hetman but a short time as an independent people.

Mazeppa's name is not allowed to die in Russia. As the first Sunday in Lent comes round, "Anathema Sunday," as it is called, Mazeppa, with other great rebels of former times, is cursed solemnly by the priests and the great Russian congregations. This is but a relic of a more severe excommunication, when, in the Tsar's presence, the portrait of Mazeppa hanging in one of the cathedrals was lifted down with a rope and suspended upon a gibbet, as a fit ending to the rebel traitor "who designed to give the Christian people over to Polish infidels."

The Boyhood of Frederick the Great

Prussia—1712

Somewhat over a hundred years ago there used to be seen, riding or driving in a rapid manner, on the open roads or through the scraggy woods near Potsdam, a highly interesting, lean, little old man. He had a stoop¬ing figure, but seemed none the less alert for that.

He was a king, "every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king."

He was dressed with Spartan simplicity: an old mili¬tary cocked hat, trampled and kneaded, took the place of a crown; a walking-stick cut from the woods served as a sceptre; for royal robes he wore merely a soldier's blue coat with red facings.

And this was no less a man than Frederick the Great of Prussia—at least, so he was known to the world at large; at home among the common people, in his German fatherland, he was only known as "Father Fritz."

His thin face, with its steadfast grey eyes, bore traces of much sorrow, and gave evidence of much hard labour done in the world. Perhaps his childhood alone and the hardships he endured would account for a good deal.

He was born in the palace of Berlin on a cold January day in the year 1712. Great were the rejoicings when the news spread that a prince was born to the Crown Prince, afterwards Frederick the First; for two little princes had already died: one, it was said, had been killed by the noise of the cannon firing for joy over it; the other was crushed to death by the weighty dress and metal crown put on it at the christening. This little prince too had a narrow escape of being stifled by the somewhat rough caresses of its overjoyed young father.

On Sunday, the last day of the year 1712, at the age of one week, the prince was christened Frederick with great pomp and magnificence. He was not spared the cannon volleys or the metal crown, but he survived them all, and lived to be one of the greatest kings Prussia ever had.

When Frederick was but fourteen months old, his grandfather died, and his father became King of Prussia.

The king seems to have been fond enough of the little Crown Prince Fritz at this time. He was a quiet, rather melancholy child, and very delicate. He was brought up with Spartan simplicity, his food was of the plainest, and he was kept in petticoats and curls for a long time.

To make a soldier of him was his father's one idea, and great was the king's joy when one day on his return home he found the small boy beating a drum with evi¬dent pleasure.

But the king was destined to disappointment. The Crown Prince was no soldier at this early age.

The king's idea of what his education should be was written down for the tutors who were to teach the prince.

"He is to learn no Latin, observe that, however it may surprise you," he writes. "What has a living German man and king of the eighteenth century to do with dead old heathen Latins? Let him learn arithmetic, mathematics, artillery, economy, history in particular, ancient history only slightly, but the history of the last hundred and fifty years to the exactest pitch. Of geography he must know whatever is remarkable in each country.

"The prince must, from youth upwards, be trained to act as officer and general, and to seek all his glory in the soldier's profession. You must make it your care to stamp into my son a true love for the soldier's business, and to impress on him that there is nothing in the world can bring a prince renown and honour like the sword."

Already a miniature soldier company had been formed for the prince, numbering over a hundred. Boys of his own age, selected from noble Prussian families, made up this "Company of Crown Prince Cadets," as they were called, and the Crown Prince himself was drilled until he could himself take command, in the Prussian uniform of light blue and a cocked hat. He was but ten when the king had a "little arsenal "made for him in the "Orange Hall of the palace," where, with a few companions, he could mount batteries and fire small brass ordnance. From an early age he accompanied the king on his annual reviews; for from the Russian frontier to the French border every garrison and regiment was rigorously reviewed by the king once a year.

The boy had very little time to call his own. Here is his father's time-table for his days when he was ten years old:—

"On Monday, as on all week days, he is to be called at six, and so soon as called he is to rise; you are to stand to him, that he do not loiter or turn in bed, but briskly and at once get up and say his prayers. This done, he shall as rapidly as possible get on his shoes and spatter-dashes, also wash his face and hands, but not with soap. Then he shall put on a short dressing-gown, have his hair combed out and queued, but not powdered. While getting combed and queued, he shall at the same time take breakfast of tea, so that both jobs go on at once; and this shall be ended before half-past six. Then enter his tutor and the servants with worship, hymns and prayers follow; this is done by seven, and the servants go again. From seven till nine he learns history, from nine to a quarter to eleven the Christian religion. Then Fritz rapidly washes his face with water, hands with soap and water; clean shirt; pow¬ders, and puts on coat; about eleven, comes to the king. Stays with the king till two, perhaps walking a little, dining always at noon. At two he goes back to his room. His tutor is there ready, takes him upon the maps and geography from two to three. From three to four he treats of morality; from four to five lie writes German letters, to acquire a good style. About five Fritz shall wash his hands, and go to the king, ride out, or divert himself in the air and not in his room, and do what he likes, if it is not against God.

"In dressing and undressing, you must accustom him to get out of and into his clothes as fast as is humanly pos¬sible. You will also look that he learns to put on and put off his clothes himself, without help from others, and that he be clean and neat, and not so dirty. 'Not so dirty,' that is my last word, and here is my signature.

FREDERICK WILLIAM

The boy was slow in learning the lessons he did not care about; at spelling he was bad even to the end of his long life. The forbidden Latin had great attractions for him, and he used to make his tutor teach him the language in secret. One day the king was going his rounds when he came upon Fritz and his tutor engaged in this forbidden employment. The table was strewn with Latin books, dictionaries, and grammars, and the Crown Prince was eagerly learning. "What is this?" roared the king, fixing his eyes on a Latin copy of the "Golden Bull."

"Your Majesty, I am explaining the 'Golden Bull' to the prince!" exclaimed the trembling tutor.

"Dog, I will 'Golden Bull' you!" cried the king. "Go!" And the terrified tutor fled.

This was not the only grievance the king had now to complain of. The boy did not care for hunting; he preferred story-books and flute-playing. He refused to have his hair closely cropped according to army regulation, and, instead, "combed it out like a cockatoo."

But on this last point the king was firm, and one day the court surgeon, with comb and scissors, was ordered to come and crop the prince's hair before his father's eyes.

The boy was growing to have a decided will of his own, which was distasteful to the tyrannical king, and the first rifts of division in the royal household now began to take place. New offences seemed to be added day by day. The king began to hate the Crown Prince, and to long sorrowfully that his younger brother, August William, might be Crown Prince in his stead.

And yet this Fritz, growing daily more out of favour, was to become one of the greatest of the Prussian kings, by whom his angry father would be far out-shadowed one day.

In vain did his mother try to conciliate the king, im¬ploring him to take the Crown Prince back into favour.

"I cannot bear the effeminate fellow," was the king's answer, "who has no manly inclinations, who is shy, cannot ride or shoot, is not cleanly in his person, frizzes his hair like a fool, and does not cut it. All this I have reprimanded a thousand times, but all in vain."

Still the Crown Prince kept his own way.

After devoting a certain time to restraint, to drilling in tight uniforms, he would retire to his room, throw his uniform into a corner, have his hair dressed, put on a gold brocade dressing-gown, and practise on his flute with a great flute-player called Quantz.

One day he was practising in this manner, when a mes¬senger entered breathlessly to say the king was coming, indeed was close at hand.

Snatching up the flutes and music-books, Quantz had just time to hide himself in a small closet from which the stove was supplied with fuel, while the Crown Prince struggled into his uniform.

The king entered full of suspicion. He saw the state of the case. Looking about, he discovered behind a cur¬tain shelves of books and some handsome dressing-gowns. These he ordered to be burned. Then he stormed at the prince, while Quantz trembled in his hiding-place.

"Fritz is a piper and a poet," cried the king; "he cares nothing about soldiers, and will undo all that I have been doing."

The king with his family was at Potsdam, where he had a violent attack of gout in both feet. This made him exceedingly ill-tempered, and his children suffered severely, especially the Crown Prince and his favourite sister Wil¬helmina. Here is her account:—

"We were obliged to be in his room by nine in the morning; we dined in it, and durst not leave it on any account. Nothing was to be heard all day but abuse of me and my brother. The king never called me anything but the 'English brat,' and my brother 'that scoundrel Fritz.' He forced us to eat and drink things which we disliked or which disagreed with us. The king was drawn about in a chair through the whole palace, his two arms being supported by crutches. We had always to follow this triumphal car, like captives about to undergo their sentence. One day, as we rose from table, he aimed a violent blow at me with his crutch."

Indeed, the royal children in this eighteenth century palace seem to have been treated as no human being would treat a dog or a cat in these days.

The king almost starved them, too. He carved himself, and helped everybody except Wilhelmina and Fritz. He rarely saw the Crown Prince without seizing him by the collar and caning him.

The situation became intolerable to the young man, now close on eighteen. At last he sent a secret letter to his mother. It is dated Potsdam, December 1729:—

"I am in the uttermost despair. The king has entirely forgotten that I am his son. This morning I came into his room as usual. At the first sight of me he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage, almost beside himself; it was only weariness that made him give up.

"I am driven to extremity. I have too much honour to endure such treatment, and I am resolved to put an end to it in one way or another."

His plans of escape were made, and one night soon after he went into his sister's room to say good-bye.

"I am come to bid you farewell, my dear sister," he said. "I go, and do not come back. I cannot endure the usage I suffer; my patience is at an end. I shall get across to England. Calm yourself. We shall soon meet again in places where joy shall succeed our tears, and we shall be free from these persecutions."

Wilhelmina was stupefied for a moment. Then, seeing the danger of his scheme, she argued with him long into the night till he promised to give up his wild plans, or, anyhow, postpone them.

But by the following year things had reached such a crisis that even Wilhelmina agreed that flight was his only chance. So detestable had the Crown Prince become to his father that one day, on entering the king's room as usual, he was seized by the hair, dragged to the window, and would soon have been put an end to had not timely help arrived.

"I will tell you secretly of all that happens," he said miserably to his sister, "and find a safe channel for sending you letters."

But his escape was badly planned, and the page who was to accompany him, in an agony of remorse, confessed all to the king.

The Crown Prince was arrested and brought back. His long-planned flight had failed; moreover, his condition was worse than before, for he was practically now a prisoner.

Openly the king struck him till the blood ran down his face; his sword was taken from him, and he was treated as a state criminal.

"Why did you run away?" asked the king in a furious voice.

"Because," replied the prince firmly, "you have not treated me like your son, but like a base slave."

"Then you are an infamous deserter, who have no honour," roared the king.

"I have as much as you," answered the prince, "and I have done no more than I have heard you say a hundred times that you would have done were you in my place."

The king was beside himself at this answer. He drew his sword, and would have run the prince through had not an old general stepped between them to prevent it.

"If, sire," he cried, seizing the king's arm, "you must have blood, stab me. My old body is not good for much; but spare your son!"

The sword was put back; the prince was removed to a separate room, where two sentries with fixed bayonets kept watch over him; and the king did not see him again for a year and three days.

FREDERICK'S INTERVIEW WITH HIS FATHER AFTER HIS ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE.

In September he was sent to a fortress some sixty miles from Berlin, and lodged in a strong room there. It con¬sisted of bare walls; there was no furniture; books were forbidden. His sword had been taken from him, every mark of dignity was gone. He was clad in brown prison dress of the plainest cloth; his food was to cost ten-pence a day, and was to be cut up, no knife being allowed him. The room was to be opened morning, noon, and evening, four minutes at a time; the tallow lights were to be extinguished at seven p.m. He was to be alone all day, not even his flute might comfort him through the long and dreary hours.

Yet even this was not enough punishment, in the eyes of the king, for one who had deserted from the Prussian army. A court-martial must try him and his friend Katte, who was mixed up in the plan of escape.

The court-martial sat for six days, and made known the result to the king; that result was, that Katte must die the death of a deserter.

It was in the grey of a winter morning in November 1730 that Katte was led forth past the windows of the prince's fortress, where the scaffold awaited him.

"Pardon me, dear Katte," cried the miserable prince, overwhelmed with despair. "Oh, that this should be what I have done for you!"

"Death is sweet for a prince I love so well," answered Katte bravely as he passed on to his doom.

And the Crown Prince Fritz sank fainting on the floor. So melancholy and unhappy did the prince become that those about him besought the king to have pity on him, lest some dreadful mental malady should come on.

"If the Prince Royal really repents with all his heart of the faults he has committed, and is firmly resolved to amend," wrote the king to the chaplain, "you will declare to him, in my name, that, though I cannot entirely forgive him, I will mitigate the severity of his confine¬ment. He shall have the town of Custrin for his prison, but he shall not go beyond it."

The Crown Prince, after taking a solemn oath to sub¬mit to the king in all things, was then half released. When the prince heard of his father's concession, tears came into his eyes.

"Is this possible?" he murmured; and having taken the oath, he added firmly, "I am resolved never to break it."

Further, he sent a message to his father. "Say," he said, "I am deeply affected by my father's goodness, and request him to send me a belt for my sword."

"What!" exclaimed the king with delight, "is Fritz a soldier?"

On the fifteenth of August, just a year after the unlucky failure of escape, the king thought fit to visit his son in his exile and judge for himself whether he was in a state to be received back into favour. As soon as they met, the Crown Prince fell at his father's feet. The king, in a stern voice, bade him rise.

"You must recollect what has passed during the last year, and how shamefully you have behaved," he said. Then he went on to enumerate all his faults, until the prince, in a flood of tears and with deep emotion, kissed the king's feet. At last the king was touched, and embraced his son, "which gave the prince such delight as no pen is capable of expressing."

As the first tokens of returning favour, the king, on his return to Potsdam, sent him a carriage and horses, with a promise of soon allowing him to return to the army again.

In November 1731, he was summoned to Berlin to attend the marriage festivities of his sister Wilhelmina. She had suffered much during her brother's imprisonment, and it was only to help the reconciliation between her father and brother that she consented to become the wife of the Prince of Bayreuth, whom she had never seen. All at once he stood before them.

"See, madam, there is Fritz again!" cried the king, as the prince stood before his astonished sister.

The princess was overcome at seeing him again. "I threw my arms about his neck," she says, "and was so agitated that I could only utter broken sentences. I cried, I laughed like one out of her senses. I took my brother by the hand and begged the king to love him again; but my brother was as cold as ice and silent."

The court and the army were rejoiced to see the prince in their midst again.

"Let us have him in the army again, your majesty," they said. And Fritz was once more allowed to wear the uniform of the Prussian army.

And so the unhappy boyhood of Frederick the Great was ended.

"I have always loved you," said his father, as the Crown Prince knelt beside his dying bed, "though I have been strict with you. God is very good to give me so excellent and worthy a son."

Fritz kissed his father's hand, while his tears fell. The king clasped him in his arms, and pressing him to his bosom, sobbed,—

"O my God, I die content, since I have such a worthy son and successor!"

The Flight to Varennes

France—1792

The flight of Louis the Sixteenth, with his beautiful wife, Marie Antoinette, and his children, from Paris to Varennes is not merely one of the most pic¬turesque and thrilling episodes of the French Revolution, but it also marks a great crisis in European history.

It took place on the twentieth of June, in the year 1792. For some time past the position of the king and queen at the Tuileries had been intolerable, intolerable not only to themselves, but to poor, disturbed France too.

For months a rumour had been afloat that they were meditating flight. Indeed the National Guard had so suspected any movement on the part of Louis that they had actually stopped and detained by force the royal carriages as they were starting for the palace of St. Cloud, merely for change of air and peace—peace from the intense anxiety of his perilous position as king, peace from the feverish changes through which France was passing. This piece of tyranny, by which the royal family were forced back to the Tuileries, made them more determined than ever to escape from their unbearable position. Secretly their plans were made; the servants must suspect nothing of their preparations, and yet a good deal of preparation was necessary. The queen insisted on having new dresses; she must take with her a certain dressing-case of inlaid ivory and rosewood containing her perfumes too.

But at last the preparations were complete, thanks to many faithful friends, who were even more anxious to accomplish the king's escape than the king himself.

The plan was that the royal family were to escape by a glass door in the south wing of the Tuileries, and cross¬ing the two courts on foot, get into a carriage which was to be awaiting them at the corner of one of the streets. In this they were to drive beyond the outskirts of Paris, where a travelling carriage was to be ready to receive them. At each stage, where the post-horses were to be changed, a detachment of cavalry was to be ready to prevent interruption, and after a short interval these were to follow the royal carriage, picking up each detachment in turn, and thus at every stage the armed force would be increased.

It was Count Ferseu, a "gallant soldier and Swede," a devoted friend of the king and queen, who arranged most of these intricate plans. He was both head and hand. He it was who procured the duplicate of a passport which had been issued for a relation of his, the Baroness de Korff and suite; he it was who ordered the travelling carriage, which indeed he had built for the occasion; he it was who, dressed as a coachman, drove the royal fugitives beyond the barriers of Paris. Under the name of Baroness de Korff and suite the royal family were to travel.

The little dauphin was to be dressed as a girl. He and his sister, under the names of Amelia and Aglae, were to be travelling with their mother the Baroness de Korff, and their governess Madame Roche, who was to be the great Marie Antoinette herself. The king was to be dressed as a valet de chambre, and accompany the party in that capacity.

Thus far all seemed satisfactory and simple. But the story of this flight to Varennes is indeed a chapter of accidents. Mismanagement and misfortunes without end wrecked the whole, and placed the hapless king in a position worse, far worse, than he was in before.

On the afternoon of Monday, the twentieth of June, Count Ferseu paid his last visit to the royal family in the Tuileries. He had smuggled the last of the clothes into the palace—the frock-coat and round hat for the king, the travelling-dresses and bonnets for the queen, the frocks for the two children, all were concealed and ready.

The queen was weeping bitterly. A rumour was afloat that their preparations for flight had been discovered, but nothing would induce them to change their plans.

The king was deeply affected as he took leave of Ferseu, with the assurance that he could never forget all that he had done for him.

To avoid suspicion, the queen drove out with her chil¬dren to the gardens of the Tivoli in the afternoon. She took this opportunity to tell the children they must be surprised at nothing they might see or hear that night.

They returned at seven o'clock, and the queen then sat for her hair to be dressed in the elaborate manner of the age, a feat which took a whole hour. At nine supper was served as usual, and the queen dismissed her servants as soon as possible. She went to bed, or appeared to do so, and her attendant shut the door of the passage leading to her room.

The little dauphin had eaten his supper and been put to bed at nine o'clock.

About half-past ten the queen went to his room. The dauphin was fast asleep, unconscious of the coming danger. The queen woke him up. The little princess was already up and attired in a cheap dress of muslin, which had been bought a few days before at three and sixpence. Her account of this terrible night is touching in its simplicity and truth:—

"They dressed my brother as a little girl. He looked beautiful, but he was so sleepy that he could not stand, and did not know what we were all about. I asked him what he thought we were going to do. He answered, 'I suppose to act a play, since we have got these odd dresses.'"

The two children, with their governess and two waiting maids, who were to accompany the royal party, met in one of the queen's apartments. The queen looked out into the courtyard. Everything was quiet. The hackney coach was standing by the glass door, in the farthest corner, by which it was arranged the royal family should escape. Ferseu sat on the box dressed as a coachman. This door had been little used, and was known to be un¬guarded. The queen solemnly entrusted her children to their governess, Madame de Tourzel, who was henceforth to pass as their mother, the Baroness de Korff. Through unknown passages they passed that June night, the faithful governess with the sleepy little dauphin and the bewildered little princess, till they reached the unlocked door and passed, under cover of the night, into the courtyard. Ferseu lifted the children into the coach and drove off. The queen was to meet them elsewhere. The little princess took in every event as it happened.

"To deceive any one that might follow us," she says, "we drove about several streets, till at last we returned to the Little Carrousel, close to the Tuileries. My brother was fast asleep in the bottom of the carriage under the petticoats of Madame de Tourzel."

Meanwhile both king and queen were going through hairbreadth escapes. The news of their intended flight had got abroad. About eleven o'clock the carriage of Lafayette, some time head of the National Guard, flashed through the darkness on its way to the king. The guards had been doubled. Every one was on the alert. Lafay¬ette rolled past the queen making her way to the carriage; he passed the carriage containing the royal children. He satisfied himself that the rumour was a false one, and at half-past eleven he drove away.

The king was seen to bed by the servant who had charge of his rooms, the doors of the great gallery were locked by the porter in attendance, and the keys were placed in his mattress, where they were found next morning undisturbed.

As soon as he was alone the king got up and dressed for his flight.

The hackney coach had been waiting nearly an hour when the king arrived, having escaped unnoticed by the great gate. So calm and unconscious was he of the vast importance of the enterprise that he told Madame de Tourzel on his arrival that his shoe-buckle had become loose on his way out, and he had stopped to fasten it with all the coolness in the world.

But where was Marie Antoinette, still Queen of France? This is Carlyle's story of her delay:—

THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES

"She had issued safe through that inner arch, into the Carrousel itself, but not into the Rue de l'Echelle. Flurried by the rattle and rencounter, she took the right hand, not the left. Neither she nor her courier knows Paris; he indeed is no courier, but a loyal, stupid bodyguard disguised as one. They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and river, roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac, far from the glass-coachman who still waits—waits, with flutter of heart, with thoughts which he must button up under his coat. Midnight clangs from all the city steeples; one precious hour has been spent so; most mortals are asleep. The glass-coachman waits; and in what mood! Be the heavens blest! here at length is the queen-lady, safe after perils, who has had to inquire her way. She, too, is admitted; her courier jumps aloft, and now, O glass-coachman, Count Ferseu, drive!"

Crack! crack! the coach rattles along; crack! crack! through the slumbering city.

Paris slept on, unconscious that the King and Queen of France were driving through their very midst, unconscious that they should wake on the morrow to find the Tuileries empty, the royal captives gone!

On and on rumbles the hackney coach till the new travelling coach was reached, on the outskirts of the city. It had been waiting for two hours—two precious hours had been already lost. It was now two o'clock in the morning, and the dawn was already breaking in the east.

The hackney coach was driven up close to the new travelling carriage, with its six horses, and Ferseu's own German coachman on the box. It was but the work of a few minutes to transfer the whole party; the hackney coach, having served its purpose, was tumbled into the ditch. Ferseu jumped on to the box beside his coachman.

"Drive, drive, as fast as possible," he muttered, cracking the whip himself. "Go faster, faster!"

On they rushed through the ever brightening morn¬ing, till over seven miles were covered in half an hour. Then six fresh horses were put in, and on again, on, away from the sickening pomps and shams of Paris, to a free life beyond the frontier.

But the faithful Ferseu left them here. According to plans, another was to drive them on through the next stage of the journey. In vain he begged to be allowed to accompany them. The king refused his request, and after a touching and reverent farewell he rode away. The very anniversary of this day, on June 20, 1810, the faithful Ferseu was "beaten to death with umbrellas" at Stockholm, for the part he had played with regard to various events during the French Revolution.

It is very often asserted that the carriage in which the royal family made their escape was a lumbering coach which crept along at the irksome rate of three miles an hour! On the contrary, it was a very ordinary carriage, the body painted black and green, the wheels a customary yellow. The whole party went on in full daylight to Meaux. The king's spirits rose.

"I have escaped from that town of Paris, where I have drunk so much bitterness," he said, joyously.

About eight o'clock he looked at his watch.

"Lafayette is now in a terrible fix," he said, thoughtfully.

It was the twenty-first of June, the longest day of the year. Between Chaintrix and Chalons the horses fell down twice and broke the harness. This took an hour to repair. Chalons was not reached till five o'clock in the afternoon, two hours late already!

The horses were changed at the Chalons post-house. Tradition says that as they were starting off again the team fell badly and again broke the harness. This was an evil omen. On, on they drove, past the triumphal arch which had greeted Marie Antoinette on her arrival, past the Pilgrimage Church with its miraculous well, past the road from Rheims, the coronation city, till in a deep and solitary valley they reached the lonely post-house where M. Choiseul was to be met with further help. Not a soldier was to be seen. Where was Choiseul? where were his hussars? The king felt as if an abyss had sud¬denly opened beneath his feet. The horses were quickly changed, and the carriage rattled on; but the hearts of the king and queen were heavy, and they felt as if some calamity were at hand.

Meantime Choiseul had been expecting the royal carriage much earlier in the day. As three o'clock came, then four o'clock, and no carriage appeared, no courier, no message reached him, he began to grow anxious. The peasants were wondering at the appearance of his hussars—he was evidently exciting suspicion—and at half-past five he gave up waiting any longer and left the appointed place with his soldiers, leaving no message as to where he had gone.

The royal party reached the next posting-station at half-past seven, to find appointments unfulfilled, and the town of Ste. Mdnehould excited at the arrival of their large and luxurious travelling-carriage with its outriders. A series of small accidents caused the peasants to assemble in knots about the streets.

Fresh horses were being harnessed in, when one Drouet, the post-master, came up to the carriage. He had served in the dragoons, and had seen the queen at Versailles. At the same moment the king put his head out of the window to speak, and Drouet recognized him as Louis, King of France. There was no mistaking the aquiline nose, the short-sighted look, the spotted complexion.

"It is the king and his family!"

The cry ran from mouth to mouth, the news spread like lightning.

Meanwhile, the royal carriage was posting on through the most picturesque parts of France, on with heavy hearts and straining ears toward Clermont. At Clermont more misunderstanding, more accidents. Damas, appointed to meet the king here, did not do his duty any better than Choiseul. He had expected the king at five o'clock. The king arrived at half-past nine to find no escort ready, no Damas awaiting him.

The next posting-stage on the great road was Verdun, which it was arranged the party should not pass through, but on leaving Clermont to turn off by a cross-road. The first place on this cross-road was Varennes, a small village with no post-house. Here the royal carriage arrived at eleven o'clock at night.

It was dark, and the whole place was fast asleep. There was no danger of their being recognized. It was about the only spot along the whole road from Paris, a distance of some one hundred and fifty miles, where no danger was to be expected. And yet here, to use the poor king's own expression, "the earth seemed to open and swallow them."

Meanwhile, through the dark night, two horsemen rode fast, faster than the royal carriage could rumble along. They passed the carriage, arrived at Varennes first, and dismounted at the tavern of the Bras d'Or as the clock struck a quarter-past eleven. They were Drouet, the post-master of Ste. Mdnehould, and another old dragoon. Drawing the landlord aside, Drouet whispered,—

"Comrade, are you a good patriot?"

"Yes," answered the landlord with decision.

"Then," went on Drouet, "go as quickly as you can and tell all trustworthy people that the king is entering Varennes, that he is coming down the street, and must be arrested."

Drouet himself went off to barricade the bridge over the river Aire which united the two parts of the town. To do this he overturned a heavy wagon of furniture which he found there.

Here is the princess's account of their seizure:—

"When we got into the village, we heard alarming shouts of 'Stop! stop!' The postilions were seized, and in a moment the carriage was surrounded by a great crowd, some with arms and some with lights. They asked us who we were. 'Madame de Korff and her family,' we answered. They thrust their lights into the carriage, close to my father's face, and insisted upon our alighting. We answered that we would not—that we were common travellers, and had a right to get on. They repeated their orders to alight, on pain of death, and at that moment all their guns were levelled at the carriage."

"If you go a step further, we fire!" they cried.

Nothing was left for the royal family to do but to get out.

The local grocer offered them hospitality. His house was but a few steps distant. The king himself led his two children into the grocer's shop, but there was a strong smell of tallow which the queen could not bear. Up a narrow corkscrew staircase the weary travellers were taken to two small rooms, one looking into the narrow street, the other into a courtyard. A little room, some fifteen feet by twenty, on that summer night in June, held the royal family of France. Seated in an armchair in the middle of the small room was the dejected king; while the queen occupied herself in putting the little dauphin and his sister to bed, where they were soon asleep, their faithful governess watching them.

The bodyguard sat on a bench beneath the window.

It was the middle of the night when at last Choiseul arrived, to hear the news of the king's arrest. He drew up his soldiers at once—he was anxious to retrieve his blunder. "The king and queen are prisoners in the town; we must rescue them or die," he told them. Then break¬ing his squadron into fours, he trotted up the street with drawn swords and halted at the grocer's house. Another friend of the king's had also arrived, and mounted the corkscrew staircase to ask for orders.

"I am a prisoner; I have no orders to give," answered the despairing king.

Even now a little firmness and decision might have saved him, and "French history had never come under this Varennes archway to decide itself."

But the moment passed, and the delay proved fatal. By two o'clock in the morning five thousand peasants from the neighbouring villages had reached Varennes; an hour later their number had doubled. The barricades were strengthened. The news was spreading far and wide that the king was a prisoner. As the sun broke over the lovely valley of the Aire, the grocer Sausse asked the king to show himself to the crowd from the window which looked on to the street. Louis obeyed. Below he saw a dense mass of peasants armed with muskets, scythes, and pitchforks. As he appeared at the window there was deep silence. He spoke a few words to them, at the end of which there was a thunder of applause.

"Long live the king! Long live the nation!" cried the swaying crowd enthusiastically.

At six o'clock it was full daylight, and the town offi¬cials collected to decide what they should do about the king. At this moment two messengers arrived from Paris, bearing the orders of the National Assembly. The king and his family were alone in the little back room when one of the messengers entered, his clothes covered with dust, his face hot with perspiration; he was almost too breathless to speak. He handed the queen the decree of the Assembly ordering the king's return to Paris. Louis read it over her shoulder. "There is no longer a king in France," he cried. The queen was angry. Seeing the paper had fallen on to the bed where the little dauphin still lay sleeping, she seized it and threw it on to the ground. "What insolence!" she cried; "it shall not sully my son's bed!"

In desperation the king and queen begged for an hour's respite before beginning the dreaded journey back. There was yet a lingering hope that some one might come to their aid.

But the crowd was growing impatient.

"Let us compel him to go by force; we will drag him into the carriage by his feet," they cried.

"Only give me till eleven o'clock," begged the king.

A hasty breakfast was served, the sleeping children were awakened, and the carriage was once more harnessed and brought to the door.

Slowly and sadly the royal family descended the narrow, winding staircase. The king walked first, fol¬lowed by the governess with the two children; the queen followed.

The bodyguards were placed on the box-seat in front, guarded by two grenadiers with fixed bayonets. When the royal party had entered the carriage, Choiseul, who had been the cause of all their misfortunes, closed the door with a pang of almost inexpressible anguish.

Through dust and heat the royal carriage rolled, bear¬ing its now hopeless victims back to their capital, back to a fate more horrible than they were capable of imagin¬ing at this time.

Escorted by six thousand National Guards—there was no fear of their escaping this time—they drove back through the glare of a midsummer sun, exposed to the insults of the mob, no blinds drawn, no windows closed; the little dauphin sleeping only to awake crying from terrified dreams that he was in a forest with wolves which were attacking the queen; the king silent and depressed. At last, on Saturday, the twenty-fifth of June, they entered the garden of the Tuileries by a swing bridge, the Tuileries from which they had stolen at dead of night only the Monday before so full of new hopes of freedom for the future.

They were infinitely worse off than ever—fettered, watched, humbled to the very dust as never royalty was before, till some eighteen months later the king's miserable life was ended by the guillotine.

The Peasant Hero of the Tyrol

Tyrol—1809

It is true that the name of Andrew Hofer is not very conspicuous in the pages of general history; but in his own country, in the hearts of the warm-hearted Tyrolese peasants, it is a name that will never be forgotten.

A simple, uneducated village innkeeper, dressed in his picturesque peasant dress, with no other object in view than to deliver his countrymen from oppression, this man opposed successfully, for a time, the enormous power of France and Bavaria, with his army of undisciplined pea¬sants, till, forsaken by Austria, deserted by those he had thought his friends, the peasant hero died a patriot's death.

The Tyrol had belonged to Austria for over four hundred years, and to the House of Austria the Tyrol¬ese people were devotedly attached. Amid wars and tumults, through evil report and good, their faithfulness to Austria remained unshaken. And so it was somewhat natural that when, by the Treaty of Presburg, the Tyrol was calmly handed over to Bavaria by the Austrians, the Tyrolese people should resent it sorely. The Tyrol, which had been called "The Shield of Austria," nay, even "The Heart of Austria," the Tyrol—ready at all times to do and die for its mother country—to be governed by a foreign foe, by strangers who neither knew nor cared for the mountain folk and their mountain homes!

The treaty had set forth that no change was to take place in the government of the Tyrol; but changes very soon did take place. The Bavarians did not understand the temper and character of their new subjects, and oppressed them till even Napoleon cried, "The Bavarians do not know how to govern the Tyrolese; they are not worthy to possess that noble country!"

And so it came to pass that the Tyrolese were irritated almost to madness; such a state of things could not be endured. They had one hope left. Where was the Archduke John? He had always loved them: surely he would help them now in their sore distress. A deputation of Tyrolese should go to the archduke and implore Austria's help once more—representatives from the chief valleys should go.

And it is at this moment that one Andrew Hofer comes upon the scene. He was chosen to represent the valley of Passeyr in the forthcoming deputation. He was a simple peasant; his father and his grandfather had kept the village inn before him, and at this time Andrew Hofer himself was proprietor.

Now, a village innkeeper in the Tyrol was a person of some importance. He combined the duty of banker and shopkeeper; he was a leading man in provincial assemblies; he had his part to play in the construction of mountain roads.

It was therefore no strange thing to choose Hofer to represent his native village to the Archduke John. A queer figure he was even in those days: he always wore the dress of the country, a large black hat with a broad brim, black ribbons, and a big, curling feather; a short green coat and red waistcoat, over which he usually wore green braces; a broad black girdle, with a border; short black breeches, with red stockings. He wore a small crucifix round his neck, and a large silver medal of St. George, to which was added, in later years, a gold chain and medal sent him by the Emperor of Austria.

Though a middle-aged man when he went on his mission to the archduke, he was a very Hercules in strength, a man in all ways fitted to become a leader of men.

The Archduke John had always loved the Tyrolese. He had hunted the chamois over their mountains; he had wandered through their passes and defiles to gain a knowledge of the country; he had adopted their habits and won their hearts. He agreed with the Emperor Maxmilian when he said, "The Tyrol is like a peasant's frock—coarse, indeed, but right warm."

He clearly saw at the present time—when Austria was being pressed on every side to raise more troops—that the Tyrolese would make splendid soldiers if well trained.

One March day then, in 1809, the Tyrol was stirred from end to end by the following proclamation, issued by the Archduke John:—

"To arms, Tyrolese! to arms! The hour of deliver¬ance is at hand. The beloved Emperor Francis, who has for a time been separated from you, is again given to you and calls upon you to arm. Now is the time to draw your swords, while Napoleon is away, before he returns with renewed force against Austria. Look up to us. Be faithful to Austria. See on your frontiers Austria's well-known colours, black and gold. Again at your head you shall see the beloved Archduke John, who loves every inch of your land. The emperor gave up the Tyrol on condition that your ancient rights and liberties should be preserved as we had preserved them. How have they treated you? Where are your liberties now? Good, honest peasants, industrious citizens, your commerce is destroyed, your sons taken to fight against Austria—Austria whom you have loved. Tyrolese! Tyrolese! how can you bear it? Well, then, be brave! Powder and shot shall be the food of your enemies; we will oppose them with arms and the ancient Tyrolese courage! In the fields, the forests, the mountains which God has given you, we, your saviours, are at hand to receive you with open arms! Let the enemy never gain your heights; cut off their communications and their food! Young and old to arms, for the emperor and your country, for your liberty and welfare!"

The popular proclamation was received with shouts of joy by the Tyrolese. At last they should belong to Austria again, the Bavarian yoke cast off for ever.

THE SAWDUST IS FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER.

The signal for this revolt was to be given by throwing sawdust into the river Inn, which would float quickly down that rapid river and be understood by the peasants. Their success depended on secrecy.

It was on the eighth of April that a mounted peasant rode hurriedly up to the inn at Passeyr and called aloud to Hofer that sawdust was floating down the river. The news was no surprise to Hofer. Throwing off his broad-brimmed hat, he addressed the little crowd of villagers that had collected:—

"Tyrolese, the moment of deliverance is at hand! Our emperor is ready to protect us, our friends at Innsbruck are in arms; shall our hands be weaponless?"

A great shout rose from the valley; men and boys begged to be allowed to fight; and before morning a little peasant army had been raised, with Andrew Hofer as leader.

The night was an anxious one. The Tyrol seemed alive with moving troops; the stillness of the night was broken by the heavy tread of armed men, the rattling of ammu¬nition wagons and great guns. Before the break of day fires blazed on every mountain height, signals to the people that the work of deliverance had begun, and the whole country was in a state of insurrection from end to end. The Bavarians, overwhelmed at the suddenness of the rebellion, did not know which way to turn. A column of French troops, some three thousand strong, was taken by surprise, and after a short fight defeated by the peasants, and captured with their colours and guns.

Meanwhile Hofer was advancing through the valley of Passeyr. He had now nearly five thousand men, all peasants from neighbouring valleys, ever increasing in numbers as he passed through the country. His orders were to march to Sterzing; but on his way he met a detachment of French about the bridge of Laditch. Now this bridge was made of a single arch, suspended between two tremendous rocks, over which the road passed from Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol, into Italy.

It was all important that the Tyrolese should keep it. The French were well disciplined and superior in numbers, but in vain did they try to break the line of the Tyrolese; the mountaineers stood their ground bravely. As evening drew on the French were reinforced, and then only did the Tyrolese, overwhelmed by numbers, begin to give way. Suddenly on the heights above appeared some Austrians. Down the mountain side they charged, shouting as they came. They were just in time. Soon the enemy were in full retreat. As the firing ceased the peasants broke out into sobs of joy; some threw away their arms, some fell on their knees, while others embraced the Austrians with tears in their eyes, murmuring, "Brothers, brothers!"

Then Hofer, with his army of valesmen, pushed on to the heights above Sterzing. Here he was completely surrounded for a time by the enemy; but the Tyrolese sharpshooters hid themselves behind rocks and stones and made great havoc among them.

At last the exasperated peasants made a desperate charge. Armed with spears, pitchforks, and other rude weapons they had collected, they rushed madly on the Bavarians, while others stationed on the heights hurled down huge masses of rocks and trunks of trees on the foe beneath. In the thick of the fight a Tyrol peasant woman might have been seen urging on her countrymen and doing her best to help them.

The peasants won the day. After a. desperate struggle the Bavarians threw down their arms and fled. Six hun¬dred of them were taken prisoners by Hofer, who had them mercifully treated and conducted to a great and safe castle not far from the field of battle. Scarcely had he provided for the safety of his prisoners and given directions for the care of his own wounded, than news arrived that the French and Bavarians had joined forces at Brixen.

With dawn of day, Hofer was heading his irregular troops over mountain roads and passes toward Brixen. Everywhere the Bavarians had laid waste the country, plundered villages, burned houses, and a mad longing for revenge urged the peasant army on.

Hofer realized their feelings.

"Tyrolese!" he cried, "you have proved yourselves worthy to be free; do not now become ungovernable. To injure the feeble is below contempt. Let no Tyrolese allow himself to be accused of such baseness. In the name of our beloved Archduke John, I shall treat the first person who creates disturbance as an enemy to his country. His strength shall be used only in her defence."

On the tenth of April, Hofer arrived in the Innthal just as the peasants of the capital were rushing to arms. The signal was given. Women and children ran about the valley distributing papers on which were written, "It is time."

In tremendous numbers the peasants collected on the mountains above Innsbruck; the roads by which the enemy could retreat were broken up or blocked by trees, and the bridges were destroyed.

"Long live Emperor Francis! Down with the Bavar¬ians!" cried the peasants, waving their hats as they began the attack.

It was but nine o'clock in the morning. By eleven o'clock the courageous peasants had won their capital from the enemy. Their joy knew no bounds. With shouts and rejoicings they dragged the imperial eagle from the tomb of Maximilian, decorated it with red ribbons, and carried it through the streets, the peasants flocking in crowds to kiss it. Pictures of the emperor and Archduke John were placed on a triumphal arch, surrounded by lighted candles, and the people passed crying, "Long live the emperor!"

Overcome by the fatigue of the day, the victorious peasants had fallen asleep in the streets or in the orchards around the town, when they were awakened at three in the early morning by the sound of bells. The enemy were again marching on Innsbruck, but only to be de¬feated again. The prisoners were marched to strong places of confinement, escorted by a band of Tyrolese peasant women, as men enough could not be spared.

The emperor now wrote to congratulate his "faithful Tyrolese, his honest and affectionate children," as he called them.

"Your efforts have touched my heart," he wrote. "I know your courage. I am ready to meet all your wishes, and to count you amongst the best and most faithful subjects in the Austrian dominions. I trust in you, and you may rely on me, so, by God's assistance, Austria and the Tyrol will again be united."

And the peasants sent back a happy answer, assuring the emperor of their devotion. "We will persevere to the last extremity," they wrote, "and convince the whole world, as well as yourself, that it would be easier to extirpate the whole race of the Tyrolese from the face of the earth, than to diminish their affection and attachment to your Majesty and the House of Austria."

Hofer was now appointed to command the right wing of the peasant army, and the general of the Austrian forces presented him with a handsome sword and a pair of pistols, gifts well earned by the simple-hearted peasant who had inspired his men with his own patriotic enthusiasm.

While Hofer was carrying on the war in the open country, away from the capital, Innsbruck once more fell into the Bavarians' hands. At all costs it must be won back, thought Hofer.

On the twenty-eighth of May he wrote to the peasants "Dear Brethren of the Innthal, for God, the emperor, and our dear native country! To-morrow, early in the morning, is fixed for the attack. Come to our assistance.

ANDREW HOFER

All who heard it flocked to his standard. And the next day, for the second time, Innsbruck was won back for the Tyrol and by the Tyrolese themselves.

During the conflict a young peasant woman, living in a neighbouring farmhouse, brought out a barrel of wine to refresh her fighting countrymen. Regardless of the Bavarians' fire, she made her way to the scene of action, the cask upon her head, when a bullet struck it and compelled her to leave go. Undaunted by this accident, she placed her thumb in the hole made by the bullet, and gave the tired peasants a refreshing drink heedless of the bullets around.

Many brave things were done that day. And yet Hofer, as brave as any man in the army, refused to be in the action, but spent his day in one of the farmhouses, notwithstanding the entreaties of his men to come and lead them. The action over, he once more headed the men of the Passeyr Valley, and marched triumphantly into the capital.

But it was just as their liberty seemed within easy reach that the Tyrol was lost.

One July day the news arrived that Austria could no longer help them; she had been forced to make peace with France.

The Tyrolese had only themselves now to look to, and with one accord they turned to Andrew Hofer.

It was now the universal wish that Hofer should accept the supreme command of the motley Tyrolese army.

"My dear fellow-countrymen," he cried, "I have heard your wishes, and am ready to obey them; but I should say, choose rather one who has stronger claims than I have to be your chief, brave Tyrolese, and assure yourselves that your Hofer is prepared and willing to draw his sword as simple commander of the Passeyr valesmen. Whatever my station, whilst it pleases God to spare my life, the Tyrol will never want an arm or a heart devoted to her service."

This address was received with loud applause, and the mountain innkeeper was now proclaimed commander-in-chief of the whole of the South Tyrol. He was the idol of the army, and as soon as it became known that he was commander-in-chief, hundreds of peasants placed themselves under him—old men well advanced in years, young boys scarcely old enough to carry arms, chamois hunters and friars. Austrian soldiers deserted their own com¬manders to place themselves under the peasant Hofer.

In vain did the Archduke John write to the Tyrolese to beg them to lay down their arms and submit quietly. There was a ring of infinite sadness in this address of July, very different from the triumphant one of only three months before. They were still his "dear Tyrolese," but he was powerless to help them.

Still Hofer refused to submit. Accordingly, he was summoned by the Bavarians to appear at Innsbruck on the eleventh of August.

"I will do so," was his answer, "but it shall be at the head of ten thousand men."

And it was so. At the head of his peasant patriots he marched toward Innsbruck, and soon the Tyrolese were posted on the heights above the town overhanging a road along which the enemy were obliged to pass. Hofer had prepared huge stones and trunks of trees to be hurled down on the passing Bavarians.

The advance-guard was allowed to pass in safety; not a Tyrolese was to be seen. Not till the rear-guard was already marching along was the silence broken by a cry, "For Tyrol, strike!" Another instant and rocks, stones, trees, came tumbling down on the heads of the bewildered men below. "For Tyrol, strike!" From behind every cliff started forth an armed Tyrolese. Boys and girls joined in hurling down rocks on the enemy. The destruction was complete.

On the fifteenth of August—it was the birthday of the great Napoleon—Hofer made his triumphant entry into the capital, having delivered his country a third time out of the hands of the Bavarians. His presence restored order, his will was law. The power of the village inn-keeper was at its height.

He took up his quarters at the imperial castle, and assumed the title of imperial commandant of the Tyrol—a quaint commandant, still clad in the peasant dress of the Passeyr valley. In the name of the emperor he levied taxes to carry on the war, in the name of the emperor he carried on the government. On the fourth of October a great festival was held at Innsbruck in honour of Hofer, who was formally invested with the gold chain and medal sent by the emperor. And this was the end. Shortly after, a paper signed by the imperial hand was given to Hofer:—

"Tyrolese," it ran, "I wish you to be tranquil. I have been obliged to make peace with France.

FRANCIS

That was all. Not a word of thanks for the years of fidelity to the House of Austria, not a word of hope for the future. The Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria for ever. Hundreds of peasants lost heart and threw down their arms; even Hofer felt there was nothing left but to resign his supreme command and go quietly home. He took a touching farewell of his devoted troops, and then—he changed his mind. Once more he urged the men of the Passeyr valley to rise.

"Fight!" he cried again, cried for the last time, "fight in defence of your native country. I shall fight with you and for you, as a father for his children."

In vain was he entreated to submit quietly, to give up this hopeless warfare, this uncalled-for slaughter of his fellow-countrymen. Defeat followed defeat, and suddenly Andrew Hofer disappeared. Some said he had gone to Austria, others said he had been seen at the court of Vienna, but those who affirmed he was hiding somewhere among his native mountains were in the right.

In a solitary Alpine hut, inaccessible from snow, alone with his wife and children, was Andrew Hofer to be found. From time to time his devoted friends secretly brought him food. From time to time messengers from the emperor stole to the hut to urge him to follow them to Austria, where he should be safe. He steadily refused all their offers. He would never forsake his family or his country, he assured them. But at last Hofer was betrayed, and that by a friend. A force of some sixteen hundred men was appointed to go and take him prisoner. The soldiers began their march at midnight over ice and snow, and at five o'clock on a bitter January morning they arrived at the hut. It was quite dark when they entered, but Hofer knew what the strange French voices meant. He came forward and submitted quietly to be bound. Together with his wife and children he was marched through the snow to Botzen amid the shouts of the French, the tears of the Tyrolese.

Under a strong escort he was hurried to Mantua to be tried. Three months in the miserable hut, with coarse food, had greatly altered his appearance. His hair had turned grey, and his long beard was ragged.

The trial was short. He was to be executed in twenty-four hours, so that Austria should not be able to interfere.

The fatal morning dawned. As the clock struck eleven the générale  sounded, a battalion of grenadiers was drawn up in front of the prison, muffled drums were beaten, and the prisoner appeared chained among his guards in his simple Tyrolean dress. As he passed by the barracks in which his fellow-countrymen were confined, the sounds of sobbing fell on his ear. Those who were at large in the citadel thronged on to the road by which he passed, and throwing themselves on the ground implored his blessing.

"Dear countrymen, beloved Tyrolese!" he said, stopping for a moment, "you must feel as I do my undiminished love for the Tyrol, my heartfelt gratitude to you. Pardon whatever I have done or said amiss. And all of you, beloved Tyrolese, all will I trust forgive me for having been so active in a war so disastrous. The time, I think, is not far distant when you will return to the blessings of your ancient government, and cry aloud as I do now, 'Long live the Emperor Francis!"

Arrived at the scene of execution, the grenadiers formed a square around Hofer. A drummer boy offered him a handkerchief to bind his eyes, and told him to kneel down.

"No," said Hofer firmly; "I am used to stand upright before my Creator, and in that posture will I deliver up my spirit to Him."

Then firmly he uttered the word "Fire!" and so he died.

Some twenty years later, the Tyrol having been restored to Austria, his body was brought to Innsbruck and laid in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross. A statue of Hofer himself in white Tyrolese marble was erected by the Austrians. In relief are six Tyrolese, representing six districts of the Tyrol, binding themselves by an oath over the lowered banner.

But what is dearer far to the faithful peasants is the single stone put up in the valley of Passeyr, not far from his village inn, bearing only his simple name and the date of his death in 1810.

The Last Ride of the Mamelukes

Egypt—1811

The story of the massacre of the Mamelukes in the Cairo citadel is ghastly enough in all its details, but there is scarcely a more graphic scene in modern history than that of the four hundred and seventy mounted horsemen, their bright-coloured banners fluttering in the morning sunlight, riding unconsciously to their doom!

The Mamelukes have a long and interesting history of their own. Originally slaves, captured in the Turkish market, a large number of them were taken to Egypt by a Sultan of the thirteenth century to act as his bodyguard. They were to defend their master against his innumerable rivals; and loyal servants they were as long as the Sultan lived. But with the death of the Sultan, and the succession of a long line of most incapable Sultans, the Mamelukes, now a fine body of Turkish soldiers, refused to act as bodyguard any more. Indeed, they went so far as to appoint one from among themselves as Sultan of Egypt instead.

From this time—1250—for two centuries and a half, Egypt was governed by Mameluke Sultans. These Sultans lived in immense luxury and dressed royally; they built magnificent mosques and palaces in Cairo. But they were ambitious and greedy of honour. The death of a Mameluke Sultan was the signal for open revolt. Each of the great lords lived as a miniature Sultan—his bodyguard, his battalions all supreme—ready to fight his way to the throne on the first opportunity. Thus Egypt was torn asunder by these constant factions of ambitious chieftains. No sooner was one victorious than he was deposed and slain.

Nevertheless, in the eighteenth century their power had greatly declined. They had wasted their strength and thinned their numbers by fiery charges against new rulers of Egypt. Still, there was no doubt they were a power in the land; and when Mehemet Ali was made pasha in 1805, his first resolve was to extinguish them. On the face of things he was their greatest friend. He prevailed on five thousand of the most peaceable of these warlike horsemen to come to Cairo and settle under his protection. He swore to maintain Siam Bey, chief of the Mamelukes, in his posts of honour. He invited them to take part in an expedition to Mecca against a sect of Arabs who had long annoyed pilgrims journeying to that city with their caravans. The leader of the expedition was to be the pasha's favourite son Tossoon, a clever lad of seventeen, popular with all, and the idol of the wild soldiery.

It was late in February 1811, then, that Mehemet Ali invited Siam Bey to an audience to discuss the approach¬ing campaign against this Arab sect. The pasha said he wished to have his new friends under his standard, and to share with them the honour and the plunder of the holy war. He was frank and open with the bey; he told him his views, and invited him to disclose his. Siam yielded, and laid open his heart to his new friend. He discussed freely the transport of troops past the dangerous coasts of the Red Sea; he boasted of the number of saddles he could fill, of the sabres at his disposal, of the captains loyal to him.

The bey was flattered at the pasha's confidence; his pride was touched; he forgot his former hatred for this usurper—this man who had slain his comrades and kinsmen.

The interview ended by Mehemet Ali inviting the Mameluke chief and all his followers to the Cairo citadel on the following Friday, to make final arrangements and to be present at the ceremony of making the young Tossoon commander-in-chief of this allied army. On his return Siam told his chiefs of his gracious interview with the pasha, and of his promise to help in the expedition to Mecca.

"We are betrayed!" murmured an old, grey-bearded Mameluke who had appeared restless and dissatisfied. "We are surely betrayed!"

But the others laughed at him. Siam bent his brows. "And if there be danger, there is plenty of courage to meet it," he replied.

So he called together all his captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and standard-bearers, and ordered them to be in readiness to follow him to the citadel on the following Friday in the forenoon.

Meantime Cairo was like a hive. Every one was discussing the great army of Mamelukes who were going to march to Mecca together with the pasha's own troops. Everywhere—from Shoolra to Boolak, from the fresh, green fields under the shadow of the pyramids to the great sacred sycomore tree at Heliopolis—the talk was of this new friendship between the pasha and the Mameluke chief. Donkey boys, water carriers, lime sellers, date merchants, one and all talked of nothing save the great ceremony at the citadel on Friday.

Before dawn on that eventful day, the drums were rolling and beating all through the city and through the bazaars, summoning the pasha's troops to a grand parade. There was a seizing of muskets and cartouch-boxes, a great belting-on of swords and tying of scarfs and sashes. The companies hurried from their quarters to form in the squares and open places, to be instantly marched off to the citadel, and placed with extreme care at their vari¬ous stations. Mehemet's captains went down the ranks, strictly charging each man not to quit his post even for a moment on any pretext whatever. Each musket was examined and carefully loaded.

"This day the sun rose the colour of blood," said one who was present.

Meanwhile the Mameluke procession—four hundred and seventy horsemen—came winding across the millet-fields and lupin-grounds between the pyramids and the Nile. Their banners of yellow and crimson fluttered brightly in the morning air. The sun shone on the gold tissue that banded their turbans, on their white-striped silk robes, on the golden flowers that studded their uniforms and half covered their close-linked coats of mail. The March sun-beams glittered on the embossed gold and silver of their pistol-butts, on the handles of their hand-guns and the hilts of their Damascus yataghans. Their saddle-cloths were stiff with lace; their cartouch-boxes and huge stirrups—even the bindings of their high saddles—were gilt.

It was a gorgeous sight, this magnificent body of Mamelukes riding slowly along the raised earthen causeway between the cornfields and clover-fields, riding in the early morning sunlight after the drums and banners—light-hearted, reckless, but riding to their death, Young boys were there, proud of their youth and courage, yet untried, reining in their white Arab stallions side by side with brown and bearded veterans riding grimly on, heedless of the thunder-cloud hanging over their heads.

With a fanfare of trumpets and a roll of kettledrums, the Mamelukes entered the ancient city. They wound through the narrow streets, under the high awnings, past the fountains of the mosque, up, up toward the great citadel with its commanding view. They were led by three of their generals, foremost of whom rode Siam Bey, gorgeous in his uniform, confident, reckless, free. At the gate they were received by the soldiers with full military honours. Unsuspecting, they rode on past the gate, passed on up to the palace on the higher ground between the fortress walls.

The Cairo citadel dates back to the days of Saladin. It is, like a fortress, made up of a series of covered ways between bastion and bastion, with parade grounds be¬tween. At the foot of the steps that led up to a granite columned hall, the four hundred 'and seventy horsemen threw themselves from their horses, shook the dust from their glittering robes, adjusted their swords and pistols with confidence, and entered.

Siam Bey and two other chiefs were summoned to the "Hall of Audience" where Mehemet Ali sat.

He received them courteously. They talked of the coming war, and compliments passed between them. But the pasha was not at his ease. Presently he grew grave, clapped his hands, and Nubians entered with smoking coffee-pots, gold trays, and little cups set in gilt frames, after the Turkish fashion.

Still they all talked on in a friendly manner.

Then more Nubian slaves entered in flowing white, carrying long cherry stems and broad red day bowls with tobacco, and red-hot charcoal in silver censers for the honoured guests—the Mameluke chiefs.

Just then the pasha rose from his divan, thrust his feet into his red slippers, and withdrew as if to leave his guests more at their ease.

But his face darkened as he entered the ante-chamber where the armed captain of the guard awaited his orders. The pasha's hands were feverishly clutching his sword handle.

"These Mamelukes are false," he said. "They have been plotting to seize the citadel, and overturn my power as soon as the army leaves the city."

It had even been proposed in the Mameluke camp he had heard, he added, to seize the pasha himself. Should this be endured longer? No!

"Bar and close the gates of the citadel," he cried to the captain of the guard. "The moment Siam Bey and his two chiefs take horse, let the troops fire on them till every Mameluke within reach is killed. Let not one Mameluke escape alive!"

These were the pasha's orders.

THE MASSACRE OF THE MAMELUKES

The three Mameluke chiefs waited in vain for Me¬hemet's return. Anxiously, and a little distrustfully, they waited, till at last they decided to leave.

Scarcely had they thrown themselves into their saddles than a rain of fire broke upon them from behind the ramparts. Bullets whizzed through their ranks from every side. It was a scene of horror, dismay, and confusion. Tossing up their arms and firing vainly at the walls, they were mowed down by hundreds. In vain the maddened Mamelukes spurred up every passage—only to find death awaiting them, for the pasha's troops were concealed upon the ramparts and towers, and behind the walls of the citadel.

Siam Bey himself, some said, was led before the pasha, who was seated on the summit of one of the terraces. He only accused him of treachery, and ordered his head to be struck off. Others said that Siam gained his saddle and dashed down, sword in hand, to the outer gate of the citadel. It was firmly closed, and he fell before it, pierced with innumerable bullets.

The lifeless body of the brave Siam was then dragged through every part of the city with a rope passed round the neck.

The wholesale massacre of the Mamelukes went on. Some of them succeeded in hiding in the house of Tos¬soon. Many of them were dragged forth and killed on the spot. For two whole days Cairo was the scene of bloodshed. Under pretext of seeking for the Mamelukes every sort of violence was committed, and it was not until some five hundred houses had been robbed, much property destroyed, and many lives lost, that at last Mehemet Ali and his son rode out of the citadel to try to check the fury of his people.

No less than four hundred and seventy mounted Mame¬lukes, to say nothing of their servants, who usually served on foot, were slain. The wicket of the citadel gate was opened, and the victims were dragged out one by one to the court of the citadel, where they were first stripped of their gorgeous apparel, of those golden-edged turbans, of those white silk robes and the close-linked coats of mail, after which they were beheaded. Penned in like sheep, these brave old Mamelukes were struck dead one after another. A few boys only were saved for slaves, because they were so young and so beautiful. One old Mameluke chief alone escaped—so says this graphic old Eastern tale—and the story of his escape will never be forgotten as long as the Nile flows through Egypt, or the pyramids stand in their eternal grandeur.

Amim Bey then, for such was his name, had arrived late for the procession. Siam, his chief, had already passed through the citadel gate when he rode up. He therefore took a lower place in the ranks than he should have done had he arrived in time.

Suddenly the gates were shut—the firing began. It occurred to Amim that something unusual was happening. His first idea was treachery. He spurred his horse up a narrow turn to a lofty terrace close to where the great mosque of Mehemet Ali now stands. There was a gap in the old wall awaiting repair. The other side of the wall, a precipice, ran forty feet down to the sandy plain below.

On one side rose the countless minarets of Cairo and the domes of numerous mosques, on the other spread the quiet valley of the Nile with the pyramids in the distance. Certain death lay behind, almost certain death lay before. Better, a thousand times better, to die by his own hand than to fall into the hands of the enemy.

One last look, and Amim spurred his horse madly at the gap in the wall, for this his last chance of life. Away into the air they sprang, and fell. Presently Amim lifted himself up, half-stunned, from his poor, dead horse, and found himself whole and sound under the great precipice of rock from the top of which he had leaped. The long drift of rubbish from the ruined wall had broken his fall; and close to the spot where he fell an Arab had pitched his black tent and picketed his horses. Amim instantly threw himself on his mercy.

It was granted, and the Arab kept the old chief hidden till the fury of the pasha and his soldiers was past.

When rumours of Amim's escape reached Mehemet's ears, the Arab generously gave the Mameluke chief a horse, and he escaped into Syria.

The search for the Mamelukes was very hot and greedy in Cairo, a Mameluke's head being considered worth more than a melon. At the same time, orders were given for the slaughter of all the remaining Mamelukes in Egypt within the course of the next month, and some eight hundred heads were brought in from towns and villages up the Nile. They were exposed daily in Cairo before the citadel gates.

Such was the ghastly massacre of this old established body of Egyptian slaves and rulers. But in judging the conduct of the pasha Mehemet Ali, it must be remembered that he probably slew only that he should not be slain. Treachery was at work in the Mameluke's camp too—so much had been whispered abroad by a servant of Siam Bey, who had been bribed by the pasha. He had forestalled their plot, if plot there really were, and frustrated it by his own treachery.

Be all this as it may, the story of the Last Ride of the Mamelukes will never be forgotten in the East, and the great leap of the old chief Amim will always be told as long as the Nile rolls on.

The Passage of the Beresina

Russia—1812

"Hark! a thundering crash! A cry of horror! down the broken bridge Sinks; and the wretched multitude plunge deep 'Neath the devouring tide."

The retreat of Napoleon's great army from Moscow in the winter of 1812 is one of the most astound¬ing chapters in modern history, and the story of the broken bridge over the river Beresina is perhaps one of the most pathetic incidents in the whole miserable march.

Napoleon and his army of nearly half a million men had reached Moscow—reached it on a September afternoon, after a march of untold hardships and severe losses. There lay the famous city at last—"Moscow with the golden cupolas; "Moscow, with its thousand towers and steeples crowned with golden balls all flashing and blazing in the light of the sun; Moscow which should now be the great Napoleon's city. No thought of defeat crossed their minds. Was not Napoleon's army invincible?

"Yes, there at last is the famous city," said the emperor confidently. He fully expected the people to surrender to him at once, as others had done before, backed as he was by such an army. Here were Austrians, Saxons, Poles, Italians, Prussians; here were crowned heads in command and tried generals,—such a host as had never been collected together before in the annals of history.

But Moscow had no intention of surrendering even to Napoleon and this mighty army. The Russians had deserted their capital; the streets were silent, the houses were closed; while to a few soldiers and officers of police left behind was entrusted the task of setting the city on fire on the arrival of the French.

For three days and three nights the fire lasted, despite all the efforts of the combined troops to extinguish it. Napoleon had escaped on the first night; he returned to find three-fourths of the city utterly and completely destroyed. Here he was, in the heart of Russia, master of the capital, and yet as far as ever from the conquest of the land. He still cherished the hope that the Tsar would submit and come to terms; but here again he was doomed to disappointment. The Tsar's triumphant address to his people left no room for further hope in this direction. It thus summed up his miserable position:—

"The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without means of existence. He entered Russia with three hundred thousand men of all countries, without union or any national bond; he has lost half of them by the sword, famine, and desertion. He has but the wreck of this army in Moscow. He is in the heart of Russia, and not a single Russian at his feet. Meanwhile, our forces are increasing and enclosing him. He is in the midst of a mighty population, surrounded by armies which are but waiting for him. To escape famine he will soon be obliged to direct his flight through the close ranks of our brave soldiers."

This was but prophetic of what soon happened. Still, Napoleon could not bring himself to decide on a retreat. He lingered on and on, hoping the Russians would yield. September had passed, October had begun. He was urged to winter in Moscow. A Russian winter would be bad enough to endure shut up in the blackened city, with nothing but salted horse-flesh to live on; it would be intolerable in the open country.

But Napoleon's thoughts were in Paris. He could not bear the idea of being so long away; he could not bear the idea of a retreat. An early fall of snow made the Russian peasants prophesy an early and hard winter. Nevertheless, reluctantly enough, he gave the order to march to the French troops on the eighteenth of October—just a month and four days after their triumphant entry into the capital. The French army which now filed through the gates of Moscow consisted of some one hundred and twenty thousand fighting men, with a number of sick. Following the army was a long line of attendants and baggage-bearers, a confused crowd of many thousands—stragglers, followers, prisoners—a mixture of chaises, ammunition wagons, carriages, and vehicles of every description, including wheelbarrows! There were men of all nations, without uniforms, without arms; servants speaking every language; there were numbers of French women and children, composing what had been a French colony in Moscow, now fleeing from the vengeance of the Russians. And all this motley crew followed in the rear of the great army. There were trophies, too, to be borne along—trophies of Russian, Turkish, and Persian colours, together with the gigantic cross of Ivan the Great.

On the twenty-third, the advanced part of the French army, under Prince Eugene, met—and, moreover, defeated—the whole Russian army, which blocked their road of retreat. It was a desperate battle, and it spoke well for Prince Eugene and his troops that, huddled together at the bottom of a ravine, they managed to defeat fifty thousand Russians on the heights above them. But it was a dearly-won victory, and on the twenty-fifth, when Napoleon entered the town where the fight had taken place, even he, so used to battlefields, was shocked at the awful number of dead and wounded that lay heaped up in the streets. It showed him the desperate position he was in, and made him more eager now to hasten on the retreat. He was particularly anxious to reach Smolensk before the winter set in severely. Here he hoped to find plenty of provisions and possibility of rest. After this point the retreat would be comparatively simple.

On marched the army. They left a track of ruin and devastation behind them; in front was a desert almost equally horrible. The earth was trodden down, the trees cut to stumps. With downcast eyes the army marched sullenly on.

The sufferings of the men were now increased by the severity of the weather, which, although the sky still continued clear, had become bitterly cold. Starvation, cold, and the attacks of the Russians—more especially of the Cossacks, who hovered round like birds of prey—thinned the ranks and disorganized the whole army.

Hope of finding rest at Smolensk kept up the men's spirits. "Smolensk, Smolensk"—this was the goal of all their hopes. Up till this time they had had the sun to cheer their gloom. On the sixth of November, while the most advanced were yet two or three days' march from the longed-for haven, the winter came on—came on like a true Russian winter. The clear blue sky disappeared, the sun was no longer seen; thick, cold fogs descended, rolling down as it were from the downcast heavens; bitter, sleety blasts of wind swept along the earth; and at length the snow came down in large flakes, darkening the whole air.

The troops marched on, unable to distinguish anything in the darkness, while they strove to force their way through whirlwinds of sleet. The snow drifted in the chasms and hollows where the tired men sought shelter or stumbled down, and the weakest of them rose no more. The wind drove in their faces not only the falling snow, but the snow that it raised in furious eddies from the earth. Too well they remembered the words spoken to them by the Russians when they were leaving Moscow. "Within a fortnight," they had said, "your nails will fall off and your weapons drop from your benumbed and lifeless hands."

Their wet clothes froze upon them; a covering of ice chilled their bodies and stiffened their weary limbs. The cutting wind stopped their breath, or converted it into icicles on their beards. The unhappy men crawled on, with trembling limbs and chattering teeth, till, when sense and feeling were almost extinct, they would trip over a stone or the branch of a tree, and falling to the ground they would lie there unable to rise. A few minutes later, and the snow had covered them for ever. Their cries and groans were in vain. All order was at an end. Muskets were dropped in the snow, or fell from the frozen fingers which carried them; soldiers left their ranks, officers their companies. Before and around them all was snow. Some would straggle off into bypaths, hoping to reach some shelter for the night; but they met only Cossacks or an armed population, who soon sur¬rounded, wounded, and stripped them, leaving them to die in the snow. Night was before them—a night of sixteen long hours. But on this snow there seemed no place to stop, no place to sit or lie, no hope of finding roots for food or sticks to light a fire.

At length they halted. Wagons were broken up for fuel, and when at last fires were lit, crowds gathered round them —officers and soldiers alike—to thaw their garments, warm their limbs, and cook their wretched meal of horse-flesh. Hundreds, falling asleep by these great fires, never woke again. Such as survived the night had but the miseries of another day to look forward to—to stagger on through the snow, to see their comrades fall at every step; and this for day after day, night after night, till Smolensk was reached.

"Smolensk, Smolensk," they repeated to each other. This was to be the end of all their sufferings. They little knew that it was to be by no means an end; they had yet terrible troubles to go through.

Those who reached Smolensk first were a host of stragglers, without officers, without order. They were obliged to wait till the troops came up, and many died at the doors of the magazines where the flour was kept. Rye-flour and vegetables were simply scrambled for in the streets.

It was the fourteenth of November before all the army reached Smolensk. Those who came last—and, therefore, stood most in need of refreshment—fared worst. It was the fourteenth of November, at four o'clock in the morning, that Napoleon and his imperial division left the city to continue their miserable retreat.

The numbers had been counted at Smolensk. Already two-thirds of the army had perished in twenty-five days; already all the trophies from Moscow had been hurled into a great ice-bound lake; already the great cross of Ivan the Great had been cast aside, as the strength of the men had failed; and for very hunger they had to eat the beasts of burden, and discard their treasures.

The next stage was to Orsha, a distance of some five days' march. The whole country between the two towns was occupied by Russian armies, and through these the various divisions of the retreating army had to push their way.

Again Marshal Ney, commanding the rear-guard, had the worst of these encounters. Arrived at Orsha, Na¬poleon waited anxiously for the marshal's appearance; but day after day passed and no news of him arrived. At last, late on the twentieth, he reached Orsha with his brave little band, after untold hardships and difficul¬ties. On one occasion, when surrounded by Russians, a single Russian officer had appeared and begged Ney to capitulate, further resistance being useless. "A marshal of France never surrenders," was Ney's proud answer.

When Napoleon heard that the marshal had arrived more dead than alive with hunger and fatigue, he shouted for very joy. "Bravest of the brave!" he cried. "I have then saved my eagles. I would have given three hun¬dred millions from my treasury sooner than have lost such a man."

The position of the army was still one of great difficulty and danger, yet the firmness of Napoleon never left him. In the midst of the wildest waste of swamp or ice, in snowstorms and darkness, by night and by day, he never lost sight of the fact that this handful of hungry men was always the Grand Army, that he, their leader, was always the conqueror of Europe!

The army now started for Borisov, where they intended to cross the river Beresina. They were yet three days' march from that river, when on the main road an officer met Napoleon with the disastrous news that Borisov had fallen into the hands of the Russians, and that the bridge over the river had been destroyed. The emperor, striking the ground with his stick, raised his eyes to heaven. "Is it then written there," he cried impatiently—"is it then written there that henceforth every step shall be a fault?"

The situation was indeed desperate. Not only was the bridge over the river destroyed, but a Russian army occupied the opposite bank of the river, and that river was thirty-five fathoms wide and over six feet deep. So desperate seemed the state of affairs that Napoleon was strongly advised to leave the army and make his own way to Paris. This he refused to do, though he was heard to say, "We are indeed in a most lamentable condition."

It was at last decided that the river should be crossed above Borisov, though the landing-place was a marsh under fire of a commanding position occupied by the enemy. It was truly a desperate undertaking, but there seemed no choice.

NAPOLEON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE BREAKING DOWN OF THE BRIDGE.

The decision having been made, the army plunged into a dark and seemingly boundless forest, and made for the bridgeless river Beresina, hoping still to deceive the enemy as to the exact point they meant to cross it. Men, women, and children passed through the wood as fast as their weakness would allow. They were but a band of spectres at best, mostly in rags, many of them with bits of carpet tied round their frost-bitten feet. They marched on without arms and without order, hanging their heads and fixing their eyes on the ground in silence like a troop of captives.

And yet the unarmed, even the dying, though they knew they must make their way across a river in the face of their enemies, doubted not of victory. They were still the "Grand Army," though but a shadow. The very sight of Napoleon gave them courage; if they had but just strength to follow him, all would be right. He, who had raised his soldiers to such a height in old days, would save them yet, he who had conquered all before him could not fail now. In the midst of all their sufferings they never reproached their emperor. They would crawl to his feet to die, but never to murmur or complain, so rooted was their trust, so deep their faith in the man whose genius had always triumphed.

On they dragged themselves, on towards the river, towards the fatal Beresina.

It was the twenty-fifth of November when they arrived at the banks, and a detachment of the strongest was sent lower down to divert the attention of the Russians, while bridges were hastily constructed at a place called Stud¬zianka, for the main body to pass. Then the building of the bridge began. Late in the evening the first pile was driven into the muddy bed of the river. The French worked all night, up to their necks in water, struggling with the pieces of ice carried down by the stream, and, moreover, lit up by the light from the enemy's fires as they gleamed from the heights on the opposite side of the river.

All night Napoleon watched, from time to time inspect¬ing the bridge which was to decide his fate. Again his generals tried to persuade the emperor to escape, and thus save his own life; a band of devoted Poles were ready to act as guides.

"It is hardly possible we can escape," they said.

But Napoleon refused to desert his army in the midst of so great danger.

Day dawned on the twenty-sixth, and daylight showed the Russians in full retreat toward Borisov, their fires left, the banks opposite deserted, leaving a free passage.

The joy of the French army knew no bounds; the officers clapped their hands and shouted for joy. Na¬poleon, when he assured himself that the news was true, cried in a transport of joy, "I have deceived them."

Impatient to be across, and the bridge not being quite finished, Napoleon urged a body of men to swim over with their horses. In spite of the ice, which cut the chests and flanks of the animals, they gained the oppo¬site bank.

In another hour the bridge for the infantry was ready; and amid shouts of "Long live the emperor!" some of the artillery crossed rapidly over.

"My star, then, still reigns!" cried Napoleon, as the contingent reached the bank in safety.

By two o'clock on the twenty-sixth Napoleon and some six thousand of the Guards had passed the Beresina in safety and taken up a position on the opposite heights.

During that day and the next the transport of the troops continued. But the Russians were no longer to be deceived. Throwing a bridge across the river lower down, they crossed over and attacked the French from both sides.

For two days the battle raged, while the stragglers, the wounded, the baggage, and the women were struggling over the bridges. Many seemed too paralyzed with fear to attempt it; thousands wandered desolately about the banks; to leave one spot of danger was but to hurl themselves into another yet more dangerous.

At last one of the bridges broke down in the middle. One only was left, and in the wildest confusion the crowd crushed along it. Night brought no relief. All through the cold, dark night of the twenty-eighth nothing was to be heard but groans and screams from victims trampled to death under the very feet of their comrades. When morning dawned, many thousands had not yet crossed the river. The Russians were approaching nearer and nearer to the bridge, so near that it became necessary to destroy it to prevent their crossing.

"With maniac haste They throng the bridge, these fugitives of France, Reckless of all, save that last desperate chance— Rush, struggle, strive; the powerful thrust the weak, And crush the dying."

At half-past eight, on the morning of the twenty-ninth, fire was set to the bridge, and those who had not crossed were abandoned to the Russians. As the flames burst forth, a heartrending wail of anguish and despair rose from the crowd who had not yet passed over. Some sprang forward on to the fiery platform; some dashed into the river, only to be crushed by the massive blocks of ice. It was a terrible crowd of men, women, and children—doing they knew not what, flying they knew not whither, and in their delirium adding to the calamity.

All was madness and indescribable woe.

At nine o'clock the Cossacks swooped down upon their prey, and the thousands who were not frozen, burned, or drowned found themselves cut off for ever from all hope of escape.

On the twenty-ninth the emperor left the banks of the Beresina and pushed on with what remained of the Grand Army. Their miseries were not over yet. The fierce cold of that dreadful winter, the want of food, the constant attacks of the Cossacks, who hovered on the skirts of the army, continued to thin their ranks and to strew their path with the bodies of their comrades. On the fifth of December, having arrived at the banks of the Vilna, Napoleon left the army and set out for Poland and France by the quickest possible route, leaving command of the retreating army to Murat. As soon as it was known that the emperor had left the army to its fate and pushed on himself, general discontent broke out; what little remained of generous or soldierly feeling in the army was lost; hunger, cold, and despair had reduced the heroes of the Grand Army to a horde of savages.

Three days and three nights, through an atmosphere of icy frost, brought them to Vilna. The sixth of De¬cember, the very day after Napoleon's departure, was one of the most fatal—birds fell stiff and frozen from the icy air. To stop and rest meant certain death. On they tramped; the only sound was the dull tread of their steps on the snow, the feeble groans of the dying. All had lost heart. Even the fires they lit failed to revive them. They had lived on nothing but broiled horse-flesh ever since leaving Smolensk, together with a little rye-meal kneaded into muffins with snow-water, and seasoned with the powder of their cartridges.

Exactly one-half perished in those three days and nights. And so they wandered on towards home, they, the shadowy remnant of the Grand Army, thought to be invincible under the command of Europe's conqueror. Napoleon's account of the retreat was somewhat light.

"All had gone well," he said. "Moscow was in his power, every obstacle was overcome, the conflagration of the city had made no great change in the condition of the French army; but the cold of the winter had caused a general calamity, by reason of which the army had sus¬tained very great losses."

Very great losses indeed. The Grand Army started with nearly half a million of men; it returned only about twenty thousand strong.

The Defenders of Missolonghi

Greece—1825

"Sons of the Greeks, arise The glorious hour's gone forth, And, worthy of such ties, Display who gave us birth. CHORUS. "Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet. "Then manfully despising The Turkish tyrant's yoke, Let your country see you rising, And all her chains are broke. Brave shades of chiefs and sages Behold the coming strife Hellenes of past ages, O start again to life At the sound of my trumpet, breaking Your sleep, O join with me! And the seven-hilled city seeking, Fight, conquer, till we're free. CHORUS. "Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet."

This was Rhigas' famous Greek war-song which urged men on to fight for their freedom, and which animated them during that fight in the Greek revolution. The war in Greece was the war of an oppressed people against a powerful ruler. The nation, "once first among the nations, pre-eminent in knowledge, pre-eminent in military glory, the cradle of philosophy, of eloquence, and of the fine arts, had been for ages bound down under a cruel yoke."

But at last, in the beginning of this century, the Greeks rose on their oppressors, rose as the people of Holland and the Swiss had risen before them, to fight for their religious liberty and for the freedom of their country.

The strength of the Greeks lay in the hearts of the people, and all the Greek patriotism seems to have centred itself within the walls of Missolonghi. Elsewhere men's hearts had failed them; the Turkish tyrants were too strong, hostilities had languished.

But brave hearts still beat in Missolonghi, where the citizens of a little town, the fishermen of a shallow lagoon, the peasants of an isolated district, sustained the vigorous attack of a determined enemy, withstood a twelvemonth's siege, and sacrificed their town only with their lives. An undisciplined population did the duty of a trained gar¬rison; patriotic, warm-hearted peasants, the work of a trained army.

They were conquered in the end, their little town and their shallow lagoons fell into the hands of the enemy, but not till they had raised their voices for Greek inde¬pendence, and laid down their lives for religious liberty.

Missolonghi had been besieged before, in 1823, and it was after the repulse of the Turks that the Greeks realized the importance of the place as one of the strongholds of the Peloponnesus, one of the bulwarks of Western Greece. They at once began to put it into a more perfect state of defence.

Now Missolonghi stands on a promontory at the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, in a plain stretching away from the sea-coast to the mountains. Toward the north rise forests of olives, while on the west and south a shallow sea laps against its walls; so shallow indeed is the water here that the smallest boats cannot come to within two leagues of the town.

The inhabitants soon set to work to build a great earthen rampart, faced with masonry, around the parts of the town not washed by the sea. This rampart was defended by bastions. In front of the rampart was a muddy ditch, separating the fortress from the plain. The bastions and towers were named after champions of liberty: there were the tower of William Tell, the battery of William, Prince of Orange, the tower of Rhigas, the tower of Lord Byron. For Lord Byron had died at Missolonghi only a year before.

"I have given Greece my time, my means, my health; and now I give her my life," the poet had cried almost with his last breath. And truly too, for he had helped to drill the peasants, had helped in the defence of the town, had died in the "dirty and unwholesome little city."

"He died at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the 19th of April, 1824,
engaged in the glorious attempt to restore that country
to her ancient freedom and renown,"

they wrote up over his English grave, and ever in Mis¬solonghi will his name be loved.

It was on the fifth of April, just a year after Byron's death, that news arrived of the enemy's approach. The Turks had already seized the pass of Makrynoros, which the Greeks had not defended. Everywhere the Greeks fled before them with their flocks and herds; and on the morning of the twenty-seventh the first division of the Moslem troops came in view of Missolonghi, followed some days later by Reshid Pasha, the Turkish commander, with more troops. He began the bombardment of the town without delay, in hopes of terrifying the garrison into an immediate surrender. He little realized the stoutness of the hearts that beat within the town.

The garrison of Missolonghi consisted of some four thousand soldiers and armed peasants, and one thousand citizens and boatmen, but including women and children there were some twelve thousand souls to be fed daily within the walls. At present they were well supplied with provisions and ammunition, and they were confident of success. Missolonghi had withstood a siege before; why not again? They were kept well informed of the enemy's movements; for the peasants of Macedonia and Thessaly, whom Reshid had dragged from their homes to toil in his trenches, were continually making their escape from the brutal Mussulmans, and carried news of the Turkish designs into the Greek camp. Accordingly, when Reshid cut down the olive trees in the forest and prepared for a general assault, the defenders of Missolonghi knew all about it, and were well prepared when, about two o'clock one June morning, a great noise was heard to the left of the ramparts, and a body of six hundred men was discovered within musket-shot. The Greeks opened a discharge of grape and balls upon them, and the Turks, who were advancing through the lagoons in the hope of taking the batteries by surprise, instantly turned and fled.

Little progress had been made on either side, when news arrived that Miaulis, in command of the Greek fleet, was coming with supplies. The spirits of the little garrison rose so high with this welcome news that they began to make frequent sorties. On the night of the second of July, signal having been given by the explo¬sion of a mine right under the advancing posts of the Turks, the garrison rushed out on all sides and attacked the Turkish lines; they killed some two hundred, and returned with many prisoners and seven standards. Two days later the besiegers pushed their works yet nearer to the town; they destroyed all the houses on the plain for materials, cut down the olive trees, tore up the vines. Out of mere wantonness they destroyed the standing corn all over the country, laid waste the gardens, and burned the vines which they could not convey to camp.

In one of these sorties, a native of Missolonghi was taken prisoner, and was terrified by the Turks into revealing the position of certain underground channels which supplied the town with water. The supply was at once cut and for a time the people of Missolonghi were in despair, till they thought of digging wells, which kept them supplied even through the greatest heat of summer.

On the tenth of July the little garrison met with its first great disappointment. They were looking forward eagerly to the arrival of the Greek fleet, when, with the first rays of light, they saw in the distance the sea covered with vessels. Their joy reached the highest pitch. Reshid would be compelled to raise the siege in the face of such a fleet, when it slowly dawned on their minds that the fleet was too numerous and the ships too large for Greek ships.

Then the red Turkish flag became visible, and the broad white streaks on the hulls showed indeed it was no Greek fleet, but Turkish. Thirty-nine ships of war had arrived. This was heavy news to the defenders of Missolonghi.

Moreover, a number of flat-bottomed boats found their way into the lagoons, and the town was completely sur¬rounded by land and by sea. Provisions and ammunition could now no longer find their way into the town.

Shouts of joy rose from the Turks as they pushed on their works with redoubled vigour. They knew that the garrison must soon feel the want of food, all communi¬cation being now cut off, and they were in hopes that they would soon capitulate. Each day some of them approached the walls of Missolonghi, and entering into conversation with the people, advised them to capitulate.

"But what are you waiting for?" cried the Greeks. "Your works are finished, your preparations complete, your fleet has arrived."

Still no assault; Reshid's plans were mysterious. While the garrison waited in hourly expectation of an assault, six Mohammedan chiefs came to Missolonghi and begged for a conference. They were brought before a council of Christian chiefs.

"Reshid," they said, "touched by the fate of the town which he was on the point of attacking, had suspended the order for assault. There was yet time to save Misso¬longhi. As friends of the brave men defending the town, they had interceded with Reshid, and induced him to offer honourable terms to the garrison."

If the Turks thought the terms honourable, the Greeks did not. With one voice the council replied, in a spirit worthy of the ancient Spartans—"War!"

On the return of the chiefs, preparations for the assault were carried forward more eagerly than before.

Yet once more a note found its way into the town, proposing a treaty. But the answer was in the same spirit as before:—

"Arms are the treaties between Greeks and Turks."

On the twenty-eighth of July, when the Turkish camp seemed quiet enough, a sudden cry was heard, the ground shook, a noise like thunder echoed through the town, and the bastion Botzaris was in ruins.

The Turks rushed forward through the breach to plant their standard on the walls; but the Greeks were too quick for them. They were forced to retire; the breach was quickly filled up with pillows and mattresses, covered with planks and earth; and while three hundred Turks were slain, and almost as many wounded, the Greeks only lost five men.

The cannonading was still vigorously kept up on the side next the sea, and Reshid went on erecting new bat¬teries, determined to win the town. The courage of the brave defenders remained the same, but their ammunition and food were running short, and they saw that if not speedily relieved they must perish, but surrender they never would.

Again more propositions for a treaty arrived from Reshid, offering numerous advantages to the Greeks if they would but surrender. A few of the old Greek chiefs, seeing the famine that reigned in the town, were in favour of treating. The garrison was enraged at this idea.

"What, old men," they cried, "do you hold life so dear at your age, when we, in the flower of youth, would give it up?"

And they sent an indignant "No" back to Reshid. Yet again he dared to send a deputation to the Greeks.

"Mussulmans!" cried the Greek spokesman, "if the men of Missolonghi cannot defend their walls, they will defend their liberty. They will shut themselves up in three immense houses and blow themselves up—and you!"

"Unhappy Greeks!" replied the envoys, "your guilt is too great; divine vengeance urges you to despair. Farewell!"

"There shall be no capitulation so long as one of us remains alive. The Turkish standard shall not fly in Missolonghi till it has been carried over our dead bodies."

Still this brave determination would not satisfy Reshid. He suggested that the Greeks should allow five hundred of his soldiers to pass through one of the gates, while they were coming to terms!

Such a proposal was received with profound astonish¬ment; even those chiefs who had suggested surrender could not restrain their feelings.

"If Reshid wants gates and batteries, let him come and take them," they cried. "It is only sword in hand that the Turks may ever expect to enter Missolonghi."

Reshid was frantic at his proposals being refused, and the firing on the town was resumed with increased fury. Balls and bombs fell without ceasing on the ramparts and into the town. Toward evening the Turks carried a number of scaling-ladders to the advance posts—every¬thing pointed to a speedy assault. Calmly and bravely the Greeks prepared to meet it, preferring death a thousand times to the shame of yielding. The first rays of light had hardly appeared on the horizon, the stars of night were yet visible, when the trumpet sounded to arms, and the garrison was soon in readiness on the ramparts.

The increasing light showed the Moslem host ready for the assault. The explosion of a mine under the Franklin bastion gave the signal, and the Turks rushed through the breach and planted twenty standards on the bastion. Thus encouraged, the whole Turkish army rushed forward toward the walls. The thunder of the cannon and the volleying of the musketry pealed incessantly along the whole line, while clouds of smoke concealed the combatants from view. With furious shouts the infidels rushed on, certain of victory.

Calm behind their internal defences stood the Greeks, keeping up a constant fire. Some two hours later the smoke cleared away, the Turkish standards vanished, and five hundred Moslems lay dead! Reshid was so furious at this repulse that he had nine Greek prisoners brought forth and beheaded in his presence, to alleviate his wrath and his grief.

Notwithstanding their valiant repulse of the enemy, the brave defenders of Missolonghi were nearly at their last gasp. The utmost scarcity prevailed, their powder was reduced to two barrels, part of their walls was in ruins. If relief were long delayed, the stronghold of Western Greece must fall.

Where was the Greek fleet?

In the dead of night some Greek soldiers were sitting together discussing the dreary outlook, when suddenly in the silence of the night the report of distant cannon-shots fell on their ears.

"It must be our fleet," they cried joyfully.

The news spread quickly. With dawn, every eye was eagerly turned toward the sea. All day long the Greeks looked out to sea, away over the lagoons; but night came and passed, another dawn broke, the sky was dark and cloudy, and distant objects were indistinct.

When the mist cleared away a fleet was plainly visible, but was it Greek or Turkish?

"See, they are our brothers!" cried some.

"No, no; it is reinforcements for the Turkish admiral," cried others, in despair.

Suddenly in the midst of the dispute a young girl rose. "Look! I see the flash of artillery fire on board," she cried. "It is the Greek fleet."

Her cry was taken up. "It is the Greek fleet, the long-promised help has come at last"

"Glory to God in the highest!" they cried, with tears in their eyes.

A crowd of men, women, and children hastened to the beach, murmuring again and again the joyful words, "These are our ships, and here is Miaulis."

Bells rang from the churches, and hymns rose from the happy voices within.

The Greek fleet soon drove the Turks froth all the posts they occupied in the lagoons, destroyed their flotilla, and delivered over to the brave defenders of Missolonghi provisions and ammunition.

The gallant defence of the little town had fixed upon it the eyes of all Greece. Every messenger that arrived brought fresh testimonials of the admiration of the whole country.

"I call you sacred," said one of the public orators in an eloquent discourse on Missolonghi; "for you have been judged worthy to have for defenders the greatest men whose names shine in the history of Greece. You have the greatest general and best citizen of Greece—Botzaris. You possess the bones of Norman, who fought and suffered for our liberty; here, too, died the poet Byron, who, having chanted from afar the beauties of Greece, came over to take part in her battles, and died with the sweet name of Greece on his lips!"

On the twenty-first of September another assault followed. Reshid was getting nervous as to the result of this long-drawn-out siege. His Sultan's wrath weighed on his mind. "I will have Missolonghi or your head," was the message he had of late received. Reshid preferred to present the Sultan with Missolonghi.

Being again defeated by the triumphant Greeks, he determined to act on the defensive only. Indeed, famine threatened the besiegers, disease preyed on them, winter was coming on, and the rains would probably deluge the plain on which they were encamped.

Once more Reshid sent a letter demanding an interview, but the old answer was flung back:—

"The Greeks hold with the Turks no other intercourse than that of arms."

They had no idea of surrender now; their hopes were high, the garrison was numerous, its valour and patriotism well tested, the sea was open, and scarcely a week passed that some vessel did not arrive with provisions. So the months passed on; October came, November passed. In December the Greek fleet had quitted the waters of Missolonghi, when a new and formidable enemy now appeared before the besieged town.

Ibrahim Pasha with his Egyptians now advanced to attack the brave little garrison. It was the beginning of the end.

A piteous entreaty went out from Missolonghi begging for relief. The garrison was almost naked, and exposed to severe weather, ammunition was running short, provisions were scanty, the Egyptians were fierce foes to attack.

Throughout Europe sympathy was awakened for the brave defenders of Missolonghi, money was collected, clothes were sent. But by February the garrison was again reduced to its lowest extremity. They bad consumed the flesh of horses and dogs, they had subsisted on crabs fished up under fire of the enemy's boats, had fed on all sorts of marine plants. Yet though death was striding among them, they never dreamt of surrender.

Again they built their hopes on the appearance of the Greek fleet, but they were doomed to disappointment. The old Greek ships were no match for the Turkish fleet, and by the fifteenth of April Miaulis found that the Turks had closed up communication with the lagoons; hence he could no longer take provisions to the besieged, and there was nothing for it but to sail out to sea and leave Missolonghi to its fate. The fleet did not possess the same heroic patriotism that stimulated the brave defenders inside the town, or they would hardly have retreated without an effort to save them.

When the Greek fleet departed, the stores of Missolonghi did not contain rations for more than two days. The garrison had now to choose whether it would perish by starvation, surrender, or cut its way through the besiegers. It resolved to face every danger rather than surrender. Those who were unable to bear arms, the women and children, showed as much patience and courage in this terrible situation as the veteran soldiers hardened in warfare.

A spirit of Greek heroism, rare in the Greek revolu¬tion, rare even in the history of man, pervaded every breast.

After long consultation, it was resolved to force a passage for the whole population through the besiegers. Many must perish, a few might escape. Anyhow, it was no surrender! And it was their last resource. There were yet nine thousand persons in the town, of whom only three thousand were capable of bearing arms. Nearly two thousand men, women, and children were so feeble from age, disease, or starvation that they were unable to join in the sortie. They must be left to perish in the ruins. A few strong spirits refused to leave the town; they chose rather to wait till the enemy entered, and then blow themselves up.

Most of the women who took part in the sortie put on men's clothes, and carried arms like the soldiers. The children had loaded pistols in their belts, which many had already learned how to use.

It was shortly after sunset, on the twenty-second of April 1826, that a discharge of musketry told the chiefs in Missolonghi that some of their countrymen would attack the rear of the Turks, to divert them from the place where the bridges were being thrown across the ditch.

At nine o'clock the bridges were placed without noise, and a thousand soldiers crossed and ranged themselves along a covered way.

But, unfortunately, a deserter had informed Ibrahim of the Greek plan. He never for a moment thought that the whole population would attempt to escape, but he took every precaution to be ready.

When the people began to cross the bridges, their noise revealed to the Turks their whereabouts, and they at once opened on them a terrific fire.

Crowds rushed forward; the shrieks of the wounded and those who were forced into the water were unnoticed, and in spite of the enemy's fire the greater part of the inhabitants crossed the ditch in tolerable order. Many still lingered behind; it was no easy sacrifice to leave their homes and their relations to the hated Turks. Everything that could be of use to the enemy had been destroyed; printing presses had been broken up and types burned. That which had served to make known to the world the glorious deeds and immortal names of so many heroes should not be profaned by the touch of the barbarians.

Patiently the garrison waited for the last stragglers from Missolonghi. Then they sprang forward, and with a loud shout rushed sword in hand on the Turks. Never was there a more valiant charge.

But an accident happened at this moment which proved fatal.

A large number of Greeks were yet on the bridges, when a sudden cry of "Back, back to the town," rang out. No one knew why, no one knew the origin of the cry. It was taken up and repeated so loudly that it created a panic. Those on the bridges stopped, and supposing a retreat was ordered, turned and fled back into the town.

But the Turks had entered already. Eager for their prey they had sealed the walls, and now met the Greeks face to face in the streets. There was no place of refuge; women destroyed themselves and drowned their children to escape falling into the hands of the hated Turks. Throughout the night shrieks and yells were mingled with a continual roll of musketry, and constant explo¬sions, as bastion and buildings were blown up.

True, some escaped, and dragged their weary limbs to the mountains, numbers died on the road, others fell into Turkish hands.

But through all they were consoled by the thought that they had not surrendered. They had held out till all had failed; they had shown their country that they loved her, even to death; and throughout the length and breadth of Europe the brave defence of Missolonghi is still spoken of with unaffected admiration.

An Arctic Hero

United States—1853

"To conduct an expedition to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin." Few men knew better than Elisha Kane what these words meant; few men had already suffered greater hardships in those frozen, ice-locked seas than the man who was now called on by the United States Navy to go and solve the great world mystery in those dim, shadowy regions of the north.

"In search of Sir John Franklin."

He was not the first to go in search of this great Arctic explorer; he would not be the last. Just seven years before, Sir John Franklin had sailed in search of the North-West Passage, but he had never returned. Ship after ship had been fitted out, ship after ship had sailed and returned with no news of the missing crew! Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, all had competed for the honour which should belong to the one who could dis¬cover the fate of Franklin and his men, and set at rest the deep anxiety felt on their behalf.

It was on May 30, 1853, amid salutes and cheers of farewell, that Kane left New York in the Advance, a little brig of some one hundred and forty-four tons, already tried in the Arctic ice.

The crew consisted of some eighteen picked men, all ready to do and to dare. The equipment was simple; their food was plain and rough.

Kane had been before to the Arctic regions as surgeon on board the Advance; he had already faced that dreary land of everlasting ice and snow; he knew what hardships and sorrows awaited him there. He was a small, frail-looking man, suffering often and severely from rheumatism; unfit, to all appearance, for the perils he must face, but with pluck to go through anything, and with a determination to trace Franklin at all costs.

There is a story told of his courage when he sailed before in the Advance. No sooner had the vessel started than terrible sea-sickness seized Kane, and for thirty-one days he was unable to move from his berth. Reduced to a mere bag of bones, he was completely knocked up before Whale-Fish Island was reached. Meeting with an English transport here, the captain of the ship arranged that Kane should be sent home invalided on full pay. He had only to certify his own unfitness for further service.

Kane looked at his captain in blank dismay. Was this to be the end of his Arctic exploration? Then, after a spasm of painful feeling, which melted the captain's very heart, he turned and said firmly,—

"I won't do it."

The ship sailed on. Kane lived down his sea-sickness, and soon after became the most active man on board.

On his return, fifteen months later, his health entirely gave way. And yet he was ready now to try again.

Eighteen days' sailing found the Advance at St. John's, Newfoundland. After taking on board a team of New¬foundland dogs, the little brig was headed for the coast of Greenland. Here they took on board Hans Christian, an Eskimo hunter, who saved their lives many a time by procuring them fresh food when they were starving. They lingered along the coast of Greenland for nine or ten days; and then, having bought a supply of reindeer skins and sealskin boots, they put to sea again, beating to the northward in the teeth of a heavy gale.

Coasting along, they passed many an Eskimo settle¬ment, and many an old friend of three years ago turned out to welcome Dr. Kane. Here was his former patient Anna, since married to a fat Eskimo; here was Anna's mother, who insisted on sewing up the reindeer skins into possible garments for the captain and his crew to wear. Then on again, past the Horse's Head and Duck Islands, where the Advance had grounded three years before, on through heavy ice fogs, right into the heart of the icebergs!

By the sixth of August they had reached Smith's Sound, beyond which no European or American had as yet ventured.

"As we look far to the west," says Kane in his diary, "the snow comes down to the water's edge; on the right we have an array of cliffs some five hundred yards in height, with precipices sheer down into the sea. They look down on us as if they would challenge our right to pass."

Still the Advance sailed on under the dark shadow of the cliffs, sailed on into the desolate, unknown seas!

Kane had made up his mind to force his way to the north as far as he could in search of the missing Franklin; but in case of accident, so that retreat should not be wholly cut off, he landed on an island, and buried some boats and food with stones and sand. Then they built a cairn, wedged a staff into the crevices of the rock, waved the American flag, and gave three cheers as heartily as they could in the freezing midnight air.

To feed the fifty dogs on board was becoming more difficult daily. True, they once found a dead sea-unicorn, which lasted these "ravening wolves" some time; but sea-unicorns did not turn up every day.

"Unruly, thieving, wild beast pack," cries Kane, in despair; "not a bear's paw or basket of mosses, or any specimen whatever, can leave your hands for a moment without their making a rush at it, and after a yelping scramble, swallowing it down at a gulp."

They even ate Kane's feather bed!

For the next three weeks the Advance was practically ice-bound, waiting for a north wind to clear the ice and give her free passage onward. Instead of this came a gale from the south. And such a gale! The sky grew dark, and the crew prepared for a storm, with three good hawsers out ahead to keep the ship steady and all snug on board.

On came the storm fiercer and fiercer; the ice began to drive wildly about; the gale roared like a lion to the southward. Suddenly snap went one cord; half a minute later, and "twang, twang," the whole line gave. The ship was swinging by one hawser only.

"Captain Kane, she won't last much longer," cried one of the crew.

Almost as he spoke, with the noise of a shotted gun, the third hawser gave way, and the Advance was dragged out by the wild ice at the mercy of the wind and sea. They managed to beat about, keeping some sort of com¬mand of the helm, till early next morning. But they were close to the mass of ice now, ever grinding up into a great pile. In despair, they dropped their heaviest anchor; but the ice torrent took it away, and they were helplessly tossed about by an ever-increasing wind. One upturned mass of ice rose above their gunwale, smashed in their bulwarks, and deposited half a ton of ice in a great lump on their deck. The stanch little brig bore herself as if she had a charmed life.

But now a new enemy appeared in the shape of a number of great icebergs. Would they now be dashed to pieces against them, or might they not offer some refuge from the storm? The icebergs were moving slowly. A brilliant idea struck Kane. Why not make the iceberg tow them? Securing an anchor on the sloping side of one, and tying on a whale line, they attached themselves, and the great ice horse towed them bravely on. The spray dashed up over them, the icebergs closed in on them as they advanced, till suddenly the Advance was thrown up the sloping side of an iceberg amid a broken mass of ice. The crew, too glad to be at rest after their strain of thirty-six hours, secured her somehow, and overcome with fatigue fell into their berths and slept.

The gale abated; they harnessed themselves like mules on a canal, and towed their ship along the icy coast. They had sailed farther north than any of their pre¬decessors already; but an early winter threatened them. Was it possible that Franklin had got farther north before the winter darkness and ice closed him in? Snow fell heavily and steadily, and further progress became impossible.

"Let us sail to the south," said the crew, "and wait there till the darkness is past and the ice melts with the return of the sun."

But Kane saw the loss of time this would involve. They were men; they would not shirk their duty. They resolved to winter the brig at the head of a bay, latitude 78° 37', whence sledging parties could be dispatched. Then hot coffee was served out, and amid cheering songs the little brig moved on to her winter quarters.

From time to time sledge parties went out on expedi¬tions over the ice; but they returned with the same report—nothing to be seen but a solid sea of ice and great barriers of icebergs.

The winter came on fast. It was now September, and they must not reckon on seeing the sun again after another month. There was plenty to be done—a store-house for the food to be erected, provisions to be looked after, the dogs to be trained. So darker grew the days and blacker grew the nights now; they could just read the thermometer at noonday without a light and that was all.

By November all was darkness, and even to read the thermometer required a lantern. And ninety days of this to look forward to, and twenty-four long hours to each day. No wonder life was monotonous.

"We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper; the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike, and we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun."

Trying as this was to the men, it was yet more trying to the poor dogs. One by one a sort of madness seized them, and one by one they died, till out of the splendid team only six were left, thirty-eight having perished.

At last, toward the end of February, a faint glimmer of sunlight began to silver the ice between the headlands of the bay. Out turned Captain Kane and out turned the crew to welcome it back.

"The sunshine reached our deck on the last day of February; we needed it to cheer us," wrote Kane.

Yet he would not turn homewards. He felt his work was unfinished; he must push on farther to the north. On the twentieth of March a small party of pale-faced men was sent off with sledges and provisions to establish a chain of camps along the northern coast of Greenland. Dressed in their skins, they must have looked somewhat like a troop of bears on their hind legs.

Suddenly one night—it was nearly twelve o'clock, and Kane was making up garments of skins—the noise of footsteps startled them, and the next minute three half-dying men entered the cabin. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak. Their story was a terrible one. They had left their comrades in the ice, risking their own lives to bring news. Four of them were lying frozen and disabled, they could not say where, somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east. "Irish Toni" had stayed behind to watch them. This was all they could remember.

There was only one course open—a rescue party must start at once without delay, and one of the three men must be taken to show the way.

"Little Willie" was soon rigged out with a buffalo cover. The least tired of the three men was wrapped in a fur bag, his legs rolled in dogskins and eider down, and strapped on to the sledge. Then nine men, headed by Kane, all wrapped in bearskins, harnessed themselves in and started off. The tired man strapped on to the sledge, who had not rested for fifty hours, fell asleep; no tracks were to be found. The wind set in sharply from the north-west, the thermometer fell; they must not stop for a moment, or they too would freeze.

THE RELIEF PARTY

The strongest of the party were seized with trembling fits; Kane himself fainted twice in the snow. They had been eighteen hours without food or water, when suddenly Hans thought he saw a broad sledge-track. They traced it on to the deep snow among the hummocks, till at last they saw a small American flag fluttering in the wind, and lower down was a banner hanging from a tent-pole scarcely showing above the drift. It was the camp of the disabled men, and they had reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

The little tent was nearly covered. Kane crawled into the darkness. There lay the four poor fellows stretched helplessly on their backs, but not too far gone to break out into a burst of welcome, which more than repaid the man for his terrible journey.

"We knew you would come," they cried pathetically.

Each man was allowed two hours' sleep, while the others walked about to keep from freezing. Then came the homeward march. They sewed up the limbs of the sick men in reindeer skins and placed them on folded buffalo bags, lashing them on to the sledge. They were ready at last, and after standing round, while the com¬mander repeated a short prayer, they started back on their weary march.

They had drawn the sledge, top-heavy as it was with its living burden of sick men, over the cracked and uneven ice, when the strength of the whole party seemed to fail. They no longer complained of cold; they only asked to sleep, just to be allowed to sink down in the snow and sleep. Kane knew that sleep in that frozen snow meant death. He ordered the tent to be pitched; their hands were too powerless to light a fire; they were too tired to thaw their frozen food. After a short rest they struggled on again. It was desperate work. They had to eat the snow; their mouths swelled, and they became speechless. At last they reached the brig. They were like men in a dream as they staggered back; most of them were frost-bitten, several delirious, more than one dying. They greeted the men on board with a vacant look, and fell into their cabin beds as they were.

One morning in the following week (it was now April) they were watching by the side of a member of the crew, who was dying from the long exposure on the ice, when one came hurrying down into the cabin, crying,—

"People hallooing ashore."

Kane went up on deck. There they were, true enough, standing like so many bears on all sides of the rocky harbour, dotting the snowy shores, wild and strange looking, but human beings all the same. Waving their arms about, they cried, "Hoah, ha, ha," over and over again. Indeed this must have been the first time they had ever seen a white man, and this pale-faced crew must have startled them considerably. Leaving their teams of dogs and sledges, they agreed to go on board; but they were troublesome visitors, stealing everything they could lay hands on, so that the crew were not entirely sorry when they yoked in their dogs, cracked their long sealskin whips, and span away over the ice at the rate of some seven knots an hour.

And now Kane started on a very important journey. His plan was to follow the ice-belt to the great glacier of Humboldt, and so make an attempt to cross the ice to the American side. By the fourth of May they reached it, but it was dearly earned. Kane just saw the great glacier—saw the "mighty crystal bridge" which connected America and Greenland—and then once more the strength of the little party failed. Three were seized with snow blindness, scurvy attacked them all, and worse still, a friendly bear ate all their food. There was nothing for it but to return to the brig. Dr. Kane himself was the worst of all. One foot was frozen, and he fainted with every movement. He was strapped on to the sledge and drawn by five of his bravest men, themselves almost too weak and ill to get along. Through deep snow they plodded wearily on, till they carried their commander, more dead than alive, to the brig. He hardly became conscious till the twentieth of May, when, propped up by pillows, and surrounded by his sick and pale-faced mates, he once more realized the fact that he had failed to force a passage to the north.

Time was gliding on. Spring came, summer followed; still fast lay the brig firmly clenched into the ice. Daily did the prisoners watch for some sign of softening in the ice, some slight relaxing of that iron grip which im¬prisoned their little ship. But their hopes grew dim, and their prospects of escape slight, as the autumn season advanced, and the sunbeams fell more languidly on hard-frozen floes. From time to time the strongest men of the party started off on expeditions of discovery. They dis¬covered a vast tract of open water toward the pole. They found a whole island of eider ducks, and killed two hundred birds. They pushed their way to south and west, but they failed to find any retreat or way of advance. The prospect was dark indeed. There was no coal and but little wood to keep them warm through another winter; there was only a scanty supply of food to help them to fight against the diseases fast taking stronger hold on them; the ship was a hospital; most of the dogs were dead. What was to be done? Leave the brig and push southwards with sledge and boats? No, Kane could not bring himself to do this while there was a ray of hope.

"It is a simple act of honour to remain by the brig," wrote Kane. "Come what may, I share her fortunes. I cannot disguise it from myself that we are wretchedly prepared for another winter on board."

One day he called together his crew, explained matters to them, alluded to their duty to the ship, gave permission to those who liked to go, then directed the roll to be called and each man to answer for himself. There were seventeen men, broken down, home-sick, depressed. Eight stood firm, nine chose to fight their way south at all hazards. Kane gave them what food he could spare, good-byes were said, and hands were wrung in silence, and they disappeared among the hummocks.

It was with heavy hearts that Kane and his eight brave men set to work to prepare for their second winter of gloom and darkness. "But it is horrible to look forward to another year of disease and darkness, to be met without fresh food and without fuel."

They set to work to gather moss to line their sleeping compartment. Of coal there was none, and for fuel they had to burn their topmasts, cross-beams, girders, and even peel off the outer sheathing of the vessel.

The want of food was even more pressing. On the fifth of December two potatoes were served out to sick men, and the remaining twelve hoarded away as "worth their weight in gold." A bear's head was served up as a delicacy to the invalids, with a pint of fresh blood from two rabbits; the liver of a walrus, eaten with little slices of his fat, and rat soup—these were among the delicacies indulged in. Indeed rats were becoming a plague on board during that long, dark winter. They destroyed the furs and shoes, and gnawed their way into the beds; and one day a rat bit Kane's finger to the bone, having made a nest in one of his fur mittens, and resenting his putting it on. By March things looked bad indeed. The whole party was quite broken down. Every man on board had scurvy, old wounds opened anew, and most of the crew lay through the long, dark day and yet longer night in their berths, powerless to rise. With the first dawning streaks of light, Hans the huntsman had struggled out to the huts of the Eskimos for fresh food; for it was becoming more certain every hour that without fresh meat the days of the party were numbered. Still the iron-hearted commander held on. Often the only man up, he had to discharge the duties of cook, commander, and sick nurse, cheering his men when his own heart was bursting, hoping on for better days when his crew only wished to die and forget their miseries.

On the tenth of March, Hans came back. "Bim, bim, bim "sounded from the deck, and the chorus of returning dogs, and in another moment Kane had grasped his hand in silent joy. They might yet be saved, for Hans had not returned empty-handed.

"Speak loud, Hans, that they may hear in the bunks," cried Kane, as Hans related his adventures. Soon the sick men were fed on thinly-sliced frozen walrus heart with vinegar, to be followed by blood gravy with wheaten bread.

But now fuel gave in, and the sorest trial of all to Kane came in taking more wood from the brig, and so rendering her unfit to go to sea again.

"It is a hard trial. I have spared neither exertion, thought, nor suffering to save the seaworthiness of our little vessel, but all to no end. She can never bear us to the sea now," he wrote piteously.

So they struggled on till May, when even the stout-hearted Kane saw that future discovery to the north was rendered impossible in their present weak condition.

Reluctantly, sadly, he made up his mind to abandon the brig, and to make the best of their way home over the ice with sledges and the sick men.

On the twentieth of May the little crew collected to take farewell of their ice home. It was Sunday. The moss walls had been torn down and the wood that supported them burned, the beds were gone, the galley unfurnished and very cold—everything looked desolate enough.

Kane read prayers ending, "Accept our gratitude, and restore us to our homes," and a chapter of the Bible. He then addressed his pale-faced crew.

"There are thirteen hundred miles of ice and water between us and North Greenland," he said, "but by obedience and energy you can manage it. It is the duty of all to consider first the sick and wounded. I hope we have done what we ought to prove our devotion to the cause which we have in hand."

They then went up on deck, the flags were hoisted and hauled down again, the party walked twice round the brig, somewhat regretfully now the time had come to leave her, and silently they turned their heads on what had been their home for two long years.

Each man had a woollen under-dress and a suit of fur, boots made of the cabin carpet covered with fur, and goggles for snow blindness.

Thus he set out, travelling but slowly and painfully. Indeed the feeble caravan took eight days to go fifteen miles. After eighty-one miles over the snow and ice they reached open water. Launching the three boats, the Faith, Hope, and Red Eric, they embarked on a smooth sea. But the wind soon freshened, the Red Eric  was swamped, and the crew only just managed to scramble on to the other boats in time. They pushed on, though almost blinded by a snow-storm, and made for North¬umberland Island.

It would take too long to tell of the hardships and accidents the little party had to undergo—how their boats nearly sank, how they were stopped by storms or lost in fogs, how the ice-floe broke up suddenly, tossing the ice into hills with a hideous noise and whirling the helpless boats on the top of a seething cauldron. By the twenty-eighth of July things looked bad; their strength failed, their feet were so swollen they had to cut open their boots, they were too tired to sleep, too hungry to exist much longer. They were in the open bay, in boats so frail and unseaworthy as to require constant bailing to keep them afloat.

One day the starving crew saw a seal floating on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. Stationing a man in the bow with the large English rifle, and drawing stockings over their oars as mufflers, they made for the animal. Their excitement was so intense that they could hardly keep stroke. To speak would be fatal. In deep silence they moved on.

"He was not asleep, for he raised his head when we were almost within rifle-shot, and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men's thin faces as they saw him move." Their very lives depended on his capture. The seal rose, gazed at his murderers for a moment, and coiled himself for a plunge. The same instant crack went the rifle, and he relaxed his long length on the ice. With a wild yell the crew seized him and bore him on to safer ice. The men were half crazy with hunger. They ran over the ice, crying and laughing and brandishing their knives, and in less than five minutes they were greedily eating strips of raw blubber.

Ten days later, and suddenly a familiar sound was heard over the waters: "Halloo! halloo!"

"Listen, men! What is it?" they cried, trembling.

Then a single mast came into sight, and one of the men, Petersen by name, burst into a fit of crying. "'Tis the oil-boat from Upernavik," he sobbed, wringing his hands. "'Tis Carlie looking for blubber!"

He was right. Carlie was getting the year's supply of blubber, and was surprised by the sight of this ragged, famished, pale-faced crew.

Questions were poured forth in a stream, without leaving time for answers.

"What had been passing in the big world? What of America? Any news of Franklin?"

"Sebastopol ain't taken yet," was Carlie's first remark.

"And what is Sebastopol?" cried the explorers, ignorant of the Crimean war, which was moving all nations. Then they heard that Franklin's party, or traces of the dead, had been found one thousand miles to the south of where they had been searching for them.

For the first time for eighty-four days they slept under the shelter of a roof, and heard human voices welcome them back to civilized regions again.

On the eleventh they fell in with a United States vessel, dispatched to learn tidings of Kane and his missing crew. They saw the Stars and Stripes from afar. The Faith  was lowered for the last time, and the little flag which had floated so near the poles of both hemispheres once more floated in the breeze.

"Is this Dr. Kane?" asked the captain, as he looked at a little, shrivelled man in a ragged flannel shirt. With the "yes" that answered his question, the rigging was manned, and a ringing burst of cheers from the throats of their countrymen struck new life into the souls of the tired explorers.

Garibaldi's Sicilian Campaign

Italy—1860

"Italians! The Sicilians are fighting for Italy! To help them with money, arms, and men is the duty of every Italian! Let us arm. Let us fight for our brothers. A brave man can always find a weapon!

"A handful of brave men, who have followed me in battles for our country, are advancing with me to the rescue. Italy knows them. They always appear at the hour of danger. Brave and generous companions, they have devoted their lives to their country; they will shed their last drop of blood for it, seeking no other reward than that of a pure conscience.

"To arms, then! Let us show the world that this is truly the land once trodden by the great Roman race!"

Such was the proclamation issued by Garibaldi in the summer of 1860.

Garibaldi! The very name carried conviction. Had he not already shown himself a powerful deliverer, an able leader; had he not, eleven years before, defended Rome with five thousand volunteers against an organ¬ized army of European troops? And had not some four thousand men refused to leave him when the tide of victory turned, and their leader was an outlaw and a wanderer?

"If you join me," he had been known to say to his men, "you must learn to live without bread and to fight without cartridges."

And yet they were ready to join him, ready to die with him.

"Soldiers, this is what I have to offer you," he had said to his volunteer troops in Rome, "hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no rations; but constant alarms, forced marches, and charges at the point of the bayonet. Whoever loves our country and glory may follow me."

And four thousand had followed him, old men and young boys with no knowledge of warfare—nothing to bring, but deep love for their brave leader and their country.

But after months of wandering, pursued by the enemy, he had been obliged to disband his troops, and alone to wander homeless and penniless, till a change of events in Italy allowed him to return.

Now the news spread like wildfire. Garibaldi was home again, back in Italy, ready to fight for freedom and the people. Garibaldi had unpacked his red shirt! Men came forward by thousands. They were panting for a leader; now their leader had come back to them again.

This time his main idea was to help Sicily. Sicily was so ready to throw off its yoke of oppression, only wanting a leader. But the difficulty of transport was great. It was quite impossible to get ships enough to take over the numbers who had flocked to Garibaldi's call. So it was determined that the tried men only should go over with Garibaldi, the others waiting till he should send for them.

Very quietly were all the preparations made at Genoa Garibaldi being helped by Mazzini and his friends.

Well aware was Garibaldi of the difficulty of the enterprise; but, confident in his own boundless devotion to Italy, he trusted to overcoming every difficulty.

By the fifth of May all was ready.

It was a few minutes past ten in the evening, when Garibaldi was seen coming down the little path that led from the villa where all the quiet preparations had been carried on, to the sea-coast. There he found his volun¬teer troops, to the number of one thousand, awaiting him, lining the shores of the Mediterranean, some in small boats, some standing about on the rocks.

They were a medley crew of old and young. They all wore red shirts—the only uniform that distinguished them as Garibaldi's troops. Simple, half-trained Italians as they were, they were ready to do and die for the cause they had at heart.

But there was no time to be lost; the "thousand" must embark, and that quickly. Two steamers belonging to a Genoese company, the Piedmonte  and the Lombardo, had been seized in the roadstead at Genoa. Silently and quickly the red-shirted band embarked, and were soon out to sea, steering for the coast of Sicily.

Garibaldi virtually commanded the two ships. He had not served as cabin-boy in vain; not in vain had he voyaged to the East and America, and picked up knowledge of a seafaring life. By word of mouth he com¬manded the Piedmonte, and by signal the Lombardo  immediately behind.

The sea was calm, the moon was bright, as they steamed away from the shores of Italy. But towards morning the sea grew rough, a sirocco wind blew strongly, and the red-shirted volunteers collapsed below.

But they had not started long before an incident occurred that very nearly put an end to the whole undertaking. Two boats, belonging to certain smugglers, and loaded with ammunition and arms, were to await them near the Genoa lighthouse. But in vain did they search for them hour after hour, they were nowhere to be found.

Garibaldi signalled to the Lombardo  to come close.

"How many guns have you on board?" he cried.

"A thousand," was the reply.

"And revolvers?"

"Not one."

"And ammunition?"

"None."

Garibaldi called his officers together.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have heard, we have no revolvers and no ammunition. We must get some." "But how?" asked the officers blankly.

"We must land, and one of us must go to the Governor of Orbetello, and make him give us what we want."

"There is great danger," answered the officers.

"There is; but I know one who will go," said Garibaldi.

"We will all go!" cried the officers enthusiastically.

Some of the most trusted were chosen to land at Orbetello, and they procured the necessary ammunition. And, greatly encouraged, the two vessels sailed on once more.

When fairly out at sea again, Garibaldi set to work to organize his little army. There, in a corner of the deck, they sat planning the coming campaign. Enthusiastic students, despairing Venetians, old soldiers, all determined to fight for the unity of Italy, were there in charge of an "elderly man seated in a chair, with a red garment on and wide-awake hat."

On the eleventh of May the townsfolk of Marsala were overcome with astonishment by the arrival of Garibaldi, the "Liberator," with his thousand red-shirted men.

"Sicilians! I have brought you a body of brave men," ran Garibaldi's proclamation. "All we ask is the freedom of our land. If we are united, the work will be short and easy. To arms, all of you! Sicily shall once more teach the world how a country can be freed from its oppressors by the powerful will of a united people."

The name of Garibaldi acted like magic. Peasants flocked round begging to join him, and soon his thousand had become doubled.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the twelfth, after a distribution of bread, the enthusiastic little force marched from Marsala some thirty miles to Salemi.

Here Garibaldi halted for two days to organize and arm his somewhat lawless troops, and further to proclaim himself, "in the name of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, Dictator of Sicily."

Meanwhile the Neapolitan government had heard of Garibaldi's arrival in Sicily, and pushed forward some three thousand six hundred men to a little town, Calatifimi, among the mountains, between Marsala and Palermo.

It was a grand place for the untrained warfare of Garibaldi. Buried in the heart of the mountains, Calati¬fimi was a position of great natural strength.

Early dawn on the fifteenth found the Garibaldian troops in good order on the mountain heights, and the Neapolitans, brilliant in their gaudy uniforms, with gold lace and epaulettes, ready for action.

At ten o'clock the battle began which was to decide the fate not only of the expedition but also of Southern Italy After a sharp conflict, which lasted some three hours, the Neapolitans fled—fled before the red-shirted, half-armed enthusiasts, and Garibaldi entered the town of Calatifimi victorious.

"Soldiers of Italian unity!" ran the proclamation next morning, "with companions like you I can attempt anything. To-morrow the Italian continent will rejoice for the victory of her free sons and our brave Sicilians. Your mothers and lovers, proud of you, will go forth into the highways with lofty and radiant brows. The battle cost the lives of dear brothers, who have fallen in the front ranks; these martyrs to the Italian cause shall be recorded in the stories of Italian glories. I will send forth to your country the names of the brave soldiers, young and inexperienced, who so valiantly conducted themselves in the fight, and who, to-morrow, will lead to victory soldiers who shall break the last links of the chains with which our dearest Italy is bound."

Some two hundred of Garibaldi's men were wounded, among them his own son Menotti. Those who knew his devotion to this his eldest son had urged him almost on their knees to spare the boy, and not to risk his young life in such a rash undertaking.

"I only wish I had ten Menottis, in order that I might risk them all!" cried Garibaldi.

So in his first battle of Calatifimi the young Menotti carried a tricolour flag decked with ribbons and bearing the word "Liberty," and in the hand that carried the Italian flag he received his first wound.

But no time was to be lost. The Neapolitan army had fallen back upon Palermo, and thither Garibaldi intended to go.

From Calatifimi to Palermo the liberators marched on. The road was difficult, but nothing daunted them. They crept along goat-tracks over the mountains, their guns on their shoulders, their lives in their hand. Two days of heavy rain drenched them to the skin. They had no shelter, and firewood was so scarce that at one village they were forced to burn the telegraph posts. But they were no chicken-hearted band that thousand. Through fog and rain, by night and day, they marched, till at last they arrived within eleven hours of Palermo.

It was the twenty-fourth of May when the enemy marched out of the city to attack them. Garibaldi foresaw this, foresaw, too, that he could not stand an attack just then, so he planned a feigned retreat. Sending his baggage and artillery by one way, he crept through some woods with his men at night, intending to enter Palermo by its undefended side. Then he would trust to fighting his way, with the help of the townspeople, from house to house down the narrow and winding streets. Under cover of the night the Garibaldians crept on over the roughest of wood-paths, a long narrow line of red shirts. It was broad daylight before they reached the southern gates of Palermo.

Meanwhile the government was informed that Gari¬baldi and his army were in full retreat. In honour of this triumph it ordered the bands to play, gave a supper in honour of their supposed success, and sent off a steamer to Naples to impart the joyful news.

Marshal Lanza, commanding the Neapolitans, was in bed next morning when his aide-de-camp rushed into his bedroom.

"Sir!"

"What?" cried Lanza.

"Garibaldi is in the town!" was the startling answer.

"Garibaldi is here!" The news flashed like lightning through the unarmed city; for had its inmates not gone to bed happy in the assurance that Garibaldi was in full flight?

Some four hours' fighting up and down the long narrow streets of Palermo, and Garibaldi had forced his way to the centre of the town. By evening he had possession of Palermo.

The city was soon a scene of great rejoicing. Peasants flocked in from the mountains, drums and bugles sounded joyously, and everybody attired themselves in some bit of red to show their love of Garibaldi and his red-shirted soldiers.

Meanwhile the hero of all this was living very simply at the royal palace. He assumed no airs, he slept on a little hard bed, he drank nothing but water. His wardrobe was scanty enough too. It consisted of a general's old uniform, the relic of a former campaign, two pairs of grey trousers, an old felt hat, two red shirts, a very few handkerchiefs, two ties, a sabre, revolver, and purse. Even now, at the very height of his popularity, the man was simplicity itself.

The onward move was now planned.

On the seventeenth of July, Garibaldi left Palermo with a great addition to his thousand; and he had them more trained and organized than before. Still it was a motley enough crew—there were French, Hungarians, English, Italians, a babel of confused tongues in the ranks. Each carried a musket, sixty rounds of ammunition, and a water-bottle—always the same simple soldiers of a simple general.

Often enough they had cause to remember his words: "If you join me, you must learn to live without bread and to fight without cartridges."

Three days later found Garibaldi and his army engaged with the enemy at Milazzo. Milazzo is on a narrow neck of land joined to Sicily. This promontory juts out some four miles into the sea, and is strongly defended by the castle, which stands in a commanding position.

The Neapolitans had the advantage both in numbers and in position. The red shirts were driven back again and again. For more than half the day the tide of battle was against them; it was only by dogged endurance and determination not to give in that finally they routed an enemy superior to themselves in every respect.

"Yet we knew we must win," said Garibaldi, "so long as the smallest part of our country is crushed beneath the heel of the stranger."

As the afternoon wore on the Garibaldians, rather than gaining, had lost ground.

"Try to hold out as long as you can," cried Garibaldi, though almost in desperation. "I will collect some scattered men and attack the enemy's left wing."

This was the turning point of the day, though Garibaldi nearly lost his life.

Taking with him two officers and about fifty men, he passed along the road which skirts the sea, towards Messina. He had hardly passed through the marshy land bordering on the sea, when at the turning of a garden wall he met a troop of horsemen, who at once fell on his small band. Garibaldi drew his sword, and, seizing hold of the bridle of the officer in command, cried out,—

"Surrender yourself! I am Garibaldi!"

"It is for you to surrender!" cried the officer, aiming a blow at the general's head.

Garibaldi avoided the blow; but the enemy at once fell on him, and he would soon have been a dead man, had not one of his officers, seeing the danger his chief was in, cut his way to him and rescued him. Nevertheless by this daring act Garibaldi succeeded in turning the flank of the enemy, and before long the Neapolitans broke into headlong flight, closely pursued by the victorious red shirts.

By nightfall Garibaldi was in possession of the town. After ten hours' hard fighting under a scorching sun, it was not to be wondered at that he had a great number of men killed and wounded. He himself was slightly wounded; and, finding his shirt soiled after the action, he took it off, washed it in a neighbouring brook and hung it on bushes to dry, whilst he shared the frugal fare with his men, of bread, fruit, and water.

In war and peace he shared alike the dangers and hardships of his humblest followers.

Having captured Milazzo, Garibaldi had practically got possession of the whole island. Now all his attention was turned towards the mainland, towards Naples, there to proclaim Victor Emmanuel King of United Italy.

Towards the end of August, about three o'clock in the early morning, Garibaldi and his men landed on the shore at Melito. The march towards the capital through Calabria was more like a triumphal procession than anything else. Everywhere he was received with delight; the peasants clustered round him as their liberator, their "invincible Garibaldi." Out of compliment to them, Garibaldi and all his staff changed their wide-awakes for the peculiar sugar-loaf hat tied with ribbons worn by the Calabrian peasants. This delighted the people, and the triumphant army marched on.

On the seventh of September, they determined to enter the capital. Garibaldi had sent on a proclamation to the people of Naples, and received the enthusiastic reply:—

"To the invincible General Garibaldi, Dictator of the two Sicilies! The people of Naples are awaiting your arrival with the utmost impatience, to hail you as the redeemer of Italy and to place in your hands their own destiny and the guidance of the commonwealth."

As Garibaldi advanced towards the city the enthusiasm increased, the carriages were decked with flags and evergreens, and women, children, and National Guards swayed to and fro across the roads in confusion. The Gari¬baldians could only proceed at a snail's pace, and were obliged to halt at every station.

At Naples the scene baffled all description. Horses and carriages, National Guards and gendarmerie, royalists and ladies, made advance impossible. A deafening chorus of "Viva Garibaldi!" was kept up, an enthusiastic population swayed around his carriage. The houses were bedecked with the tricolour and cross of Savoy to the seventh story. Only the troops were sullen at first; they were yet in possession of the palace vacated the day before by the king and his court.

When Garibaldi entered the city without a single file of his own men to back him, he saw the artillerymen beside their guns, lighted match in hand, waiting but for the word of command to fire. One shot and Garibaldi's work would be undone, one shot and Italian unity might never have been accomplished. As Garibaldi's carriage came within range of the guns he cried, "Drive slower, slower, more slowly still." Standing up in the carriage, his arms crossed, he looked earnestly at the hostile troops. Amazed and terrified almost into sympathy with the man they were there to crush, they flung down their matches, and, waving their caps in the air, shouted enthusiastically with the crowd, "Viva Garibaldi!"

Thus was the liberty of Naples secured, without costing a single drop of her blood.

Garibaldi was at the height of his popularity. The Neapolitans would have had him for their king; for the moment, indeed, he was their king, though not in name. But he did not seek honour and glory for himself: what did he care, this simple man, for a crown and a throne? To give Italy unity, this was his one great and only object. And having accomplished this, he was ready to disappear from among them, to retire from public life and public fame. He had done what an enthusiast only could do; he would leave others to rule the new united Italy that he had redeemed.