Famous Assassinations of History from Philip of Macedon_ 336 B. C._ to Alexander of Servia_ A. D. 1903 Francis Johnson 1079 downloads.pdf

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Title: Famous Assassinations of History from Philip of Macedon, 336 B. C.,
to Alexander of Servia, A. D. 1903

Author: Francis Johnson

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS
ASSASSINATIONS OF HISTORY FROM PHILIP OF MACEDON, 336
B. C., TO ALEXANDER OF SERVIA, A. D. 1903 ***

Contents.
Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z
Some typographical errors have
been corrected; a list follows the
text.
List of Illustrations
(In certain versions of this etext [in
certain browsers] clicking on the
image will bring up a larger
version.)
(etext transcriber's note)

Famous Assassinations
of History

JULIUS CÆSAR

Famous Assassinations
of History
From Philip of Macedon, 336 B.C., to
Alexander of Servia, A.D. 1903

By Francis Johnson

WITH TWENTY-NINE PORTRAITS

Chicago
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1903

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1903

Published September 19, 1903

UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

Preface

T HE thirty-one assassinations, famous in history, which are narrated in
this volume, have never before had their stories told in a collected form
in any language. The accounts of them were scattered through the
historical works of all nations, and through many volumes of private
memoirs, which had to be scanned for proper and trustworthy material. It is
hoped that their presentation in this form will make an interesting volume,
not only for the student of history, but also for the general reader, on
account of the historical and psychological interest which attaches to them.
These assassinations embrace a period of nearly twenty-five centuries,—
that of Philip of Macedon, in 336 B.C., being the first, and that of Alexander
and Draga, in the present year, being the last. Only those assassinations
have been included which either had an important and political bearing on
the world, or on the nation immediately affected, or which left a profound,
and, it would seem, indelible impression on the imagination of
contemporaries and posterity. All those which were not distinguished by
one of these features were excluded from this series.
It will undoubtedly occur to some who read this volume that it should
have included the assassination of President Garfield. It was omitted, not
from any want of respect or sympathy for the memory of our illustrious
martyr-President, but simply for the reason that his assassination rather
grew out of the morbid aberration of one diseased mind than out of the
general spirit of the epoch in which he lived.
Others may think that the assassinations of Henry the Third of France, of
Henry of Guise, and of Marshal Coligny, which are certainly famous in
history, should have found a place here. But they all grew out of the same
spirit of religious hatred and conflict in France during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and Henry the Fourth was selected as its most
illustrious victim.
It has been the object of the writer to make each of these “famous
assassinations” the central scene of a picture in which the political,
religious, or national features of the epoch in which the assassination
occurred are portrayed with historical fidelity and strict impartiality.

F. J.
Lafayette, Ind., August 1, 1903.

Contents

CHAPTER I
Page
Assassination of Philip of Macedon (336 B.C.) 3

CHAPTER II
Assassination of Tiberius Gracchus (133 B.C.) 11

CHAPTER III
Assassination of Julius Cæsar (44 B.C.) 25

CHAPTER IV
Assassinations of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero (A.D. 37-68) 35

CHAPTER V
Assassination of Hypatia (A.D. 415) 41

CHAPTER VI
Assassination of Thomas À Becket (December 29, 1170) 53

CHAPTER VII
Assassination of Gessler (A.D. 1307) 67

CHAPTER VIII
Assassination of Iñez de Castro (A.D. 1355) 77

CHAPTER IX
Assassinations of Rizzio and Darnley (March 9, 1566; February 9,
1567) 89

CHAPTER X
Assassination of William of Orange (July 10, 1584) 111

CHAPTER XI
Assassinations by Ivan the Terrible (1560-1584) 131

CHAPTER XII
Assassination of Henry the Fourth of France (May 14, 1610) 147

CHAPTER XIII
Assassination of Wallenstein (February 24, 1634) 165

CHAPTER XIV
Assassination of the Brothers John and Cornelius De Witt (August
20, 1672) 191

CHAPTER XV
Assassination of Alexis, Son of Peter the Great (June 26, 1718) 211

CHAPTER XVI
Assassination of Peter the Third of Russia (July 17, 1762) 221

CHAPTER XVII
Assassination of Gustavus the Third of Sweden (March 17, 1792) 249

CHAPTER XVIII
Assassination of Jean Paul Marat (July 13, 1793) 283

CHAPTER XIX
Assassination of Paul the First of Russia (March 24, 1801) 301

CHAPTER XX
Assassination of August von Kotzebue (March 23, 1819) 315

CHAPTER XXI
Assassination of the Duc de Berry (February 13, 1820) 327

CHAPTER XXII
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865) 343

CHAPTER XXIII
Assassination of Alexander the Second of Russia (March 13, 1881) 359

CHAPTER XXIV
Assassination of William McKinley, President of the United States
(September 6, 1901) 381

CHAPTER XXV
Assassinations of Alexander I. and Draga, King and Queen of
Servia (June 10-11, 1903) 399

Illustrations
Julius Cæsar Frontispiece
To face page
Philip of Macedon 3
Tiberius Gracchus 11
Caligula 35
Claudius 37
Thomas á Becket 53
Gessler 67
Iñez de Castro 77
David Rizzo 89
Lord Darnley 94
William of Orange 111
Ivan the Terrible 131
Henry IV. 147
Wallenstein 165
John de Witt 191
Cornelius de Witt 205
Alexis 211
Peter III. 221
Gustavus III. 249
Jean Paul Marat 283
Paul I. 301
August von Kotzebue 315
Duc de Berry 327
Abraham Lincoln 343
Alexander 359
William McKinley 381
Alexander I. of Servia 399
Queen Draga 409

CHAPTER I

PHILIP OF MACEDON

PHILIP OF MACEDON

Famous Assassinations

CHAPTER I

ASSASSINATION OF PHILIP OF MACEDON

(336 B. C.)

T HE assassination of Philip of Macedon, which occurred in the year 336
B.C., was one of the most important in ancient history, not only because
it terminated the glorious career of one of the most remarkable men of
his times, but also because it led immediately to the accession of Alexander,
one of the supremely great men of history,—an event which would very
likely not have taken place at all if Philip had continued to live for a number
of years and had himself selected the successor to his throne. Philip of
Macedon was then at the height of his power. The battle of Chæronea, in
338 B.C., had made him the master of Greece; and by his tactful and
generous treatment of the vanquished he had even been appointed by the
Amphictyon League commander-in-chief of all the Greek forces, which he
intended to lead, at the head of his Macedonian army, against the Persians,
and to conquer their mighty empire. This stupendous plan, by whose
accomplishment Philip would have anticipated the glorious achievements of
Alexander, his son, was frustrated by his assassination.
While Philip had arranged everything for his descent upon Persia, and
had been frequently absent from home, his domestic affairs in his own
capital, which had never been of a very satisfactory character, took such an
unfavorable turn as to require his personal attention. As a husband, Philip
had often given just cause of complaint to Olympias, his royal spouse.
Wherever he went he formed liaisons, and several illegitimate children were
openly recognized by him as his own. But when Olympias, the Queen, laid
herself open to a suspicion of having violated her marriage vows in his
absence, he repudiated her, charging her with gross infidelity, and
intimating that he had very strong doubts of being the father of Alexander.
Olympias thereupon went back to her native state, Epirus, accompanied by
Alexander, who was highly incensed at the treatment shown to his mother
and himself.
Philip contracted a second marriage with Cleopatra, a niece of Attalus,
one of his generals; and it is said that at the wedding feast Attalus, half
intoxicated, expressed the wish and hope that Cleopatra might give the

Macedonians a lawful heir to the kingdom. This remark, overheard by
Alexander, so enraged him that, throwing a full cup at Attalus’s head, he
shouted to him: “What, you scoundrel! am I then a bastard?” Whereupon
Philip, taking Attalus’s part, rose from his seat, and rushing with his drawn
sword upon Alexander would have run his son through, if he had not, being
himself more than half drunk with wine, slipped and fallen on the floor; at
which sight Alexander scornfully said: “See there the man who is making
great preparations to invade Asia at the head of a powerful army, and who
falls to the ground like a helpless child in going from one seat to another.”
It is said that after this debauch both Olympias and Alexander retired
from Philip’s capital, the one going to Epirus, and the other to Illyria. By
the counsels and efforts of Demaratus, the Corinthian, an old friend of the
royal family, Philip was, however, induced to send for Alexander, and the
son returned to his father’s court. Soon afterwards, Cleopatra gave birth to a
son; and the fears of Alexander, who remained in communication with his
mother and was filled with jealous rage by her, revived.
It is more than likely—although absolute proof of it has never been
furnished—that Olympias, in her revengeful jealousy, planned the
assassination of the King who had so cruelly offended her pride as a
woman, and who, she supposed, was also plotting to exclude her own son
from the throne and place upon it the son of her young rival. An opportunity
for this act of revenge soon presented itself. A young Macedonian, named
Pausanias, had been mortally offended by Attalus and Queen Cleopatra. He
appealed to the King for reparation of the wrong done to him; but this being
refused, he resolved to revenge himself by taking the King’s life. All
historians seem to agree that Pausanias was encouraged and incited to this
act of revenge by Olympias; but whether or not Alexander was cognizant of
the murderous plot, and approved it, has never been satisfactorily explained,
and remains one of the unsolved problems of history.
The occasion for the murderous act of Pausanias was the wedding of
Alexander’s sister with her uncle Alexander, King of Epirus. Philip
considered this marriage between his daughter and the brother of his first
wife, Olympias, an act of consummate statesmanship, inasmuch as it
transferred an enemy and an ally of Olympias to his own side and made a
friend of him. He therefore resolved to make the nuptials of this ill-matched
couple as brilliant as possible. Grand Olympian games and spectacular
festivities were arranged, and an incredible display of luxury and pomp,

unheard of in those days, was planned to show to the wondering eyes of
Greece the court of the new master of the civilized world in matchless
splendor and grandeur. All the cities of Greece had sent delegations to these
brilliant festivities; most of them came with costly wedding presents,
among which golden crowns were conspicuous. Poets sent nuptial hymns
and poems celebrating the beauty of the bride and the genius of the father in
the most extravagant terms; and a noted dramatist of that age, Neoptolemus,
composed a tragedy for the occasion, in which Philip, under a fictitious
name, was represented as the conqueror of Asia and the triumphant
vanquisher of the great Darius.
It was at the theatre, in which this tragedy was to be performed, that
Philip met his doom. Accompanied by a brilliant cortège of all that were
renowned at his court for birth, talent, and wealth, he proceeded to the
theatre. On approaching the entrance, he bade the noblemen surrounding
him to advance, and his body-guard to fall back, so that he might be
personally more conspicuous before the enraptured eyes of his subjects. The
procession was led by priests in white robes, each carrying a statue of one
of the twelve principal gods; and a thirteenth statue, even more richly
draped and ornamented than the others, with the insignia of divinity upon it,
was that of Philip himself.
It was the supreme moment of his pride and happiness; but it was also
his last. The noblemen and courtiers had already disappeared in the
building. The body-guard, obedient to the King’s orders, remained behind.
Just at the moment when the King stepped forward, alone, under the
gateway of the theatre, a man sprang from a side corridor, thrust a sharp
short sword into his side, and hurried off as the royal victim reeled and fell.
In the tremendous confusion which arose, the assassin came very near
making his escape. He ran toward a swift horse which was kept in readiness
for him by friends who evidently knew of the murder and were in the plot;
and, dazed as the people were who witnessed the assassination, he would
probably have escaped, had not his sandal caught in a vine-stock and caused
him to fall, which gave some of his pursuers time to lay their hands on him
before he could get up. In their rage, they killed him with their spears and
tore him to pieces.
The surroundings and execution of this plot bear a strong resemblance to
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In both cases there was an individual
murderer, the scene was a theatre, the act was done with incredible audacity

in the presence of a large concourse of people, and the murderer was
crippled by a misstep after the fatal blow.
The assassination of Philip of Macedon was not only one of the boldest
and most dramatic in history, but it was also one of the earliest in point of
time.

CHAPTER II

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

CHAPTER II

ASSASSINATION OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

(133 B. C.)

I N the history of ancient Rome there occurs one political assassination
which stands out as an event of special significance, not only on account
of the great celebrity of the victim, but also owing to the fact that it is the
first occasion on record in which the conflicting economical interests of
different classes in a republic were settled by a resort to arms, instead of
being adjudicated on principles of equity and justice, or simply by public
authority.
This great historical event was the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, which
was soon followed by the forced suicide of his brother, Caius Gracchus,—
the immediate result of their attempt to enforce an agrarian law passed as an
act of justice to the poorer classes of Roman citizens. The law was violently
opposed by the rich, who organized an armed revolution against its
originators and were powerful enough to do away with them.
There is in the whole conflict about that agrarian law (the so-called
Sempronian law) a modern feature which makes it especially interesting to
Americans at a time when party issues turn largely on economical
questions, and when the antagonism between capital and labor (or the rich
and the poor) threatens to enter the acute stage. It will be noticed that at that
early age (more than two thousand years ago) capital already had a power
and commanded a political influence against which right and justice, allied
to poverty, battled in vain. History, both ancient and modern, has been
written largely in conformity with the ideas and prejudices of the ruling
classes, and in praise of them, while their enemies and opponents have
generally been unjustly criticised and denounced as disturbers of public
order and peace, or even as anarchists and rebels against public authority.
The two illustrious brothers, the Gracchi, have shared this unjust treatment
of historians, and in the estimation of many, pass to-day as dangerous and
seditious characters whose death alone could have saved Rome from greater
calamities. An impartial investigation of their case will, in our opinion,
furnish sufficient proof to reverse this historical judgment.

The two Gracchi were the sons of Sempronius Gracchus, the famous
Roman tribune, who won distinction by his great independence and ability
in the administration of his office, and of the equally famous Cornelia,
daughter of Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the renowned vanquisher of
Hannibal. The brothers, so closely united and so much alike in political
sentiments, designs, and efforts, were of different character, temperament,
and appearance. Tiberius, who was nine years older than his brother, was
gentle and mild in conduct; and his countenance, his eyes, and his gestures
were of peculiar and winning gentleness. His brother Caius was animated,
vehement, and high-tempered. His eloquence was distinguished by the same
characteristics, while that of Tiberius was tactful, persuasive, and
conciliatory. Tiberius would have made an ideal preacher; Caius seemed to
be predestined for the part of a popular advocate and orator.
Tiberius had seen military service and won distinction both by his
bravery and prudence in Spain as aid to his brother-in-law, Scipio
Æmilianus, who was the commander-in-chief. It was, therefore, not his
illustrious birth alone, but individual merit also, which caused him to be
elected tribune of the people in the year 133 B.C. As such he introduced a
bill for the re-apportionment of the public lands and their distribution
among the poorer citizens of Rome. Various explanations have been given
for this action of Tiberius Gracchus. It has been said that he was instigated
by others to introduce a measure which could not fail to arouse against him
the strongest hostility of the rich proprietors of some of these lands. But
from a statement in writing left by his brother Caius, it appears that the idea
of the bill originated with Tiberius himself, and that its introduction sprang
much more from a noble and generous impulse than from political
ambition.
Even to-day the traveller who traverses the silent and depopulated desert
of the Roman Campagna, which is owned by a limited number of large
proprietors and is left in an almost uncultivated state, is struck forcibly with
the thought that the unwise and unjust distribution of the land has had much
to do with the desolate and unproductive aspect of this district, which under
judicious and scientific cultivation might yield rich harvests and contribute
materially to the welfare of the inhabitants of Tuscany. The same thought
struck Tiberius Gracchus as, on his departure for Spain, he travelled through
Tuscany and found it almost a desert, or, at best, only rudely cultivated in
some parts by barbarian and imported slaves. It was at that time that he first

conceived the idea of bringing about a change—an idea which continued to
haunt his mind until he was in a position to realize it. And in doing so he
found a precedent for legislative action.
There already existed a law at Rome—the so-called Licinian law—
which limited the number of acres to be possessed by any one citizen to five
hundred. But this Licinian law had been a dead letter for many years, and
there were many rich citizens in Rome who counted the number of their
acres by the thousand or even ten thousand. It was this violation of the
Licinian law, and the open injustice done to the poor by this violation,
which Tiberius Gracchus wanted to correct. He therefore introduced a new
agrarian law which aimed to revive the Licinian law, but at the same time
greatly modified and attenuated its provisions. The change in the law which
Tiberius Gracchus proposed was in one respect an act of injustice, because
it put a premium on the violation of the law as it had existed, instead of
punishing that violation by imposing an adequate fine. Under the new law a
citizen might hold 500 acres of the public lands in his own name, and in
addition, 250 acres for each son still under the paternal roof and authority.
Moreover, the new law provided that, whenever a citizen should be
compelled to give up land which he held in excess of the share which the
law allowed him, he should be reimbursed for this loss, at the appraised
value, from the public treasury. Tiberius Gracchus also favored the
immediate distribution of the confiscated lands among the poor as their
absolute property, and proposed that, whenever a Roman colony was
founded on conquered territory, a similar distribution of the newly acquired
land should be made.
The new law was enthusiastically applauded by the Roman people, even
before it had been legally adopted; but the Senate most violently opposed it,
because many Senators would have been deprived by its passage of most
valuable lands. In order to defeat it they prevailed upon one of the ten
tribunes to object to the third reading of the law. The unanimous support of
the tribunes was necessary for its passage. When the day for the public vote
on the law had come, an immense multitude of people was assembled at the
Forum. The ten tribunes entered and took their seats on the platform.
Tiberius Gracchus arose and ordered the clerk to read his law, but was
immediately interrupted by Octavius, who ordered him to stop. The
interruption caused an immense sensation and commotion among the
spectators. Tiberius, after having vainly tried to persuade Octavius to

withdraw his objection, adjourned the meeting to a later day. During this
interval he used all his power of persuasion to overcome the resistance of
Octavius, but in vain. It was then that Tiberius Gracchus, in his intense
desire to pass a public measure which he considered highly beneficial to the
people and almost indispensable to the public welfare, resolved to resort to
an expedient which was really unconstitutional and which is the only public
act of his that gives the least foundation to the charge of sedition so
generally preferred against him. He came to the conclusion that the only
way to overcome the veto of Octavius was to depose him from his office by
a popular vote. This was a clear violation of the Constitution, and he carried
out his intention in spite of the loud protests of the Senate.
The scene on the Forum in which Octavius was deposed must have been
very pathetic and impressive; and while it signified an immediate victory
for Tiberius Gracchus, it nevertheless incensed a great many Roman
citizens and turned them against him. It is safe to say that this scene sealed
his doom and furnished the principal reason for his assassination. Plutarch,
a reliable and impartial authority, describes the scene as follows:
“When the people were met together again, Tiberius placed himself in the rostra and endeavored
a second time to persuade Octavius. But all being to no purpose, he referred the whole matter to the
people, calling on them to vote at once whether Octavius should be deposed or not; and when
seventeen of the thirty-five tribes had already voted against him, and there wanted only the vote of
one tribe more for his final deprivation, Tiberius put a short stop to the proceedings, and once more
renewed his importunities; he embraced and kissed him before all the assembly, begging with all the
earnestness imaginable that he would neither suffer himself to incur the dishonor, nor him to be
reputed the author and promoter of so odious a measure. Octavius did seem a little softened and
moved with these entreaties; his eyes filled with tears and he continued silent for a considerable time.
But presently looking toward the rich men and proprietors of estates, who stood gathered in a body
together, partly for shame, and partly for fear of disgracing himself with them, he boldly bade
Tiberius use any severity he pleased. The law for his deposition being thus voted, Tiberius ordered
one of his servants, whom he had made a freeman, to remove Octavius from the rostra, employing his
own domestic freed servants instead of the public officers. And it made the action seem all the sadder
that Octavius was dragged out in such an ignominious manner. The people immediately assaulted
him, while the rich men ran in to his assistance. Octavius, with some difficulty, was snatched away,
and safely conveyed out of the crowd; though a trusty servant of his, who had placed himself in front
of his master that he might assist his escape, in keeping off the multitude, had his eyes struck out,
much to the displeasure of Tiberius, who ran with all haste, when he perceived the disturbance, to
appease the rioters.”

The law was then passed, and commissioners were immediately
appointed to make a survey of the lands and see that they were equally
divided.

The forcible ejection of Octavius and the subsequent passage of the new
agrarian law opened a chasm between Tiberius Gracchus and the patricians,
which nothing but his death could close up. He had made himself
immensely popular with the poor, and other laws which he introduced
increased that popularity. But the more the poor idolized him, the more the
rich hated and abhorred him; and a large number of the better and more
thoughtful class of plebeians resented his bold violation of the Constitution
in removing Octavius from office.
Such were the conditions when the time for the expiration of his official
term as tribune approached, and he as well as his friends saw the necessity
for his reëlection as a measure for protecting his life. He therefore appeared
as a candidate for reëlection; and when on the first day of the election no
choice had resulted from the vote, the next day was appointed for the final
decision. Tiberius knew that not only his political career, but his very life
depended on the result, and he therefore left no stone unturned to rally his
friends to the rescue. But unfortunately, it being harvest time, many of his
adherents were absent from the city, and could not be reached in time for
the struggle.
On the day following, the Senate convened at an early hour, while the
people assembled at the Capitol to proceed with the vote. However, great
confusion prevailed, and a large number of outsiders tried to force their way
in and establish themselves among the voters. And even the appearance of
Tiberius Gracchus, although he was received with loud acclamations, failed
to restore order in the assemblage. Moreover, he showed by the depression
in his countenance and conduct that he had lost confidence in the success of
his cause. Several evil omens which he had encountered on his way to the
Capitol disturbed his mind. At daybreak a soothsayer, who prognosticated
good or bad success by the pecking of fowls, informed him that all his
efforts to induce the fowls to eat had failed. Tiberius then remembered that,
a short time before, two serpents had been found in his helmet. On stepping
out of the house he stumbled on the threshold and hurt his great toe so badly
that it bled profusely. As he walked through the streets he saw on his left
hand two ravens fighting on the roof of a house, and suddenly a stone,
detached from the roof, fell at his feet. The friends of Gracchus, who
surrounded him, all stopped, and he himself hesitated as to whether he
should proceed or return to his house. However, a philosopher from Cuma,
one of his intimates, who was credited with inspiring Gracchus with his

democratic ideas and who was free from the superstition of the Romans,
persuaded him to continue on his way to the Capitol.
There the voting of the tribes was proceeding with great noise and
confusion. All at once Gracchus noticed that one of his friends, Lucius
Flaccus, a Senator, had mounted an elevation from which he could be easily
seen, but where he was too far off to be heard, and was indicating by
motions of his hand that he wished to communicate some important news.
Tiberius told the crowd to let Flaccus pass. With great difficulty the Senator
reached Tiberius and informed him that at the session of the Senate, after
the Consul had refused to have him arrested, a resolution had been passed
to kill him, and that the Senators had armed a large number of their clients
and slaves to carry out this purpose. Tiberius immediately informed the
friends who surrounded him of the action of the Senate, and signified to
those at a greater distance the danger in which he was placed, by raising his
hands to his head,—and it was this motion, entirely innocent in itself, which
hastened his ruin. His enemies construed it as a desire on his part to wear a
crown, and carried this ridiculous news to the Senate chamber. It caused a
perfect explosion of maledictions and threats among the Senators; and
Scipio Nasica, the most violent of all, immediately made a motion that the
Consul be instructed to save the Republic and to exterminate the would-be
tyrant. The Consul replied that he would resist any factious and criminal
attempt against the Republic, but that he would not put to death a Roman
citizen without trial. On this Scipio Nasica turned to the Senators,
exclaiming: “Since the Consul betrays the city, let those who want to defend
the laws follow me!” and followed by a large number of Senators and their
clients, he rushed toward the place where Tiberius Gracchus, surrounded by
his friends, was observing the progress of the election. Immediately a riot
and fight ensued. The Senators, who were armed with clubs, canes, stones,
or whatever weapon they could lay their hands on, rushed upon the crowd
of voters, overthrew, beat, and killed them, stamping them under their feet
and quickly and irresistibly advancing toward the spot where they beheld
the man who was the object of their rage and bloodthirstiness. Tiberius,
unarmed and forsaken by his friends, turned round to seek safety in flight,
but, stumbling over those who had been knocked down, fell to the ground.
It was at that moment, while Tiberius was trying to get on his feet again,
that one of his own colleagues, a tribune of the people, dealt him a powerful
and fatal blow, striking him on the head with the leg of a stool. Others

rushed up and struck him again and again, but it was only a lifeless corpse
which suffered from their abuse. Three hundred of his friends had fallen
with him. It was the first Roman blood which had been shed in civil war,
and this first conflict deprived Rome of one of its most illustrious citizens.
It is unnecessary to go into any details regarding the death of Caius
Gracchus, who took up and continued the work of his brother. To the
measures in favor of the poor which had been advocated by Tiberius, he
added others,—for instance, regular distributions of corn among the poor at
half price, the imposition of new taxes upon articles of luxury imported
from foreign countries, and employment on public works for mechanics and
laborers who could not find employment on private contract. It will be seen
that these measures, as well as some other projects of minor importance
which Caius Gracchus advocated and caused to be enacted as laws, form
part of the platform of modern labor parties, and that the Gracchi can fitly
be designated as the founders of these parties. They both fell victims to the
attempt to carry out their theories. At first, it would seem, Caius Gracchus
at the request of his mother, was inclined to abandon the projects of
Tiberius; but one night, says Cicero in his book De Divinatione, he heard
Tiberius saying to him: “Why hesitate, Caius? Thy destiny shall be the same
as mine—to fight for the people, and to die for them.” It is said that this
prophecy determined him in his course, and that his death was the
consequence. In 121 B.C., during a public riot and conflict organized by his
enemies for his destruction, he committed suicide, dying not by his own
hand, but by commanding his slave to stab him,—an order which was
promptly obeyed. The assassination of the one and the forced suicide of the
other immortalized the two brothers.

CHAPTER III

JULIUS CÆSAR

CHAPTER III

ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CÆSAR

(44 B. C.)

A MERICANS are not great students of history, especially ancient
history. Very likely the assassination of Julius Cæsar, one of the most
important events in the history of ancient Rome, would also be among
the “things not generally known” among Americans, had not Shakespeare’s
great tragedy made them familiar with it. It is true, the aims of the dramatist
and of the historian are wide-apart. The dramatist places the hero in the
centre of the plot, and causes every part of it to contribute to the catastrophe
which overwhelms him under the decree of fate. He is the victim of his own
guilt. The historian makes the great man but one of the principal factors in
the evolution of events, and if a Cæsar or a Napoleon succumbs in the
struggle, it is by force of external circumstances against which his genius is
powerless to contend, although his ambition or his passion may have been
the dominant cause of arraying those circumstances against him. By his
matchless genius and incomparable art, Shakespeare has, to a certain
degree, in his “Julius Cæsar,” solved the difficult problem of combining the
task of the dramatic poet with that of the historian, and has placed before
the spectator not only Cæsar himself with his world-wide and imperialistic
ambition as the central figure of the play, but also Rome with its republican
recollections and aspirations in antagonism to Cæsar’s ambition. The
delineation of the character of the foremost man of the ancient world by the
greatest dramatist of modern times, and his skilful grouping of the great
republicans struggling for the maintenance of republican institutions, have
been so indelibly engraved upon the minds of modern readers that the
assassination of Julius Cæsar, which took place at Rome 44 B.C., is nearly as
familiar to them as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And if we, in this
series of Famous Assassinations in History, devote a chapter to it, it is
simply for the reason that the series would be incomplete without it.
Moreover, it may be both interesting and useful to call to the mind of the
reader the circumstances and surroundings which led to the downfall of
Cæsar. The conspiracy and assassination removed from the scene of action
the master-mind of the age, without saving the republican institutions; and it

is only by explaining the causes that we can do justice to the noble
intentions of the conspirators, while lamenting the assassination of Cæsar as
a public misfortune for Rome, inasmuch as it removed the strong hand that
could have prevented the anarchy and civil war which broke out among his
successors, immediately after his disappearance from the public stage.
Cæsar was at the height of his power. His achievements had eclipsed the
military glory of Pompey, and by his wonderful career he might truly be
looked upon as the “man of destiny.” On his return from Gaul, when the
Senate had rejected his request for a prolongation of his command, and had
ordered him to disband his army and to give up the administration of his
province, his popularity was so great that his homeward journey, escorted as
he was by his victorious army, was but a continuous triumphal march. Not
only Rome, but all Italy welcomed him home as its greatest man, and was
ready to heap its greatest, nay even divine honors upon him.
The Senate and its chosen commander-in-chief, Pompey, had fled on the
approach of Cæsar. In the decisive battle of Pharsalus Cæsar defeated
Pompey, and by this victory became the sole ruler of the Roman Republic.
Pompey was assassinated on landing in Egypt, as a fugitive, and Cæsar
returned to Rome, where he was received with the tumultuous acclamations
of the people, and conducted to the Capitol as the savior of the country. The
Senate, which had just made war upon him and outlawed him as an enemy
of the fatherland, appointed him dictator for ten years with absolute and
supreme power, gave him a body-guard of seventy-two lictors to proclaim
his majesty and inviolability, and ordered his statue to be placed beside that
of Jupiter on the Capitol. A public thanksgiving festival, continuing for
forty days, was proclaimed, and four brilliant triumphs for his victories in
Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, were accorded to him.
Never before in the history of Rome had such honors, which seemed to
pass the human limit, been conferred on any Roman citizen. It was evident
that of the Republic nothing but the name remained, and that Cæsar, the
dictator, was in fact the absolute monarch of the immense Empire. Once
more the friends of liberty made an effort to shake off the yoke which
Cæsar had imposed on the Republic. They flocked to the standards of the
sons of Pompey, but the bloody and hard-fought battle of Munda sealed
their fate; and Cæsar, again victorious, remained the absolute master of the
civilized world,—not without an enemy, but certainly without a rival.

On his return to Rome new honors and new ovations awaited him. The
dignity and pride of Roman citizenship seemed to have been lost entirely in
the crouching servility with which the most distinguished and most highly
stationed citizens prostrated themselves at the feet of the all-powerful ruler.
Resistance to Cæsar had apparently disappeared. All bowed to his
surpassing genius and ability, and to these qualities he added acts of
clemency, kindness, and gentleness, which won him the hearts even of
those who, from political principle, had opposed him. But while thus openly
the more than imperial power of Cæsar was generally recognized, and while
the Senate and the tribunes had been degraded to the position of mere tools
to his autocratic will, there still remained in the hearts of a number of high-
minded patriots the hope and anxious desire to save the republican form of
government from the grasping ambition of the conqueror, who was
evidently not satisfied with being Imperator in fact, but wanted to be also
Imperator in name. At least the repeated attempts of the most intimate
friends and most trusted lieutenants of Cæsar to induce him to accept the
crown at the hands of a subservient people, and his rather hesitating conduct
in refusing these proposals, seemed to confirm this suspicion.
These enthusiastic Republicans cautiously disguised their hostility to the
Imperator under the mask of devoted friendship. Their hope was, perhaps,
that Cæsar’s imperial régime would be but temporary and that, like Sulla,
he would sooner or later get tired of his dictatorship, and resign his imperial
honors. But Cæsar did not think of abdicating the honors he had won; on
the contrary, every act and every public utterance of his indicated that he
wished to prolong and augment them rather than to abandon them. In public
he was anxious to show his preëminence. He appeared dressed in the
costume of the kings of Alba, and with royal insignia. One day, when the
entire Senate waited upon him in front of the temple of Venus, he remained
seated while he was addressed, during the entire ceremony. His statue at the
Capitol was placed beside those of the ancient kings of Rome, as though he
were to continue their line. New titles of honor, not to say worship, were
added to those which had been conferred upon him at the first moment of
his brilliant victories, and his lieutenants and followers welcomed and
adopted them as something that was due to his superhuman wisdom and
greatness. He was called not only “Father of the Country,” but “Demi-
God,” the “Invincible God,” “Jupiter Julius,”—as though Jupiter himself
had taken mortal form and shape in him.

This public adoration irritated the Republicans we have mentioned, to
the highest degree. They secretly charged Cæsar with encouraging or
instigating this worship of himself, because they knew that his friends
would not have proposed it unless confident that he would be pleased by it.
Brutus and Cassius were at the head of these Republicans. Brutus, a stern
Republican, a Roman in the noblest acceptation of the word, was reputed to
be Cæsar’s son, the offspring of an adulterous love-affair, and was openly
favored and distinguished by him. Cassius, a distinguished general, was
much more prompted by jealousy and envy than by civic virtue and
republican principle. When these two men and their friends became
thoroughly convinced that Cæsar’s ambition would stop at nothing, and that
the new imperialistic régime was to be permanent, they came to the
conclusion that nothing but Cæsar’s death could prevent these calamities.
They therefore resolved to assassinate him.
The ides of March (the fifteenth day of the month) in the year 44 B.C.,
was selected as the day of the assassination. The conspiracy had been
formed with the greatest secrecy, but it came near failing at the eleventh
hour. Cæsar’s wife had had dreams and presentiments of bad omen, and she
persuaded him not to go to the Senate on that day. Very reluctantly he
consented to remain at home. But Decimus Brutus, one of the conspirators,
who was afraid that the postponement of the assassination might lead to its
discovery, went to Cæsar’s residence, ridiculed the dreams of a timid
woman, and said he could not believe that they would influence the mind of
the great Cæsar. Then Cæsar, half ashamed at having yielded to his wife’s
entreaties, accompanied him. On his way to the Senate a paper was handed
to Cæsar, which gave all the particulars of the conspiracy, and warned him
not to go to the Senate session on the fifteenth of March, because it was the
day set for his assassination. But Cæsar kept the paper in his hand without
reading it. Under various pretexts, all the particular friends of Cæsar had
been kept from attending the session of the Senate, so that when he arrived,
he was surrounded only by enemies or by those who were not considered
his friends. The conspirators acted promptly. Cæsar was defenceless, and in
a few minutes he lay prostrate,—a lifeless corpse, showing thirty-five
wounds, many of which were absolutely fatal. The most celebrated of all
political assassinations had been successful; and by a peculiar irony of fate,
the dying Cæsar fell at the feet of the statue of Pompey, his great rival,
whom he had vanquished at Pharsalus. His death did not, as the

conspirators had hoped, prevent the establishment of the Empire; it but
delayed it for a few years.
Cæsar has had many worshippers and admirers, and comparatively few
calumniators and belittlers. Unquestionably he was one of the most
extraordinary geniuses that ever lived, equally great as a general and as a
statesman, as an orator and as a historian. In the whole range of history
there is but one man—Napoleon—who, in the vastness of his conceptions
and the masterly perfection of their execution, can be justly compared with
him. All other men whom national vanity has occasionally placed by
Cæsar’s side only suffer from the comparison; their immense inferiority
appears on even superficial investigation. He was in fact the foremost man
the world had seen to his day, and, but for his equally great rival in modern
times, would still occupy the pinnacle of human greatness alone. Very
likely, if he had lived, Rome would have been the happier.

CHAPTER IV

TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO

CALIGULA

CHAPTER IV

ASSASSINATIONS OF TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO

(A. D. 37-68.)

A T the time of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, the Roman people, and
especially the higher classes, had reached a degree of perversity and
degeneracy which appears to the modern reader almost incredible.
They had become utterly unfit for self-government. The most atrocious
public and private vices in both sexes had taken the place of the civic
virtues and the private honor for which the ancient Roman had been famous
the world over. In public life, corruption, venality, and bribery were general;
a public office-holder was synonymous with a robber of the public treasury.
Nepotism prevailed to an alarming degree, and the ablest men were
unceremoniously pushed aside for the incapable descendants of the nobility.
In times like those, only the very strongest hand and the sternest character
and mind can restrain the masses from falling into anarchy and civil war,
and impose on society moderation and the rule of law.
The assassination of Cæsar had a most demoralizing effect on the
Roman people. The hand of the master who might have controlled the
unruly masses and restrained the degenerate nobility lay palsied in death;
the giant intellect, which had embraced the civilized world in its dream of
establishing a universal monarchy, thought no more; and the results were
chaos, anarchy, and civil war. The absence of the master mind was
lamentably felt; his heirs were unable to control the wild elements which
the assassins had set free; and for many years, rapine, bloodshed, murder,
and spoliation ruled supreme throughout the vast extent of the Roman
Republic, until finally, in the year 30 B.C., Octavianus Augustus, Cæsar’s
nephew, succeeded in establishing that imperium of which Cæsar had
dreamed, and for which his genius and his victories had paved the way.
The imperial era, beginning with a display of magnificence and splendor,
both in military achievements and literary production, soon degenerated
into an era of crime, which, at least in the highest classes of society, has
never been equalled in history. Its worst feature was, perhaps, the utter
degradation and depravity of the women even of the highest classes, and
their readiness to sacrifice everything—chastity, shame, name, and

reputation—to the gratification of their passions. Soon the women excelled
the men in assassinating, by poison or dagger, their victims or rivals.
Augustus, the first Emperor, showed on the throne much less cruelty than
he had manifested as a triumvir; but Livia Drusilla, his third wife, was the
first of those female monsters on the throne of the Cæsars—Livia,
Agrippina, Messalina, Domitia—who never shrank from murder, if by
blood or poison they could rid themselves of a rival or of an obstacle to
their criminal ambition. Livia, who wished Tiberius, her son by a former
marriage, to be the successor of Augustus on the imperial throne, caused
Marcellus (the

CLAUDIUS

husband of Julia, daughter of Augustus), and also Julia’s two sons, to be
poisoned; and by these crimes secured the succession for Tiberius. She is

also suspected of having poisoned Augustus himself.
Tiberius, the second of the Roman Emperors, lives immortal in history
rather by his crimes than by his valorous deeds. So does Caligula, the third,
and Claudius, the fourth, and Nero, the fifth Emperor,—who were all
assassinated after comparatively short reigns, but who had exhausted all
forms of cruelty and crime; while their wives, Messalina, Agrippina, and
Poppæa will live in history forever as the unrivalled types of female
depravity. Above all, Messalina, the wife of Claudius, who ruled from the
year 41 to the year 54 of the Christian era, became notorious for every
species of vice. In her libidinous and voluptuous excesses, as well as in the
demoniacal conception of her murderous plots against her enemies, she was
easily first and foremost,—the real empress of the vicious and fallen
women of Rome: she became their open rival in the houses of ill-fame in
her capital, she contended with them for the palm of obscenity and
prostitution, and vanquished them all.
Unless the great historians of Rome had recorded these excesses as facts
abundantly substantiated by irrefutable testimony, the reports would have
been relegated to the domain of fable, because they are too revolting to be
believed without sufficient authority. Can the human mind conceive, for
instance, an act of greater criminal insolence than that which the Empress
Messalina committed by marrying, publicly and under the very eyes of the
capital, a young Roman aristocrat, Caius Silius, for whom she was inflamed
with an adulterous passion, while her husband, the Emperor, was but a few
miles away at Ostia? And yet Tacitus, a stern and truthful historian, records
this as an undeniable fact, adding that future generations will be loath to
believe it.
When, in the year 68 A.D., Nero expired by the dagger of a freedman,
courage having failed him to commit suicide, the family of Cæsar the Great
became extinct, even in its adopted members. Only one hundred and twelve
years had elapsed since the greatest of the Romans had fallen by the
daggers of the Republican conspirators; but that short period had sufficed to
subvert the Republic and to erect a despotic Empire on its ruins, to flood the
vast territory of Rome, which embraced the entire civilized world, with
streams of blood, to place imbeciles and assassins on the throne of the
Cæsars, and to adorn the brows of courtesans and prostitutes, their partners
in crime and depravity, with the imperial diadem. Never before in human
history had human depravity and human lust displayed themselves more

shamelessly; never before had the beast in man shown its innate cruelty so
boldly and so openly as during the reigns of these five Roman Emperors. It
is almost a consolation for the sorrowing mind to read that Tiberius was
choked to death; that Caligula was beaten down and stabbed; that Claudius
was killed by a dish of poisonous mushrooms; and that Nero, the last of
Cæsar’s dynasty, was helped to his untimely death by the poniard of a
freedman. Quick assassination was all too light a punishment for these
monsters of iniquity who had so often feasted their eyes on the tortures of
their innocent victims.

CHAPTER V

HYPATIA

CHAPTER V

ASSASSINATION OF HYPATIA

(A. D. 415.)

N EVER, perhaps, did the wonderful genius of Alexander the Great
appear to better advantage than when he selected Alexandria as a
commercial centre and distributing point for the products of three
continents, and as an intellectual focus from which Hellenic culture should
be transmitted to those countries of Asia and Africa which his victories had
opened to Greek civilization. The rapidity with which the city—to which
Alexander had given his own name—grew to the dimensions of a great
capital and a world-emporium, proved the sagacity and ingenious foresight
of its founder, and was unrivalled among all the cities of the ancient world.
It became the greatest seaport of the world, surpassing in the grandeur and
magnificence of its buildings every other city except Rome itself; and
when, through the genius of the Ptolemies, the successors of Alexander as
rulers of Egypt, the great library was added to its monuments and treasures
of art, it became also the intellectual capital of the world, rivalling and in
some respects eclipsing the city of the Cæsars. It is true, long before
Alexandria had reached its greatest prosperity, the creative power of
Hellenic genius in the higher spheres of poetry and philosophy had passed
its zenith. In the so-called Alexandrian age of literature the most beautiful
and most poetical inspirations were the idyls of Theocritus. But Alexandria
was the first city in the ancient world which became the seat of a many-
sided, methodical scholarship, and of systematic, zealous studies of the
exact sciences,—a university in the modern sense. It also became the great
library city of the world.
It is true, the great library of inestimable value collected by Ptolemy
Philadelphus (who also purchased the large library of Aristoteles) had been
ruthlessly destroyed in the Alexandrian war of Julius Cæsar. But Ptolemy
Physcon collected a second valuable library, which was augmented by the
splendid library of King Eumenes of Pergamus, and formed by far the
grandest collection of books to be found in the world. Mark Antony gave
this splendid library to Queen Cleopatra. It comprised the intellectual
treasures of the ancient world, and was placed in a wing of the Serapeum,—

in that gigantic and magnificent building which was the grandest temple of
ancient Egypt and the pride of Alexandria. The great city of the Ptolemies,
with a population of nearly a million souls, had also become a sort of
neutral territory upon which all religions could meet on equal terms. The
cosmopolitan character of this great commercial centre, in which Christians,
Jews, and pagans of all countries competed for the acquisition of wealth,
made it natural for all these different citizens to live in harmony and mutual
toleration. The time came, however, when Christianity was proclaimed the
official state religion under Theodosius the Great, upon whose instigation or
order the Roman Senate (not by a unanimous, but by a simple majority
vote) passed a resolution declaring that the Christian religion should be the
only true religion for the Roman Empire. This official declaration became
the signal for a brutal persecution of the old religion throughout the Empire,
and especially in its eastern provinces. Very prominent in this work of
persecution and destruction was Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria,
who was famous far and wide as one of the great lights of the Church and
as a man of exceptional piety, although many of his actions are utterly
inexcusable from a moral point of view. Theophilus was in constant warfare
with the pagans and Jews of Alexandria, who quite often joined hands in
fighting him. But, as a rule, they were defeated by the pugnacious prelate,
who, on such occasions, always found at his command a formidable army
composed of the mob of the city and of the monks of the desert of Nitria,
which was near the city. The main object of Theophilus’s attacks was the
great Serapeum, in which immense treasures of gold, silver, and sacred
vessels were stored away, and which contained also the great collection of
books,—a perfect armory of pagan philosophy, religion, and poetry,—
which was especially obnoxious to him. By shrewdly misrepresenting the
spirit of revolt among the Jews and pagans of the city, he succeeded in
getting an edict from the Emperor authorizing him to destroy this temple of
ancient wisdom and culture,—and, for the second time, the magnificent
library of Alexandria was partly destroyed, partly scattered to the winds.
The audacity of Theophilus had inflicted terrible defeats on the non-
Christian population of Alexandria, and had utterly disheartened it. On the
other hand, the Christian inhabitants showed by their increasing arrogance
that they were conscious of the supremacy of their church and of the
exclusive protection to which their religion entitled them. However, in spite

of this cruel discrimination there still remained at Alexandria a large and
intelligent element true to the old religion, or rather to the old philosophy.
Theophilus died in the year 412 A.D., and was succeeded by his nephew
Kyrillos, better known as St. Cyril, who continued the vindictive policy
against the Jews and pagans which his uncle had inaugurated. It was not
long before Cyril had fanaticized the mob against the Jews to such an extent
that the latter, driven to despair, took up arms against their aggressors, who
had undertaken a regular crusade against their lives and property. Pitched
battles and massacres took place in the streets of Alexandria. Hundreds of
the unfortunate Jews were slain, and very likely the Jewish population
would have been entirely exterminated or expelled from the city, had not
Orestes, the imperial governor, interfered in their behalf, and defeated the
infuriated mob and the monks of Nitria, who as usual had taken a hand in
the fight. But it was a long and stubbornly contested battle. Although Cyril
personally did not show himself, it was nevertheless well known that he
directed the attacks against the Jews from his hiding-place. Moreover all his
most intimate friends actively participated in the riot and strenuously
resisted the efforts of the governor to restore peace.
One of these friends personally assaulted and seriously wounded the
governor. After the revolt had been quelled, this man was put on trial and
sentenced to death. In vain Cyril appealed for mercy and tried to save the
life of the accused man. Orestes was implacable, and the condemned man
was executed. The disdain with which he had been treated by the governor,
enraged the prelate and stimulated him to revenge. A large procession of
priests and citizens took the body of the criminal from the gibbet and
carried it to the principal church of Alexandria, where the Archbishop read
high mass and delivered a sermon full of admiration and eulogy for the
victim, filling the hearts of the congregation with hatred and contempt for
the authorities, and invoking the punishment of Heaven upon their heads.
But even this public demonstration did not satisfy the Archbishop; and with
consummate cruelty he hit upon a plan for deeply wounding the governor
without attacking him personally.
At that time there lived at Alexandria a young lady of great talent and
renown. Her name was Hypatia. She was the daughter of Theon, a
celebrated mathematician who lived at Alexandria, and whose genius for
mathematics she seemed to have inherited. She first became his pupil, but
soon surpassed him in ability and reputation. She also applied herself with

great zeal and rare penetration to the study of the philosophy of Plato,
whom she greatly admired and much preferred to Aristotle. Since
Alexandria had no professors superior to herself in attainments and
learning, Hypatia went to Greece and for several years attended the lectures
of the most famous professors of Athens. She then returned to Alexandria,
and was immediately invited by the authorities to the chair of philosophy in
the University. Hypatia accepted this honor and filled the position with
brilliant success. It was not only her profound and extensive learning,
embracing the entire compass of the exact sciences, but also the charm of
her persuasive and mellifluous eloquence which filled her hearers with
admiration.
Her reputation as a public lecturer soon equalled her renown as a
mathematician and philosopher, and a number of the most distinguished
men of Alexandria and other cities were among her regular disciples,
listening with delight to her dissertations. One of her most enthusiastic
students was Synesius, afterwards Bishop of Ptolemais, who always held
her in affectionate reverence, although she had steadily refused to profess
the Christian religion. Orestes, the governor, was also among the number of
her admirers and was frequently seen at her lectures, which were attended
by Christians as well as by pagans. To the great qualities of her mind were
added rare physical beauty and a suavity of manners which won the hearts
of all those who became acquainted with her. Several of Alexandria’s most
prominent citizens desired to marry her, but she refused all proposals
because she wanted to live only for the sciences to which she had devoted
her life. In spite of her great popularity and the steadily increasing number
of admirers, Hypatia’s reputation was spotless; she had many friends, but
never had a lover. While this eminent woman’s celebrity as a thinker—
which entirely eclipsed his own—would have been sufficient to fill the
heart of Cyril with envy and jealousy, there was an additional reason for his
hatred and hostility. Orestes, the governor, was a frequent visitor at her
house and was known to consult her frequently on important public
questions. The Archbishop, perhaps justly, attributed to Hypatia’s influence
the governor’s evident leaning toward paganism and his open admiration
for the philosophical doctrines of the Greek philosophers. Seeking for a
victim on whom to vent his spite against Orestes, he therefore selected
Hypatia as the one whose destruction would hurt him most deeply, while at
the same time it would deliver himself and the church from their most

dangerous opponent. It was comparatively easy for him to inflame the
minds of the ignorant masses with rage against the woman who was
represented to them as the implacable enemy of their religion, and whose
pernicious teachings had led so many others from the path of virtue and
salvation.
Everything was carefully but secretly prepared for the fatal blow, which
was struck in the month of March, 415. It was a beautiful sunny day, and
Hypatia got ready to proceed to the University, where she was to lecture
that forenoon. A carriage was waiting for her at the door of her residence.
When she entered the carriage she was surprised at the unusual number of
people filling the street, and at the great number of monks passing through
their ranks and apparently haranguing them. She could not account for this
strange gathering, for it was not a Christian holiday, nor was any civil
procession to come off that morning.
All at once she noticed that this great assemblage of people began to
move in the direction of her own house. As it came nearer she heard wild
exclamations and threats, without comprehending, however, that she was
the object of this hostile demonstration. At the head of the procession
marched Peter, the reader, one of the most fanatical of the priests of the city;
he had played a very prominent part in the previous riots, and was evidently
the leader in this new movement. With growing astonishment Hypatia saw
them coming, but in the consciousness of her innocence she had no fear.
She was soon to be cruelly disabused.
As soon as the rioters were within a few hundred feet of her residence
and saw her seated in her carriage ready to start, the leaders and those in the
front rank rushed toward her. Peter, the reader, was the first to reach her and
to lay hands on her. As she recoiled from his touch in terror, others climbed
upon the wheels of the carriage and dragged her down into the street. She
resisted and called for help, but her cries died away unheard in the tumult of
the roaring and jeering multitude who surrounded the carriage and with
ever-increasing violence uttered threats against her.
Popular excitement is a flame which feeds itself by the electric current
emanating from thousands of impassioned and excited minds. It is ready on
slight provocation to burst forth in all-devouring violence. But a few
minutes had passed from the moment the procession reached Hypatia’s
carriage until the infuriated mob, holding the victim firmly in their grasp,

had torn the garments from her body and hurried her with wild cheers and
laughter to the Cæsarium, the great Christian church. Paralyzed with fear,
unable to utter anything but screams and cries for help, she was dragged, in
a state of perfect nudity, through the streets, and neither her helplessness
nor her beauty softened the hearts of her tormentors and murderers. She was
doomed to die, to be sacrificed at a Christian altar, atoning for her unbelief
and her pernicious teachings with her life. One of her own friends, like
herself adhering to the ancient cult and to Platonic philosophy, fitly
compared Hypatia’s murder to the sacrifice of a Greek goddess by drunken
and infuriated barbarians. But the crowning infamy of this assassination, as
brutal as any that history has recorded, was that the victim was dragged to
the church of Christ,—Christ, the incarnation of love and mercy,—and
slaughtered there amidst the yells and curses of the so-called believers.
Hundreds of women had swelled the mob, and like the men they were
brandishing flints, shells, and broken pottery, with which to cut and lacerate
their victim that they might feast their eyes on her agony.
Charles Kingsley has given in his famous novel, “Hypatia,” a heart-
rending description of the last moments of the illustrious woman-
philosopher. The description may not be accurate in every little detail, but
Mr. Kingsley sees the scene with the eye and with the imagination of a poet,
and his description is poetically true. Our readers will thank us for quoting
his words in rendering this final scene:—
“Whither were they dragging her?... On into the church itself! Into the cool dim shadow, with its
fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures
looking from the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom; and right in front, above the altar, the colossal
Christ watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand raised to give a blessing—or a curse?
“On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy pavement—up the chancel steps
themselves—right underneath the great, still Christ: and there even those hell-hounds paused.... She
shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing back, rose for one moment to her full height,
naked, snow-white against the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide, clear eyes,
but not a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her; the other long white
arm was stretched upward toward the great still Christ, appealing—and who dare say in vain?—from
man to God. Her lips were open to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached
God’s ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again ... and
then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, ran along the vaulted roofs.... What in the name of the
God of mercy were they doing? Tearing her piece-meal? Yes, and worse than that!... It was over. The
shrieks had died away into moans, the moans to silence.... A new cry rose through the dome: ‘To the
Cinaron! Burn the bones to ashes! Scatter them into the sea!’ ”

In the whole annals of crime not a more heart-rending and more brutal
scene can be found than the murder of Hypatia. The assassination of the

beautiful young Princess de Lamballe, the friend of Marie Antoinette,
during the worst days of the French Revolution, bears some resemblance to
it; but, after all, political fanaticism is never equal in its intensity and
cruelty to religious fanaticism. Moreover, the fate of Hypatia shows that not
all the martyrs were on the side of Christianity in the early ages of the
Christian church. It should be stated, however, that a general cry of horror
resounded through the world when the terrible news of Hypatia’s death
crossed the seas and was echoed from land to land, and that the Christian
Church, by its most illustrious representatives, was loud in its denunciation
of the murder.
Upon the fame and name of St. Cyril the murder of Hypatia has left a
lasting stain; for the plan and execution were generally attributed to him.
Even Catholic Church historians, both ancient and modern, criticise him
severely for his imprudent and ill-advised instigations against Hypatia and
her followers, although they try to protect his memory against the reproach
of having intentionally caused her death.

CHAPTER VI

THOMAS À BECKET

THOMAS À BECKET

CHAPTER VI

ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS À BECKET

(December 29, 1170)

O NE of the most remarkable careers and one of the most famous
assassinations in the middle ages were the career and the assassination
of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. His life (at least after
he had been elevated to the Primacy of England) and his death show him as
the great representative of the Church of Rome, standing up for the defence
of its rights and dying in their defence; and they show also how necessary,
in those dark ages, was a superhuman power, to hold the arrogance and
brute force of warriors and princes in check, and bring into subjection their
unbridled passions and their insolent usurpations. Even if Thomas à Becket
miserably perished in his bold resistance to kingly assumption, his death
was a wholesome lesson to the tyrants on European thrones, and raised him
higher in the estimation of the world than a victory over King Henry the
Second would have done.
Thomas Becket, or, as he is oftener called, Thomas à Becket, rose to his
eminent station in State and Church from comparatively low birth. He was
born in 1119, the son of a London merchant and an Oriental mother. This
lady had followed the merchant to England after his return from the Holy
Land, where he had been a crusader. The merchant rapidly acquired wealth,
and was able to give his son, who was distinguished by brilliant talents, a
splendid education. After having studied for some time at Oxford, the
young man was permitted to complete his studies at the University of Paris,
which at that time attracted students from all parts of Europe by the
reputation of its professors and the superiority of its methods of instruction.
From Paris Thomas went to Bologna, in order to study theology; by his
travels and the application and zeal with which he pursued his studies, he
acquired an exceptional reputation for the extent, variety, and depth of his
knowledge. On his return from Italy Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury
was charmed with the attainments and learning of the young man, and
recommended him to the King for the appointment of Chancellor. The King
appointed him and made him also the tutor of his son. In the position of
Chancellor he ingratiated himself with the King, and his counsels in matters

of State and of importance to the crown proved so valuable that the King
soon distinguished him above all other courtiers and officials, and treated
him more as a friend than as a subject.
Having inherited immense wealth from his father, and having, moreover,
been endowed by the munificence of the King with a number of offices and
benefices from which he derived large revenues, the Chancellor made a
great display of splendor and wealth. His household eclipsed almost that of
the King himself, and looked more like the court of a prince than the
household of a citizen. However, he neglected no opportunity to show his
loyalty and devotion to the King. In 1159 he accompanied the King to
Toulouse, with a retinue of seven hundred knights and twelve hundred
mounted men, all of whom he had equipped at his own expense. The King
also intrusted him with a confidential mission to Paris, where he was to
negotiate the marriage of the King’s eldest son with the eldest daughter of
the King of France. The Chancellor succeeded in concluding a family
alliance between the two courts, and conducted the young princess
personally to England.
In 1162 Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and King Henry the
Second immediately declared that Thomas à Becket should be his
successor. When the King’s plan to make him Archbishop was mentioned to
Becket, he protested against it, and it would seem, sincerely. He even went
so far as to tell the King, when the latter urged him to work for his election,
that he was making a mistake in advocating his elevation to the See of
Canterbury, using these words: “If I should be raised to that office, you
would soon hate me as much as you now love me; for you will meddle in
the affairs of the Church more than I can consent to, and people will not be
wanting to embroil us.” But the King laughed at these warnings. He
supposed that Becket, as Archbishop, would be as complaisant and willing a
tool to assist him in curtailing the prerogatives of the Church and
transferring them to the crown, as he had been on a former occasion. He
therefore continued to use his influence in favor of Becket’s election, and
succeeded in placing him in the Archbishop’s See. At first the Pope objected
to his election, but he finally ratified it in order to please the kings of
England and France, who had both appealed to him in Becket’s behalf.
No sooner had Becket been installed as Archbishop of Canterbury—
which dignity carried with it that of Primate of England—than he entirely
changed his mode of living. No more luxury, no more display of wealth, no

more horses or magnificent costumes for him! On the contrary, the new
Archbishop ostentatiously chose the coarsest and plainest garments. Instead
of the fine lace shirt of former days he wore a coarse haircloth, dirty in the
extreme, and his outer garments were frequently ragged. His food was of
the plainest quality, consisting of bread, water, and skimmed milk. He
affected austerity in every way, frequently flogged himself for impure
thoughts or nominal sins which he might have committed, and every day he
knelt and washed the feet of thirteen beggars. He resigned his office as
Chancellor in order to devote all his time and zeal to his new office and the
affairs of the Church.
The King did not like the change in the Archbishop’s ways, and
protested against his resignation, but Becket would not reconsider it. The
King rightly guessed that there might be a hidden meaning and a secret
ambition in the Archbishop’s sudden conversion to Christian humility,
which so strangely contrasted with his past conduct. The storm between the
two mighty men, each self-willed and irascible, was brewing, and when it
finally broke out, it was fierce and relentless. It never ended until the prelate
lay prostrate as a victim of assassins before the altar of the church which he
tried to protect from the King’s usurpation.
It was not long before the conflict broke out. It then appeared that the
change which had taken place in Becket was not confined to the outer man
only, but had also affected his relation to the Church and the State. From a
King’s counsellor and servant he had suddenly turned to be the counsellor
and servant of the Church, and he carried over into his new station the
impulsiveness and stubbornness which had always distinguished him in the
service of the King. It is difficult to say which of the two, in this struggle
for ascendency, was right, or rather which of the two was the more to
blame. For while the King was aggressive, arrogant, domineering, in the
consciousness of his power, the Archbishop was imperious, insolent, and
inconsistent, inasmuch as he now boldly condemned what he had formerly
counselled. But it seemed to be a trait of Becket’s character, that he always
devoted himself unconditionally to the master he served at the time, and
that from the moment he abandoned the service of the King for that of the
Church it was quite natural for him to defend the interests and rights of the
latter against the usurpations of the former.
At that time a priest who had committed any crime could be tried by an
ecclesiastical court only; consequently very few criminals of this class were

convicted and adequately punished; in most cases the accused, even if
found guilty, were only reprimanded and degraded. This abuse was carried
to such excess that during the first years of the reign of Henry the Second
no less than one hundred murders committed by priests had not been
punished. A priest had seduced the daughter of a gentleman living in
Worcestershire, and, confronted by the angry father of the girl, assassinated
him. Public indignation was aroused by this atrocity to such an extent that
the King ordered the arrest of the guilty priest and his trial before a civil
tribunal. Becket protested against this order, claiming that it was an
infringement of the prerogatives of the Church. He ordered an ecclesiastical
court to investigate the charges, and the result was as usual, that the
punishment awarded was only degradation. The King was furious. He made
up his mind to beat the Archbishop at his own game and to punish him for
his presumption. He therefore submitted the question of ecclesiastical
immunities and of church prerogatives to a council of jurists and ordered
them to investigate whether these prerogatives were founded on a solid
historical basis. The jurists knew what sort of decision the King wanted, and
they gave it. Thereupon the King convened a general council of the high
nobility and also of the Church at Clarendon, and there, among other
restrictions placed upon the Church, it was enacted that members of the
clergy indicted for a crime should be tried by civil tribunals, exactly like
other subjects.
Becket, seeing that all the barons and many prelates had submitted to the
decree of the council, was compelled to yield, and swore to obey it; but his
submission was caused only by his powerlessness. But when this so-called
Constitution of Clarendon was sent to the Pope for ratification, he rejected
it haughtily and condemned it in the most energetic manner. Thereupon
Becket, basing his action on the condemnation of the Pope, openly retracted
the consent which he had given to the Clarendon decree, and subjected
himself to great austerities and macerations proportionate to the greatness
of the sin he had committed in yielding to the royal demands. He even
refused to perform any functions connected with his episcopal rank until the
Pope had acquitted him of his great wrong against the Church. This action
made the rupture between the King and the Archbishop irreparable. Henry
swore to have his revenge on a priest who was not only an ingrate but a
perjurer. He arraigned him before a parliament convened at Northampton in
1165 as a rebel, as having violated his oath of allegiance. Becket was

convicted, his personal estate was confiscated, the revenues of his
archbishopric were seized, and Becket himself, abandoned even by his
clergy, fled to France, whose King, in spite of the protests of Henry, offered
him a refuge.
Becket’s spirit was far from being broken. From his retreat in France he
wrote to the bishops of England that the Pope had annulled the Constitution
of Clarendon, and at the same time he excommunicated a number of those,
bishops as well as other high officials, who had assisted in violating the
sacred rights of the Church. The King answered by exiling all his relatives
from England, and forbidding his subjects to correspond with him, or to
send him money; he even forbade prayers in behalf of the Archbishop to be
offered in church.
But the conditions between the Church and the court created by this
conflict were such that the King found it expedient to make overtures of
reconciliation to Becket, first through the bishops and church officials of
England, and afterwards personally. In a conference which he held for that
purpose with the King of France, he said to the latter: “There have been
several kings of England, some more and others less powerful than myself;
there have been also several Archbishops of Canterbury, in my opinion as
respectable and as sainted as Thomas à Becket; let him show to me the
same deference which the greatest of his predecessors have shown to the
least powerful of my predecessors, and there will be no controversy
between us.” King Henry also offered to take the clergy of France as
umpires in the questions at issue; but when Becket stubbornly refused to be
reconciled to the King of England, the King of France lost his patience and
withdrew the protection which up to that day he had accorded to him.
These and other changes unfavorable to him finally induced Becket to
lend to the King’s proposals of reconciliation a more willing ear, and at last
an interview took place between them which resulted in their reconciliation
—apparently at least. The interview was much more cordial than might
have been supposed from the exceedingly strained relations that had existed
between them for years. The Archbishop approached the King as became a
subject, and the King met him with the humility shown at that time to
princes of the Church; when they parted, Becket bent his knee to the King,
who held the stirrup of his horse as the Archbishop mounted. The interview
had resulted in settling their differences. Both had made concessions, but
the larger part of these had been made by the King. All the Archbishop’s

personal property had also been restored to him; he thereupon agreed to
return to England and resume the functions of his office. He had been
absent seven years.
The people at large, and especially the poor, greeted him with
enthusiasm; but the barons kept away, and some of them showed open
hostility to the Archbishop, or mysteriously hinted at a speedy ending of his
newly regained honors. His arrival in England had been preceded by a
messenger from the Pope carrying writs of excommunication for three
English bishops who had been especially hostile to Becket. These bishops
immediately went to Normandy, where Henry the Second had remained,
and laid their complaints before him, laying all the blame on Becket, whom
they charged with inflaming the people of England against their King and
sowing discord in their hearts. When these matters were laid before him,
and also a statement that Becket had excommunicated two barons whom he
considered his special enemies, the King got into a rage and exclaimed:
“What? Is there among the cowards whom I feed at my table not one brave
enough to deliver me from this firebrand of a priest?” These words could
have but one meaning. Four of the barons took it upon themselves to deliver
the King from the obnoxious priest. The King afterwards declared that he
had never intended to suggest the assassination of Becket; but what other
construction could be given to his words? The assassination itself was one
of the most dramatic in history. The would-be murderers travelled in such
haste that a messenger whom the King sent after them to warn them not to
kill Becket could not overtake them. Arriving at Canterbury on December
29, 1170, they, with twelve other noblemen, went to the Archbishop’s
residence, and expostulated with him concerning the excommunication of
certain priests and barons, and when he refused to revoke the
excommunications, the barons left him with threats. They returned toward
evening. The bell of the church was ringing for vespers, and the Archbishop
had gone there. The priests wanted to close and barricade the doors, but he
objected. “The doors of the house of God should not be barricaded like a
fortress!” said he. Just then the assassins came in, brandishing their swords
and calling for the traitor. The priests surrounding the Archbishop fled in
terror; only his cross-bearer stayed with him. It was so dark that neither the
intruders nor the priest could be seen distinctly. Another voice called:
“Where is the Archbishop?” “I am here,” answered Becket. “I am no traitor,
but only a priest of the Lord!” They were afraid to kill him in the holy

precincts. Once more they asked him to absolve those he had
excommunicated. He refused, because they had not repented. “Then you
shall die!” they cried. “I am ready, in the name of the Saviour,” he
answered; “but I forbid you, by the Lord Almighty, to touch any of these
present, priests or laymen.” They heeded him not, but rushed upon him, and
with three or four thrusts from their swords, one of them splitting his skull,
laid him prostrate at the foot of the altar.
The murderers hurried back to Normandy to get their reward. The news
of the murder, when it reached the ears of the King, struck terror into his
heart. He knew he was, and would be held, responsible for Becket’s death.
Fear seized him, that he would feel the Pope’s wrath, that he would be
excommunicated, that England and his possessions in France would be
placed under an interdict, that the Saxon population of England, which
already revered Becket as a saint, might rise in open rebellion against him.
He therefore made haste to disclaim publicly any complicity in the murder,
and sent an ambassador to the Pope to assure him of his entire innocence
and of his profound grief at the bloody deed. The Pope at first refused to
receive the ambassador, and it was only by means of many prayers,
promises, and humble supplications that he finally absolved the King of
intentional complicity in the heinous crime. The King actually purchased
this absolution by pledging himself to support, during three years, two
hundred well-equipped horsemen for the protection of the Holy Sepulchre.
But even this act of papal absolution was not deemed sufficient by the
King to protect him from the evil consequences of the assassination. To
remove this danger the King two years afterwards undertook a pilgrimage
to the tomb of Becket, who had in the meantime been buried in the
Cathedral with royal honors. As soon as the steeple of the Cathedral
appeared on the horizon, the King dismounted, and proceeded on his way
barefooted, his bleeding feet leaving a spot of blood at every step. On his
arrival at the tomb he prostrated himself, and subjected himself to the
humiliation of a severe flagellation at the hands of the monks, each of
whom applied to his bare back three strokes from a knotted rope.
Having undergone this public chastisement, the King remained praying
and fasting the following night, prostrated on the tombstone. Next morning
he returned to London, where, immediately after his arrival, he fell
seriously ill from the effects of his pilgrimage.

The Pope canonized the martyr who had so heroically died in the
defence of the prerogatives of the Church.

CHAPTER VII

GESSLER

GESSLER

CHAPTER VII

ASSASSINATION OF GESSLER

(A.D. 1307.)

T HE assassination of Julius Cæsar and of the first Roman Emperors led
to greater demoralization of the people, and thereafter to anarchy,
bloodshed, civil war, and ultimately to an atrocious despotism; but at an
interval of twelve hundred and forty years after the death of Nero there
occurred a political assassination, growing out of personal revenge, which
freed a whole people from oppression and placed the murderer among the
heroes of mankind and the liberators of nations. We speak of William Tell,
the national hero of Switzerland, who in 1307 deliberately murdered
Gessler, the Austrian governor.
This governor, who resided at the castle of Kuessnacht, had committed
the greatest outrages and acts of despotism against the inhabitants of his
gubernatorial district, embracing the so-called three Waldstädte (Forest
Cantons),—Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Until then these Forest Cantons
had enjoyed a republican government, and had given to the German Empire
a merely nominal recognition, by acknowledging the German Emperor as
their suzerain. There is a great resemblance in the relations between these
Swiss Cantons and the German Empire to the relations which existed,
before the South African war, between the two Boer Republics and the
crown of England. Rudolph of Hapsburg, himself a Swiss by birth, who had
been elected German Emperor, had pursued a liberal policy toward the
Cantons and in special charters had guaranteed to them their inherited rights
and liberties. But his son Albrecht the First, who succeeded Rudolph on the
imperial throne, resolved to do away with these prerogatives, deprive the
Swiss Cantons of their independence, and make them subject to the crown
of Austria. Theretofore the German Emperors had been represented in a few
cities of Switzerland by bailiffs, who exerted the same authority in the
Cantons as our federal judges in United States Territories; but Albrecht
changed their duties and authority entirely, investing them with many
additional powers, so that they became practically governors of their
districts, appointed by the Emperor and administering their office as
imperial officials.

Against this change the inhabitants of the Cantons entered their solemn
protests; they sent delegations to Albrecht to remonstrate with him; but he
gave evasive answers, increased the soldiery protecting the governors, shut
his ears to all complaints about their arrogance and growing usurpation, and
secretly encouraged them “to do all in their power to break the stubborn
resistance of these uncouth mountaineers and boors, and make them
obedient subjects of the Austrian crown.” To the strong men of the Cantons,
who had never bowed their necks under the yoke of a foreign despot, the
tyranny of these Austrian governors became intolerable; their leading men
made up their minds to throw it off by all means, and to maintain their
independence at any cost. Even the members of the nobility scattered
through the Cantons were indignant at the arbitrary and haughty ways of the
imperial bailiffs, who treated them with the same arrogance as they treated
the common people; they therefore made common cause with the latter, so
that practically the imperial officials were isolated in a hostile country,
without friends or party.
The public discontent culminated in a secret conspiracy, of which Walter
Fuerst of Uri, Werner Stauffacher of Schwyz, and Arnold Melchthal of
Unterwalden, were the originators. These three men, each a representative
and influential citizen of his own Canton, met at the house of Walter Fuerst
and agreed to meet for further consultation on the Ruetli, an elevated
plateau, hidden in the woods, near the lake of Uri, on certain nights, each
undertaking to bring along ten men tried and true, who had promised to act
with them, for life and death, for the deliverance of their country. They also
pledged themselves by oath to keep this league a secret from all but the
initiated, who like themselves had sworn to coöperate for the deliverance of
the country, until the time had come for united action on one and the same
day. This was done in the fall of 1307. A later consultation of the
conspirators on the Ruetli took place some weeks afterwards, and was
attended by the three leaders and thirty others. They were all full of
enthusiasm and hope of victory. They all pledged the almost unanimous
support of the inhabitants of the three Cantons, and finally agreed that the
people should rise in rebellion on New Year’s Day, 1308. The humane
feature of this proposed revolution appears from their joint agreement,
affirmed under oath, that, in expelling the Austrian governors and their
followers from their castles and their country, they would not kill them
except in self-defence, but would treat them with leniency and charity. Is it

not as if we heard Oom Krueger and his friends of the Transvaal and
Orange Free State counsel on measures for their independence? They
placed their full confidence in the justice of their cause, the assistance of
God, and their own bravery.
The day for the execution of their plot was anticipated by an unforeseen
event. Gessler, the Governor of Uri and Schwyz, had made himself
especially odious by all sorts of petty acts of tyranny. Among these was an
order that the ducal hat of Austria was to be placed on the top of a long pole
to be erected on the market space of Altorf and that nobody should pass by
it without uncovering his head and showing it respect as if the Duke of
Austria (Albrecht, Emperor of Germany) himself were there. The citizens
generally complied with the order. But one day William Tell and his little
son passed by the hat without minding Gessler’s order. William Tell was the
son-in-law of Walter Fuerst, one of the three leaders of the Ruetli
conspiracy, and, like Walter Fuerst himself, he was looked upon with
suspicion by the Austrian authorities. The openness with which he ignored
Gessler’s order was immediately construed as an act of defiance and
rebellion. He was taken before Gessler, and the cruel bailiff imposed upon
him a punishment which, he thought, would wound him to the heart.
“Tell,” said he to him, “by your act of disobedience you have forfeited
your life. But I will be merciful to you,” and pointing to Tell’s crossbow, he
continued: “You have the reputation of being the best archer of our Canton,
if not of all Switzerland. I have never seen a test of your skill yet; very well,
let your skill be tried now, and if it is as great as your reputation it will save
your life. There is an apple. Place it upon your boy’s head, and at a distance
of thirty steps shoot it with an arrow. But take good aim! For, if you hit the
boy, your life will pay for it!”
William Tell complied with the cruel order, and with his usual masterly
skill brought down the apple from the boy’s head. Gessler was enraged at
the result, and, before dismissing Tell, he asked him with an insidious
smile: “Now tell me, William Tell, why did you take two arrows from your
quiver before you took aim at the apple on your boy’s head? Tell me
sincerely, and whatever your answer may be, your life shall not be
imperilled.”
Carried away by his wrath, Tell contemptuously replied: “If I had missed
my aim and hit my boy, the second arrow was for you, and, by God

Almighty, it would not have gone astray!”
“That’s what I thought,” cried Gessler, and turning to his escort he
ordered them to put Tell in chains and take him to the boat on the lake.
“Your life,” said he to Tell, “is not in peril; but I will take you to my castle
in Kuessnacht; there in one of the darkest dungeons underground you shall
be imprisoned, and may find time to repent the rebellious words which you
have uttered!”
In the immediate neighborhood of Kuessnacht, on a mountain top
overlooking the town, was the fortified castle where Gessler resided. It was
on the way to that residence that Tell did the act by which he satisfied his
personal revenge and also freed his country from the bloody tyranny of the
despot. While Gessler and his prisoner were crossing the lake, a storm
arose, which endangered the boat. The fury of the tempest filled the hearts
of the boatmen with dismay and terror, and tremblingly they turned to
Gessler, saying: “The boldest and most skilful boatman in the Canton is
Tell. He may be able to save the boat, but we cannot! Set him free and he
may bring us safe to port.”
Gessler ordered the chains to be removed from Tell’s limbs and ordered
him to take the helm, promising him life, liberty, and a full pardon if he
should bring them safe into port. Tell took the helm, and the boat, obedient
to its master’s hand, sped through the storm-tossed waves like a seabird
dancing on the surface. But turning round a rock-bound bluff close to the
shore, Tell suddenly took up his cross-bow lying on the bench near by, and
with a mighty leap jumped on the rock, hurling the boat far back into the
hissing and tempestuous flood.
Gessler also escaped from the watery grave, but only to meet his doom
on land even before he had reached his home. Tell was lying in ambush on
the road from the lake to Kuessnacht. It was the road which Gessler and his
party had to take on their return to the castle, if they should succeed in
effecting a landing on the shore. After some time Gessler, accompanied by a
few friends, came in sight. No sooner had the party entered the defile than
Gessler, shot through the heart by Tell’s unerring arrow, fell from his horse.
Tell’s shot was the signal for the general uprising of the people of
Switzerland. Years of struggle and warfare against Austria’s nobility and
armed forces followed Tell’s heroic act, but the entire independence of
Switzerland was finally secured. Switzerland is to this day a free and

independent republic, and Tell’s name shines with imperishable lustre not
only as its great national hero, but also among the immortal patriots and
liberators of mankind.
We are well aware that recent historical criticism has expressed doubt as
to Tell’s great act of deliverance, and even as to his existence, and that in
some histories the tale is simply relegated to the domain of legend and
tradition. But there is no real justification for this decision. It is founded
only on a statement in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus recording a feat
of archery in Scandinavia similar to that of William Tell, and performed
hundreds of years before Tell’s day.
As Johannes von Mueller, the great historian, judiciously says: “It shows
but scanty knowledge of history to deny the truth of a historical event
simply because another similar event occurred in another century and
country.” But truth or fiction, history or legend, the heroic act and name of
Tell will live on, immortal and inspiring, as they have lived during the last
six hundred years. Poets and novelists have immortalized the great national
hero of Switzerland in song and story. Frederick Schiller, Germany’s
greatest dramatist, has made him the central hero of his greatest drama, and
has given his name to that great hymn of liberty and patriotism, which
stirred up the German nation to its glorious struggle against Napoleon the
First. It is one of the few truly patriotic assassinations recorded in history.

CHAPTER VIII

IÑEZ DE CASTRO

IÑEZ DE CASTRO

CHAPTER VIII

ASSASSINATION OF IÑEZ DE CASTRO

(A.D. 1355.)

A S one of the most cruel and heart-rending tragedies of the middle ages,
the love-story and the assassination of Iñez de Castro has lived in song
and story for five hundred and fifty years, and still awakens echoes of
pity and sorrow whenever read or heard.
Constancia, the wife of Pedro, son of Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal, and
heir-presumptive to the crown of that kingdom, died in 1344, and left to her
husband a son of tender age, named Ferdinand. Pedro thereupon desired to
marry the countess Iñez de Castro, a young lady of great beauty and
loveliness, and, like himself, sprung in direct lineage, but on her mother’s
side, from the royal house of Castile. Iñez de Castro was of an illustrious
family, it is true, but her rank was not deemed sufficient to entitle her to
become the wife of the Crown Prince; therefore when Dom Pedro
mentioned to his father his intention to marry her, the King positively
refused his consent. Dom Pedro, however, instead of obeying his father,
secured permission from the Pope, and secretly married her, bestowing
upon her the full rank and all the rights of a legitimate wife.
In the meantime the King and his advisers urged Dom Pedro to get
married again, and proposed a number of young princesses of renowned
beauty and ancestry for his choice. But Pedro, without disclosing the secret
of his marriage with Iñez de Castro (rumors of which were nevertheless
whispered and busily circulated at the court of the King), persistently
rejected all these proposals, giving no other reason for his refusal than his
personal disinclination to marry. While Pedro’s father reluctantly accepted
his son’s emphatic declaration, the most trusted advisers and counsellors of
the King, Diego Lopez Pacheco, Pedro Coello, and Alvaro Calvarez, did
not, because they were afraid lest the influence of the beautiful and
accomplished Iñez de Castro—no matter whether she was legally married
to Pedro or not—would be dangerous and possibly fatal to their own
preëminence at the court, as soon as Pedro should succeed his father on the
throne. They shrewdly worked upon the King’s mind by insinuating that if
the rumor of Pedro’s secret marriage should prove to be true, the ultimate

succession of Ferdinand, Pedro’s son by his first wife, to whom the King
was very much attached, might be endangered, and that possibly the son of
Iñez de Castro would become Pedro’s successor on the throne.
The King summoned Pedro to a private interview, and asked him
concerning his relations with Iñez de Castro, informing him at the same
time of the rumor of his secret marriage. Pedro denied the truth of this
rumor, admitting, however, that Iñez de Castro, while not his wedded wife,
was so dear to his heart that on her account he would not consent to form a
new matrimonial alliance, no matter how illustrious by birth or beauty the
princess proposed to him might be. The emphasis with which Pedro made
this assertion satisfied his father that the rumor of a secret marriage was
true; and when the King, at the next cabinet council, repeated to his
confidants the result of his interview with the Crown Prince, they predicted
that the greatest calamities would arise, after the King’s death, from the
Crown Prince’s infatuation for Iñez, which they ascribed rather to unnatural
evil influences than to the surpassing beauty and loveliness of the young
woman. The King, a man of very irascible temperament, became excited
and indignant; he declared again and again that, if there were no other
means of separating Pedro and Iñez, the young woman would have to die.
The council then broke up.
It was but a short time afterwards that Dom Pedro left the court for a few
days to go out hunting with some friends. But warned by his mother, who
had heard of the King’s evil designs upon Iñez de Castro, he had taken her
and her two children to Coimbra, where he left them in a convent to await
his return. On the day after his departure, King Alfonso suddenly appeared
at the convent and demanded to see Iñez de Castro. Pedro’s wife
immediately made her appearance, accompanied by her two children. As
she looked upon the King, whose mien was grim and menacing, and who
was surrounded by a number of his knights in full armor, a presentiment of
some terrible calamity which was to befall her and her two children entered
her breast, and from an impulse of both fear, and of hope to save her
children, she threw herself at the King’s feet, imploring him to forgive her
and to take pity on her innocent children. Alfonso’s heart melted with pity
at the sight of so much beauty and innocence. He raised her from her
kneeling position and told her to be of good cheer, and that no harm would
befall her. And then turning round, he left the convent, followed by his

attendants, who were not a little surprised at this peaceful ending of a visit
which had promised to be a tragedy.
But while Iñez already congratulated herself on her lucky escape from a
terrible death, and even on her good fortune in having softened the King’s
heart toward herself and her two children, she was nevertheless doomed to
ruin. The three counsellors so hostile to her had not accompanied the King
on his visit to the convent; they were waiting for the return of their
sovereign at some distance from Coimbra, and were greatly disappointed
when they learned from his own lips that, instead of having slain with his
own hands, as he had promised to do, the woman who had seduced his son
and enthralled him either by her beauty or by the employment of
supernatural means, he had changed his mind concerning her, and now
spoke feelingly and affectionately of her and her sweet children. The
counsellors concealed with great difficulty the irritation and disgust with
which the King’s weakness filled them; they immediately proceeded to
counteract the favorable impression which Iñez had made, uttering the
foulest insinuations and aspersions upon her character. The very change
which she had succeeded in effecting in the King’s sentiments toward her
was made the means of renewing and corroborating the charge that evil
spirits were assisting her in bewitching the royal family for her own selfish
purposes. “Since she has so easily captured your majesty,” said one of them
cunningly, “who can hope to resist her and her ambitious designs? Poor
Ferdinand!”
The artful mention of the name of the young prince, whose right of
succession was endangered by the recognition of Iñez de Castro, was
sufficient to elicit from the King the promise that his son’s mistress should
never be received at the court. Having obtained this concession, the three
counsellors found it comparatively easy to persuade him that the original
purpose for which they had come to Coimbra—the death of Iñez—was the
only salvation for the throne and the dynasty, and that it was his duty as a
monarch to remove her as soon as possible in order to avert greater
calamities. They told him that it was perhaps right that he had not soiled his
royal hands with the blood of one who was unworthy of the high distinction
of dying by his sword, but that it was a duty he owed to the state and to the
legitimate heir to the throne to order her death at the earliest moment.
Alfonso was weak and foolish enough to believe them and to sanction the

murder of the fair and innocent wife of his son. That very night Iñez de
Castro fell a victim to the daggers of two assassins.
The assassination provoked terror throughout Portugal and Spain, and
general were the denunciations of the King and the counsellors who had
advised him to commit the crime. But in this case what followed the murder
has, even more than the atrocity of the crime itself, made it famous in song
and story. The murder of Iñez de Castro occurred in 1355.
A rumor of the tragedy reached Dom Pedro while he was taking dinner
at the small tavern of a village, some thirty leagues from Coimbra. The
Crown Prince was travelling incognito, and neither the host nor the guests
of the tavern, except his own companions, knew him and how deeply he
was interested in the terrible news which a cattle dealer had just reported as
the latest sensation in the city. Dom Pedro hurried back to Coimbra and to
the convent. The rumor was only too true. His idolized wife was dead.
Three horrible wounds, each of which would have been sufficient to cause
death, disfigured her beautiful corpse; but her countenance shone with
angelic radiance and sweetness, and the agony of death seemed to have left
no trace on it. When Dom Pedro learned from the nuns how the assassins
had demanded entrance in the name of the King and had burst open the
bedroom of Iñez and butchered her without mercy, he knelt down by the
coffin and swore bloody vengeance against all those who had taken a hand
in this inhuman and atrocious crime. He called upon Heaven to assist him in
bringing the assassins and their instigators to justice, and laying his hands
upon the breast of his murdered wife, he swore that he would not desist
from the pursuit of the guilty persons, even if he had to seek them on the
throne. The meaning of these words could not be misconstrued, for it was
generally understood that, while the three counsellors had proposed the
murder, the King had given his consent to it. When Dom Pedro’s threat was
repeated to him, the King, highly incensed, loudly proclaimed that Iñez de
Castro’s death was a just punishment for her criminal liaison with the
Crown Prince, in open violation of the King’s order, and assumed the full
responsibility for the murder. The Crown Prince, so rudely repelled by his
father and deeply wounded by the disgrace heaped upon his virtuous wife,
refused to return to the court; on the contrary, he called his friends, and the
friends of Iñez de Castro, her brothers and cousins, to arms. The cruel and
unjustifiable homicide he justly ascribed to the calumnies and intrigues of a
set of rapacious cut-throats who were ready to sacrifice everything to their

own personal interests, and who had deceived the King. In a very short time
Dom Pedro found himself at the head of an army, with which he invaded
those provinces in which the castles and mansions of the counsellors were
situated. With merciless severity their lands were laid waste, their castles
razed to the ground, their families and friends killed, and everything was
done to make their very names and memories odious to their fellow-men.
By that time the King had also been informed by high dignitaries of the
Church that the union between his son and Iñez de Castro had been
consecrated, that the Pope himself had granted them permission to get
married, and that strict secrecy had been observed simply out of high regard
for the King, in the hope that he would never hear of it and would
consequently not feel irritated by it. This information had a powerful effect
on the King’s mind. He began to see what a great crime he had committed
in sanctioning the murder of a virtuous and innocent young wife, whose
only fault had possibly been her yielding, against the King’s outspoken
wishes, to the Prince’s ardent wooing. And when the Queen, Dom Pedro’s
mother, added her supplications and tears in behalf of her son, whom the
murder of his wife had made nearly insane from grief, the King became
more and more willing to be reconciled to him. He not only forgave his acts
of rebellion, but even made amends, as much as he could, for the cruel
wrong he had done him.
Under such circumstances it was comparatively easy for the Archbishop
of Braga, whom the Pope had authorized to impart to the King the
information concerning Dom Pedro’s marriage, to effect a reconciliation
between father and son. Thereupon the son returned to the court, where he
was received with the highest honors, after he had solemnly promised not to
take revenge on the counsellors who had been instrumental in causing the
death of his wife, and who had already been so severely punished by the
devastation of their lands and the destruction of their castles. To consent to
this condition was the cruelest sacrifice on the part of Dom Pedro, but he
finally yielded to the tears and prayers of his mother—very likely, however,
as we shall see, with a mental reservation.
Two years later, King Alfonso the Fourth died, and Dom Pedro ascended
the throne of Portugal. The old King’s death was also the signal for the
flight of his three counsellors, Pacheco, Coello, and Gonsalvez, whose
absence was first noticed at the King’s obsequies. They had sought refuge
in Castile, because they felt instinctively that it would not be safe for them

to remain in Portugal, and that the ill-concealed hatred of Dom Pedro might
break forth at any moment and punish them terribly for the part they had
taken in Iñez de Castro’s death. In fact Pedro had never forgiven the
assassins of his wife. On the contrary, his heart had never ceased to yearn
for the day when he could not only take full and bloody revenge on her
persecutors and murderers, but also restore the honor of her name and
memory, which had been sullied by the calumnies of those scoundrels.
Castile was at that time ruled by Pedro the Cruel, one of the worst and
most bloodthirsty tyrants that ever sat upon a Spanish throne. Some of his
victims had made their escape into Portugal and had found protection at the
court of Alfonso, Dom Pedro’s father. But when the counsellors of Alfonso
arrived at his court, Pedro the Cruel formed the diabolical plan of delivering
them up to Pedro of Portugal, provided the latter would deliver, in exchange
for them, the Castilians who had found an asylum in his kingdom. No more
agreeable proposition could have been made to the King of Portugal, and
the exchange was readily made. Two of the counsellors, Coello and
Gonsalvez, were transported in chains to Portugal, and executed with
inhuman cruelty. They were put to the torture in the hope of extorting from
them the names of other accessories to the crime; thereupon they were
burned at the stake, and their hearts were torn out; and thereafter their ashes
were scattered to the winds. Pacheco, however, escaped this terrible fate.
Being absent from the court of Castile when his two colleagues were
arrested, he fled to Aragon.
After having in this manner satisfied his vengeance on the assassins,
King Pedro assembled the high nobility and the great dignitaries of his
kingdom at Cataneda, and in their presence swore that, after the death of his
first wife, Constancia, he had legally married Iñez de Castro; that the Pope
of Rome had given him special permission to do so, and that the marriage
ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop La Guarda, in the
presence of two witnesses, whom he mentioned by name. He ordered these
facts to be entered upon the archives of the state and to be proclaimed
publicly in every city, town, and village of the kingdom. The children of
Iñez de Castro were declared legitimate and entitled to all the rights and
prerogatives of princes of the blood, including succession to the throne of
Portugal. Proceeding thence to Coimbra, the King ordered the vault in
which the remains of Iñez had been deposited to be opened, her corpse,
which had been embalmed, to be dressed in a royal robe and placed upon a

throne, and her head to be adorned with a royal crown. He compelled his
attendants, composed of the highest men of the monarchy, to pass by the
throne and bow their knees and kiss the edge of the Queen’s robe,—in fact,
to show the same reverence and respect to the dead Queen as they might
have shown to the living Queen on the day of her coronation. As soon as
this ghastly ceremony was over, the corpse was placed in a magnificent
metal coffin and escorted by the King and a most brilliant cortège of
knights and noblemen to Alcobaza, a royal residence about seventeen miles
from Coimbra, and placed in a royal vault. A magnificent monument, which
represented Iñez de Castro in her incomparable beauty and loveliness, was
shortly after erected near the vault. It was the last tribute which the love and
admiration of her husband could render to her memory.

CHAPTER IX

RIZZIO AND DARNLEY

DAVID RIZZIO

CHAPTER IX

ASSASSINATIONS OF RIZZIO AND DARNLEY

(March 9, 1566; February 9, 1567)

A MONG the female rulers of Europe there is one who on account of her
matchless beauty, her genius, her adventurous life, but especially her
tragic death, has enlisted the attention and admiration of authors and
poets even to a higher degree than Catherine the Second of Russia or
Elizabeth of England, who perhaps surpassed her in political genius. More
regretted and admired for her misfortunes and accomplishments than
condemned for her sins and crimes, Mary Stuart, the beautiful Queen of
Scots, lives in the recollections of posterity as a vision of incomparable
grace, beauty, and loveliness, hallowed by the genius of great poets and
redeemed by a tragic and cruel death. To no historical memory poetry and
tradition have been more kind and more idealizing than to Mary Stuart; and
yet she deserves a place in this gallery of assassinations not as a victim, but
as a murderess.
After reading the descriptions in prose and verse of her personal charms,
of her matchless beauty and grace, of her elegance and wit, of her poetical
inspiration and musical accomplishments, it is almost impossible for the
stern historian to maintain the self-possession of an impartial judge and
record the misdeeds of which this bewitching creature was unquestionably
guilty. She seemed to combine in her incomparable personality all the
physical and mental perfections woman is capable of. We will say, however,
that the crimes which have justly been laid to her charge were, in part at
least, excusable either on the ground of the surrounding circumstances or of
great provocations. Murder itself, in the rude country and in the equally
rude and violent times in which it was committed, had not that horrid
significance which stigmatizes it in a more refined and cultured state of
civilization.
Mary Stuart was the only daughter of King James the Fifth of Scotland
by his second wife, Marie de Lorraine. She was the niece of the famous
princes of the house of Guise—Duke Francis of Guise and the Cardinal de
Lorraine—who were rivals in authority and power with the kings of France,
and who on several occasions rose superior to them. James the Fifth died

young, with his daughter yet in her cradle. Quite young she was betrothed
to the Dauphin of France, who became afterwards King Francis the Second,
and she was married to him when a mere child. Her renown for beauty and
genius resounded from one end of Europe to the other. With remarkable
facility she learned French, Italian, Greek, Latin, history, theology, music,
painting, dancing, and she excelled in writing poetry. Some of her short
poems are still famous in French literature. But her life as Queen of France
was but a short dream of splendor and delight. The weak and emaciated
Francis the Second died after a reign of eleven months, and the crown went
to his young brother, Charles the Ninth.
Mary Stuart retired for a while to a convent at Rheims, but soon, upon
the death of her mother at Edinburgh, she proceeded to Scotland, where a
throne awaited her. Quite a number of enthusiastic adorers among the high
nobility of France followed her to her new home, because they could not
bear the thought of separating from a princess so charming and beautiful,—
a princess who kindled in the hearts of all men who were brought into
contact with her, desires and frequently a passion which became fatal to
them. Unquestionably Mary Stuart was one of the most dangerous coquettes
who ever lived, and at the brilliant and voluptuous court of the Valois in
France, almost under the personal direction of the famous Diana de Poitiers,
she had cultivated the art of using her extraordinary charms and
accomplishments for the seduction of men to her best advantage. One of the
most conspicuous of these followers from France was Du Chatelard, the
scion of one of the noblest houses of the French monarchy. He bears the sad
distinction of having been the first victim to Mary Stuart’s intrigues, and of
having paid for the mad and uncontrollable passion which he had conceived
for her with his life. Chatelard himself was a young man of high
accomplishments. He was a poet and musician, and by his sweet voice he
easily won the favor of the young Queen. She imprudently gave him so
many proofs of her favor and openly admitted him to such a close intimacy
that young Chatelard not without reason believed that she returned the love
which he had conceived for her. And Mary was not in the least afraid to
show her fondness for him. It is authentically reported, for instance, that in
bidding him goodnight in the presence of the court “she kissed him below
the chin, looking at him in a way that set his whole soul afire.” No wonder
that the young man in the transport of his passion committed acts of
indiscretion and madness, which in a short time led to his execution,

without visibly affecting the beautiful coquette who had encouraged his
passion. One night the ladies of the palace discovered him hidden behind
the curtains of the Queen’s bed, but his audacity was ascribed to his
thoughtlessness and vanity. He was expelled from the palace for a while,
but was soon afterwards forgiven and received again into the Queen’s
intimacy. This act of pardon turned the young man’s head again. He made
no secret of his glowing admiration for the Queen, and addressed amorous
verses to her, which were repeated by her attendants. One evening he was
again discovered in the Queen’s bedroom, where he had secreted himself
under the Queen’s bed. This second time he was put on trial, and was
condemned to death for having conspired against the Queen’s life. In vain
he protested his undying love for Mary Stuart, but the judges were
inexorable, and Mary herself, who had been trifling with his heart so long,
and who with a single stroke of the pen could have pardoned and saved
him, coolly handed him over to the executioner. A scaffold was erected
before the windows of Holyrood Palace, where Mary resided, and Du
Chatelard, the grand-nephew of the famous Chevalier Bayard, suffered
death with a heroism worthy of his great ancestor. His last words were, as
he cast a sorrowful look upon the windows behind which the Queen stood
with her attendants: “Farewell, thou who art so beautiful and so cruel, who
killest me, and whom I cannot cease to love!”
The death of Chatelard was the first of a series caused by the mad
passion which Mary Stuart kindled in the hearts of her adorers. Another
attendant who had followed Queen Mary from France to Scotland, and
whose tragic fate is even more generally known than that of Du Chatelard,
was David Rizzio, an Italian musician, who for some time had been
attached to the court of Francis the Second of France. Rizzio was of low
birth, but had some talent as a composer of songs and as a singer, and had
been brought from Italy by the French Ambassador at Piedmont, from
whose service he passed into that of one of the enthusiastic noblemen who
had escorted the young Queen to Scotland. The Queen’s attention was soon
attracted to the Italian composer and singer, and she begged Rizzio of the
nobleman, so that he might enter her own service and by his art make her
forget the lonesome hours and the homesickness for France which she felt
would be the inevitable result of her residence in Scotland. By a
congeniality of taste the poor and lowborn Italian artist and the beautiful
young Queen were thrown together a great deal, and gradually the love for

the art ripened into a preference for the artist. He soon became the declared
favorite and private secretary of the Queen, who made him practically the
omnipotent counsellor and minister of her policy.
The scandal of this singular preference, which was at once announced as
a vulgar love affair, spread rapidly over all Scotland, and gave rise to loud
complaints by the Protestants, headed by John Knox, who preached against
the “woman of Babylon” and her low-bred paramour. The Queen was blind
to the consequences of her infatuation for this lute player, a mere servant,
who moreover, by his Italian nationality and Catholic religion, defied the
narrow prejudices of the Scotch people. In spite of her beauty, youth, and
loveliness the Queen became very unpopular, not only with the nobility, but
with the great mass of the people.
At that very time Mary Stuart was induced, mainly through the influence
of Queen Elizabeth of England, to contract a marriage with Henry Darnley,
a young Scot of the almost royal house of Lennox, of great physical,
although somewhat effeminate, beauty, but of very inferior mind. On seeing
this young Adonis, Mary Stuart fell immediately and very desperately in
love with him, while it was noticed that Darnley showed much greater
coldness than men generally manifested in their gallantry toward her.
Darnley, descending from a daughter of Henry the Eighth, had perhaps as
good a title to the crown of England as Mary Stuart, and by a marriage of
these two claimants, it was expected that their interests would be
consolidated and consequently strengthened. The interest which Queen
Elizabeth of England had to promote this marriage was her hope of
lowering Queen Mary’s standing and authority in the eyes of her many
Catholic adherents in England by this marriage with an English subject,—
an intention in which Elizabeth was largely successful. In spite of the strong
opposition of a number of the most prominent Scotch nobles and most
notably of Lord Murray, Mary’s half-brother, the marriage was
consummated on the twenty-ninth of July, 1565. On the other hand. David
Rizzio, Mary’s Italian secretary and confidant, had very warmly advocated
and promoted the marriage, and Darnley openly paid court to him,
expecting great results from his influence over the Queen. Why Rizzio
should have so eagerly encouraged the

LORD DARNLEY

marriage is involved in doubt. Very likely the scandalous stories circulated
about the Queen’s relations to Rizzio were mere inventions; and Rizzio,
who moreover was deformed and ugly, far from being the Queen’s lover,
was only ambitious; he hoped to have even a greater share of political
authority under a nominal king, whom he recognized as an intellectual
nonentity, but whose personal beauty diverted the young Queen’s thoughts
from the cares of government.
During the first months after the wedding Rizzio’s expectations were
fully realized. The young Queen in the transport of her passion for Darnley
paid no attention to government affairs; her whole mind and soul seemed to
be enwrapped in her love for her young husband; apparently she cared for
nothing else but to caress him and to shower her favors upon him. She
conferred upon him the title of king, without, however, giving him the
attributes of royal power, which she reserved for herself. If Darnley had
been a man of greater mental calibre he could very easily have made
himself king in fact as well as in name; but he was a weakling in every

respect. After the first few weeks had passed away in the closest intimacy
with her consort, Mary’s extreme fondness, not to say idolatry, of him,
entirely disappeared, and in a very short time her conduct toward him
assumed a degree of estrangement and coldness which contrasted strangely
with the cordiality which had preceded them. Mary’s full confidence and
intimacy turned once more toward Rizzio, whose ascendency over her mind
seemed to be greater than ever before. More than anybody else Darnley was
dissatisfied with this turn of affairs. He saw that the chance of empire had
slipped away from him, and he found that it was impossible for him to
recover his former standing with the Queen. In vain he tried to be admitted
to a direction of the government affairs and to perform some of the duties
which seemed to pertain to his exalted station in the state; but Queen Mary
obstinately refused to accede to these demands. Darnley, who ascribed this
refusal, in part at least, to Rizzio’s influence, then joined the party of
political malcontents who, either from motives of personal ambition or of
religious antipathy, were anxious to bring about the overthrow of the Italian
favorite and place a national and, if possible, a Protestant ministry in power.
To carry out this plan they won Darnley over to their side, and filled his
mind with dark insinuations and jealousy against Rizzio. It seems they also
promised him a co-regency with the Queen, and full royal authority equal to
hers in case the much-hated Italian should be removed.
These prospects were sufficient to inflame Darnley’s ambition and make
him a willing tool in the hands of Rizzio’s enemies. He did not shrink even
from murder, and committed it openly and defiantly. As soon as the
conviction had been established in his mind that Rizzio stood in the way of
his ambition, he resolved upon his assassination, which was not only to lead
to his own aggrandizement, but also to punish Mary for having preferred
the Italian to him. He did not wait long to carry his plan into execution; and
the brutality and reckless ferocity with which the murder was committed
were even more atrocious and repulsive than the crime itself. Only a brute
and cowardly knave could have planned it.
The murder was committed on the evening of Sunday, the ninth of
March, 1566, in the Queen’s private dining-room in the palace of Holyrood,
adjoining her bedroom. The Queen was there with the Countess of Argyle,
one or two other ladies, and Rizzio, her secretary. The best of feeling and
humor prevailed in the little party. There was not the least indication or
suspicion of impending trouble or danger. Nevertheless an armed force of

five hundred adherents of the conspirators, under the lead of one of
Darnley’s lieutenants, had been posted on the outside so as to surround the
palace entirely. The greatest caution had been observed to avoid all noise,
and the first intimation that something was wrong was conveyed to the little
party in the dining-room by the sudden appearance of Darnley. With great
familiarity he throws his arm around the Queen’s waist. He is almost
immediately followed by Ruthven, one of his friends, who is clad in full
armor and is ghastly pale from excitement and fear. The Queen haughtily
commands him to leave the room; but before he can answer, her bedroom is
filled with men bearing torches and brandishing their swords, nearly all
under the influence of liquor, and calling with loud and threatening voices
for Rizzio. The Italian knows immediately what this scene means. He jumps
from his seat and takes refuge behind the Queen, clutching her gown with
the grasp of despair and imploring her to save his life. Mary Stuart at this
moment stands erect in the consciousness of her outraged dignity, her eyes
sparkling with indignation and wrath, and trying to protect Rizzio against
the crowd of aggressors who are pushing up to her, upsetting the table on
which she leans her hand, and trying to push her aside in order to get at
Rizzio. For a few moments she succeeds in keeping them at bay; but then it
is Darnley who comes to their rescue. He seizes the Queen, tries to push her
away, and takes hold of Rizzio’s hand in order to make him loose his grasp
of Mary’s gown. In this struggle Mary has partly uncovered the Italian, and
one of the conspirators, espying the opportunity, plunges a dagger over
Mary’s shoulder into Rizzio’s breast. It is a signal for a general assault on
the unfortunate victim. Like madmen they rush upon him from all sides;
they drag him from behind the Queen, who is herself in danger of being
slain; they beat him, they kick him, they plunge their swords, their knives,
their daggers into his bleeding and mutilated body, they pull him by the
hair, lifeless and maimed as he is, through the dining-room, through the
bedroom, to the outer door of the antechamber, and only desist when they
see that it is nothing but a corpse which they are maltreating.
The dead silence which suddenly follows gives notice to Mary that the
horrid crime has been fully committed, that her favorite lies prostrate and
silenced forever at the threshold of her bedroom. What wonder that in that
terrible hour thoughts of revenge and hatred against Darnley, the leader of
this gang of savages and murderers, arise in her brain, never to leave it
again?

The assassination of Rizzio had opened a chasm between Mary Stuart
and Darnley which nothing but his own blood could fill up. From the very
first moment it became evident—and the Queen made no secret of it—that
Mary Stuart intended to resent the foul murder of one who, if he had not
been her lover, had enjoyed her confidence and her friendship, and whom
not even her personal intercession had been able to save from a most cruel
and entirely undeserved death. Immediately after the murder, when Ruthven
came back to her presence, with the blood-stained dagger still in his hand,
and demanded wine, she answered: “It shall be dear blood to some of you!”
Nor would she permit the blood of Rizzio to be washed off the floor; she
wished that it should forever remain as a mark of the murder which had
been committed there, and she ordered a partition to be built between the
grand staircase and the door of the antechamber leading to her bedroom, in
order to protect the blood-stained floor from being desecrated by the feet of
visitors. In this condition the Palace has remained for centuries and the
stains caused by Rizzio’s blood have withstood the lapse of hundreds of
years.
The halcyon days which Mary had tried to create for herself at Holyrood
—the days and hours which she had hoped would console her by poetry,
music, and song for her absence from France—had come to a sudden and
cruel end. The conspirators were not satisfied with having slain Rizzio; his
murder was only the unavoidable means to accomplish a certain purpose,—
to get control of the government. They kept the Queen in close captivity and
would not permit any of her friends, not even her ladies, to see or confer
with her. It was then that Mary resorted to her great power of duplicity.
Carefully concealing the profound horror and disgust with which the sight
of Darnley filled her, she convinced him easily that her interests and his
were identical, that his strength lay in his exalted station as consort of the
Queen, and that their continued estrangement and enmity would only lead
to the elevation of her half-brother, Lord Murray, or some other great
nobleman. Darnley was only too easily persuaded; he fell readily into the
trap which the deceitful Queen had set for him. In his overweening vanity,
and convinced of his own invincibility, he ascribed the passionate appeals
and the affectionate solicitations of the Queen for his support to a renewal
of her former love and passion for him. Carried away by her tenderness and
loveliness, he promised to release her from her captivity and to abduct her

to Dunbar castle, where she would be secure from any plots of her enemies.
Darnley induced a number of his personal friends and adherents to join him
in this undertaking, and a few nights later the flight from Holyrood to
Dunbar was effected with complete success.
Darnley, after having thus separated his cause from that of the enemies
of the Queen,—who were seriously debating whether she should be
imprisoned for life, exiled from the country, or put to death,—went a step
further. He openly denounced the assassination of Rizzio as an inexcusable
crime, and disclaimed all previous knowledge of and complicity in it.
Nobody believed him,—neither the Queen, who had seen his active
participation in the murder when he could easily have prevented it; nor the
conspirators, who knew that he had planned all the details, had helped in its
execution, and had promised to protect those who would take a hand in it.
But Darnley’s lying declaration served the political aims of the Queen well.
From Dunbar she issued an appeal to the loyal people and nobles of
Scotland, imploring their assistance against the rebels who had driven her
from Edinburgh and had insulted and threatened her in her own palace, and
using the presence and the declaration of the King to contradict the stories
and accusations circulated by the conspirators and “rebels” against her
scandalous private life. Eight thousand loyal Scots responded to this appeal
of their Queen, and at the head of this enthusiastic army Queen Mary and
her husband returned to Edinburgh and once more took possession of
Holyrood.
It was not long before the Queen threw off the mask of affection for
Darnley, which she had assumed for political purposes, and openly again
showed that aversion which she really felt for him. Not even the birth of her
son, who afterwards as James the Sixth ruled over Scotland and as James
the First over England, changed the strained relations between husband and
wife. There seems to be no doubt that the new cause of these strained
relations, which grew more apparent from day to day, was a criminal and
adulterous love affair which had quite suddenly sprung up between the
Queen and one of the noblemen of her court, the Earl of Bothwell.
The new favorite was a scion of one of the noblest and most renowned
families of Scotland, but his personal history was far from being honorable.
The mere fact that a man with such antecedents could appear at court and
be received in the very highest society is a sad comment on the moral tone
prevailing at that court and in that society. Bothwell was at that time no

longer a young man. When quite young he had one day disappeared from
the castle of his fathers and, on reaching the coast of the North Sea, had
joined a gang of adventurers who, as pirates, infested those waters and were
a terror to the merchant vessels of all the nations of Europe. By natural
ability, unbounded courage and daring the young Scotchman had rapidly
risen to a commanding position among the wild corsairs; his name was
repeated with fear and awe from the coasts of Denmark to the west coast of
Ireland. In one of the desperate engagements with warships of the Hanseatic
League he had lost one eye, but had saved his life and his freedom. Many
years of his life he had passed in this wild and adventurous career. Then the
news of the death of his father reached him, and one morning he reappeared
in his ancestral home to take possession of his vast domain. The turbulent
condition of Scotland, the civil war between Protestants and Catholics, the
struggles for supremacy between the crown and the nobility, were congenial
to his adventurous and reckless spirit. He had been among the first to greet
Mary Stuart on her arrival from France and had shown her, from the first
day he saw her, an enthusiastic, almost worshipful devotion. He was a
passionate adorer of female beauty, and the romantic halo of his past life
which surrounded his brow had secured for him triumphs in love-affairs
with some of the fairest women of the court. He was among those who
escorted Mary from Holyrood to Dunbar, and again he was one of those
who led her back in triumph from Dunbar to Edinburgh. During this return
march Bothwell distinguished himself by the skill of his military
dispositions, by his boldness and intrepidity, and attracted the personal
notice of the Queen.
At Holyrood the acquaintance between the Queen and the daring general
quickly ripened into love and intimacy, although the Queen took great care
at first to conceal the new passion which had taken possession of her
inflammable heart, even from her closest friends. But while these efforts on
the part of the Queen may have been successful in deceiving her intimate
friends, there were always eyes turned upon her which were not so easily
deceived,—and these eyes were those of the ambassadors of England,
France, and Spain accredited at her court. They watched her conduct very
attentively, and almost simultaneously reported to their sovereigns the
nascent favor with which the Queen looked upon Bothwell, and the
growing coldness which became noticeable between her and Darnley. It was
only a serious accident, which befell Bothwell soon afterwards and which

imperilled his life for several days, that revealed the new passion of the
Queen to the whole court and placed the new favorite at the head of the
government, with similar honors and similar powers to those previously
showered on Rizzio.
We are neither writing a personal history of Queen Mary, nor a political
history of her reign; we are merely writing a history of the assassinations of
which she was, so to speak, the central figure that gave them world-wide
celebrity. We have therefore carefully excluded from our narration all
political and biographical facts which were either not directly connected
with these assassinations or had not a psychological bearing upon them.

We have reached the period when Mary—blinded by passion and
infatuated with love for a man utterly unworthy of her, or to speak more
correctly, of the exalted position she occupied in the world—surrendered
not only herself, but also the dignity of the crown and the honor and the
interests of the realm to the Earl of Bothwell, known to the entire court as a
profligate and libertine of the worst sort and as a most unscrupulous and
reckless adventurer. It was this infatuation for Bothwell and the shameless
liaison she formed with him from which all of Queen Mary’s sufferings and
disasters now flowed in rapid succession. Not even her incomparable
beauty and loveliness could save her from the contempt attached to this
disgraceful liaison, of which she made soon no more a secret than she had
formerly made of her preference for Rizzio. But while in her infatuation for
the Italian singer the artistic taste of the Queen was rather successfully used
by her admirers as an excuse for her enthusiastic preference for him, there
was absolutely no excuse for her liaison with Bothwell. And Bothwell did
all he could do to strengthen the unfavorable impression of Mary’s conduct
by the haughty and overbearing rudeness with which he treated the greatest
lords and the highest dignitaries of the kingdom, including the King
himself, for whom he openly showed the greatest contempt.
Outraged by the insults which he had to endure day after day and from
which the Queen herself did not seem to be willing to protect him, Darnley
suddenly left the court and went to Glasgow, where he took up his residence
in the house of his father, the Earl of Lennox. The King’s sudden departure
caused more unfavorable comment than the Queen had anticipated. It
greatly disconcerted her, because she was afraid that from Glasgow Darnley

might issue an appeal to the Scotch people, and especially to the dissatisfied
nobility, laying before them his complaints and calling upon them to
overthrow the disgraceful rule of an adulterous wife and her paramour.
Soon the news came from Glasgow that Darnley had fallen seriously ill,
that he was suffering from the small-pox and was expected to die. The
Queen took advantage of this serious illness and once more resorted to her
power of dissimulation, which had served her so well after Rizzio’s death.
She intended now to employ it not only to temporarily deceive and beguile
her husband, but to decoy him into an ambush and put him to death.
Incredible as the enormity and ferocity of the crime may appear, especially
on the part of a young and beautiful woman distinguished by so many
mental advantages, there seems not to be the least doubt that Mary, in going
to Glasgow and appearing at the bedside of her sick husband as a loving
wife, had this horrid crime in view and successfully paved the way for its
execution. She again played with consummate art the part of a loving and
trembling wife, and deceived Darnley so fully that he promised to follow
her to Edinburgh as soon as the progress of his convalescence would make
it possible for him to undertake the journey. Thus fully assured of Darnley’s
forgiveness, she returned to Holyrood and perfected there, together with
Bothwell, the arrangements for his murder.
When Darnley arrived at Edinburgh, a short time afterwards, he was not,
as he ought to have been, taken to the royal palace, where he could have
been cared for better than anywhere else, but to a private residence in an
isolated location in one of the suburbs of the city, whose salubrious
location, it was alleged, would facilitate the King’s rapid recovery. Darnley
himself was greatly surprised at these arrangements, especially when he
learned that the Queen would not take up her residence with him, but would
remain at the Palace. Apprehensions of some impending danger haunted his
mind, and he became melancholy and despondent. However, the Queen by
her appearance and the excess of her tenderness soon dispelled his vague
fears and convinced him that only care for his enfeebled condition and the
hope of quickening his convalescence had prompted her to select his
residence, from which he would be promptly removed after his complete
recovery. In order to reassure him fully, she remained several nights with
him, occupying a room immediately beneath his own, and manifesting
toward him the greatest affection and solicitude. One of her pages slept in

the same room with him, and five or six servants, whom Bothwell had
appointed, formed the entire household.
Late in the evening of February 9, 1567, the Queen left the house and
went back to Holyrood to pass the night there, because one of the musicians
attached to the royal chapel was to be married that night, and she had
promised to be at the wedding. It was while the wedding-festivities were
going on at Holyrood and while the Queen was dancing with some of the
courtiers in the most careless and unaffected manner possible, that a terrific
explosion took place which was heard and felt in all parts of the city and at
Holyrood. Soon the rumor spread that the house of the King had been
blown to atoms and that all the inmates were buried under the ruins. This
rumor was only partly true. The morning light of the tenth of February
revealed the fact that the house had been blown up by means of an
underground mine; but the corpse of the King was not found among the
ruins. On the contrary, it was found, together with the corpse of the page, in
an orchard adjoining the house, and neither the King nor the page showed
any marks of gunpowder; but the bloated condition of their faces and the
marks of finger-nails on their necks showed that both had been choked to
death and had been left lying on the ground where the assassins had killed
them. It was then surmised that both the King and the page, having been
disturbed in their sleep by the approach of the assassins, had tried to make
their escape through the orchard, but had been overtaken in their flight and
slain. The explosion had unquestionably been intended to destroy all
vestiges of the crime by burying both the assassins and their victims under
the ruins, but it had either taken place too soon, before the murderers could
have carried the King and the page back to the house, or the assassins had
hurried away immediately after committing the deed. At all events, Darnley
was dead.
The evidences of premeditated murder were so plain that from the very
first not the least doubt was manifested as to the character of the calamity.
Neither was there the least uncertainty in the public mind as to the author or
authors of the terrible catastrophe and the assassinations attending it. The
public voice immediately named Bothwell as the murderer and added, in a
whisper, the name of the Queen as his accomplice. In those times murders
were committed so often that the murderers in a majority of cases escaped
unpunished. But in this case the rank of the victim was so exalted, and
moreover the circumstances surrounding the crime were so damaging to the

authority of the crown, that public opinion demanding an investigation of
the death of the King could not be disregarded. The Queen, who, if
innocent, should have been the first to insist on a thorough investigation of
the crime by which her husband was killed, affected an absolute
indifference in the matter. She utterly disregarded the damaging rumors
which openly charged Bothwell with the murder, and by this indifference
confirmed the suspicion of her silent active (or at best, passive)
participation in the crime. The Queen even openly defied public opinion by
leaving Bothwell in the undisturbed possession of the honors and dignities
she had conferred upon him, and by adding new ones, showing the
continued favor the Earl enjoyed, in spite of the public clamor raised
against him. “But Banquo’s ghost would not go down!” The excitement and
the indignation of the people rose to the highest point. On her appearance in
the streets, the Queen was insulted by the women. She found it necessary
for her safety to leave Holyrood and seek refuge in the fortified castle.
Bothwell had the audacity to demand a public trial, because the Earl of
Lennox, Darnley’s father, had openly accused him of the murder; and the
cowardly judges, overawed by the power of the accused, by the royal
troops, by the authority of the Queen, acquitted him, while the whole people
considered and declared him guilty.
We have reached the end of this atrocious murder. Posterity holds Queen
Mary guilty of the crime of having murdered her young husband. Her
abduction by Bothwell and her marriage to him, although apparently forced
upon her, had been planned by the two murderers even before the
assassination. Mary’s long imprisonment and final execution at the bidding
of a cruel and jealous rival has often been deplored by biographer, historian,
and dramatist,—but were they more than a just atonement for crimes as
atrocious as they were unprecedented?

CHAPTER X

WILLIAM OF ORANGE

WILLIAM OF ORANGE

CHAPTER X

ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE

(July 10, 1584)

I T was said by one of the wild revolutionists of France, in extenuation of
his incessant demands for the execution of a larger number of the nobility,
that the tree of liberty, to grow vigorously, should be watered with plenty
of blood. Alas! The history of the republics of the world, not only since the
great French Revolution of 1789, but at all times, both ancient and modern,
proves the justice of this assertion, but none furnishes a more convincing
proof of it than the history of the Dutch Republic in its heroic struggle
against the gigantic power of Spain and other monarchical nations. At the
very threshold of that history stands the luminous figure of the great Prince
of Orange, William the Silent,—warrior, statesman, orator, and patriot;
whose assassination, closely following upon the murders of the night of St.
Bartholomew, is but the first of the crimes committed against the illustrious
men of the Dutch Republic—Olden Barnevelt, the brothers De Witt, and
others.
The assassination of William of Orange is of a semi-political and semi-
religious character. The revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule, of
which the Prince of Orange was the principal figure, originated in religious
conflicts between the Netherlanders—most of whom were Calvinists or
Lutherans—and the bigoted King of Spain, Philip the Second, who was
more Catholic than the Pope himself. It was one of the fixed ideas of Philip
the Second, a perfect monomania, that in the immense empire over which
he ruled, none but faithful believers in the Catholic faith should be
tolerated, and that all heretics or dissidents should be exterminated with fire
and sword. In the Pyrenean peninsula—for Portugal was at this time
annexed to Spain—this idea was most radically carried out, and year after
year the Inquisition, which flourished there as the first institution of the
state, handed over thousands of victims, convicted or suspected of heresy,
to a most cruel death at the stake for the purpose of purifying the spiritual
atmosphere of the country. But when an effort was being made on the part
of the King to introduce the same system of spiritual purification into the
Netherlands, which he had inherited from his father, the Emperor Charles

the Fifth, and whose population was mostly of Germanic race, that effort
met with a most stubborn and almost insuperable resistance.
Already, under Charles the Fifth, all attempts to smother the Protestant
Reformation—which had entered the Netherlands both from Germany and
France and which had immediately found many adherents—had failed. The
Emperor, himself a Netherlander and familiar with the character of the
people, had deemed it prudent to abolish the Inquisition (at least in name)
and not to interfere too strongly with those personal rights of the inhabitants
which their municipal or provincial statutes guaranteed to them. Moreover
the Emperor had a very affable and popular way of dealing with the people,
and he could do a great many things which no other ruler might have
presumed to do. When Charles the Fifth abdicated in 1555, the grief of the
people of the Netherlands was not only general, but sincere; they seemed to
feel instinctively that the change which was to occur in the government was
full of impending dangers and calamities for them. The personality of the
new ruler fully justified these apprehensions. Philip the Second came to the
Netherlands from England, where he had resided a short time as consort of
Queen Mary, and his reputation for bigotry, fanaticism, and cruelty had
preceded his arrival. Many of the acts of bloodshed and cruelty which were
committed under that reign were more or less justly imputed to his
influence, and his new subjects trembled at the prospects of similar scenes
of persecution and despotism. No wonder that on the twenty-fifth of
October, 1555, when the act of abdication was consummated at Brussels,
and when the infirm Emperor, leaning upon the shoulder of Prince William
of Orange, appeared before the representatives and high dignitaries of all
the provinces constituting the Netherlands, and ceded the government to his
son, who stood on his right side, a shudder passed through the high
assembly. Many eyes passed apprehensively from the open and kindly
countenance of the Emperor, then bathed in tears, to the sinister and cruel
features of King Philip. What a contrast also between the majestic form and
noble countenance of William of Orange and the small, feeble, narrow-
chested son of Charles, who with distrustful eyes looked down upon this
assemblage of nobles as if they were strangers or enemies, and whom not
even the glitter of royalty could invest with dignity, although his features
showed uncommon pride and haughtiness! The hopes of the people of the
Low Countries rested upon the one; their fears were centred on the other.

Unquestionably it had been the Emperor’s intention to place William of
Orange by the side of his son as chief adviser and protector; but the
characters of the two were so different—the one broad, humane, manly; the
other narrow, bigoted, timid—that it soon became manifest that a hearty
coöperation of the two men for the welfare of the state was impossible.
Moreover the aspirations and tendencies in regard to the government of the
provinces which the two men entertained were absolutely conflicting, the
Prince being in favor of liberal institutions and scrupulous observance of
the guaranteed rights of the provinces, while the King was illiberal and
despotic, without regard for the local customs and rights of the
Netherlanders, anxious to concentrate all powers in his hands and to
subordinate the whole government to his autocratic will.
These conflicting tendencies and these antipathies grew and became
intensified as the months and years passed by; consequently, when Philip in
1559 left Brussels for Spain, he did not appoint the Prince of Orange
Governor-General of the Netherlands, to which position he was clearly
entitled, but conferred that honor with the title of regent upon his half-sister,
Margaret, Duchess of Parma, who shared his own fanatical ideas. As her
chief adviser he appointed Cardinal Granvella, a man of great sagacity and
talent, but filled with animosity against the enemies of the Catholic Church,
and in full though secret accord with the King concerning the necessity of
wiping out the privileges of the “arrogant burghers of the Low Countries.”
William of Orange was appointed Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand, and
a member of the Council of State, a sort of cabinet for the Regent Duchess
in which Cardinal Granvella was the leading spirit. Several other prominent
noblemen of the Dutch provinces, Count Egmont, the conqueror of
Gravelines, and Count Hoorn, were also members of the Council of State;
but they were in a minority, and the Spanish or Cardinalistic party ruled its
decisions absolutely. All of these decisions were hostile to the guaranteed
rights of the Provinces; they interfered with freedom of conscience; they
reintroduced the Spanish Inquisition under the disguise of creating new
episcopal sees and attaching two inquisitors to each; and by establishing
Spanish garrisons in the fortified towns they violated the constitutional right
of the provinces that no foreign troops should be stationed there. The
protests of the Prince of Orange and of Counts Egmont and Hoorn were of
no avail, so these three distinguished members refused to attend the
sessions of the Council of State.

In the meantime a spirit of public dissatisfaction and disorder manifested
itself which showed to the sagacious Regent that the measures enacted and
enforced by Cardinal Granvella would lead to a revolt against the Spanish
régime. The people of Brussels showed their hatred and contempt for the
Cardinal in many ways. In public processions they carried banners with
insulting inscriptions or offensive caricatures and cartoons exhibiting him in
ridiculous positions. Alarmed at these manifestations of public hostility, the
Duchess Regent applied to the King, imploring him to remove Granvella
from his post as President of the Council of State. The King reluctantly
complied with the request, but Granvella’s removal did not change the spirit
of the Council; and it was only too evident that its decisions were
emanations from the King’s own mind. When Count Egmont, who had gone
to Madrid on a special mission to plead for the personal and political rights
of the Netherlanders, urged upon the King to give them greater religious
liberty and to annul some of the stringent laws of the Council of State,
Philip got into a rage and exclaimed: “No, no, I would rather die a thousand
deaths and lose every square foot of my empire than permit the least change
in our religion!” And he added that the decrees of the Council of Trent,
which had recently been held, and which had affirmed anew the immutable
doctrines of the Catholic Church, should be rigidly enforced in all his states.
New instructions to that effect were sent to the Netherlands, followed by
new convictions and new executions.
It was at this perilous and critical time that William of Orange openly
accepted the Lutheran faith. Shortly before, he had been married to Princess
Anne of Saxony, a daughter of the famous Maurice, Elector of Saxony, and
a fervent Lutheran. William’s conversion to Protestantism has been often
ascribed to the influence of his wife, but it should be remembered that
William was born a prince of Nassau in Germany and the son of Lutheran
parents, and that his Catholicism dated only from the time of his later
education at the court of Charles the Fifth, where he was placed as a page at
the early age of nine years. William had never forgotten the lessons of
Protestantism which he had imbibed in his early childhood, and while
professing the Catholic faith in later years, he had retained that respect and
that affection for the principles of the Reformation which so peculiarly
qualified him to act as umpire and leader in a contest in which religion
played so conspicuous a part.

Up to that time the nobility had taken much less interest in the religious
quarrels than the lower classes of the people; but the steadily increasing
number of convictions and executions for heresy aroused their fears that the
Spanish monarch intended to abolish their time-honored privileges and
wished to substitute a Spanish autocracy for their liberal self-government.
Against this intention they loudly protested, Catholics as well as
Protestants, and bound themselves to stand together in their resistance to
further acts of aggression. They presented petitions and protests to the
Duchess Regent who received them in a conciliatory spirit, and forwarded
them to the King, recommending at the same time greater leniency and
moderation. But Philip the Second, getting tired of the many complaints and
remonstrances reaching him from Brussels, and determined to stamp out
heresy at whatever cost, sent the Duke of Alva, the sternest and most cruel
of all his commanders, at the head of a considerable army to the
Netherlands, with full powers to restore order and to reëstablish the
authority of the Catholic Church. From the well-known character of the
commander-in-chief it could not be doubted that the King’s severe orders
would be carried out in the most cruel and unrelenting spirit, and that
neither age nor sex nor rank would be spared. That Alva’s mission would be
successful, the King did not doubt for a minute. But it was on his part a case
of misplaced judgment, because his narrow mind could not measure the
difference between the Jews and Moriscoes, and the Netherlanders: against
the former the policy of violence and compulsion had been successful;
against the latter that same policy was doomed to ignominious failure. The
rumor that he would come as a bloody avenger preceded Alva’s arrival, and
filled the hearts of the Netherlanders with terror. A regular panic ensued,
and an emigration en masse was organized; it looked as though the northern
provinces were to be depopulated entirely by this exodus of men, women
and children, mostly belonging to the mercantile and working classes, and
taking their merchandise and their household goods with them.
The sending of an army composed entirely of Spaniards and Italians into
the Netherlands was so flagrant a violation of the constitutional rights of the
provinces, which the King had sworn to maintain, that the Prince of Orange
thought the time for open resistance had come, and he conferred with
Egmont, Hoorn, and other prominent men concerning its organization. But
finding it impossible to organize united resistance against Alva’s army,
William of Orange, with his profound insight and with his distrust in the

Spanish King’s intentions, deemed it prudent to leave the Netherlands and
withdraw to his estates in Germany instead of imperilling his head by
remaining at Brussels. It was in vain that he tried to persuade Egmont, to
whom he was greatly attached, to accompany him and to place his valuable
life beyond the reach of the Spanish “avenger.” Egmont’s openhearted and
confiding character refused to believe the sinister forebodings of the
penetrating genius of his friend; he relied on his immense popularity among
the Netherlanders and on the great services he had rendered, on the battle-
field, to the House of Hapsburg. He therefore remained at Brussels, and
even welcomed Alva on his arrival at the capital. The Spanish commander
conducted himself as the regent de facto without paying much attention to
the Duchess, who still held that position nominally. One of his first official
acts was the appointment of a special tribunal, which he named the Council
of Troubles, composed exclusively of Spaniards, to try charges of heresy
and treason. The people, however, found another, and more appropriate
name for it. On account of the indecent haste and rapidity with which
persons were tried, convicted, and executed by this Council, they named it
“The Bloedraad” (The Council of Blood). The number of victims was so
great that gallows and scaffolds had to be erected in all the cities and towns
of the Netherlands, and that the executioners were kept busy in beheading
and quartering the heretics and “traitors.” Counts Egmont and Hoorn had
been arrested, soon after Alva’s arrival, on the charge of treason; they were
also tried before the Court of Troubles and convicted on trumped-up
charges. They were beheaded, together with eighteen members of the
nobility, at the public square of Brussels.
This infamous act stirred up William of Orange to immediate action.
What he had foreseen and predicted had come to pass. Evidently it was
Alva’s intention to kill off the leaders in order to get control of the great
mass of the people without much difficulty or resistance. William of Orange
himself was charged with treason and summoned to appear before the
judges of the Court of Troubles. But since his appearance at Brussels would
have been equivalent to his conviction, he refused to recognize the
jurisdiction of the court, claiming that as a knight of the Golden Fleece he
had the right to be tried by the King personally and by no other judges than
his peers. At the same time he published an address to the King in which he
defended his public actions in a masterly manner, convincing every
unbiased mind not only of his patriotic devotion to his country, but also of

his loyalty to his sovereign in all his legitimate and constitutional acts of
government. The Duke of Alva took no further notice of this defence; but
when the day for William’s appearance at court had passed, he was
sentenced to death, and his property, personal and real, was confiscated as
that of a rebel and traitor.
In the meantime the Prince of Orange had not been idle in Germany. He
had appealed to his co-religionists for assistance, pointing out to the
Protestant princes that the cause of Protestantism itself was the issue of the
war in the Netherlands, and that the complete victory of the Spanish army
over the Netherlanders would be followed by an overthrow of the Protestant
churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, in Europe. He succeeded in
collecting a considerable army, which he divided into two corps, placing the
one under the command of his brother Lewis, Count of Nassau, and
invading Brabant with the other. The Count of Nassau was defeated in
battle and driven out of Frisia with heavy loss, while Alva avoided giving
battle to the Prince of Orange. By skilful manœuvres the Spanish general
tired out the patience of the German troops, and when the severe cold of
winter set in, the Prince, finding himself without means of paying his
soldiers and getting no support from the inhabitants (who were overawed by
the Spanish authorities), had to disband his army and to return, temporarily,
to Germany. Alva triumphed and pompously reported to the Spanish King
that both the rebellion and heresy had been stamped out in the Netherlands,
and that his presence was hardly required there any longer. In his
overweening vanity he went even so far as to order a bronze monument to
be erected in his own honor, in which he was represented as a conqueror,
standing with one foot on a Dutch nobleman in full armor and with the
other on a man of the people, kneeling and with a Lutheran prayer-book in
his hands.
It is not my intention to go into the details of the cruel war in the
Netherlands,—cruel even beyond human imagination,—to recount the
sufferings, the tortures, the atrocities, the martyrdom imposed upon the
unfortunate victims of political and religious persecution, conceived by
human fiends educated in the school of the Spanish Inquisition and warmly
applauded by him whom both his cotemporaries and posterity have justly
named “the demon of the South.” Such a war had never been seen between
nations claiming to be civilized; and never has patriotic devotion in defence
of home and country, of liberty and creed, been carried to a higher degree

than by those brave Netherlanders in the sixteenth century. The world
should never forget the immense service which they rendered to mankind
by victoriously maintaining the principles of religious liberty, which,
without their heroic perseverance, would very likely have perished under
the incubus of Spanish despotism and the Spanish Inquisition. That they did
not succumb and perish must be considered one of the marvellous enigmas
of history, in which the finger of God is plainly visible. Immortal glory and
renown should be accorded to the gallant leader who, under the most
discouraging and desperate circumstances, never lost hope and confidence
in the righteousness and final triumph of his cause, and who, undaunted by
personal danger and persecution, never wavered in his loyalty to principle,
and held high the banner of popular sovereignty and individual liberty, until
the pistol shot of a hired assassin interrupted his glorious career.
If to-day, after the lapse of three centuries, we look back upon that
career, our admiration for William of Orange grows steadily. We follow him
from his first appearance on the public stage of the Netherlands, as a friend
and confidant of Charles the Fifth, as a loyal adviser of the Duchess Regent,
as a loyal subject pleading with Philip the Second and warning him to
respect the rights of citizenship and religion of the Netherlanders,—
pleading and warning in vain; we behold him unsheathing his sword for the
defence and, when they appeared to be lost, for the recovery of those rights,
toiling, struggling, fighting for the people, always subordinating his own
interests to those of the nation and to the sublime cause of which he was the
acknowledged champion; we recognize him as the first in the field, the first
in the council-room, filling his countrymen with an enthusiasm and a
confidence which alone could sustain them in undergoing sufferings and
hardships unequalled in history. Thus he stands before us fully realizing and
even surpassing the eulogy which Goethe wrote for the monument of
another national hero, perhaps worthy, but certainly not so worthy of it as
William the Silent:—
“In advance or retreat,
In success or defeat,
Ever conscious and great,
Ever watchful to see,
From foreign dominion he made us free!”

In translating Goethe’s inscription on the famous Blücher monument at
Rostock we were strongly impressed with the fact that it was even better

adapted for a monument of the great Prince of Orange than for that of the
indomitable, but rather reckless, “Marshal Vorwärts.”
The King of Spain had from the first day of his accession known the
powerful influence which the Prince of Orange exerted in the Netherlands.
The Prince stood without a rival at the head of the nobility, and his eminent
talents enhanced the authority which his illustrious birth had secured for
him. The King was also informed by his special representatives—the
Duchess Regent, Granvella, the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria, and
others—that this authority was steadily increasing, that the great mass of
the people idolized the Prince, that his wish was a law for the burghers, and
that practically the revolt, its failure or success, depended on him. The
exalted character of the Prince precluded the very idea of winning him over
to the other side by means of high distinctions or honors, much less by
pecuniary bribes or corruption, and nothing remained therefore for the King
to do, if he wanted to get rid of the dangerous popular leader, who held a
number of the provinces entirely under his sway, than to place him beyond
the pale of the law and to offer a high reward for his head. This method of
removing rivals or enemies was not unusual in those days; and it should
cause no surprise that the monarch who is, and very likely justly, suspected
of having ordered the murder of his half-brother, Don Juan d’Austria, and
also that of his own son, Don Carlos, was perfectly willing to adopt this
method of getting rid of the Prince of Orange, who in his eyes was not only
a rebel, but also a heretic, and as such deserved death a hundredfold. The
price he put on the Prince’s head—twenty-five thousand ducats—showed
sufficiently the importance he attached to his life, and how willing he was
to tempt assassins by the enormous sum of the reward.
The King, who evidently had experience in such matters, had not
miscalculated the temptation, for several attempts were made on the
Prince’s life in consequence; but they always failed, and it would almost
seem as if that life was under the special protection of Providence that it
might carry out the plans predestined for it. In 1582, Juan Jaureguy, a young
man in the employ of a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, and a religious
fanatic, fired a pistol shot at the Prince which came very near killing him.
The ball entered the head under the right ear, passed through the roof of the
mouth, breaking several teeth, and came out under the left jaw-bone. For a
while the Prince’s life was despaired of, but he finally rallied and recovered.
His would-be assassin was immediately killed, and his accomplices, of

whom there were several, were publicly strangled and quartered. In order to
deter others from making attempts on the Prince’s life, the ghastly remains
of these accomplices, one of them a Dominican monk, were nailed to the
gates of Antwerp. The joy at the Prince’s recovery was general, and
thanksgiving days, with divine service in the churches and public halls,
were held in a number of the provinces. Unfortunately neither these public
demonstrations of gratitude and delight, nor the terrible warnings addressed
to assassins were sufficient to protect a life so valuable to his country and to
the world.
Another assassin was more successful than Jaureguy. The scene of the
murder, which took place on the tenth day of July, 1584, was the city of
Delft in Holland. Shortly after the noon hour of that day a common-looking
man, who had found access to the Prince’s residence for the purpose of
securing a passport, approached the Prince as he came from the dining-hall
and fired three shots at him, one passing through the stomach and causing
his death after a very short while. The assassin was a man still young, less
than thirty years of age. He was a Frenchman, Balthasar Gérard by name,
who had come from his home in Franche-Comté or Burgundy to carry out
his hellish design, which was inspired by religious fanaticism and
encouraged by Jesuits of the College of Trèves. Through these he was
introduced to the Duke of Parma, then Governor-General of the
Netherlands, who promised him the royal reward in case of success, and
other royal favors besides. Gérard had made his preparations for the murder
with considerable circumspection; these preparations were very similar to
those which Booth made for his escape after the murder of Abraham
Lincoln, and just like Booth, Gérard stumbled and fell in making his escape
and hurt himself, and this led to his arrest.
After having undergone the most terrible tortures, his joints having been
wrenched and his body nearly roasted alive, he was executed in the most
cruel manner imaginable. His right hand was burnt off with red-hot irons;
the flesh was torn from half a dozen different parts of his body, which was
then broken on the wheel. Gérard was still alive; his vitality was wonderful.
The executioners then disembowelled and quartered him; tore out his heart
and flung it in his face. It was then only that the unfortunate man breathed
his last. His head was then cut off and placed on a pike of a gate in the rear
of the Prince’s residence, and the four parts of his body were fastened to the
four gates of the city. This cruel mutilation and dismemberment of the

assassin’s body was hardly sufficient to satisfy the vengeance of the people;
the certainty that the King of Spain stooped even to murder of the basest
sort to recover his sovereignty over the Netherlands exalted their desire for
absolute and lasting national independence to a sort of religious dogma
which made all hope of peace illusory.
When the assassin’s hand cut short the life of the Prince of Orange, he
had not completed the great work for which he had toiled, fought, suffered
and died. But part of that work had been done, and it had been done so well
and so thoroughly that the Republic stood on a firm foundation ready to
receive the other provinces which were still in the power of Spain as a
fitting superstructure. For this reason history recognizes William the Silent
as the founder of the Dutch Republic and of the independence of the United
Provinces.
To Americans the character of William the Silent is of special interest
because it bears, in many respects, a striking resemblance to that of George
Washington. Both were the principal figures in wars for the independence
of their countries; both were soldiers and statesmen of a high order. If
Washington was very likely the greater general, William the Silent was very
likely the greater statesman, and the success of the American cause would
have been as impossible without Washington as the failure of the Dutch
struggle would have been certain without William of Orange. Both were
sterling patriots and subordinated their own interests to those of the nations
they represented; but in this respect Washington was, perhaps, superior to
William, who had an eye on the possibilities which might arise after a
successful issue of the war. It should be remembered, however, that William
of Orange was a prince and sovereign before he was made the head of the
Netherlanders rising in revolt against Spain, and that, as a sovereign, it was
natural for him to look after the interests of his family and dynasty. As far
as mental and moral qualifications are concerned, both men were
distinguished by that perfect equilibrium of powers of the mind and powers
of the soul, which is but rarely found in men of the highest rank. Neither of
these statesmen had the capacity of immediately conceiving and executing
plans of a decisive character. Their minds, although full of resources,
worked slowly in elaborating such plans; they weighed and hesitated before
taking action; but as soon as their minds had been made up and a plan had
been resolved upon, they acted without wavering, and held on to it until
success or failure resulted from it. The great respect in which Washington

has been always held by British historians and statesmen is, perhaps, the
noblest tribute that can be paid to his character and abilities. The fact that
Philip the Second relied less on his splendid armies, led by some of the
ablest generals of Europe, and on his powerful navy, than on the death of
William the Silent is, perhaps, the greatest eulogy which can be given to the
great founder of the Dutch Republic. Unquestionably the Spanish monarch
considered the twenty-five thousand gold pieces which he offered for the
assassination of William of Orange, although an enormous sum for those
times, but a very cheap equivalent for the life of a man who had been the
very life and soul, the inspiring genius of the rebellious Dutch provinces. If
monuments of foreign statesmen and rulers are to be erected on American
soil, no fitter and no worthier man can be found for that honor than William
the Silent.

CHAPTER XI

IVAN THE TERRIBLE

IVAN THE TERRIBLE

CHAPTER XI

ASSASSINATIONS BY IVAN THE TERRIBLE

(1560-1584)

R USSIAN history abounds in instances of famous assassinations.
Sometimes these murders were committed by the rulers of Russia, at
other times these rulers themselves were the victims. Ivan the Fourth,
whose very surname, “the Terrible,” sufficiently indicates his character, was
one of the most cruel and inhuman monarchs who ever ruled over a nation,
either in ancient or modern times. It is therefore not one famous
assassination which we wish to describe, but a series of monstrous crimes,
unparalleled in history as the acts of one individual.
Ivan was only three years old when his father died. A regency was
formed, composed of his mother and a council of boyars, belonging to
different factions, who were constantly at war with one another. At no time
had Russia been more poorly governed. As Ivan grew up, he was despised
and maltreated by the haughty nobility; his favorites were abused. In order
to divert his mind from nobler occupations and keep him in profound
ignorance of public affairs, he was amused and entertained with coarse and
brutal games which developed his innate cruelty and ferocity, and made
him, at an early age, the terror of those who were subordinated to him. He
delighted in torturing and slowly killing domestic animals, and also in
crippling and killing old men and old women whom he encountered in the
streets while riding fast horses or driving a carriage like a madman, without
looking either right or left. He was a mere boy yet—hardly fourteen—when
the boyars began to fear him and predicted a reign of terror when he should
assume the reins of government.
At seventeen, he dissolved the regency and declared his intention to
reign for himself. He also wanted to get married, and sent out messengers to
the different provinces of the Empire to pick out the most beautiful young
girls and send them to the capital, that he might choose a wife from among
their number. Many noblemen hid their handsome daughters, or sent them
far away from home on hearing of the Czar’s intention. His reputation for
excessive cruelty had reached already the remotest parts of the Empire, and
nearly every boyar trembled at the mere idea of becoming his father-in-law.

But the messenger succeeded nevertheless in bringing together several
hundred young girls of extraordinary beauty, and sent them to the capital.
Ivan then chose from their number Anastasia Romanowna, a young girl of
great beauty and great brilliancy of mind. He fell desperately in love with
her, and through the superiority of her mind she gained a great influence
over him, and succeeded even in keeping his cruelty in check.
Ivan was a man of natural ability. He had some striking qualities, and
might have been a great ruler if his education had been entrusted to
competent and wise teachers. At an early age he learned the art of
dissembling to perfection, and possessed the rare faculty of keeping his
plans and intentions secret even from his closest friends. It was only after
the conquest of Kasan that he threw off the mask. Until then he had been
exceedingly friendly and kind to a number of the powerful noblemen, who
considered themselves almost his peers in rank and birth. But when that
conquest had added to his power and authority, he suddenly said to his
boyars: “At last I am free! God has made me the master over all. Beware!”
Again it was his wife, Anastasia Romanowna, who with rare political
sagacity prevented him from too openly showing hostility and impatience at
their pretentious conduct. He was very young, and could afford to wait. But
in 1560, when Ivan was only twenty-nine years old, Anastasia, his best
friend and his ablest counsellor, died, and he found no loving hand to
restrain his passions and keep his cruelty and ferocity in check.
Nevertheless, for some time after her death the softening influence of his
wife (whom he had really loved) over his cruel nature made itself felt, and
for the next four years he proceeded rather cautiously. He considered all the
boyars his enemies and traitors; and he commenced murdering them, one at
a time.
In 1564 he threw off all restraint. He suddenly disappeared with all his
soldiers and servants, and rumors were circulated that he intended to
abdicate the crown and to retire from public life. The abject fear in which
the people had lived for thirty years had fully demoralized them. Boyars,
clergymen, and the great mass of the people went nearly crazy at the idea
that their “dear little father” would no longer rule over them. At last they
discovered his place of retirement, and the manifestations of public delight
at this discovery were almost boundless. Delegation after delegation waited
upon him and implored him on their knees that he might return to his
capital and continue to govern them. At last Ivan consented to return, but he

consented conditionally. He demanded—and they all cheerfully agreed to
the demand—that he should have full and absolute power to punish all his
enemies and all traitors by banishment or death and confiscation of their
property, without being interfered with, even by the clergy. It was a regular
coup d’état. From this act dates the absolute rule of the emperors of Russia,
and Ivan the Fourth thenceforth took the official title of “Czar of all the
Russias,” which his successors have retained to the present day.
Ivan had carefully matured his plan. He took possession of a certain
number of cities and country districts, expelled the proprietors from them,
declared them territory forfeited to the government, and distributed them
among certain of his own adherents upon whose fidelity he could count.
These adherents generally were taken from the lowest classes of the people,
knew no other law than the will of their master, and obeyed him blindly.
While confiscating all these estates without mercy or hesitation, on the most
trivial or far-fetched pretexts, he was shrewd enough to respect
constitutional rights in other parts of the Empire. His plan was to increase
the imperial private domains gradually to enormous proportions by
dispossessing year after year the legitimate proprietors of the soil, and by
this method to destroy the power of the nobility. In order to accomplish this
purpose he did not hesitate to employ the most cruel and disreputable
means for the conviction and punishment of his intended victims.
One of his favorite ways for entrapping and punishing a rich boyar was
to order one of the servants employed in the imperial household to steal
jewelry or other valuables, and then to seek refuge in the boyar’s residence.
Of course, the fugitive was closely pursued by the Czar’s guards, drawn
from his hiding-place, and then massacred together with the boyar and his
family, who, the Czar pretended to believe, were the thief’s accomplices
and deserved death as well as the offender. But much oftener the terrible
Czar rushed down, with a numerous suite of his followers, upon the
residence of a wealthy boyar, put all the men, the children and the old
women of the domain to the sword, carried off the young women and girls,
and abandoned them on the highways after he and his gang had satisfied
their desires on them. On the trumped up charge that Grand Duke Wladimir,
his own cousin, as well as the Grand Duke’s wife and grown daughters had
participated in a conspiracy against the Czar’s life, he forced him to commit
suicide by drinking poison, while the Grand Duchess and her beautiful
young daughters, and all their ladies of honor and female servants, were

divested of their garments, exposed in a state of complete nudity on the
market space of the town adjacent to their domain, and afterwards
butchered in cold blood. Wladimir’s immense wealth and all his real estate
were confiscated by the crown. In this manner Ivan succeeded in
overpowering the boyars, one after another, in a very short time, and
acquiring immense wealth. He visited the different provinces and
departments in succession, and wherever he appeared he left a track of
desolation, rapine, and murder. From the capital of each province he
organized marauding tours in all directions, placing each under the
command of an officer on whose devotion to himself and ferocity to others
he could count. But the most terrible expeditions were those which he
commanded himself. It can truthfully be said that wherever Ivan “visited,”
he destroyed everything in sight,—not only the human inhabitants, but also
the farm and domestic animals, even dogs and cats. He took also a pleasure
in draining ponds and creeks, so as to cause the fish to die, and after having
killed or mutilated all things living, he ordered the buildings to be set on
fire, and left the scene of his cruelty and lust amidst the wild huzzas of his
comrades. No civilized, or half-civilized country had ever witnessed such
atrocities on the part of its own ruler.
If Ivan was not travelling and marauding he resided generally in the
Alexandrowna Convent, which he had strongly fortified. This convent,
situated in the neighborhood of Moscow, and surrounded by dense forests,
was not only the scene of his bestial orgies and excesses, and of his more
than beastly cruelty, but also of his hypocritical zeal for religion and divine
service. The convent, although transformed into a palace, remained still a
convent. Ivan’s most abject and infamous favorites were acting as monks,
while Ivan himself performed the functions of the pontiff. He also acted as a
bell-ringer for the church. Quite early in the morning, at four o’clock, mass
was read and public service was held in the church, lasting till seven
o’clock. Regularly every evening, from seven to eight o’clock, there was
again divine service. The time intervening between the dinner and the last
church service was employed by him in going to the torture rooms of the
palace where his victims—and there was always a number of them—were
subjected to the most excruciating pain, and in many cases tortured to
death. To be invited to these scenes of horror was a mark of imperial favor.
Ivan was never in better humor or happier than after having witnessed
the tortures or the execution of a man whom he had sacrificed to his greed

for wealth or to his vindictiveness. It is reported that one day when one
hundred and twenty persons were to be executed—either strangled, hung,
beheaded, or quartered—at Moscow, and when the inhabitants of the streets
near the place of the execution had fled in horror from the neighborhood,
the Czar sent out his soldiery and compelled thousands of citizens to be
spectators of the wholesale butchery. He sat there himself on an elevated
stage applauding the torturers and executioners when, in his opinion, they
had done their task well and had prolonged the agony of the victim as much
as possible. When the cruel spectacle was over, he rose to his feet and
addressed the spectators as follows: “My loyal subjects! You have seen
torture and death! Some of you are horror-struck at what you have
witnessed! My punishment is severe, but it is just. All these men and
women were traitors to their Czar, and deserved to die. Answer me, was I
right in punishing them?” And the tremendous audience, almost frightened
to death, as with one voice replied: “Glory and long life to the Czar! Death
to the traitors!” The sight of blood, of suffering and of death seemed to have
an intoxicating effect on this unparalleled monster, and he never tired of it
to the day of his death.
The high dignitaries of the Church fared no better at Ivan’s hands.
Whenever they stood in the way of his ambition, or whenever they
presumed to criticise him for his crimes, he treated them with the same
cruelty and inflicted the same punishments upon them as upon the boyars.
In that way he imposed silence on the clergy, and caused them even to
sanction his worst misdeeds. But one day, after an especially atrocious
marauding expedition of the Czar, the Metropolitan of Moscow mustered
sufficient courage to reprimand him publicly. On the twenty-second of
March, 1568, Ivan entered the cathedral, expecting the blessing of the high-
priest. The latter did not stir, but kept his eyes fixed upon a picture
representing Christ in all his glory. “Holy Father,” said one of the boyars to
the Metropolitan, “the Czar is here; bless him!” “I do not recognize the
Czar!” replied the Metropolitan. “Since this world was created and the sun
was placed in the skies, it has never been known that a Czar has committed
such atrocities and crimes in his own state as ours has. Here in this church
we offer our prayers to God, and beyond its walls the blood of innocent
Christians is shed in torrents.” Then turning to Ivan, he said in a loud voice:
“The very stones under thy feet will rise against thee and cry out against thy
crimes and atrocities! God has bidden me tell you and warn you, even if I

should suffer death for my boldness!” And death was his punishment,
although not at the very moment. As a rebel, he was sentenced to
imprisonment for life at Twer. But it happened so that Ivan, the year after,
passed through Twer on one of his marauding expeditions. It was then that
he remembered Philip, the Metropolitan, who had accosted him so boldly.
He sent half a dozen of his soldiers to the prison, and they strangled the
Metropolitan without previous notice. This assassination paved the way for
many others among the clergy, until Ivan had so intimidated them that
thenceforth not even a whisper was heard among them against his cruelties.
It then became apparent how readily the example of an infamous ruler is
followed by his courtiers and attendants. The boyars and officers
accompanying him on his expeditions of murder and pillage tried to surpass
him in iniquity; in their very appearance they showed their true character,
adorning themselves with symbols of their ferocity. When they started on
their marauding tour, they attached a bleeding dog’s-head and a broom to
the neck and saddle of each horse, signifying by these decorations that they
would bite like savage dogs and sweep off the ground all they could find.
Whomsoever they found on the highways they would arrest and hang as
traitors to the Czar, and in the villages and towns on their route they would
commit the most horrid excesses, sparing neither sex nor age. If the
inhabitants had fled at their approach, they reported them to the Czar as his
enemies who were plotting against his life, and he issued decrees of
vengeance declaring their property confiscated and their lives forfeited. In
this way they kept the inhabitants at home waiting in terror for the arrival of
their tormentors.
After having decimated and terrorized the nobility and the clergy, Ivan
turned his attention principally to the merchants and wealthy citizens. The
commercial centres, in which a great amount of capital had accumulated,
were the special objects of his greed, especially if they showed a spirit of
independence. Prominent among these was Novgorod, the ancient and
wealthy city, proud of her free institutions and her honored name. It was
this pride and her great wealth which pointed out Novgorod as a victim for
Ivan’s wrath and cupidity, and the manner in which he planned and
executed his evil designs on the city shows his diabolical genius at its
height. Never has tyrant or despot conceived a more sinister and
treacherous plot for the ruin of a great city and for the assassination of its
inhabitants. The horrors of St. Bartholomew’s night pale in comparison.

A Polish vagabond, on the personal command of Ivan, wrote a petition,
with the forged signatures of the Archbishop of Novgorod and a large
number of leading and wealthy citizens and addressed to the King of
Poland, in which the latter was supplicated to assume the sovereignty over
Novgorod and the province in which it was situated, and to assist the
citizens in their desire of shaking off the yoke of Ivan. By Ivan’s direction
this petition was concealed in the great cathedral, behind a picture of the
Holy Virgin. The Polish vagabond, after having executed the task dictated
to him, came to Moscow and charged the city of Novgorod with treasonable
designs against the Czar. Upon this information the Czar immediately sent
messengers with the Polish vagabond to Novgorod, where, as a matter of
course, the forged petition was found hidden behind the picture of the Holy
Virgin in the cathedral. This was considered proof sufficient to condemn the
whole city. No further investigation was deemed necessary. Ivan kept quiet,
but the inhabitants knew what was in store for them. They trembled and
waited. They had not to wait a long time. Two weeks after the discovery, on
the twenty-first day of January, 1570, the first detachments of an imperial
army, commanded by some of Ivan’s most trusted and most cruel
lieutenants, entered the city. They immediately proceeded to seal the doors
of all the churches and chapels, and took possession of the residences of the
wealthy inhabitants, where they established their headquarters. All traffic
was suspended. No citizen was permitted to leave the city, nor could goods
of any kind be shipped from it. A dead silence and fear hung over the city.
Nobody knew what the Czar intended to do, but that he would do
something horrible, everybody felt, and also that there was no escape from
him.
At last he came. He took up his residence in the Archbishop’s palace. He
treated the priests and the Archbishop himself like servants; he drank and
feasted with his boyars, while the priests had to wait upon him at table. And
then suddenly, when he rose, he uttered a loud shout of triumph, and this
was the signal for his lieutenants to order a general pillage throughout the
city. Without any control by their superiors, the soldiers committed plunder,
murder, violence, and outrages of all kinds. The treasures accumulated in
the churches and large business houses Ivan had reserved for himself, and
his orders were strictly observed; nobody touched what he had designated
for his share. The palace of the Archbishop became the scene of the most
beastly orgies and excesses. The wives and daughters of the noblest families

were dragged before Ivan, and after having picked out the most beautiful
for his own use, he turned the others over to his lieutenants and
companions. Many of the unfortunate women committed suicide, many
others died from the effects of the terrible abuse to which they had been
subjected. The Czar knew no pity. “Such scenes of horror, iniquity, and
inhumanity,” says a foreign eye-witness, “had not been seen in the world
since the destruction of Jerusalem.”
The work of devastation, pillage, murder, violence, and incendiarism
lasted five weeks. At last the Czar thought it was time to stop the bloody
carnival. The measure was full to overflowing,—not only the measure of
misery, affliction, distress, and death for the unfortunate and innocent
inhabitants of Novgorod, but also the measure of lust and cruelty for
himself. The constant indulgence in voluptuous excesses told upon his
constitution; he was worn out and surfeited with animal gratification; his
eyes had a vague, almost lifeless expression; his herculean frame
commenced to tremble, his legs to totter. No less than twenty-seven
thousand persons, men, women, and children, had perished; there was not a
family which did not lament one or more dead among its members. The
corpses were thrown into the river, and at some points they had been thrown
in in such numbers that the river was impeded in its current. On the first day
of the sixth week, Ivan called citizens living in all the different streets of the
city together and addressed them as follows: “Men of Novgorod, and all of
you who are still alive, pray to God and thank him for your escape from
peril; thank your Czar too, for it is to his mercy and his fear of God that you
owe your safety; and thank also his soldiers, whose humane treatment saved
you from death. Pray to God that he may give us power and strength to
vanquish all our enemies! Much blood has been shed for the punishment of
traitors. These traitors are responsible to God for all that has happened here
during the last five weeks. May God have mercy on them. And now stop
your crying and weeping! Live and be happy, and may your city grow and
prosper!”
Cæsar Borgia could not have done better than this brutal monster of the
North. He was the genius of cruelty and hypocrisy personified in one man.

CHAPTER XII

HENRY THE FOURTH OF FRANCE

HENRY IV.

CHAPTER XII

ASSASSINATION OF HENRY THE FOURTH OF FRANCE

(May 14, 1610)

R ELIGIOUS wars—that is to say, civil wars for religious causes—had
desolated France for half a century, and tranquillity and apparent
harmony had finally been restored only by the genius of one man—
Henry the Fourth. He it was who issued the Edict of Nantes, conferring
equal religious and political rights upon the professors of both religions, the
Protestant and the Catholic.
A short time after Martin Luther had inaugurated the great movement of
religious reform in Germany, a similar movement had also been organized
in France; but it was only since 1536 and through the influential and
energetic agitation of John Calvin that it had assumed large dimensions and
acquired a really national importance. After the disastrous battle of Pavia
and after his release from Spanish captivity, King Francis the First had
ordered a cruel persecution against the Protestants for political reasons, but
it had utterly failed to put a stop to this movement. On the contrary, a great
many noblemen had joined the new church and the originally purely
religious movement had gradually assumed a pronounced political
character. But this change of tendency only added fuel to the flame of
intolerance and persecution. Not only were hundreds of professors of the
new church most cruelly executed on the gallows or burnt alive for heresy,
but among the Waldenses in Provence and in the valleys bordering on
Savoy a wholesale massacre was inaugurated, which aimed at nothing less
than their entire extirpation. On account of their peaceful and industrial
habits, these people had for a long time enjoyed toleration in spite of their
dissenting religious opinions. No less than twenty flourishing villages were
destroyed and burned to the ground, and their entire population, men,
women and children, were butchered in the most barbarous manner. But it
seemed as if the very horror which such acts of inhumanity inspired, and
the heroic constancy and bravery with which these unfortunate victims of
religious fanaticism had sealed their convictions with their blood, had rather
increased than diminished the ranks of the Protestants. The French
translation of the Bible, which was secretly circulated throughout the

kingdom, proved also a powerful means of propagandism for the principles
of reform among the better educated and thinking classes.
Francis the First died in 1547 and was succeeded by his son, Henry the
Second, who considered the Protestant movement merely a political
question, and treated it as such. In Germany he supported the Protestant
princes in their fight against Charles the Fifth, but at home, in France, he
persecuted the adherents of Calvin even more persistently and cruelly than
his father had done. Hundreds of excellent citizens were sent to the gallows
or to the stake for heresy, and even the possession or sale of a French Bible
was deemed a sufficient crime to warrant the death punishment. Henry the
Second died after a reign of twelve years, in 1559, from a wound received
in a tournament and inflicted accidentally by the captain of his own body-
guard. His successor, Francis the Second, the husband of Mary, Queen of
Scotland, was entirely under the control of his wife’s uncles, the Duke of
Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. For the Protestants matters grew worse
and worse. Francis the Second, who was merely a boy, died after a reign of
less than two years, and was succeeded by his brother Charles the Ninth, of
bloody St. Bartholomew Night’s memory. He was succeeded by Henry the
Third, who after an inglorious reign, in which torrents of blood had flowed
without quenching the fire of religious fanaticism, was assassinated in 1589
by Jacques Clément, a young Dominican monk, who had become
exasperated at the concessions which the King had made to the Protestant
Church. Before expiring, King Henry the Third recognized the young King
of Navarre as his successor, who then ascended the throne of France under
the name of Henry the Fourth.
The wars which devastated France during the preceding three reigns
were waged almost without interruption; they were of a semi-religious and
semi-political character. These wars must be largely ascribed to the
pernicious influence of Catherine de Médicis, the wife of Henry the Second,
and the mother of his three sons, Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth and
Henry the Third. Her name stands in history as a synonym for an astute,
unscrupulous, cruel, and intriguing ruler and politician. At the time of
Henry the Third’s assassination, he was investing the city of Paris, which
was in the hands of his enemies, the League, under the command of the
Duke of Mayenne, who himself was aspiring to the throne. It was therefore
not an easy matter for the new King to assume the reins of government, the
half of his kingdom being in arms against him, and the royal army itself, in

whose ranks he was fighting, being hostile to the religion he (as a
Protestant) professed.
But Henry the Fourth was equal to the difficult task. In fact, he was one
of the most remarkable men who ever sat on a European throne. His career
up to that day had been extremely stormy; his escape from death and perils
innumerable was wonderful and stamped him as a man of destiny. It is
reported of him that when he was present one day as a very young man at a
brilliant reception at the French court, where nearly all the prominent men
of the French capital were assembled, he strongly impressed the foreign
ambassadors with the brilliancy of his wit and the sagacity of his
observations. One of them said: “In this whole assemblage of dukes, princes
and great dignitaries, I see but one man fit to rule either as king or
emperor,” and pointing to Henry of Navarre he continued: “It is that young
man with the eye of an eagle!”
Henry the Fourth was born in 1553, the son of Antony of Bourbon. His
mother was Jeanne d’Albret, only child of Henry the Second, King of
Navarre, and of his wife, Queen Margaret of Navarre, who has won a
lasting place in literature by her famous collection of novels, known as the
“Heptameron.” Much of the genius and esprit which distinguished the
grandmother was inherited both by her daughter and her grandson. Jeanne
d’Albret was not only an excellent woman and mother, but she was also an
enthusiastic admirer and supporter of the Calvinistic doctrine, and brought
up her son in that faith. On account of her religion both Philip the Second of
Spain and Catherine de Médicis, Queen of France, hated her intensely, and
it seems that at an early day a sort of rivalry arose between Catherine and
the mother of the boy concerning his education. Catherine maintained that,
inasmuch as Henry was a royal prince and might be called upon some day
to ascend the throne of France, it was absolutely necessary to educate him
in the Catholic faith in order to make him worthy to rule over a Catholic
country and occupy a throne whose occupant had for centuries been
honored with the noble title of the “eldest son of the Church.”
In this contest over the boy the mother remained victorious, and, true to
her religious convictions, she surrounded him with Protestant professors.
But Catherine de Médicis was not a woman to abandon a scheme which she
had formed and in which politics played a large part. She therefore
concocted a plan for the abduction of young Henry, which would have
succeeded and would have placed him under the immediate control of

Philip the Second of Spain, had it not been betrayed to Henry’s mother, the
Queen of Navarre. Henry was thereupon hurried off to La Rochelle, the
headquarters of the Protestant army, where he was soon placed in nominal
command of all the Protestant forces, although the famous Admiral Coligny
was its real leader.
We may fitly pass without comment the stormy years preceding Henry’s
elevation to the throne of France. In order to reconcile the Protestant and
the Catholic branches of the reigning dynasty, Catherine de Médicis was
successful in her plan of a marriage between Henry of Navarre and her own
daughter Marguerite, although the Pope hesitated a long time in giving his
permission to this family alliance, which was in every respect a very
unfortunate one. As far as Catherine de Médicis was concerned, her
principal intention in planning it was the hope of continuing under Henry
the Fourth’s reign (if he ever should become king) the absolute rule which
she had so successfully maintained under the reign of her sons. Far from
using her influence and authority to secure, if possible, the happiness of the
young couple, she held out to both all possible temptations to lead them
astray, and openly advanced Henry’s liaisons with other beautiful ladies of
the court. It is also pretty well established by historical evidence that
Catherine, in order to withdraw Henry from the beneficial influence of his
mother, caused her death by poison in the very year of his marriage. At the
massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night, Henry escaped death by abjuring
Protestantism, King Charles the Ninth having left him the choice between
going to mass and suffering death. Henry preferred the former and
professed Catholicism as his religion until 1576, when he suddenly and
secretly left the court, and, retracting his forced abjuration, placed himself
once more at the head of the Protestant party.
In 1584 the death of the Duke of Anjou made Henry the legitimate heir
to the crown of France, and five years later, the death of Henry the Third
made him King. But only the southern provinces and the Protestants
recognized him as their king. The Catholics vehemently protested against
this heretical king, and refused obedience to him. The League, which kept
an army of 30,000 men in the field against him, and which was supported
by the King of Spain, not only refused to recognize him, but proclaimed an
aged uncle of his, the Cardinal de Bourbon, King of France, and Spain
adhered to this decision. The civil war between the contending factions
continued with greater fury and obstinacy than ever, and it was in this

campaign, in which Henry always fought against tremendous odds, that he
displayed his wonderful ability and tact as a political and military leader.
Finally his second conversion to Catholicism on the twenty-third of July,
1593, which was simply a political measure and not at all dictated by
religious motives, decided the succession to the throne in his favor,
although it took years of warfare and diplomatic negotiation to secure his
recognition by Spain and the leaders of the League.
Henry the Fourth’s greatest political achievement, by which he
manifested his far-seeing ability as a statesman, was the Edict of Nantes,
promulgated on the thirteenth of April, 1598. It guaranteed freedom of
conscience and equality before the law to Catholics and Protestants; and it
was the first great manifesto of religious toleration issued by any ruler. But
noble and high-minded as it was, even if inspired only by political motives,
the fanatics of the Catholic Church would not forgive him. Unquestionably
it was the Edict of Nantes which caused his assassination,—an act of
revenge with which the Church paid back the injury it supposed it had
received at his hands.
Henry, with the assistance of his great minister, the Duke of Sully,
devoted the first few years, after peace had been restored, to building up the
prosperity of the country, which had been distracted by war for nearly forty
years. In this he admirably succeeded. With wonderful rapidity the
monarchy recovered from the disasters and calamities of the religious and
civil wars. Without Henry’s success, late as it came, this national
improvement would have been impossible, and France would have sunk
into the same condition of intellectual lethargy and material decay from
which Spain has suffered for three centuries. But Henry’s ambition went
much beyond the borders of his kingdom. The house of Hapsburg, a branch
of which ruled Spain, appeared to him too dangerous for the security and
greatness of France. He supported the German Protestant princes in their
opposition to Austria, which wanted to take possession of Juliers-Cleves,
two German principalities, and sent an army of ten thousand men to their
assistance. Henry wanted to join personally this army on the nineteenth of
May, 1610. On the thirteenth of May he published a decree appointing the
Queen, Mary de Médicis, Regent of the kingdom, and her coronation was
celebrated on the same day with great pomp.
On the fourteenth of May, the day after the coronation, the King was
assassinated by Francis Ravaillac in the Ferronière Street at Paris, where his

carriage had stopped a few minutes. It was this short delay which gave
Ravaillac a chance: he climbed upon the hind-wheel of the carriage and
stabbed the King twice with a long poniard, with deadly effect. It was thus
that the greatest King France has produced died at the hands of a miserable
fanatic, at a moment too when, according to the statement of Sully, who
knew him better than any other man, he had formed a plan of establishing a
great European confederation, founded on the civil equality of Catholics
and Protestants and on an equilibrium of power among the great nations of
Europe. Ravaillac was executed with revolting barbarity on the twenty-
seventh of May, but not even the repeated application of the torture elicited
the least information as to the motives or the accomplices which he may
have had in his crime. Henry’s death was a cruel loss not only for France,
but for the whole world.
The assassination of Henry the Fourth ended in France the era of famous
political murders, which during the religious wars had taken off Coligny,
Henry of Guise, and the two kings, Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth,
all during one generation. But of these only the assassination of Henry the
Fourth has made a lasting and profound impression on his contemporaries
as well as on posterity. It has enhanced his reputation and glory by
enshrining his name among the great martyrs of history. It was one of the
most patriotic and high-minded thoughts of Voltaire to make Henry the
Fourth the hero of his epic poem “La Henriade,” which although not
ranking with the great poems of Milton, Tasso, and Virgil, in poetic merit, is
still a noble hymn of liberty and a glorification of religious toleration, as
well as of Henry, its representative. It is uncertain whether the profound
horror which the assassination of Henry caused throughout the world, or the
terrible punishment inflicted on Ravaillac, caused assassins to desist from
their nefarious work, but certain it is that no new assassination of a king or
any member of the royal family of France took place from the death of
Henry the Fourth to the assassination of the Duc de Berry, the presumptive
heir of Charles the Tenth, in 1820. Not that no attempts on the life of any or
all of the French monarchs since the days of Henry the Fourth were made;
but all such attempts had failed, and instead of killing the rulers, had only
led to the cruel and horrible execution of the conspirators.
Most remarkable among these was the assault of Damiens on King Louis
the Fifteenth, one of the most dissolute and worthless monarchs,—one who
in the gratification of his lusts was utterly oblivious of common decency

and shame. Louis the Fifteenth came nearer reviving the atrocious
immorality of Claudius, Caligula, Caracalla, Heliogabalus in the palace of
the Cæsars of ancient Rome, than any other modern monarch had done. It
was the age of Madame de Pompadour and the monstrosities of the “deer
park.” The French nation blushed at the excesses of the court, which paved
the way for the great Revolution, already dimly foreseen by some ingenious
observers, as one of the necessities of the future. It was at this time, when
public indignation, not to say public disgust, had reached its culminating
point, that an attempt on the life of the King was made.
It was on the fifth of January, 1757, at six o’clock in the evening, on a
cold and dark day, that he stepped out of the doorway of the palace of
Versailles and went up to a carriage waiting for him to take him to Trianon.
All at once he felt that somebody had run against him, and at the same time
that he was bleeding from a wound in the side. He uttered a cry of pain and
alarm, and when the torch-bearers drew near and surrounded him, the King
noticed a man who alone among all those present had kept his hat on. “This
man has assaulted and wounded me!” exclaimed the King, pointing to the
man whose head remained covered. “Arrest him, but do not harm him!” It
makes almost a painful impression to find that an embodiment of vice and
debauchery like Louis the Fifteenth should at such a moment have been
inspired with feelings of mercy toward his assassin, and should have used
almost the identical words which fell from the lips of the pure and high-
minded President McKinley after Czolgosz had fatally wounded him! But
history records them, and we must give even the devil his due.
The attempt on the King’s life caused a tremendous sensation in Paris,
where immediately the most exaggerated reports concerning the fatal
wounding of the King and the discovery of a widespread conspiracy to
assassinate him were circulated. Damiens was treated with the greatest
severity. As though the crime which he had tried to commit had been really
committed, and as though the stab he had given to the King had had fatal
effect, the criminal was treated as a regicide, and the terrible machinery of
the law provided for in such cases, and in France not employed since the
trial of Ravaillac, was put in operation. Even during his transportation from
Versailles to Paris measures of precaution were used, as if a state prisoner
of the most dangerous character and of the greatest importance were to be
guarded. Regiments of soldiers surrounded his carriage, and six sergeants
with drawn swords marched on each side. Strict orders had been issued to

the citizens of Paris not to go out on the streets or appear at the front
windows of their houses. Everything had been done to create the impression
of a conspiracy against the government which counted many influential
men among its members and of which the assassin was merely the tool,
while those who were directing him and using his arm against the King, had
to be sought in the highest classes of the aristocracy, and especially among
the enemies of Madame de Pompadour. Great efforts were made to get a
full confession from Damiens. Who was he? How had he formed the plan to
assassinate the King? Who had instigated him to commit the act? Who were
his accomplices? These were the questions to be solved by the French
police authorities, and for whose solution they did not hesitate to apply the
most cruel measures known to them. But the result of their painstaking
investigation was far from realizing their expectations. It was found that
Damiens belonged to the lower classes of the people. He had learned the
trade of a locksmith, but had preferred to enter the service of rich lords and
ladies as a domestic. Being of a very restless and quarrelsome disposition,
he had changed his positions as often as Gil Blas had changed his masters.
He had been in the houses of parliamentarians, clergymen, noblemen,
orthodox Catholics, Jansenists, Molinists, Protestants, free thinkers. Often
he had served at the table of the great lords and ladies of the kingdom and
had listened to the conversation of the guests; and invariably the subject of
the conversation had turned on the disgraceful conduct of the King, on his
excesses, on the shameful orgies of the court, on the mysteries of the “deer
park,” where not only the virtue of young girls of the people was ruthlessly
sacrificed, but also the money extorted from the sweat of the people
criminally squandered. Wherever he had gone he had heard the same story,
and it had made a deep impression upon him. Damiens had always been of
an eccentric turn of mind; he had even had spells of religious exaltation,
and for three years he had seriously meditated on the possibility of rescuing
the King from his sinful excesses and debauches.
He finally had come to the conclusion that the only possibility of turning
the King’s mind away from his vicious habits and arousing his soul to
sentiments of honor and duty might come through fear, by placing him in
the immediate presence of death. This thought preyed so incessantly and so
strongly on his mind that he resolved to become the instrument of the
King’s redemption, by attacking and wounding, but not killing him. The
attempt on the King’s life was therefore the result of a psychological

process which was, perhaps, based on wrong and extravagant premises, but
which, if all the circumstances are taken into consideration, was rather
meritorious than criminal in its aim. The assassin had acted strictly in
accord with his preconceived theory. He had in his possession a knife with
two blades, one of which was very long, sharp and pointed like a dagger,
while the other was quite short and sharp. It seemed to be impossible to
inflict a mortal wound with the short blade, and Damiens had used it in
wounding the King. He had no accomplices. At first, very likely to mitigate
his punishment, he had hinted at the existence of a widespread conspiracy,
contemplating the assassination of the King, the Dauphin, and others, but he
soon retracted these statements, and even the most severe application of the
torture could not elicit from him any other declaration than this: that he had
no accomplices, that nobody, not even his wife and his young daughter, had
known anything of his intention; that he did not intend to kill the King,
though he could easily have done so; that he had only intended to wound
him for the purpose of frightening and warning him; that his act had been
inspired by the wish of saving France and the dynasty.
But all these statements, which could not be controverted by conflicting
evidence, made no impression upon judges who had fully made up their
minds beforehand, and who looked upon the man that wanted to touch even
the King’s finger with the same horror as upon a regicide who might have
stabbed him through the heart and killed him. The sentence passed upon
Damiens was therefore in conformity with their preconceived opinion, and
cruel in the extreme. It was based upon the sentence carried out against
Ravaillac for having killed the greatest of kings and one of the benefactors
of mankind. Though Damiens was an eccentric ponderer, a foolish dreamer,
who had but slightly wounded a heartless voluptuary that had deserved
death a hundred times, his sentence was terrible beyond description, and
was actually carried out in the presence of an immense multitude. At first
his right hand, in which was placed the knife with which he had struck the
King, was burned to the bone. Thereupon his arms, his legs, his breast, his
back and his feet were lacerated with burning tongs; molten lead, boiling
oil, burning sulphur, rosin, and wax were poured into the open wounds; and
finally, while he was still suffering unimaginable pain, four strong horses,
hitched to his arms and legs, tried for half an hour with all their might to
tear out his limbs. After that time only one arm remained in the body, and it
took another five minutes’ work to pull it out of its socket. The body of the

unfortunate man had been pulled to almost double its length and width, and
its power of resistance amazed all the spectators. When at last the cruel
execution was over, the bleeding trunk and the arms and legs were thrown
upon a pile of wood near the scaffold and destroyed by fire. The spectacle
had struck terror into the hearts of the beholders.
But even with this terrible act of revenge the criminal justice of France
was not satisfied; it reached out for the innocent family of the criminal. His
father, his wife, and his daughter were banished from France for life, not to
return there on penalty of death, while his brothers, sisters, and other
relatives had to change their names. The house in which he was born was
burned to the ground, and any other trace which he might have left was
carefully obliterated. The crime of Damiens was not one of the famous
assassinations in history, but it caused such a sensation in Europe, and it
was punished so cruelly, that we thought his attempt on the life of Louis the
Fifteenth might very properly be recorded in this book.

CHAPTER XIII

WALLENSTEIN

WALLENSTEIN

CHAPTER XIII

ASSASSINATION OF WALLENSTEIN

(February 24, 1634)

I N a previous chapter we have seen how a King of England got rid of a
contentious Archbishop of the Church of Rome by assassination when the
latter stood in the way of his usurpation. In a similar manner, also by
assassination, an Emperor of Germany freed himself from a general who
had twice saved him from ruin, but who had grown too powerful for his
security, and whose loyalty he (perhaps justly) mistrusted. Although nearly
three hundred years have passed away since Wallenstein’s assassination at
Eger, Bohemia, the most searching investigations of historians have been
unable to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the certainty or extent of his
treasonable intentions, although there are strong indications that they
existed, and that the crown of Bohemia, as a sovereign state, was to be the
price which he exacted for his treason.
The religious war, which had broken out between the Emperor of
Germany, as representative of the Catholic Church, and the Protestant
princes of North Germany in 1618, had been waged with great cruelty and
varying success for several years. Neither party had won such decisive
advantages that the end of the terrible struggle, which partook as much of
the character of a civil war as of a religious war, could be predicted with
any degree of certainty. The most unfortunate feature of this strife was that
not only the different German princes were fighting against each other, but
that also foreign princes, upon the invitation of the Germans, participated in
the struggle and gave their support to either the Catholic or the Protestant
side. The German princes themselves had formed two different alliances:
the Catholics had formed the League, while the Protestants were members
of the Protestant Union; and both parties had powerful armies in the field
commanded by experienced and able generals, the Catholics by Tilly, the
Protestants by Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick. The greatest of these
generals was perhaps Tilly, but he was extremely cruel and vindictive, fully
as much from religious hatred for the enemies of his church as from natural
disposition. His conquest and pillage of Magdeburg has given to his name a
deplorable immortality. The Emperor of Germany, Ferdinand the Second,

was rather nominally than actually the war-lord of the Catholic party; for
the Catholic League, which had placed the army in the field, had elected
Maximilian of Bavaria as its supreme chief. Thus, while the Catholic armies
were called the Imperialists, and while the victories which they achieved
were supposed to redound to the Emperor’s glory, Ferdinand could not
repress a feeling of humiliation at the thought that he owed these victories
and the advantages which resulted from them more to the generosity and
loyalty of the Catholic League than to his own power and resources. Once
or twice Protestant soldiers had even threatened him in his own imperial
palace, and he had owed his safety from capture or death only to the timely
intervention of some Spanish and Croatian horsemen who dispersed the
aggressors.
In November, 1620, Tilly had, at the head of a powerful army, won a
decisive victory over the army of the Protestant Union by the battle of
White Mountain; then, having restored Bohemia and Moravia to the rule of
the Emperor, the victorious general quickly marched to the Palatinate,
where the cause of the Protestants was at that time supreme. But he was
defeated there by the Protestant army under Mansfeld and the Margrave of
Baden; and at that time Protestantism might have been triumphantly
established in western and northern Germany at least, had not the two
victorious Protestant generals made the mistake of separating their armies,
—a mistake which proved fatal to both of them. Tilly was not slow to see
the advantage which he gained by this dismemberment of the army which
had so signally defeated him at Wiesloch; he rallied his forces and defeated
first the Margrave of Baden at Wimpfen, and shortly afterwards Mansfeld
and the Duke of Brunswick at Höchst. Then the Protestant armies crossed
the frontier of the Netherlands in the hope of receiving assistance from
England.
In the meantime the German Emperor, emboldened by the successes of
Tilly, strained every nerve to reëstablish Catholicism and stamp out
Protestantism in the Empire. The excessive zeal which he displayed in
accomplishing this purpose, and the terrible work of destruction which Tilly
and his lieutenants were carrying on in all those districts of the Empire
which were unfortunate enough to fall under their sway, were, however, the
means of setting Protestantism on its feet again, of reviving the waning
hopes of the German Protestant princes, and of arousing a powerful interest
in their behalf among their neighbors. The most important accession which

the cause of Protestantism had at that time was that of King Christian the
Fourth of Denmark, who joined the Protestants with a large army and took
supreme command in northern Germany.
Such were the conditions in Germany at the moment when the man who
is the subject of this chapter appeared on the stage as principal actor in the
terrible war of thirty years. This man, one of the most remarkable men of
the seventeenth century, and one of the most eminent generals in German
history was Wallenstein. For seven years he was the greatest man of the
war, eclipsing the fame of Tilly himself, filling the minds of enemies and
friends, and finally that of the Emperor himself, with vague fears and
apprehensions of his treason and unbridled ambition. But in the flower of
his age his life was cut short by the hands of assassins.
The Empire seemed to be hopelessly divided between Catholicism and
Protestantism, and civil war with all its terrors and horrors laid waste its
fairest provinces. The Emperor had lost much of his authority, while
Maximilian of Bavaria, commander-in-chief of the armies of the Catholic
League, wielded a power which was supreme wherever the so-called
Imperialists held possession of country or town. It was a humiliating
position for the Emperor, but he was utterly powerless to extricate himself
from it. Suddenly a deliverer came to him in the person of Albert, Lord
Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman, who had married the daughter of Count
Harrach, the Emperor’s special favorite. He was immensely rich, and had
won great military distinction in the Bohemian wars. It was this Lord
Wallenstein who on a morning in June, 1625, presented himself before the
Emperor Ferdinand of Germany with a proposition which, at first, appeared
so extravagant and incredible to the Emperor himself and to his counsellors
that they doubted the sanity or sincerity of the man who made it. But he
insisted on the feasibility of his plan with so much eloquence and
enthusiasm that they finally consented to it. Wallenstein proposed to the
Emperor to enroll, entirely at his own personal expense, an army to fight for
the cause of the Emperor and to protect his hereditary states, provided he
should have the power to make that army at least fifty thousand strong, to
appoint all the officers, and take supreme command himself, without being
interfered with by other generals, no matter how highly stationed they
might be. The immense wealth of Wallenstein guaranteed the financial
success of the plan; moreover he received permission to make his army

self-sustaining by pillage, marauding, and forced contributions in all those
districts which it might temporarily occupy.
When the new plan and the appointment of Wallenstein to the command
of a large army—larger than any other in the field—became known, the
world, and especially Germany, was struck with amazement, and there were
but few who believed that it could be carried out. But those who doubted
did not know the tremendous energy, the boundless resources, and the
towering ambition of the man. The plan was carried out to its fullest extent:
within a few months a large and well-equipped army was ready to take the
field, and Wallenstein, whose name was comparatively unknown in the
history of war, suddenly assumed an importance which eclipsed that of the
renowned generals of the Catholic League and of the Protestant Union. The
suddenness of his elevation, the apparent mystery surrounding him, and the
rumors of the royal rewards in store for him, made the imperialistic generals
very jealous. It may be truthfully said that from the very moment
Wallenstein took command of his army, he had not only to face the
Protestant armies in the field, but also to guard against his Catholic rivals,
who used their high connections at the imperial court to undermine his
position and blacken his character in a most unscrupulous manner. The
achievements of Wallenstein fully realized the high expectations of the
Emperor. He displayed consummate generalship in the field, and had a
magnetic power of attraction which caused his whole army, both officers
and men, to idolize him. At the same time his army increased rapidly and
wonderfully. It soon reached the one hundred thousand mark and still they
were coming, while the armies of the League were decreasing at a fearful
rate from camp diseases and the ravages of war. The Emperor made him
Duke of Friedland, and “the Friedlanders” became soon a terror to friend
and foe. In his march of victory, which extended from Hungary and
Transylvania to the Baltic Sea, he swept the Protestant armies from the face
of the earth. Where the Friedlanders had passed, no human dwelling, no
human being remained to tell of the cruelty and devastation which had
struck the country, and which fell with the same crushing weight on
Catholics and Protestants. The army was to be self-sustaining and was
therefore given full liberty of pillage and marauding wherever it went.
Coming to the extreme north of Germany, he invaded Mecklenburg, whose
dukes had furnished men and money to the King of Denmark in his
campaign against the imperialists. The King of Denmark had after a

decisive defeat left Germany and returned to his own kingdom, and on
Wallenstein’s approach the Duke of Mecklenburg also hastily decamped
and left his country to the mercy of the conqueror. Wallenstein took
possession of it and was rewarded with the title of Duke of Mecklenburg
and the rank of a sovereign prince of the Empire. The royal crown of
Bohemia, which rumor and secret whisperings designated as the reward in
store for him after the conclusion of peace, was now not so far off as on the
day he took the command of his army. But the higher he rose, the greater
became the envy and hatred of his rivals, especially of the sovereign princes
whose countries and cities had suffered from the passing of his army.
From Mecklenburg Wallenstein turned to Pomerania, where Stralsund,
one of the greatest fortresses of the Empire, impeded his further progress.
Wallenstein invested it with his army, and made several assaults, which
were successfully repulsed. The brave inhabitants had sworn to hold out to
the last and rather perish in the defence of their hearths and homes and
families than surrender their city to a conqueror who showed no mercy to
the vanquished. Wallenstein, on the other hand, was determined to enter the
city as a conqueror. Hearing that the inhabitants would defend the city unto
death, he swore that he would take it, even if it were bound with chains to
Heaven, and he laid a regular siege to it. But all his efforts were in vain.
The Swedes succeeded in giving succor to the beleaguered city from the
seaward side, reinforcing it with troops, ammunition, and provisions.
Finally, after a delay of two months and a loss of twelve thousand men,
Wallenstein abandoned the project of taking the city, raised the siege, and
returned to Mecklenburg. There the conquest of the strongly fortified city of
Rostock consoled him to a certain extent for his failure at Stralsund.
Emboldened by the great successes of Wallenstein and the almost
complete overthrow of the Protestant armies, the Emperor rather rashly
undertook to reinstate the Catholic Church in all its former privileges and to
compel the Protestant states to restore all the property and real estate which
had been confiscated and estranged from that church during the preceding
eighty years. To carry out this imperial plan the so-called Restitution Edict
was promulgated,—a very unwise measure, which spread consternation and
alarm throughout the Empire, and fanned the dying embers of the religious
war into a new flame. Not only Protestants, but many Catholics protested
against the edict, and Wallenstein himself criticised it sharply. But the
Emperor would not recede from the resolution he had taken.

Wallenstein’s influence was already rapidly declining; his overthrow was
near at hand. In 1630 the imperial diet of Regensburg was held. All the
sovereign princes of Germany, and especially all the Electors of the Empire
were present, and they made jointly a terrible onslaught on Wallenstein,
whom they all hated or envied. They united their complaints against him
and demanded his immediate and peremptory dismissal from the service, as
a punishment for the outrages committed by his army and for the extortions
and exorbitant levies which he had made from friend and foe for his own
self-aggrandizement. For a long time the Emperor resisted these demands
and stood up for the great general to whom he owed so much; but he was
anxious to secure the votes of the Electors for his son, the King of Hungary,
as heir to the imperial crown, and the dismissal of Wallenstein was to be the
price for these votes. He therefore issued the decree, deposing Wallenstein
from his office of generalissimo of the army. It is said that he trembled in
affixing his signature to the document, and that for weeks afterwards he
lived in extreme fear of the wrath of the powerful chieftain. But Wallenstein
took his disgrace very coolly. The news came to him at a moment when he
was with Seni, a famous astrologer, in whom he placed implicit confidence.
Seni had just predicted to him, from a configuration of the stars, that he
would experience a tremendous disappointment, but that this
disappointment would be followed soon by his complete reinstatement in
all the honors which he might be deprived of. Wallenstein took the decree
of deposition as the confirmation of Seni’s prediction. Without showing
much irritation, and only with an expression of regret that the Emperor had
been ill-advised and had yielded to bad counsels, he left the army and
withdrew to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, to live there in royal splendor
and luxury.
When Wallenstein’s soldiers were informed of the dismissal of their
chief, whom they idolized and regarded with an affection mingled with awe
and terror, there was danger of an open revolt against the Emperor’s decree;
but Wallenstein himself and some of his generals quieted their rage and
suppressed all manifestations of rebellion. Thousands of soldiers and a great
number of officers refused to remain in the Emperor’s service, declaring
that they had enlisted only in order to serve under Wallenstein and under no
other commander. More than one half of the entire army left the service,
and most of the officers, at their own request, accompanied the deposed
general to his new place of residence, Prague. The disgrace of the general,

or rather the act of removal which, in the eyes of the German princes, was
intended to disgrace him, turned out to be a triumph, greater than a victory
in the field, and made his position in Germany even more conspicuous.
Moreover, everybody seemed to feel that the hour of his reinstatement
would soon come. And Wallenstein, on his part, neglected nothing to
confirm this opinion, which flattered his vanity, and which he firmly
believed would be realized, because “it was written in the stars.”
It was perhaps as a challenge to his princely enemies at the imperial
court and in defiance of the Emperor himself that he established his
household on a footing more becoming a reigning monarch than a private
citizen. He had a secret desire to accustom the people of Bohemia to look
upon him as the man who might, within a short time, be called upon to rule
over them as king. Otherwise it is hardly reasonable to suppose that he
would have paraded such wealth and magnificence as could not but confirm
the charges preferred against him by his influential enemies,—namely,
gigantic extortions and robberies of public and private moneys, and plans to
satisfy an insatiable ambition. His palace had six public entrances, and he
caused a hundred houses to be torn down to enlarge the vacant place
surrounding it. By day and by night it was guarded by sentinels, and during
the night the public streets leading to it were barred with chains, that the
rest of the Duke might not be disturbed. In the hall leading to the
antechamber of his private apartments fifty halberdiers were constantly on
guard, while sixty pages, all from the best families of Germany, four
chamberlains, six barons, and a master of ceremonies belonging to one of
the most illustrious houses of the Empire, were always ready to receive the
orders of the great man. Whenever he travelled, his own carriage was drawn
by eight full-blooded horses; his attendants followed in fifty carriages, each
drawn by six horses, while as many baggage wagons, each drawn by four
horses, transported the baggage for the ducal procession, and sixty richly
mounted cavaliers formed the regular escort of “His Highness.”
As if Providence wished to advance the pretensions of Wallenstein, the
Emperor’s affairs took a turn for the worse soon after his removal from the
command of the army. Incensed at the intolerance of the German Emperor
and his Restitution Edict, which was to be enforced in its full severity,
Gustavus Adolphus, the great and high-minded King of Sweden, came to
the assistance of the Protestant princes of northern Germany. He came not
unsupported; behind him, and as his secret ally, stood the King of France, or

rather Richelieu. This great French statesman, although a cardinal of the
Catholic Church, saw the time had come to curtail the power of Austria, and
therefore utilized the military genius of Gustavus Adolphus to effectually
cripple the Emperor’s power, and to raise France to a predominant position
in Europe. Richelieu equipped and subsidized the Swedish armies and, by
doing so, enabled the Swedish King, whose country was comparatively
poor and whose resources were consequently limited, to take the field in
Germany with a strong force.
On the twenty-fourth of June, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus landed his army
in Pomerania. That date marks the turning-point in the fortunes of the
Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish King’s piety, and the strict discipline which
he maintained in his army, stood in such glaring contrast to the excesses and
outrages committed by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein that the King
was welcomed by the sovereigns of northern Germany as a savior and
liberator. It is not our purpose to describe the glorious and victorious career
of Gustavus Adolphus in the Empire. Suffice it to say that the conditions of
victory and defeat, of triumph and despondency, were entirely reversed, that
the imperial armies were unable to stem the tide of victory which had set in
for the Protestant cause since the Swedish King’s appearance on German
soil, that his progress southward was rapid and incessant, that the Catholic
princes were either vanquished or fugitives from their states, and that the
Emperor himself was trembling in his palace at Vienna, as report after
report informed him of the uninterrupted onward march of the royal hero.
Who can help? Who can oppose and prevent this steady march of conquest?
To the terrified mind of the Emperor only one man presents himself. It is
Wallenstein. But Wallenstein has been mortally offended by him. How can
the Emperor humiliate himself before a subject and assuage his wrath? The
danger is increasing.
Gustavus is still on the Rhine, but he prepares an invasion of
Würtemberg, many of whose inhabitants will gladly welcome him. The
advance of his army, under General Horn, is in Franconia and driving the
Imperialists before him. No time is to be lost. The Emperor sends a friendly
message to Wallenstein; but the message is haughtily rejected, and the
messengers are treated with arrogance, not to say contempt. He sends back
word to the Emperor that he does not care to repair the faults of others; that
he is not on friendly terms with the allies of the Emperor; that he is tired
and sick of war; that he is in need of rest, etc. The Emperor sends new

messengers, holds out new rewards. He insists and appeals. At last, in
December, 1631, Wallenstein promises to raise a new army, equip it and
place it in the field by the first of March, 1632; but he positively refuses to
command it. The magic power of his name renews the prodigy of six years
before. On the first of March the hereditary states of Austria—Bohemia,
Silesia, and Moravia—had furnished him a splendid army of forty thousand
men. But it was a body without a soul; it lacked a leader able to command it
and lead it to victory. The most urgent demands, prayers, supplications of
the Emperor at last decide Wallenstein to take the command of this army,
which is crazed with enthusiasm when he finally accepts. But he accepts
only on conditions most humiliating to the Emperor. He will be
generalissimo of the armies of Austria and Spain; he will appoint all his
subordinate officers; the Emperor will not be permitted to join the army,
and will in no way interfere with its direction or movements; Wallenstein
will receive one of the hereditary states of Austria as a reward; he will be
war-governor of all the territory occupied by his army; he will have the
right to levy contributions, and all confiscated property will belong to him;
he alone can grant amnesty; he will remain Duke of Mecklenburg, even if
another crown be given to him; all his expenditures will be paid back to him
at the conclusion of peace; and in case of defeat, he will have the right to
retire upon Vienna, and remain there. These conditions, readily granted by
the Emperor, made Wallenstein practically the Dictator of the Empire.
It was at Nuremberg, one of the most ancient and prosperous cities of
Bavaria, that the two great captains met face to face for the first time.
Gustavus Adolphus had many friends in the city, which he wanted to protect
against the Imperialists and from which he had received many
reinforcements and supplies. His army had taken quarters in the immediate
neighborhood. When Wallenstein approached, the King expected an
immediate attack, but in this expectation he was disappointed. Whether he
was afraid to endanger his party and his own reputation by the chances of a
battle, or whether he thought that to check the victorious progress of the
King was equivalent to a victory and would dishearten his allies, or whether
the hope of starving the army of the King by cutting off his communications
and supplies prompted his action, Wallenstein massed his army in front of
Nuremberg, erected breastworks and strongly fortified them, and observed
every movement of his great antagonist. It was evident that he wished to
avoid giving battle. In this way they remained for eleven weeks opposed to

one another, neither daring to become the aggressor or to leave his fortified
position. It was the King who moved first. Provisions both in his camp and
in the city were getting very scarce, and a contagious camp disease had
broken out among his troops and spread to the city, decimating the ranks of
his army. He therefore resolved to attack the position of Wallenstein and
take it by storm. A terrible battle ensued. The Swedes and the Protestant
army showed wonderful bravery, but the heavy artillery of Wallenstein
mowed them down in long lines, and they were unable to stand the
incessant volleys of shot and shell which poured into their ranks all day
long. The assault was repulsed with terrible loss to the Swedish army, and
Wallenstein had the glory of having inflicted the first defeat on Gustavus
Adolphus. This defeat was the more painful to the King because he had lost
from ten to twelve thousand of his best soldiers and some of his ablest
commanders in the vain attempt to take Wallenstein’s position. But the
defeat had no other bad results for Gustavus Adolphus, for Wallenstein
permitted him to retreat from Nuremberg without molesting, attacking or
pursuing him, although his army was greatly superior in numbers to the
King’s army, and although his loss during the battle of the preceding day
was much smaller; in fact Wallenstein’s loss in killed and wounded was
estimated at no more than one thousand.
This neglect of Wallenstein to annihilate the King’s army, when
everything seemed to favor such an attempt, is among the strongest
evidences of his treacherous sentiments. It caused consternation at Vienna,
and his enemies charged him openly with treason. But the Emperor had no
right to interfere! Finally Wallenstein also left his fortified camp, but
instead of following Gustavus Adolphus to Thuringia, he went in an easterly
direction and invaded Saxony, where he captured a detachment of two
thousand five hundred Swedes and with them Count Thurn, a German
nobleman, who for some reason or other had left the Emperor’s service and
had entered the Swedish King’s. This Count Thurn was especially odious to
the Emperor, and when the news of his capture reached Vienna, there was
general rejoicing. The Count would unquestionably have been executed, but
to the utter dismay of the court Wallenstein set him free and permitted him
to return to the King,—as his enemies asserted, with secret overtures from
the Imperialist commander. It is possible, although by no means certain,
that Wallenstein, remembering how ungratefully he had been treated before,
and thinking that the same ingratitude might be shown to him again as soon

as his services were no longer needed, may have tried to open negotiations
with the Swedish King to secure from him personal recognition and
advantages which he was afraid would be withheld from him after the
King’s final overthrow. His fears were certainly not unreasonable, for the
Emperor was surrounded by, and lent a willing ear to, the bitter enemies of
Wallenstein, and to the very men who had brought about his first disgrace
and dismissal. The King, on the other hand, if he received such overtures
from Wallenstein, either distrusted him or did not see fit to act upon them
favorably, possibly because Wallenstein’s terms were too extravagant.
As soon as Gustavus Adolphus had learned of Wallenstein’s invasion of
Saxony he turned round, and in forced marches hurried also to Saxony in
order to protect that unfortunate country from the ravages of the
Friedlanders. The Elector of Saxony, while secretly favoring the German
Emperor, had appealed to the King of Sweden for protection, and Gustavus
Adolphus had granted his request. He marched so rapidly that Wallenstein,
when informed of his approach, at first refused to believe the truth of the
report, but nevertheless prepared to give him a warm reception. Having
sent, a few days before, his most renowned cavalry general, Pappenheim, in
another direction, he now sent messengers after him to recall him. The two
great captains met at Lützen on the sixth of November. A terrible battle
ensued, in which Gustavus Adolphus was killed. But Wallenstein was
defeated; at least he left the battle-field in the possession of the enemy and
retreated to Bohemia.
This retrograde movement and his retreat from the battle-field were
unfavorably commented on at Vienna and declared unnecessary.
Insinuations of treason were again whispered into the Emperor’s ear, and
his suspicion was aroused to such a degree that Wallenstein’s removal from
the army was resolved upon, although this intention was kept secret for a
while. The Emperor surrounded himself with Spanish soldiers to be safe
from an attack of the Friedlanders. He also succeeded by bribes and
promises in estranging a number of Wallenstein’s prominent lieutenants
from him and in securing them for his own service. To some extent
Wallenstein was kept informed of these secret steps of the Emperor, and he
tried to counteract them and to protect himself. He renewed his negotiations
with the Swedes and the Protestant princes, who had found in Bernard,
Duke of Saxe-Weimar, a worthy successor of King Gustavus Adolphus as a
military leader; and it is said that an agreement had been made by the two

leaders of the opposing armies that Wallenstein’s forces should join the
Protestant army, and that they jointly should impose conditions of peace
upon the Emperor. It goes without saying that a sovereignty for Wallenstein
—most likely that of Bohemia—was included in the terms of peace.
Before this agreement could be carried out, events occurred which not
only precipitated the downfall, but cut short the life of the over-ambitious
military chieftain. It was of the greatest importance to Wallenstein to find
out how far he would be able to rely on his army commanders and on their
regiments in carrying out his treasonable projects. He first revealed these to
three of them,—Terzky, Kinsky, and Illo,—the first two related to him by
marriage, and the last an avowed and bitter enemy of the Emperor, who had
refused to raise him to the rank of count. It was Illo who undertook to find
out how the generals and colonels would feel and act; he called them
together one evening and very cautiously proceeded to inflame their minds
against the Emperor and glorify the services of Wallenstein, who, he said,
was the only one who could have saved the Emperor from ruin, and who
was now to be sacrificed again to the envy and jealousy of his enemies.
This announcement caused loud protests and great indignation among those
present. “But,” concluded Illo, “the Duke is not willing to undergo this new
humiliation, which is a shameful reward for his long and glorious services;
no, he will not wait until it pleases the Emperor to kick him out, but he will
go voluntarily and resign his command; but what pains him deeply is the
thought that, in doing so, he must leave his devoted friends and comrades,
and cannot reward them as he intended.” It may well be thought that these
remarks kindled revolt in the hearts of the soldiers, and that they swore they
would not let the Duke leave the army. The next morning they sent a
delegation to their commander-in-chief, imploring him to desist from his
intention of leaving the army, and assuring him that they would stand by
him, no matter what might happen. It was only when a second delegation of
the highest and most popular officers waited upon him, that the Duke gave
way to their entreaties and promised to remain at the head of the army. But
he attached one condition to this promise: he exacted from all the
commanders a written pledge that they would all, jointly and singly, stand
by him as their chief, and would consider his removal from the command of
the army a public calamity. They all agreed to this condition, and a paper
embodying this declaration was gotten up to be signed by all of them.

Illo took it upon himself to secure all the signatures, and in order to
make short work of it, invited the commanders to an evening party at his
headquarters, where he read the paper to them; but, in order to preclude all
suspicion in the minds of the signers, Wallenstein had inserted a clause
which bound the signers to the agreement only as long as Wallenstein used
the army in the service of the Emperor. After Illo had read the paper
containing the saving clause, he dexterously withdrew it and substituted for
it another copy without the clause, and unknowingly the commanders
signed it. Moreover, most of them were half or entirely intoxicated and
could not have discovered the deception; but one or two had remained
sober, and when they read the paper again before signing it, they found that
it was different from the one which had been read to them. They indignantly
charged Illo with having practised a fraud on them, and the company broke
up in confusion and anger. This half-failure seems to have opened
Wallenstein’s eyes to the real situation in which he found himself. Many of
his commanders were too devoted Catholics to make common cause with
the enemies of their Church, and while they were willing to stand by
Wallenstein to the last as the defender of their faith, they refused to follow
him into the Protestant camp and as a deserter from the Emperor’s service.
It also opened the Emperor’s eyes to the necessity of prompt action, unless
he would permit Wallenstein to concoct some plan by which he might lead
the whole army into the camp of the Protestants. He therefore secretly
commissioned General Gallas, one of Wallenstein’s subordinates, to take
command of the army as soon as the time had come for openly deposing the
Duke of Friedland. It was a game of duplicity and deception on both sides.
The Emperor tried to cheat Wallenstein out of his command and reward,
and Wallenstein tried to cheat the Emperor out of the army.
Until then Wallenstein had been at Pilsen; but after the demonstration of
the commanders, he deemed it advisable for his own plans and interests to
transfer his headquarters to the strongly fortified city of Eger, which was
commanded by Gordon, whom he considered one of his most reliable
friends. The larger part of the army remained at Pilsen, while Wallenstein
himself, escorted by a number of picked regiments under the command of
his most trusted lieutenants, went to Eger. But there he was to meet his
doom. The thunderclouds of imperial wrath had been gathering more and
more threateningly above his head. Wallenstein saw them not and feared
them not. Had not the stars prophesied his coming elevation? Even when

the Emperor published a proclamation, which was secretly distributed in the
army, declaring him a rebel and offering a reward for his surrender, dead or
alive, he would not believe it; he laughed at it when it was shown him.
Under ordinary circumstances he would have had the courage to treat any
imperial edict with contempt, for with his army his name was a much
greater power and authority than that of the Emperor; but a complication
had arisen which in the minds of his soldiers paralyzed his efforts and
reëstablished the Emperor’s supremacy. This complication was the
increasing strength of the Protestant armies. The Duke’s army, lawless,
cruel, and violating every rule of morality, was nevertheless composed of
men who stood in slavish fear of the Church and of the priest, and as soon
as Wallenstein turned against these two, the soldiers turned against him.
They were willing to follow him to death in a Catholic cause, when death
would open to them the gates of Paradise, but they refused to follow him to
death when death would deliver them to the everlasting torments of hell.
With this invisible moral power the great commander had not reckoned.
Among the very men whom he had picked out as his escort to Eger were his
murderers. And they did not wait long, for fear that others might anticipate
them in their bloody work, and capture not only the imperial reward, but
also the benedictions of the Church. These men were Gordon, the
commander of the Eger garrison, and Leslie (both Scotchmen), Deveroux
and Butler (both Irishmen). They had always been enthusiastic friends and
admirers of Wallenstein, but they were also fanatical Catholics, and when
they had to choose between their commander and the Church, their
devotion to the latter prevailed. Deveroux was the leading spirit in the plot.
He had received private instructions from Gallas and Piccolomini and won
over the others. They also secured the assistance of a number of soldiers in
their regiments, and solemnly pledged themselves to surrender
Wallenstein’s person, dead or alive, to Gallas, who was to take command of
the imperial army. But in order to prevent interference with their dark
design, Gordon, the commander of the garrison, invited them all to the
citadel for an evening entertainment. At this entertainment, while eating
supper, Illo, Terzky, Kinsky and Newman, were murdered. It was on a
Saturday evening, February 25, 1634, the day after they had arrived with
Wallenstein at Eger. Wallenstein himself was not present. He had retired
early that night, after having once more consulted the stars with his Italian
astrologer, who discovered unfavorable signs in the constellations. But it

seems Wallenstein paid no attention to these warnings, and fell soundly
asleep soon afterwards. Toward midnight, or perhaps shortly after midnight,
he was aroused from his sleep by a loud noise. Coming from the citadel,
where Wallenstein’s lieutenants had been slain, Butler, with a number of his
dragoons, and Deveroux, with a number of his halberdiers, marched up to
Wallenstein’s residence. Since both Butler and Deveroux were well known
to the guards in the hall, they were immediately admitted, but when they
reached the anteroom to the Duke’s apartments, the sentinel wanted to stop
them. He was cut down, not, however, before he had called for help, and
cried out: “Murderers! Rebels!” It was this tumult that aroused Wallenstein.
He jumped out of bed and hurried to the window to ask the sentinel posted
at the entrance what was the matter. At that moment the door leading to the
anteroom was burst open, and Deveroux, a halberd in his hands, and
followed by half a dozen of his men, entered the bedroom, where he found
himself face to face with Wallenstein. “Are you the scoundrel,” said he,
“who wants to rob his Imperial Majesty of his crown? You must die now!”
And without having given any answer, Wallenstein received a stab of the
halberd which lacerated the intestines and caused almost immediate death.
Like Cæsar, he might have exclaimed, “Et tu, Brute!” for he had always
especially befriended and distinguished this man Deveroux, who had come
to him poor and friendless, and who owed to him everything. One of the
halberdiers wished to throw Wallenstein’s corpse out of the window, but
Deveroux would not permit it; he rolled the body up in a table cover and
had it transported to the citadel, where the Duke’s murdered friends were
lying in the yard, waiting for their burial. Wallenstein’s body was placed by
their side. It was then resolved to send the bodies of the dead generals to
one of Illo’s country-seats, which was in the neighborhood. In placing them
in their coffins, it was found that Wallenstein’s coffin was too small, and in
order to force him into it his legs had to be broken.
Thus died one of the most remarkable men of the seventeenth century,—
the greatest of the German generals of the terrible Thirty Years’ War. As a
strategist, he may not have been fully the equal of Gustavus Adolphus, but
he had a magnetic power over his men which even that great commander
did not possess, and which would have made him invincible, had not
superstition and religious awe counteracted it. The German Emperor,
hearing of his assassination, appeared to be overwhelmed with grief, and
ordered three thousand masses to be read for the salvation of his soul; but

he tried in vain to deceive the world by this hypocritical sorrow for a
murder which he had planned and for which he rewarded the assassins. To
this very day the treason of Wallenstein remains shrouded in doubt; and
very likely it will remain forever an unsolved problem.

CHAPTER XIV

JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT

JOHN DE WITT

CHAPTER XIV

ASSASSINATION OF THE BROTHERS JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT

(August 20, 1672)

N EVER, perhaps, was the old saying, “Republics are ungrateful,” more
strikingly verified than in the case of the two brothers De Witt, who,
after having rendered many great services to the Dutch Republic, were
foully murdered by an infuriated mob in the streets of the Hague, August
20, 1672. John and Cornelius de Witt were the sons of a distinguished
citizen of the city of Dordrecht, who had represented that city in the general
assemblies of Holland and Friesland and was known as an eloquent and
incorruptible defender of popular rights. He had placed himself at the head
of the anti-Orange party because he considered the ambition and power of
the princes of Orange a standing danger to the Republic. Grown up under
the direction of such a father, the two sons had naturally imbibed his strong
democratic principles, and their undoubted patriotism was strongly tinged
with hostility to the house of Orange. The two De Witts have often been
compared to the Gracchi, and, like those illustrious Romans, they worked
and died for their democratic principles. Both were highly talented and,
while quite young, rose to the highest honors and dignities among their
countrymen,—Cornelius, the elder of the two, by his eminent legal ability
and his skill as a military and naval director and commissary, and John, by
his eminence as an administrator and statesman. It is difficult to decide
which of the two was intellectually the superior. A medal struck in their
honor bore the inscription, “Hic armis maximus, ille toga.” It should not be
inferred, however, from this inscription, that Cornelius, to whom the word
“armis” applied, was at any time commander-in-chief of the Dutch army
and navy, since he held only the office of government inspector of the navy,
in which capacity he greatly distinguished himself.
John was, at the age of twenty-five, elected pensionary of the city of
Dordrecht, and two years later, in 1652, Grand Pensionary of Holland, one
of the highest offices in the United Provinces. His political influence was
very great, and he used it to the best of his ability against the house of
Orange. William the Second, Prince of Orange, had died on the second of
October, 1650, leaving only a widow and a posthumous son as his heirs. On

these circumstances, so unfavorable to the illustrious house which had
played for so many years a conspicuous part in the history of the
Netherlands, John de Witt built his hopes of dealing a deathblow to its
political pretensions and of abolishing forever the office of stadtholder. It
was, however, no easy task to accomplish this object. The province of
Zealand was full of friends and partisans of the late stadtholder, who
vigorously opposed any attempt in the direction contemplated by De Witt;
and the other provinces, either from loyalty to the house of Orange, or from
a secret jealousy of the supremacy of the states of Holland, which always
wanted to control the policy of the Republic, either openly rejected the
plans of De Witt or modified and attenuated them as exaggerated.
At the moment when John de Witt took the reins of government, the
states were at war with England, and the war had taken a very unfavorable
turn for them. The Dutch admirals had suffered several terrible defeats.
Tromp, one of their most celebrated naval heroes, had been killed in battle,
and an English fleet was cruising along the coast of Holland, blockading its
ports, and paralyzing its commerce. But De Witt repaired these disasters
with such rapidity, and restored to the Dutch navy such a formidable
strength by his administrative genius, that Cromwell was willing to enter
into negotiations for peace, which he had haughtily rejected before. A treaty
of peace, submitted by the Grand Pensionary of Holland and signed at
Westminster on the fifteenth of April, 1654, reëstablished virtually the
conditions which had existed between the two nations before the war.
However, the Dutch Republic was compelled to recognize the superiority of
the English flag in the channel, and bound itself to give the Stuart dynasty
no support, and that no Prince of Orange should be elected again either
Stadtholder or Captain-General. This last section of the treaty was signed, at
first by the province of Holland only, and was kept secret for a long time. In
getting this provision of exclusion of the house of Orange passed (which, by
the way, was as welcome to De Witt as to Cromwell) by the other provinces
also, the Grand Pensionary practised a good deal of duplicity, and laid
himself open to serious charges of official deception which later on
contributed to his downfall.
In the meantime another complication had arisen and taxed the
statesmanship of the Dutch government and the patriotism of the
Netherlanders to the utmost. In France Louis the Fourteenth had taken the
reins of government into his own hands, and manifested an ambition for

conquest which endangered the security of all his neighbors. Although the
wife of Louis, at the time of her marriage, had solemnly renounced all her
rights of succession to the Spanish throne and any Spanish provinces, the
King nevertheless after the death of his wife’s father, Philip the Fourth,
claimed the Spanish Netherlands as justly belonging to his wife, and
defended this claim not so much by argument as by an invasion and armed
occupation of the disputed territory. No state was more deeply interested in
the outcome of this dispute than the Netherlands. With growing fear they
beheld the rapid progress which the armies of the French King under the
command of great generals were making, and they thought that their own
independence might suffer from the immediate neighborhood of so
powerful and aggressive a monarch. With great skill the Dutch government
secretly formed an alliance with Sweden and England by which these three
powers agreed that the Spanish Netherlands should remain under Spanish
dominion and that Louis the Fourteenth should be prevented from annexing
them to the French monarchy. This Triple Alliance was too powerful to be
defied by the French King, and he made peace with Spain, evacuating
Franche-Comté, which he had already conquered, but retaining possession
of a number of important cities in the Netherlands,—such as Charleroi,
Douai, Lille, Tournay and Oudenarde, which by the genius of Vauban were
converted into almost impregnable fortresses. Dutch statesmanship was the
obstacle which had placed itself in the King’s way and frustrated his
ambitious designs. Personal irritation and offended vanity were added to his
chagrin at the failure of his plans.
A boastful medal was struck in the Netherlands commemorating the
diplomatic victory which their government had achieved over the power of
France. On this medal a Dutch statesman was represented as Joshua bidding
the sun (the symbol of Louis the Fourteenth) to stand still. For this
arrogance the Republic was to be punished, and with matchless skill and
cunning the French government went to work to prepare for its overthrow.
The general political situation of Europe was highly favorable to the
consummation of the French designs. The Emperor of Germany, a weak and
pusillanimous sovereign, had his hands full in the eastern provinces of the
Empire, in which the Turks had advanced victorious up to the very gates of
Vienna; he was therefore powerless to oppose French aggression in the
Netherlands. Moreover special negotiations had been opened with some of
the sovereign princes of northern Germany by which the French monarch

secured the right to march his armies through their territory on their way to
the United Netherlands without touching Spanish territory. With equal
success the French diplomats dissolved the Triple Alliance, and made both
Sweden and England, former allies of the Dutch Republic, subservient to
the French monarch. Sweden received an annual subsidy of 600,000 dollars
from the French treasury, and England a subsidy of 350,000 pounds sterling
and also the promise of the province of Zealand as its share of the
dismemberment of the United Netherlands. Princess Henrietta of France,
wife of the Duke of Orleans and sister of Charles the Second of England,
was sent by the wily French King to England to negotiate this infamous
treaty. She succeeded in accomplishing her object mainly through the
influence which one of the ladies of her suite, Mademoiselle de Querouet,
gained over the mind of the English King, who made her his mistress and
bestowed on her the title of Duchess of Portsmouth.
Having thus fortified himself on all sides and deprived the United
Netherlands of the possibility of taking the field against him with any
chance of success, Louis declared war upon them. The result could not be
doubtful. Moreover the domestic discord and the active struggle between
the political factions added much to the gravity of the situation, and partly
paralyzed the efforts of the government to arouse the provinces to a full
comprehension of the danger. John de Witt was the chief executive of the
government, and upon him rested largely the responsibility of the situation.
The Orangist party turned its main attacks against him, and spared neither
criticism nor calumny to undermine his standing and authority. It charged
him directly with having, either through incompetency or something worse,
neglected to place the country in a suitable state of defence, and then having
provoked a war with a powerful enemy. These charges against De Witt were
largely unjust, and were preferred only to punish him for his opposition to
reinstating the house of Orange in the stadtholdership and in the chief
command of all the military forces of the Republic.
John de Witt had made two radical errors in his estimate of the political
situation. He knew that Louis the Fourteenth felt irritated at the Dutch
Republic’s action in preventing his acquisition of the Spanish Netherlands;
but he did not know that the French King would resent that action, and
make gigantic preparations for crushing the Dutch Republic. Never before
had such tremendous efforts been made by a great nation to destroy a weak
neighbor. The war was to be short and decisive, and the insolent “traders”—

that was the name the haughty French King gave to the citizens of the
Netherlands—were to be punished radically. The second error which De
Witt committed was his underestimation of the venality and corruption
existing in the government circles of his former allies, England and
Sweden. He learned at an early day that French diplomacy had induced
them to recede from the Triple Alliance; but he did not realize at the time
that French gold and French promises had persuaded these two powers to
make common cause with him for the dismemberment of the Republic, and
to furnish troops for that purpose. When finally the full reality of the King’s
revengeful plan was revealed to him, he not only aroused the people of the
Netherlands to a realization of the terrible danger which threatened them,
but he also, with his usual energy, went to work to find assistance against
the overwhelming odds among the other European powers, and his
experienced statesmanship served him well in bringing into play all the
different motives, both personal and political, by which he could hope to
influence their decisions.
Unfortunately the allies he could enlist in his cause were too weak to
constitute an adequate counterpoise to the enormous power of his opponent.
In stating the general political situation of Europe preceding the attack of
Louis the Fourteenth on the Dutch Republic, we have already mentioned
the causes which prevented the other powers from active interference in
behalf of the Netherlands. The aggressive Turk, also influenced by French
money, kept the Emperor of Germany busy in his eastern provinces, and left
him little time to care for other things than his own protection. Moreover
Louis the Fourteenth had, by munificent presents and liberal payments, won
the secret support of the Emperor’s prime minister, Lobkowitz, who did all
in his power to overcome his master’s fears concerning the intentions of the
French King, and frustrated the efforts of the King’s enemies to draw him
over to their side. De Witt had to contend with these difficulties in securing
little more than the moral support of the Emperor; but when the rapid
progress of the French arms had revealed to him the danger which
threatened the Empire, he consented reluctantly and hesitatingly to a sort of
active intervention for the protection of the German territory.
One ally of the Dutch Republic should not be forgotten here—Frederick
William, the great Elector of Brandenburg, whose political genius enabled
him to see the disastrous consequences which the growing power of the
King of France would have not only for the German Empire, but also for his

own possessions on the Rhine. He, therefore, concluded an alliance with the
Dutch Republic, promising an army of twenty thousand men in defence of
German soil against the aggression of the French King, and used besides his
influence over the German Emperor in persuading him to join the alliance.
The Elector of Brandenburg was for one reason a particularly valuable ally,
because his army was needed to keep in check the Swedes, who were to
take the field in northern Germany as soon as the German Emperor would
show a disposition to coöperate with the Dutch Republic. The decisive
victory of Fehrbellin, in which the great Elector routed a Swedish army
much superior in numbers to his own, showed how gloriously he performed
his part of the programme.
It was at this time that the Prince of Orange, although only twenty years
old, appeared to the Dutch people as a savior from these threatened
calamities. The young Prince, after the death of his mother, in 1661, passed
under the guardianship of John de Witt, who had him instructed in political
science and in the study of modern languages. It would seem that, with the
foresight of genius, he foresaw the prominent part which Prince William
would sooner or later play in the history of the Republic, and that, in spite
of his personal antipathy to the house of Orange, he was patriotic enough to
educate him well for his coming career. The precarious condition of his
health, which seemed to disqualify the Prince for the hardships and
exposures of military life, had no influence whatever on his ambition to
equal the great achievements of his ancestors. An opportunity for reaching
the goal of his ambition was given him when the States-General, in
obedience to the urgent demand of the people, appointed him Captain-
General of the Republic. Although the powers of the new commander-in-
chief were limited by several provisions, yet the Republican party, under the
leadership of De Witt, demanded more and better guarantees for curbing the
ambition of the Prince. It demanded and obtained from the States-General
an order that the Captain-General should be obliged to swear to maintain
the Perpetual Edict suppressing the stadtholdership and prohibiting its
reëstablishment. John de Witt also strongly opposed the life-appointment of
the Prince of Orange until he should have completed his twenty-second
year, while the Orangists and the Prince himself made his life-appointment
a condition for his acceptance. A compromise was finally reached, and
Prince William of Orange, known in history as William the Third, was
solemnly inaugurated in his new office of commander-in-chief. On him was

imposed the difficult task to oppose the armies of Louis the Fourteenth,
commanded by Condé, Turenne, Luxembourg and Vauban. Entire harmony
and good-will seemed to exist between the Grand Pensionary and the Prince
after the latter’s appointment to the command of the army. They
corresponded in a very cordial tone, and De Witt showed the greatest
eagerness to satisfy the wishes of the Prince for the thorough defence of the
country. It is not our purpose to mention in detail the indefatigable exertions
of John de Witt to place the country in a suitable state of defence. But these
exertions and the measures they resulted in were not sufficient to avert the
calamities of the war and to prevent a conquest which everybody had
foreseen. The Netherlanders had enjoyed peace for twenty-four years, and
this long rest had unaccustomed the country to war. The constant quarrels
between the different parties had weakened the unity of the Republic, and
when the time for united and patriotic action came, the nation was but ill
prepared for it.
On the sixth of April, 1672, France issued a declaration of war which
had been long expected. Louis the Fourteenth celebrated beforehand the
conquest he was about to undertake, although some of his most experienced
generals, Condé for instance, did not share his confidence. However, the
rapidity with which the French, after having crossed the Yssel, took cities
and fortresses almost without firing a gun, seemed fully to justify Louis the
Fourteenth in his anticipation of an easy and brilliant victory. One short
month had sufficed to place at the mercy of the French monarch the
flourishing and prosperous Republic, which four years before had
interrupted him in his march of victory. No man suffered more both as a
patriot and as a public official, from the disastrous turn in public affairs than
John de Witt. He had done all that a sagacious statesman and a noble-
minded patriot could do to prevent, and failing in this attempt, sought to
repair the disasters which overwhelmed the Republic. But the ungrateful
people failed to stand by him and reward his exertions for the public
welfare. And not only the honor of having saved the independence of his
country in this unequal conflict was denied to him, but his life itself was
lost, as a sacrifice to popular hatred and fanaticism.
Under these exasperating circumstances—each new day bringing
information of a new calamity, of the surrender of a fortress, of the
capitulation of a garrison, of the precipitate retreat of the army—it was not
only natural, it was a matter of duty and patriotism for John de Witt, the

head of the government, to enter into negotiations with the conqueror in
order to check his rapid advance and get from him better terms of peace
than might be expected after he had captured the last bulwarks of Dutch
independence. It was by no means De Witt’s plan to open negotiations for
the surrender of Dutch independence; but he hoped that the French King
would consent to suspend hostilities during the progress of the negotiations,
and that this intermission would give the Republic time to strengthen its
bulwarks. In case of an unfavorable result, he would resume armed
resistance with greater chances of success than before. John de Witt had
frequently, during the months preceding the outbreak of the war, insisted on
making adequate preparations to meet an attack of the French King, whose
restless ambition for military glory and territorial expansion was well
known. He had also pointed out (if all other means should fail) the necessity
of again, as in the war with Spain, resorting to those means of defence
which nature had placed in the possession of the Dutch, by opening the
sluices and cutting the dykes, in order to let the sea overflow the bottom
lands of the country, and thus protecting Holland, and above all Amsterdam,
from foreign occupation. This last measure of defence, terrible and
destructive as it was necessarily, was really the anchor of hope upon which
the minds of Dutch patriots rested their expectations of final triumph.
The Dutch navy was in excellent condition. It was still mistress of the
seas, and it had lately, under the able command of De Ruyter one of the
greatest naval heroes that ever lived, won two great victories over the fleets
of France and England, which secured the Republic against the landing of
foreign troops from the sea side. The Republic had spared no efforts to keep
the navy in splendid condition, and more than any other man Cornelius de
Witt had contributed to its efficiency. He was an intimate friend of Admiral
de Ruyter, and during the naval battle of Solbay, although seriously ill, he
sat by his side, as the official delegate of the States-General, assisting him
with his counsels, and by his very presence inspiring sailors and
commanders with patriotic devotion. The greatness of his services to the
Republic had been formally recognized after that battle by a unanimous
vote of thanks of the States-General.
It would seem almost a matter of impossibility that with such a record of
patriotism, integrity and devotion to the public welfare, the voice of
calumny should have been successfully raised against the two illustrious
brothers; but it was done nevertheless by the Orange party, which did not

forgive their opposition to the elevation of Prince William. The young
Prince had, during the short campaign, won no martial laurels by victories
in battles or by the capture of fortresses; but he had shown eminent qualities
which promised glorious results if an opportunity were given for unfolding
them. He was wise and circumspect beyond his years, self-collected and
cool amid the most pressing dangers, inexhaustible in resources, and while
thoroughly loyal to the Republic, yet proud of his ancestors and the
preëminent part they had played in the history of their country.
As soon as the report became public that the Grand Pensionary had taken
steps for negotiations with the French King, the Orange party denounced
them as acts of treason, and loudly demanded that Prince William should be
placed in supreme authority. It also asserted that the failure of the campaign
so far was due to the restrictions foolishly and criminally imposed on the
Prince, who might have saved the Republic if he had been permitted to
follow the inspirations of his own genius and had not been fettered by
instructions from men that had been his life-long enemies and who
preferred the rule of a foreign monarch to the stadtholdership of a Prince of
Orange. In this manner the public mind was filled with hatred toward the
De Witts, while gradually the young Prince of Orange became the idol of
the nation. Recollections of the glorious achievements of his forefathers, of
their perseverance and patience, of their intrepidity and resoluteness, and of
their final triumphs in situations as perilous as theirs, were awakened in the
hearts of the burghers, and made them inclined to a restoration of the
stadtholdership in behalf of the Prince. It was to be expected that sooner or
later public excitement, aggravated from hour to hour by the unfavorable
reports from the seat of war, would manifest itself in a violent explosion
and fall with destructive force upon the very heads which were most
entitled to public gratitude and veneration.
Two attempts on the lives of the two brothers in the summer of 1672—
an attack on John de Witt which came very near killing him and prostrated
him for weeks on a sick bed, and the other on Cornelius, who escaped from
it almost unhurt—were the first serious manifestations of the public ill-will.
It was only too evident that the Orange party was at the bottom of these
outbursts of hostility, and that Prince William himself was not a stranger to
the intrigues. On the second of July, 1672, the Prince of Orange was elected
Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand for life. These were the only two
provinces not occupied by the French armies, and the Prince’s

CORNELIUS DE WITT

election was therefore equivalent to his appointment as Stadtholder of the
Republic. In effect it placed the De Witts at his mercy.
In vain the Grand Pensionary handed in his resignation on the fourth of
August. The Orange party was not satisfied with permitting him to retire
from the public service; it formed a sinister conspiracy which engulfed the
two illustrious men in ruin and death. A worthless scoundrel, a certain
Tichelaar who on several occasions had been accused of felonies, openly
charged Cornelius de Witt with having tried to bribe him to assassinate the
Prince Stadtholder,—a proposition which he had indignantly rejected in
spite of the tempting rewards offered to him. Incredible as it may appear,
the accusation, contradicted both by the noble character of Cornelius de
Witt and by the bad reputation of the informer, was eagerly acted upon by
the authorities of Holland. Cornelius was arrested and imprisoned at the
Hague, where for four days he was subjected to the infamy of the torture. It
was hoped that in his agony he would make a confession of guilt which,

true or not, would justify his partisan judges in passing a sentence of death
on him. But Cornelius remained firm in his disdainful denial of the odious
accusation, and the repetition of the torture on four different days did not
change his testimony. Under these circumstances his base judges,
instruments of the Stadtholder and his party, did not dare to pronounce the
death sentence against him; but they found him guilty nevertheless,
deprived him of all his public dignities, and exiled him for life from the
territory of the Republic.
It may appear strange that the Orange party persecuted Cornelius de
Witt, who was the brother of the Grand Pensionary, with such venomous
hatred; but an occurrence which had shortly preceded his arrest will explain
the ill-will of the leaders of the Orange party. Like the other cities of
Holland, the city of Dordrecht had, by a vote of its Common Council,
revoked the Perpetual Edict. Cornelius de Witt had but a few weeks before
returned from the battle of Solbay, where he had so greatly distinguished
himself, and was confined to his bed by serious illness. Being one of the
highest city officials, his signature was required on the act of revocation,
and the Orange leaders demanded that the document should be forthwith
presented to him. City officials, followed by an excited and hostile mob,
took it to his residence and requested him to sign it. He refused. In vain his
family, his friends, and his servants implored him to affix his signature,
telling him that a mob of thousands of excited people surrounded the house
and threatened to demolish it and kill the inhabitants if his name should not
appear on the paper. Finally the supplications and tears of his wife and
children, imploring him not to sacrifice their lives by his obstinacy, induced
him to affix his signature, but he added the two initials V. C. to it; and when
the officials asked him what those two letters meant, he answered, “They
stand for the words ‘Vi coactus’ ” (yielding to violence). This declaration
caused an outburst of indignation in the crowd, and but for the speedy
erasure of the obnoxious initials by his wife, and the energetic efforts of his
friends to protect him, Cornelius de Witt would very likely on that day have
paid for his boldness with his life. It was ascertained that Tichelaar, who
shortly afterwards accused him of having planned the assassination of the
Prince of Orange, had been one of the mob surrounding the house and
vociferously demanding the punishment of the rebellious magistrate. The
infamous charge of Tichelaar against the great patriot had unquestionably
sprung from the scene at Cornelius de Witt’s residence. The Orange leaders

saw that it would not be safe for them or their master to let republicans like
the two De Witts remain among them, and their death was resolved upon.
The twentieth of August, 1672, was the fatal day which was to seal the
doom of the two illustrious brothers. Cornelius, crushed by the sentence of
perpetual banishment pronounced against him, remained in his cell at the
Buitenhof, the terrible prison of the Hague. On the morning of that day John
de Witt was called to the Buitenhof, where his brother wished to see him.
Although warned by his friends not to go, the brave ex-Pensionary did not
hesitate to comply with the summons. It was a false message. Reaching the
prison, he found himself entrapped and at the mercy of the mob, which had
assembled before the prison howling and shouting, “Hurrah for Orange!
Death to the traitors!” It was but a short time after his arrival, and after a
hurried and pathetic interview with his brother, that the rabble, instigated by
the calumnies of the Orange men, burst open the doors of the prison, and
with axes and sledge-hammers and clubs forced their way up to the cell
where Cornelius was imprisoned. At the sight of the two brothers the fury
of the mob knew no bounds. Like tigers they jumped upon them, threw
them down, clubbed and slew them amid cries of beastly exultation. “There
goes the Perpetual Edict!” one of the butchers is said to have exclaimed as a
powerful blow with the butt-end of his musket prostrated John de Witt
senseless at his feet. Another murderer came up, and noticing symptoms of
returning consciousness in the countenance of the Pensionary, he fired his
pistol at him, blowing out his brains. Cornelius was killed by a tremendous
blow with an iron bar which fractured his skull; he died instantly. But death
alone did not satisfy the slayers. With unheard-of brutality they kicked, beat
and abused, in every possible manner, the lifeless bodies, and finally, after
having stripped off their clothes, dragged the mangled and disfigured
remains from the jail to a gibbet which had been erected by volunteer
executioners, and hung them by the feet. The popular frenzy went so far
that the murderers cut and tore the flesh in pieces from the bodies of “the
great traitors, John and Cornelius de Witt,” and sold them in the streets of
the city for a few cents each.
Thus suffered and died, on the twentieth of August, 1672, two of the
purest and most high-minded patriots that any nation has produced,—
murdered by their own people, whom they had served faithfully and
successfully for many years. Their death is a dark blot on the annals of the
Dutch Republic: and it is an indelible stain on the otherwise great and fair

name of William the Third of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic
and afterwards King of England. History has forgotten many crimes, but it
will not forget the assassination of the brothers De Witt.

CHAPTER XV

ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT

ALEXIS

CHAPTER XV

ASSASSINATION OF ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT

(June 26, 1718)

T HE sudden death of Alexis, son of Peter the Great by his first wife
Eudoxia, has always been and is still shrouded in mystery; but the
prevailing opinion of historians is that the unfortunate young man was
assassinated by direct order of his father, and all the surrounding
circumstances point to this conclusion. We think we are therefore justified
in placing it here among the famous assassinations in history. It is the
darkest chapter in the history of Peter the Great, a monarch whose
achievements as a civil administrator, reformer, and general entitle him to a
high rank among the really great rulers of Europe; but these achievements
should not be made a cloak or excuse for a crime from which not only
modern civilization, but human nature itself, shrinks back in horror.
It is not necessary here to go into the details of the marvellous activity
and energy of Peter’s life. More than any other ruler of ancient or modern
times he stands before the world as a model national reformer, introducing,
by the force of an indomitable will, the most sweeping changes and reforms
into the social, economical, political, industrial, and commercial life of the
nation over which he rules, breaking with all the traditions of the past, and
lifting his nation by a supreme effort from comparative barbarism into
semi-culture, and starting it on the road to political greatness and
commercial importance, on which it has made such astounding progress
during the last two hundred years. The personal genius and initiative of
Peter the Great have contributed more to the development of Russia’s
resources, and he has done more to raise her to her present position in
Europe than all other causes combined. It is sad for the philanthropist and
historian to admit that these great qualities were obscured by vices and
habits that were, perhaps, the tribute which even the greatest of mortals has
to pay to his age and to his nation.
As a very young man Peter had married Eudoxia Laputkin, the daughter
of a powerful and influential family. It was not a love marriage, but he had
hoped to gain from this alliance a strengthening of his pretensions to the
throne. Eudoxia was very handsome, but, while she pleased Peter, she had

not the power to win his exclusive affection. She bore him a son, Alexis, but
even the birth of an heir—generally so anxiously expected by autocrats—
could not firmly establish intimate relations between Peter and Eudoxia
while he permitted the boy to remain entirely under the care of the mother
and her relatives. Unfortunately the Laputkin family was strongly attached
to ancient Russian traditions and usages. It was entirely under the influence
of the priests and clung to the prejudices and prerogatives of the Russian
aristocracy. Alexis was brought up in these opinions and absorbed them
from his infancy. In fact no two minds, and no two temperaments could
have been more at variance than those of the father and of the son; and, as
the boy grew up, the antagonism between Peter and Alexis became greater
and more pronounced.
Whether from incompatibility of temper or some other cause, Peter
discarded Eudoxia and had her shut up in a convent in 1698; he then took
the boy out of her hands and entrusted his education to teachers in
sympathy with his own ideas. But they found it impossible—and even Peter
himself, in spite of rigorous measures and cruelty—to eradicate from the
mind of the boy the conservative and old-Russian principles which his
mother and the Laputkins had, as it would seem, planted deep within it.
When Peter divorced Eudoxia and shut her up in a convent, the antipathy of
the boy turned into hatred, and he clung only the more stubbornly to his
mother and her family. As he grew older, he became intemperate and
dissipated; but, more than these vices, the sluggishness of his mind and the
open hostility with which he looked upon the great reforms in which Peter
was engaged and in which he took great pride, irritated his father to such a
degree that the Czar formed the plan of excluding him from the succession.
In order to break his bad habits and possibly to bring about a salutary
change in his rude and uncouth conduct, Alexis was married quite young to
a Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a lovely and refined young woman
of great personal beauty; but Alexis treated her very coldly and cruelly. The
fact that his father had selected his bride was sufficient cause for him to
treat her with contempt and aversion. She bore her misfortune with great
resignation; but died of a broken heart, after having given her husband two
children, a daughter and a son. The latter afterwards ascended the throne as
Peter the Second.
The death of his wife made but little impression on Alexis, who had been
living for a long time in open adultery with his mistress, an illiterate serf

from Finland. When this matrimonial attempt to reform Alexis had failed,
the Czar, more than ever incensed at his obstinacy, gave him the choice
between changing his ways and being sent to a convent. The Czar was the
more inclined to shut him up in a solitary place of confinement because
Catherine, his second wife, had just given birth to a son, and Peter might
hope to have a male heir, even with Alexis out of the way. The birth of this
half-brother filled the mind of Alexis with vague fears. But being assured
by his friends, and especially by the Laputkins and the priests, that he might
easily, at the proper time, get out of the convent, since the cowl would not
be nailed to his head, he hypocritically declared in favor of the convent, and
told his father that he had a greater vocation for spiritual things than for the
government of an empire. The confinement was, however, not so very
solitary as it might have appeared to the Czar; on the contrary, both Alexis
and Eudoxia were the chief personages around whom the malcontents and
all the opponents of reform clustered with hopeful expectation. Alexis
treated his imprisonment so lightly that he imprudently spoke of what he
was going to do as soon as he had ascended the throne. “I shall be the
Czar,” said he; “they cannot keep me out of the succession. Let his
foreigners intrigue against me; I shall beat them all, for the people are for
me, and I’ll set all things right again. We shall then be Russians once
more!”
In the meantime Peter the Great had started on a new European tour.
Catherine, his wife, accompanied him. He went to Prussia, Denmark,
Holland, England and France, and was received everywhere with the
greatest honors and distinctions. At Amsterdam the unwelcome news
reached him that Alexis had left his convent under a false pretence, saying
that he would join the Czar on his travels; but he had proceeded to Vienna
and placed himself under the protection of the German Emperor. The Czar
immediately despatched two of his most intimate friends with instructions
to bring him back, alive or dead. But when the two messengers reached
Vienna, the Czarowitz had left that city already, and his whereabouts was
unknown. But after a diligent search, it was discovered that he had gone to
Naples and had found an asylum at the Castle of St. Angelo. The
messengers hurried to Naples and succeeded in getting an interview with
the Prince, in which they exhausted their eloquence to induce him to return
with them to Russia. They read to him also a letter written by his father,
who promised him that, upon his immediate return, his escapade would be

forgiven and forgotten. The Prince was not willing to go, and consented
only when the Viceroy of Naples joined his own request with the entreaties
of the messengers. The Czar had returned already to St. Petersburg when
Alexis arrived.
The Prince hoped to be kindly received and to be treated like a repentant
son; but in this expectation he found himself badly deceived. He was
immediately arrested and subjected to a very severe interrogatory, in the
course of which he implicated a number of prominent persons in having
planned and assisted him in his flight from Russia. And then a mock trial of
the most infamous character was enacted. The young Prince had already
renounced all his rights to the crown; but this renunciation did not assuage
the vindictive spirit of his father. Those whom Alexis, in his confusion and
in the agony of the torture, had implicated in the crime of which he was
accused, were tried for high treason, convicted, and beheaded or broken on
the wheel. The ex-Empress Eudoxia was transferred to a dungeon in another
prison, after having been cruelly chastised by two nuns. Alexis himself,
from whom the cruel application of the torture (during which the Czar was
present) had extorted the confession of crimes which he had never
committed, was convicted of high treason and sentenced to be beheaded.
The Czar insisted on a verdict of capital punishment, and the one hundred
and eighty-one judges composing the court obeyed the imperial brute; they
rendered a unanimous verdict. Peter hypocritically said that he would
pardon him. When the decision of the judges and his father’s promise of
clemency were communicated to Alexis, he was overcome with terror and
excitement, and led back to prison. The next day it was reported that he had
died of apoplexy, but that in his last moments an affectionate interview had
taken place between him and his father. Another report stated that the Czar
had withdrawn his pardon and ordered his son to be beheaded without
delay. And still another report, almost too horrid to be true, says that Peter,
with his own hands, cut off the head of his son. There is no doubt that the
young man was foully murdered. The story of his death by apoplexy was
merely invented to whitewash the memory of one of the greatest, but also of
one of the most brutal and cruel rulers that ever lived.

CHAPTER XVI

PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA

PETER III.

CHAPTER XVI

ASSASSINATION OF PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA

(July 17, 1762)

I N a previous chapter we have told the story, full of horror and crime, of
the life of Ivan the Terrible of Russia. It was not one famous assassination
which placed that life-story in this series of historical murders; it was an
uninterrupted, long-continued succession of butcheries and assassinations
which entitled it to this place. In the long line of historical characters
extending through the ages there is not one who so fully deserves the
designation of a wholesale assassin as Ivan the Terrible, the demon of the
North. But strange to say, the Russians, who during his lifetime execrated
him and fled from him as from contagion, to-day seem to have forgotten his
iniquities, and place him among their great rulers. Let Karamsin, one of the
few great historians Russia has produced, explain this seeming anomaly:
“Such was the Czar! Such were his subjects! Their patience was boundless,
for they regarded the commands of the Czar as the commands of God, and
they considered every act of disobedience to the Czar’s will as a rebellion
against the will of God. They perished, but they saved for us, the Russians
of the nineteenth century, the greatness and the power of Russia, for the
strength of an empire rests in the willingness of an empire to obey.” Words
like these make us comprehend—what otherwise would be utterly
incomprehensible to us—that a monster like Ivan the Terrible was permitted
to continue his career of crime and murder until it was terminated by death
brought on by disease and not by violence.
The history of Russia, after the death of Ivan the Terrible, is full of
crimes and assassinations. Czars and heirs to the crown were ruthlessly
murdered in order to make way for usurpers and pretenders, until these
again fell victims to conspiracies. The most famous of these assassinations
is that of Peter the Third, not only because it was carried out in the interest
of his own wife, the Empress Catherine, but mainly perhaps because
Russia, at that time,—1762—had already entered the list of great European
powers. Peter the Third was the son of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-
Gottorp, and of the Grand-Duchess Anna of Russia, oldest daughter of Peter
the Great. As such, young Peter had even a better right to the crown of

Russia than the Empress Elizabeth, who was a younger daughter of Peter
the Great; and it was Elizabeth herself who, in 1742, sent for Peter—then a
boy at school in Germany—and declared him her heir and successor to the
crown.
Peter was then only fifteen years of age. His education until then had
been designed to fit him for the throne of Denmark and Sweden, upon
which his father had a just claim; but preferring the prospect of sitting on
the throne of the Czars, he went to St. Petersburg. The Empress spared no
pains to educate her nephew for the high and difficult task which was in
store for him as the future ruler of Russia. But it was in vain that she tried to
make a Russian of him; he remained not only at heart, but also in his tastes,
his manners, his conduct, his amusements and occupations a German; and
what was worse, he liked to show publicly and privately how strongly
attached he was to the land of his birth, and how profoundly he despised the
people of Russia, over whom he was to rule. In a foreign-born crown-prince
such a disposition would have been a serious political mistake under all
circumstances, but it was especially so in this case, since Russia had been
engaged, for years, in war with Frederick the Great of Prussia, and had
made great sacrifices in men and treasures to conquer him and to cripple his
growing power and influence in Europe.
Elizabeth hated Frederick the Great with the passion of a woman
offended in her vanity. He had said of her: “She is as ugly as a cat and as
treacherous; the very thought of her makes me sick.” The hatred of the
Empress did not prevent the Crown Prince from openly expressing his
unbounded admiration for the Prussian King. True, Peter was mentally too
insignificant to comprehend the real greatness and genius of Frederick; but
he admired the strict discipline, the rigid training, the incessant military
exercises, the severe punishments for the slightest infraction of the rules
and the least symptom of insubordination,—in short, all the outward and
visible work in the preparation of a model army; and the Prussian army had
become the model of Europe since the days of King Frederick William the
First. He was anxious to introduce these Prussian features into the Russian
army, expecting very likely that such externals would be the principal
means of making an army invincible. That it took the genius and the
untiring energy of a Frederick to bring about this invincibility he failed to
see. When Peter had grown up to manhood his military zeal increased and
became a perfect passion. But he felt no desire to join the Russian army in

the field and earn military distinction and honors; no, he preferred to stay at
home and act the drillmaster of a regiment of Holsteiners, which the
Empress had organized for his especial pleasure, and to whose equipment,
drill and exercises the young Grand Duke devoted most of his leisure hours.
The men were uniformed and armed exactly like Prussian grenadiers, and
all the officers belonged to prominent German families. The organization of
this regiment made the Grand Duke very unpopular among the members of
the Russian nobility, and they lost no opportunity in blackening his
character and belittling his mental qualifications.
In 1745 Peter married the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the daughter of a
Prussian field-marshal. She was distinguished by great beauty and high
mental attainments, and afterwards won world-wide renown under the name
of Catherine the Second. She was originally named Sophia Augusta, but
when the Empress Elizabeth selected her for the wife of her successor, she
adopted the name of Catherine. Before his marriage, Peter had led a rather
dissolute life, but for a couple of years after the wedding the young couple
seemed to be quite happy. Peter himself was very good-looking and,
although not a man of brilliant mind, was of average intelligence and
culture. An attack of small-pox destroyed his good looks; and this
circumstance combined with the volatile character of his wife caused an
estrangement, which seemed to grow from year to year, and finally
degenerated into absolute hatred. From that time on husband and wife,
although not formally divorced or even separated, lived each a life of
unrestrained vice.
No sooner had the courtiers noticed the growing coldness between them
than they tried to ingratiate themselves with the young and beautiful but
profligate Catherine, and some of them succeeded only too well. The first of
her lovers was Count Soltikoff, one of the handsomest men of the Russian
court, and first chamberlain of the Grand Duke. In his privileged position in
the service of the Grand Duke he had so many opportunities of meeting the
Grand Duchess, that soon the closest intimacy was established between
them. But somehow or other a report of the liaison reached the ears of the
Empress, and she sent Soltikoff on a diplomatic mission to Turkey in the
hope of putting a stop to it. But the Grand Duchess easily consoled herself.
No sooner had Soltikoff left the capital than Catherine formed a new
liaison. Her next lover was the beautiful and chivalrous Prince Poniatowski,
of the renowned Polish family; the scandal became so notorious and excited

so much envy and jealousy among the Russian courtiers that it reached the
ears of the Grand Duke, who applied to the Empress and demanded that his
wife be punished for her shameful conduct. The Empress, who was guilty
herself of many scandalous love affairs, did not reprimand the Grand
Duchess, but sent Poniatowski back to Poland. A short time afterwards he
returned, however, having been appointed Polish Ambassador at the court
of St. Petersburg. The Grand Duke was indignant at his unlooked-for return,
and having one day surprised him in a very intimate tête-à-tête with
Catherine, upbraided him and her in the presence of the whole court,
threatening at the time to drive him like a dog from the palace, and to
imprison her in a convent. At the same time the Grand Duke himself was
very far from leading an exemplary life. He had picked out among the
ladies of the court a young and beautiful girl, Countess Woronzow, and
made her his mistress.
The time came when the Empress Elizabeth was on her deathbed. She
made then a last attempt to reconcile the Grand Duke and the Grand
Duchess, in order to secure peace for Russia; but the estrangement and
repugnance which they felt for each other was so great that this attempt
failed utterly. In fact, the chasm widened immensely after the death of
Elizabeth, and neither the husband nor the wife took care to conceal it.
Moreover, immediately after Peter’s accession to the throne, a radical
change occurred in the policy of the government,—a change that was
warmly approved by some, but most bitterly opposed by others. Two great
political parties were formed, and although the opponents of the
government were compelled to practise their agitation in secret, they
nevertheless counted a number of the most influential men among their
leaders. The new Emperor broke loose entirely from the traditional policy
of Russia; he not only withdrew from the Franco-Austrian alliance, but he
sent orders to the Russian generals in the field against Frederick the Great
of Prussia to coöperate with him. Peter himself donned the uniform of a
Prussian general, which grade Frederick the Great had conferred upon him
at his special request; all exercises and manœuvres of the Russian army
were, by direction of the Czar, fashioned after those of the Prussian army,
and Russian traditions and customs were disregarded.
The indignation and discontent among the high nobility of Russia at
these “reforms”—which they ridiculed and despised—knew no bounds. In
these sentiments they were encouraged by the Czar’s wife, who both from

personal hostility and from the intuition of her far-sighted political genius,
opposed them as anti-Russian and as the manifestations of a Teuto-maniac
unfit to rule over the great Russian nation. Her husband became more and
more aggressive in his threats. He spoke openly, among his intimates, of his
intention to imprison Catherine in a convent and to marry his mistress,
Elizabeth Woronzow, and branded the son whom Catherine had borne to
him, as a bastard, who would be excluded from the succession. It was
therefore in self-defence that Catherine surrounded herself with men of
power and influence. She entered into close relations with high officers of
the Russian army, who still adhered with loyal devotion to the traditions of
Peter the Great and Elizabeth; and although far from being pious and
religious herself, she surrounded herself with the high dignitaries of the
Russian Church, whom Peter insulted by neglect. Catherine, on the other
hand, manifested a great interest in religious ceremonies and a strict
observance of the Greek Church service; and at all times prominent
clergymen were guests at Peterhof, her residence.
Peter the Third wished to realize on the throne of Russia the ideal of
enlightened despotism, of which his idol, King Frederick the Second of
Prussia, was so illustrious a model. One of his first acts was to recall the
political exiles from Siberia—among them the two fieldmarshals Münnich
and Biron, who had been exiled by Elizabeth. It is assuredly one of the most
lamentable spectacles to behold on the throne of a great Empire an ignorant,
narrow-minded, whimsical, and fanatical ruler, introducing, under the name
of “reforms,” vital and extraordinary changes in the administration and
government, utterly unsuited to the character and culture of his nation. Even
with the best intentions he will fail and pass for a fool.
Many of Peter’s measures were humane and just, and might have been
considered judicious if he had not, by the manner in which he introduced
them, provoked a resistance which proved fatal to them. He had no
knowledge of Russian character, and looked down upon public sentiment.
Even as Czar he gave public expression of his contempt for Russia, and
placed it in every respect below Germany. With incredible self-sufficiency
he disregarded all counsels to be more prudent in his public utterances and
to proceed more slowly in his efforts to Prussianize Russia’s methods of
administration and her system of civil and criminal jurisprudence. He
abolished time-honored institutions; he attacked the privileges of the
Church and the clergy; he ordered the churches and chapels to be deprived

of their wealth and golden ornaments and images; he confiscated real estate
belonging to the government, but occupied and taken possession of by the
clergy; he reduced the exorbitant salaries of great noblemen in the
provinces. By such acts he engendered protests, dissatisfaction, and threats
in the very classes upon which the throne has to lean in despotic countries.
To cap the climax, he dismissed the Russian body-guards and surrounded
himself exclusively with German troops. The Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, his
own cousin, was placed in command of these German regiments, under
whose protection the Emperor considered himself absolutely safe. The King
of Prussia, who was well informed on all matters going on at the Russian
court, and who more than anybody else in Europe had an interest at stake to
prolong the reign of his admirer, warned him again and again against the
intrigues of his wife and the “old-Russian party,” but Peter was blinded by
his prejudices and paid no attention to the warnings. He underrated his
wife’s talent for political combinations and intrigue, and was far from
suspecting that from the very first day of his reign his fate was sealed and
his days numbered.
A great historian has called Catherine of Russia “the Messalina-
Richelieu” of history, indicating by that combination that she was a monster
of voluptuousness, insatiable in lust, and a prodigy of statecraft and political
shrewdness. The name is wonderfully appropriate, for hardly ever has any
female ruler, with the exception of the infamous Roman Empress, so
shamelessly prostituted herself as Catherine the Second of Russia, and
never has any woman, not even Elizabeth of England, possessed political
genius to a higher degree. It was Peter the Great who introduced Russia into
the list of European states, but it was Catherine the Second whose genius
breathed into the gigantic empire its policy of grasping and ambitious
expansion, which has placed her standards as tutelary guards already over
the northern half of Asia, and which is yet far from being satisfied.
While the Czar was amusing himself with new reforms which were at
best dead letters and created new enemies for him, his wife was untiring in
her efforts to win new friends and new supporters for the great coup d’état
which she was preparing as the crowning act of her ambition. She wanted to
be Empress in her own name, in order that she might make Russia great and
not be molested and embarrassed by a husband whom she hated and
despised. Her own personal memoirs, written in French and published in
London in 1858, whose authenticity has never been seriously doubted,

shows that when only fifteen years old, she was possessed by this ambition,
which she afterwards so fully realized. Among the influential persons
whose active coöperation Catherine had secured for her ambitious plans
was Princess Dashkow, a young woman of excellent education and great
ability, and sister of Elizabeth Woronzow. Princess Dashkow, who, on
account of the superiority of her mind had great influence over her sister,
proved a powerful auxiliary to Catherine in this most critical period of her
married life. Through her, Catherine gained Count Panin, one of the ablest
men of Russia and governor of the young Grand-Duke Paul, Catherine’s
son, as her ally. She told Panin that she knew from her sister (the Czar’s
mistress) that Peter the Third was on the point of repudiating his wife, that
he denied the legitimacy of the young Grand Duke, that he intended to
exclude him from the succession, and to declare Ivan the Sixth his
successor. This Prince had been dethroned by Elizabeth and was retained as
a prisoner in the fortress of Schlüsselburg, but had fallen into idiocy. These
confidential communications induced Panin, who trembled for his own
position and possibly for his head, secretly to join the army of malcontents,
whose programme it was to dethrone Peter the Third, proclaim his son,
Paul, Emperor, and Catherine Regent of the Empire during Paul’s minority.
This programme was not exactly that of Catherine, who aspired to be the
sovereign Empress of Russia, and not merely the Regent during her son’s
minority, but with consummate ability she welcomed Panin’s overtures as
steps leading to her own elevation.
Whether Catherine had fully weighed and approved all the possibilities
which might result from the revolution which she had planned and for
which she had found so many instruments willing to help her, will very
likely remain forever an unsolved problem. Was she willing to sanction the
murder of her husband in order to step over his corpse to the throne? This
has been an open question with native and foreign historians. Perhaps she
honestly believed with Panin that she might get rid of Peter in some way
without either killing him or imprisoning him for life. But it is absolutely
certain that Catherine, in the summer of 1762, came to the conclusion that
the time had come for striking a decisive blow; and it is equally certain that,
although not cruel by nature, she never shrank back from any means to
remove obstacles standing in the way of her ambition. By the agency of her
generals, Suwarow, Potemkin, and Repnin, she sacrificed whole nations to
her ambition, and swept them off the face of the earth without feeling any

compunction at the barbarities committed. Does it look improbable
therefore that she may have consented to the assassination of her husband,
whom she detested, when all other means of silencing his claims to the
throne appeared unsafe?
A very important part, in fact the most important of all, in the conspiracy
against the Czar, was taken by the Orloffs, and especially by Count Gregor
Orloff, the favored lover of Catherine, who had the reputation of being the
handsomest officer of the Russian army. The Empress was passionately in
love with him, although pretty well founded rumors asserted that she
bestowed her secret favors also on Gregor’s brother, Alexis, a perfect giant
in stature and of herculean strength. All the Orloffs—Gregor, Alexis, Ivan,
and Feodor—held positions as officers in the imperial guards or in the
artillery, and were among the warmest adherents of Catherine, whose
elevation would raise them, as they well knew, to the highest position in the
Empire, immediately by the side of the throne. They became active
agitators for her in the army, and were really the principal actors in the
terrible drama of Peter’s assassination. Quite a bloody tradition attached to
the Orloff family, and the part which they were to play in the revolution
against Peter the Third lent new confirmation to it and recalled it to the
minds of the Russian people. At the time when Peter the Great abolished the
strelitzi, attended their horrid executions, even helped in them, one day the
block of the executioner was so crowded with the heads of the victims that
there was no room for others. Then one of the condemned coolly stepped
forward and pushed several of the heads off the bench, as if it had been his
business to do so. The Czar looked on in astonishment and turning to the
man, who had already attracted his attention by his herculean frame and the
classic beauty of his features, asked him: “What are you doing that for?”
“To make room for my own head!” was the cool reply. Peter the Great, who
admired personal courage above everything else, was so well pleased with
the reply, that he immediately pardoned the condemned and set him free.
This pardoned officer was a young nobleman, named Orloff—the
grandfather of the five Orloffs who played such a conspicuous part in the
revolution of 1762, and one of whom murdered Peter the Third with his
own hands.
The outbreak of the revolution, as is usual in such cases, was caused by
an unexpected and trifling occurrence. A young officer of the imperial
guards, who had been won over to the party of Catherine, one evening

while under the influence of liquor, talked about the impending revolution
and was arrested by other officers who were not in the conspiracy. Gregor
Orloff heard of the arrest and immediately hurried to Catherine, who was at
Peterhof and had already retired for the night. But Orloff went directly to
her bedroom, aroused her from sleep and told her that immediate action on
her part was necessary, unless she wanted to imperil and very likely lose the
game for whose success they had been working so patiently.
Catherine’s resolution was quickly taken. She immediately got up,
dressed rapidly, and half an hour afterwards the carriage which had carried
Orloff from St. Petersburg, returned thither with the Empress and her
attendant. It was five o’clock in the morning of the twenty-ninth of June
when they arrived at the capital. Two hours later Catherine was on
horseback, dressed in the uniform of a general of the imperial guards, which
Count Buturlin had furnished, on her way to the armory of the
Preobrajenski guards, accompanied by Gregor and Alexis Orloff, and an
escort of high officers who were in the conspiracy. Princess Dashkow, also
in an officer’s uniform, had preceded her, and had announced to the officers
of the guards that the Emperor, Peter the Third, had died suddenly, that the
Empress would shortly appear among them in order to receive their homage
and their oath of obedience as heiress to the throne and Regent of the
Empire during the minority of her son. The officers consented immediately
and influenced their soldiers without difficulty when they were reminded of
the late Czar’s unjust partiality for the German regiments, and of
Catherine’s unwavering kindness to them. Both officers and soldiers greeted
Catherine, therefore, very enthusiastically when she arrived an hour later,
and both swore allegiance and devotion to her. Catherine’s bearing on this
trying occasion, was full of courage and dash. She had never looked more
beautiful, and the three regiments were perfectly charmed with their new
ruler. She then proceeded with her escort to the Casan Church, where, in the
meantime, the Archbishop of Novgorod and the entire clergy of the capital
had been assembled and were waiting for her. The Archbishop administered
the oath of office to her, and Catherine swore to respect the laws and
institutions of the Empire and to protect the religion of the people,
whereupon the entire clergy swore allegiance to her. A solemn Te Deum,
sung by thousands of voices, terminated the grand ceremony, while the roar
of artillery announced to the inhabitants of St. Petersburg the accession of a
new ruler. Catherine had reached the goal of her ambition; she was now the

sovereign ruler of Russia, not merely in name, but in fact. She returned to
the imperial palace, where an immense multitude greeted her with
enthusiastic cheers. Many thousand roubles were scattered among the
populace, which was moreover treated liberally with whiskey and other
intoxicants, and cheered vociferously, until Catherine, who looked
charmingly beautiful in her gaudy uniform, showed herself again and again
on the balcony. Count Galitzin, vice-admiral of the Russian fleet, was on a
visit at St. Petersburg on that day. Catherine sent for him, won him over to
her side by amiability and promises, and sent him back to Kronstadt, the
Russian naval port, to inspire the garrison and sailors of that stronghold
with enthusiasm for the Empress,—so that the capital was protected on the
seaward side against a possible attack by Peter the Third.
But even after having acted so promptly and so energetically, and after
having got possession of the capital and the principal part of the army and
the navy, Catherine had still a great deal to do, and her penetrating genius
did not underrate the danger of the situation in which she found herself. All
her successes in the capital among officers had been secured by the
fraudulent assertion that the Czar had died suddenly, and there was no
certainty whether Peter’s sudden appearance at the capital, or a well-
authenticated report that he was still among the living and was hastening
toward the capital, might cause a sudden change in public sentiment.
Undaunted by these secret apprehensions, and impelled by the restless
energy of her devouring ambition, she never wavered in her resolution, but
pressed onward toward the consummation of her dangerous but tempting
project, which seemed to be almost within her grasp. Through the active
agitation of her friends, and the strong and widespread hostility of the
people and the army against Peter’s ill-advised measures of “reform,” she
could, almost from the first announcement of her accession to the throne,
command an army of fifteen thousand well-equipped men, who were ready
to die for her against any pretender, Peter the Third included.
The outbreak of the revolution was so sudden that Peter was taken
entirely by surprise, and would not listen to the first reports when they
reached him. He had gone on that very day to Oranienbaum, an imperial
summer resort, about twenty miles from St. Petersburg, where he enjoyed
himself with his Holstein guards, his favorites, and his mistress, Elizabeth
Woronzow. There were altogether about two thousand soldiers with him;
but there was also Field-marshal Münnich, Russia’s most renowned soldier,

and a man of great authority in the army. Moreover Münnich was a man of
great personal courage, and if Peter had followed his counsels, he might
have saved his crown and his life. Münnich’s advice was to take immediate
and bold measures, to meet aggression by aggression, and to oppose the
immense prestige of the legitimate ruler to the revolutionary usurpation of
an ambitious and adulterous wife. But neither Peter’s personal character,
nor his immediate surroundings would admit of the acceptance of such bold
and aggressive action. He was like a helpless child, hesitating and
vacillating, sending out orders, and revoking them the next hour; asking
everybody’s advice, and following nobody’s. His mistress was bewailing
his misfortune, cursing Catherine and her treachery, and falling into
hysterics at the mere thought of a bloody struggle for supremacy between
Peter and his wife. It was easy to foresee the outcome of so much
indecision, vacillation and cowardice on one side, and of so much
determination, firmness and courage on the other.
After nearly the whole day had been spent in fruitless attempts to come
to a decision, Münnich finally, at about eight o’clock in the evening,
succeeded in persuading Peter to go on board of a yacht and proceed to
Kronstadt, where, he expected, the Emperor would be warmly welcomed. If
this step had been taken earlier in the day, it would very likely have been
successful. But it will be remembered that Catherine, after her return from
the Casan church, had an interview with Count Galitzin, commander-in-
chief of the naval forces at Kronstadt, and had secured his coöperation. The
Emperor was therefore not permitted to enter the harbor, and when he
himself appeared in the fore-part of the yacht and proclaimed his identity,
he was simply told to return to where he came from, and that Russia had no
longer an emperor, but an empress. Münnich then appealed to Peter not to
be deterred by such words, but to get into one of the boats, in which he
would accompany him, and to effect a landing. “They will not shoot you,”
the old field-marshal said, “this whole affair is a bold game some of the
high officers are playing, but the soldiers are kept in ignorance, and when
they meet their Emperor face to face they will throw down their arms.” But
when the women heard from Peter that he would undertake to effect a
landing on the coast, they burst into tears and filled the ship with loud
lamentations and cries, and the Czar’s mistress threw herself at his feet
imploring him not to expose his precious life to the bullets of the rebels, and
not to abandon her, helpless and heartbroken, to the revenge of his enemies.

Peter was only too glad to take her despair as a pretext to recede from
Münnich’s proposition.
Münnich was disgusted and wished the women were a thousand miles
off; but he made still another proposition. He wanted to turn the imperial
yacht toward Reval, where quite a number of Russian warships were
assembled. Peter was to take command of this fleet, sail to Pomerania, land
on Prussian soil, proceed as rapidly as possible to the large Russian army
concentrated there, and return at the head of that army to St. Petersburg,
which, as the old and bold field-marshal believed, would not even attempt
to make resistance. “Within sixty days,” said he to Peter, “your Empire will
be at your feet again, your wife will be at your mercy, and your whole
people will hail you as a conqueror and savior!” The plan was good and
would very likely have succeeded if it had been promptly acted upon. There
were nearly eighty thousand Russian soldiers—and they were the élite of
the Russian army—in Pomerania, and if Peter had been supported by them,
he could easily have quelled the rebellion and recovered the throne.
But Peter was not the master of his own decisions. He obediently bowed
to the will of his mistress and her lady friends, and they strongly protested
against this new plan of the old fighter and “war-horse,” who, they
declared, had no heart and did not know what love meant. Countess
Woronzow persuaded Peter that the proper thing for him to do was to return
to Oranienbaum or Peterhof and make his peace with the Empress, who
would be only too glad to make an arrangement with him satisfactory to
both. This suggestion corresponded too well with the pusillanimous and
vacillating character of Peter to be rejected by him. So the whole party
returned to Peterhof, and negotiations were at once opened with Catherine
tending towards a reconciliation of the husband and wife. Peter addressed a
letter to his wife in which he offered her the co-regency of the Empire,
assuring her at the same time that the occurrences of the past week should
be entirely forgotten and that love and harmony should in the future prevail
in the imperial household. The letter was haughtily rejected by the Empress;
no answer came to it but a verbal message that it was too late, and that no
further communication from him would be received except an act of entire
abdication. Peter thereupon surrendered unconditionally. He wrote a second
letter to his wife, in which he very humbly asked permission both for
himself and his mistress, Countess Woronzow, and a number of his
attendants to return to Holstein, where they would live quietly in retirement

from all public affairs. In order to carry out this wish, he asked for a
pension enabling him to live in becoming style, and in exchange for these
favors he recognized Catherine as Regent of the Empire during his son’s
minority.
Major-General Michael Ismailoff, one of Peter’s most intimate and most
trusted friends, was the bearer of this valuable document, which seemed to
satisfy Catherine, but was not equally satisfactory to Count Gregor Orloff,
who hoped to secure the hand of the Empress when Peter had been put out
of the way. Orloff’s secret design was to assassinate Peter and then take his
place by Catherine’s side. The Orloffs therefore took hold of General
Ismailoff, after he had handed the Czar’s letter to the Empress, and induced
him by supplications and brilliant promises to come over to their side, and
to assist them in making Peter a prisoner as the only means of restoring
peace and avoiding civil war. At first Ismailoff resisted their offers, but at
last he yielded. He returned to Peterhof and played the part of a traitor to
perfection. He told Peter that he had delivered his letter to the Empress, and
that she would, as a matter of course, grant the request he had made, but
that she was overcome with sorrow at the turn things had taken, that she
was perfectly willing to admit him to a co-regency and to be reconciled to
him, and that she was anxious to meet him in a private interview at
Oranienbaum in order to arrange matters to their mutual satisfaction.
Peter fell easily into the trap. He immediately accepted the invitation and
got ready to go to Oranienbaum. At first he proposed to go there under the
escort of his Holsteiners, but Ismailoff persuaded him to let them stay at
Peterhof, because it might look as though he distrusted the Empress and
might offend her. Peter therefore went to Oranienbaum, accompanied only
by Ismailoff, who encouraged him in his most extravagant expectations of a
brilliant career still in store for him. But there was a sad and sudden
awakening from this dream of greatness. On his arrival at Oranienbaum he
found the courtyard filled with forty or fifty kibitkas; and Ismailoff,
changing his conduct and tone suddenly, told him that he was a prisoner.
Peter, without arms and without friends, resigned himself to his fate almost
without a word of protest. He was led to one of the kibitkas, already
occupied by two strong officers armed to the teeth, and then all the kibitkas
started at once in as many different directions as there were roads leading to
Oranienbaum. This was done in order to deceive the spectators as to the
direction which Peter’s kibitka had taken. He was conveyed to Robzak, a

country villa near the village of Kraskazelo, a short distance from
Petersburg, but rather isolated and out of the way of the regular traffic.
Moreover precautions were taken to surround the villa with soldiers. Peter
was treated almost with cruelty in his solitary confinement. He was not
permitted to communicate with anybody, and his friends were kept in
profound ignorance as to his whereabouts. Many of them believed that he
was either at Peterhof or at Petersburg. He addressed a pitiable letter to the
Empress in which he humbly petitioned her to send him his negro servant,
with whom he liked to play, his favorite dog, his violin, his Bible and a few
novels. But the letter remained unanswered, and none of the things asked
for were sent.
In the forenoon of July seventeenth, Alexis Orloff, accompanied by
several officers, arrived at Robzak. They had an order from the Empress
admitting them to Peter’s presence. Orloff and an officer named Tepelof—
both men of herculean strength—entered the deposed Emperor’s room, and
found him in a despondent mood. They carried some delicacies,—among
them bottles of old Burgundy wine, which was poisoned. They announced
to Peter that his term of imprisonment would soon be ended, and that he
would then be permitted to return to Holstein, his native country. Peter was
overjoyed at this announcement, and invited the officers, whom he treated
as his guests, to take dinner with him; they readily consented and produced
the delicacies and the wine they had brought. At the dinner-table Orloff
presented a glass of Burgundy to Peter, who swallowed it rapidly; but the
wine was so strongly poisoned that he felt the effect almost instantly. He
jumped from his chair, screaming and howling with pain. “I am poisoned! I
am poisoned!” he cried, “give me milk, give me oil!” The two assassins
terrified with what they had done sent for milk and oil, which he swallowed
eagerly. But after a few minutes they took courage again and resolved to
complete their murderous work. Peter’s cries had attracted two or three
officers, who entered the room; but instead of protecting him, they assisted
the conspirators. All at once Alexis Orloff rushed upon Peter, who had
thrown himself upon his bed, writhing in pain, and tried to choke him. Peter
himself was a man of herculean strength, and defended himself with the
courage of despair. The iron grasp of Orloff’s fingers did not release his
throat, and the Czar’s face became as black as a negro’s. At last, by a
terrible blow, he freed himself from Orloff, but while he tried to take breath,
the four or five assassins rushed upon him all at the same time; they

dragged him from the bed, and when he fell into an arm-chair, they threw a
large napkin round his neck and strangled him until he was dead. He fell
from the chair to the floor and expired in a few minutes. A number of
officers had witnessed the terrible scene from a terrace which afforded a full
view of the prisoner’s room.
The admirers of Catherine have often denied her active participation in
the crime of Peter’s assassination; but they have never succeeded in making
the world believe in her innocence. In fact, how could she be innocent,
since the assassins were admitted to Peter’s presence upon a direct order
issued by her, with no other business for them to do than to kill him? And
then her conduct after the horrible crime had been perpetrated is sufficient
evidence of her guilt. She did not regret the murder, and she rewarded the
murderers. Even in the announcement of Peter’s sudden death she
manifested a brutality which defied decency and common-sense. In a few
words, without adding one word of sorrow at the death of one who, as she
asserted, was the father of her son, she announced to the Russian people and
to the foreign ambassadors at St. Petersburg that the dethroned Czar Peter
the Third, had suddenly died from the effects of a hæmorrhoidal colic, to
which he was subject, and which had caused a stroke of apoplexy. This cool
declaration was to account for the horrible appearance of Peter’s
countenance, which looked almost black even in death, and which could not
be concealed from the people. It had always been customary to exhibit to
the public the corpse of a deceased Czar and to place him on a catafalque
where the people could see him and pay their respect to him. This public
exhibition could not be avoided without immensely strengthening the
suspicion of foul play; and Catherine boldly underwent the ordeal. The
black hue of the countenance could not be changed, but Peter’s neck was
entirely covered up with a very high and stiff stock, which concealed the
finger-marks of his assassins. Among the spectators was the old field-
marshal, Prince Trubetzkoi, well known for his rudeness and sincerity. He
rapidly stepped up to the bier, where Peter lay in state, and exclaimed in a
loud tone of voice: “Why, why, Peter Fedorowitch, what ridiculous kind of
necktie have they bundled around your neck? You never wore such a thing
in your life; why should you wear it now when you are dead?” And he
began to open the stock, and would have exposed Peter’s throat to public
view, if the guards, in spite of the high rank of the Prince, had not forcibly
dragged him away.

Unfortunately for the memory of Catherine the Second the assassination
of her husband was not the only assassination caused by her usurpation of
the Russian throne. It will be remembered that Peter had repeatedly
threatened to disown, and consequently to exclude from the succession,
Paul, the son whom Catherine had borne to him, and whom he openly
branded as a bastard, and to this threat he added the declaration that he
would name as his successor the young ex-Emperor Ivan the Sixth, who had
been dethroned by the Empress Elizabeth, and who was still imprisoned at
Schlüsselburg. This threat was fatal to the poor young Prince, who during
his long seclusion had become half-idiotic and had lost the knowledge of
his identity. But nevertheless the fear that he might be used by her enemies
as a legitimate pretender, with better rights to the crown than her own,
haunted Catherine’s mind, and she did not rest until he had fallen a victim
to the assassin’s dagger.
Strict orders had been issued to the commandant of the fortress of
Schlüsselburg that on the first attempt to liberate Ivan he should be
immediately put to death. And then a new infamy was committed which
very likely sprang from Catherine’s own diabolical genius. There was a
young and poor lieutenant named Mirowitch, in the garrison of
Schlüsselburg who was infatuated with admiration for the Empress and
anxious to render her a service. He was approached by one of his superior
officers (probably an Orloff) and his attention was directed to Ivan. “If he
were out of the way,” he was told, “the Empress would never forget it, and
would reward the service in an imperial manner.” Mirowitch took the hint
and resolved to merit the Empress’s gratitude by assassinating Ivan. Under
some pretext he really came to the door of the room in which Ivan was kept
a prisoner. Two officers were on guard there, but when they heard
Mirowitch’s voice demanding admittance and threatening to break open the
door, they rushed upon Ivan and put him to death. Then they opened the
door, and finding Mirowitch before them, they showed him Ivan’s corpse
and arrested him. Mirowitch was put on trial. The crime he was charged
with was an attempt to abduct the imprisoned Ivan and to proclaim him
Emperor of Russia. Mirowitch did not defend himself. He only smiled. He
knew who stood behind him and would protect him from injury. He was
found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded. He laughed at the sentence and
never lost courage. With a smile he ascended the scaffold and looked
around, wondering why the imperial messenger with the pardon and the

reward was not coming. The priest approached him and prayed for him. He
listened with little attention, and still a smile hovered on his features. But
suddenly the executioner took hold of him, held him in his iron grasp, and
threw him down. It was the last moment and no messenger appeared yet;
and then only Mirowitch realized his terrible fate. With a scream of mad
rage he commenced wrestling with the executioner, and while uttering a cry
of execration against Catherine, his severed head rolled upon the scaffold.
The assassination of two czars—one of them her own husband—was the
bloody price which Catherine paid for the throne which she was to make
great and renowned by a long and glorious reign. How easily great crimes
are forgotten if committed by sovereigns of genius!

CHAPTER XVII

GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN

GUSTAVUS III.

CHAPTER XVII

ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN

(March 17, 1792)

O N the seventeenth of March, 1792, Gustavus the Third, King of
Sweden, was assassinated by Ankarström, a Swedish nobleman, and
this crime caused a sensation throughout Europe, although the horrors
of the French Revolution and the wholesale executions by the guillotine had
made the world familiar with murder and bloodshed. This assassination was
of a political character, and private revenge or other considerations had
nothing whatever to do with it. But in order to understand fully the causes
leading up to the tragedy, it will be necessary to refer to the condition of
public affairs in Sweden during the period preceding the reign of Gustavus.
The continuous and costly wars of Charles the Twelfth had left Sweden
in a terrible state of exhaustion and misery. A number of her most valuable
provinces had been taken by Russia, and the domestic affairs of the country,
its finances, industry and commerce were utterly ruined. Charles died
during his invasion of Norway; it would really be more proper to say “was
assassinated”; for, on the evening of the eleventh of December, 1718, while
leaning against a parapet and looking at the soldiers throwing up the
breastworks, he was struck down by a bullet, which could not have come
from the enemy, in front of the fortress of Frederickshall. In spite of the
very severe winter weather, Charles had insisted on laying siege to the
strong fortress, and he paid for his obstinacy with his life.
When the news of his death reached Sweden, the nobility took advantage
of it and of the unsettled question of the succession to the throne in order to
recover those privileges and rights which it had lost through the genius and
statesmanship of Charles the Eleventh, and which had not been restored to
it during the reign of Charles the Twelfth. The Reichsrath was immediately
reinstated in its old rights, and arrogated to itself the power of deciding the
succession according to its own will and advantage. It coolly passed by the
lawful heir, Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Charles the
Twelfth’s elder sister, and elected Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, who had
married Charles the Twelfth’s younger sister; not, however, without having
compelled the royal couple to renounce, both for themselves and for their

heirs, all absolute power, and also to make a solemn promise that the
Reichsrath should be reinstated in all its former rights and prerogatives,
which made that Assembly actually co-regent of the kingdom. The
Reichsrath was declared sovereign; it had seventeen members, and each
member had, in the decision of public questions, one vote, and the King
only two. It decided all questions of domestic and foreign policy arbitrarily,
and controlled not only the legislative, but also the executive action of the
government. The King was a mere figure-head, poorly salaried and of little
influence. But this degradation of the crown was only one feature of the
oligarchy established by the Reichsrath. It restored to the nobility all the
domains and landed estates which had been appropriated by the crown
during the preceding century, exempted them from taxation, conferred upon
them the exclusive right of holding all the higher offices in the army, navy
and civil service, and heaped all public burdens upon the lower classes of
the people. The King, shorn of all power, was utterly helpless to prevent
these wrongs. His timid protests were always met with a reminder that he
had been elected to the throne only after having promised to reinstate and
not to disturb the nobility in the enjoyment of their ancient rights. The
Reichsrath also concluded treaties of peace with the powers upon which
Charles the Twelfth had made war, and as the members negotiating these
treaties looked out much more for their own advantage than for that of their
country, Sweden was so badly crippled that it ceased being a great
European power. That honor passed from Sweden to two other countries
which up to that time had been considered Sweden’s inferiors in power and
influence,—Russia and Prussia.
It was not long before the Reichsrath, whose members sold themselves
to foreign rulers, was split up into different factions which fought bitterly
for supremacy. One of these factions favored France and was regularly
subsidized with French money, while the other faction was equally well
subsidized with Russian money and followed blindly the dictates of the
Czar and Czarina of Russia. The French faction was called “the party of the
hats,” and the Russian faction was known as “the party of the caps.” These
two factions fought each other most bitterly, each charging the other with
almost any crime committed against divine and human law; and both were
right in the charge, because both were equally guilty. At the beginning of
the war of the Austrian succession, France wanted to prevent Russia from
siding with Austria, and thought a war between Sweden and Russia would

be the right thing to accomplish that object. The French Ambassador at
Stockholm therefore ordered the “party of the hats” in the Reichsrath to
declare war upon Russia, and a resolution to that effect prevailed against the
violent and menacing protests of the “party of the caps.” In great haste a
Swedish army was recruited to take the field against the Russians in
Finland; but since all the money sent by the French government for the
proper equipment of that army had disappeared in the pockets of the
members of the Reichsrath, the army was so poorly equipped and its war-
material was of such inferior quality that it could not hold the field against
the well-armed and well-equipped Russians, and suffered defeat after defeat
at their hands. The “caps” were jubilant over this discomfiture and
humiliation of the “hats” and forced them into a treaty of peace with Russia,
which was disgraceful to Sweden, but which would have been even more
hurtful if the Russian Empress had not for personal reasons offered very
mild terms of peace. But one of these terms was that Adolphus Frederick of
Holstein-Gottorp, whose father had been so shamefully cheated out of the
Swedish succession in 1718, should be declared heir to the Swedish throne.
The Reichsrath cheerfully accepted this condition, made all other
concessions which the Russian Empress demanded, and ceded a part of
Finland to the Russian crown. Peace between the two countries was
restored by the treaty of Abo in 1743.
Conditions were not improved under the rule of the next King,—the said
Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, who ascended the throne in 1751.
The new King had married the younger sister of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, but he had so little influence on the direction of the public policy of
Sweden, both at home and abroad, that in the great European war which
Frederick had to wage against the other powers, Sweden took sides against
him by the dictation of the Reichsrath. In fact, the Reichsrath became more
aggressive and arrogant from year to year. It interfered in the education of
the royal princes. It presumed to attach the King’s signature to public
documents after he had refused twice to sign them. The “caps” made an
effort to strengthen the King’s authority by amending the constitution, but it
failed, and resulted in a complete victory for the “hats.” The “hats” had it all
their own way for a while. Under orders from the French government, and
also out of hatred and contempt for the King, they declared war on the King
of Prussia, and Sweden was, without any cause or provocation, drawn into

the terrible Seven Years’ War, which resulted in the victory of Frederick the
Great over all his enemies.
This disastrous result of the war caused the temporary overthrow of the
“hats.” But the Russian faction, as soon as they had got control of the
government, established a tyranny worse than that of their predecessors, so
that the King, provoked to the utmost, threatened to resign and appeal to the
people, unless a popular Diet should be called to establish the rights of the
crown on a firm and more dignified basis. Under the strong pressure of
public indignation the Diet was called; it restored to the crown part of the
rights and prerogatives annulled by the Reichsrath and dismissed a number
of those officials most hostile and objectionable to the King; but a
proposition of the young, ingenious and ambitious Crown Prince—to
change the constitution thoroughly, to reëstablish autocratic government in
Sweden in order to renew an era of glory and prosperity for the unfortunate
country—failed through the irresoluteness of the King. In 1771 the King
died, and the Crown Prince ascended the throne under the name of
Gustavus the Third.
The Crown Prince was at Paris, where he was paying the court a visit,
when his father died. His presence in the French capital and his
conversations with Choiseul, the able prime minister of Louis the Fifteenth,
had strengthened and confirmed his own personal views about the necessity
for a change in the government of Sweden and for a return to an absolutistic
régime. He formally renewed the secret alliance between Sweden and
France, receiving the promise of liberal subsidies from the French treasury
in order to enable him to carry out his plans. He took with him to Sweden a
large sum of money, which was, so to speak, the first instalment of the new
subsidy. Moreover, Choiseul gave the young King, on his return trip to
Sweden, an experienced and sagacious companion and adviser in the person
of Count de Vergennes, who nominally was to take charge of the French
embassy at Stockholm, but who in reality was to guide and assist Gustavus
in his attempt to overthrow the constitution of the monarchy and to restore
the absolute régime of former days. The personality of Gustavus the Third
was peculiarly fitted for the rôle which he was to play in the great drama of
a political revolution. He was young, enthusiastic, talented, eloquent, bold
and chivalrous; he was a poet of considerable ability, and his political ideal
was Louis the Fourteenth of France, whose majestic declaration: “The
state? I am the state!” struck a sympathetic chord in his heart. Choiseul had

found it an easy task to change the vague aspirations and dreams in the
young King’s mind into a fixed determination to put an end to the oligarchic
régime of the nobility and to reëstablish absolute monarchy in its pristine
glory. The art of dissimulation, of which he was a consummate master, and
which he had practised with great success as Crown Prince in order to
throw his instructors, who were mere tools of the Reichsrath, off their
guard, served him admirably in perfecting the initiatory steps, and finally,
when the proper time had come, for the successful execution of his coup
d’état.
When Gustavus arrived at Stockholm, he found the Swedish Reichstag
(the Diet) in session. It had recognized him, during his absence, as King,
but the members were busily engaged in the discussion of a new
constitution, which they insisted would be necessary for protecting the
rights of the nobility against the usurpation of the King. The rights of the
people and the prerogatives of the King were hardly thought of in this
discussion, and the people were disgusted with the whole proceeding. So
was the King, but he had shrewdness and self-control enough not to
interfere with the work of the Diet; and when, after a hard-fought battle of
eight months’ duration between the contending factions of the “hats” and
the “caps,” the new constitution was finally completed and submitted to
him for his signature, he readily signed it, without reading it, explaining his
extraordinary readiness with the words “I have confidence enough in the
patriotism and wisdom of the Reichstag to believe that they all have worked
for the welfare of the state, and that my own rights were safe in their
hands.”
In order to make this rather strange indifference on his part appear quite
natural, he had lived most of the time at his country-seat, at some distance
from Stockholm, surrounded by a few literary friends and writing comedies
and poems, without paying the least attention to the political work going on
at the capital. He came but rarely to Stockholm, but whenever he went, he
took good care to insinuate himself into the good graces of the people. His
natural eloquence and the fact that he was born in Sweden and spoke the
Swedish language correctly, as well as his pleasant and affable manners,
made him immensely popular with the common people, while at the same
time his friends lost no opportunity to incite the people, and also the
soldiery, against the nobility, whom they charged with having caused all the
miseries from which the State, and especially the rural population, were

suffering. Poor crops and great financial distress added to the popular
dissatisfaction, and the royalist party did not fail to attribute these public
calamities to the aristocracy’s injudicious administration; thus the people
were thoroughly aroused for the impending battle between King and
nobility.
In the Reichsrath the faction of the “caps” had succeeded in utterly
defeating the faction of the “hats,” and driving all their adherents out of the
public offices. The official slaughter and persecution of the “hats” was
carried on so recklessly and injudiciously by the “caps” that even the
Russian ambassador protested against their imprudence, which, he was
afraid, might lead to a revolution that would overthrow both factions and
place absolute power in the hands of the monarch. But the “caps,” in the
intoxication of their victory, were too blind to see the danger; moreover,
they felt absolutely safe because the King had sworn to obey and uphold the
constitution, and the constitution deprived him of all power of action.
Gustavus had so fully duped them that not even a suspicion of foul play
arose in their minds. With masterly dissimulation and with marvellous
strength of mind he waited in apparent indifference until the proper moment
for action had come. His friends, however, had been very busy. They had
won one hundred and fifty of the higher officers of the Stockholm garrison
over to the King’s cause, and this acquisition placed practically the entire
military power of the capital under his orders.
It had been arranged, however, that the first outbreak should not occur at
Stockholm, but in another city. In compliance with this programme Captain
Hellichius, a devoted friend of the King, and Commandant of the garrison
of Christianstadt, on the twelfth of August, 1772, issued a manifesto, in
which he fiercely denounced the pernicious administration of the
Reichsrath, and called upon the inhabitants of Sweden to shake off the
tyranny of the oligarchy which held both the King and the people in
bondage. It had also been arranged that Prince Charles, the King’s brother,
Commander of the troops in Scania, should immediately march, with the
army under his command, toward Christianstadt, ostensibly for the purpose
of suppressing the revolt, but really for the purpose of swelling the ranks of
the malcontents. When this news reached Stockholm, some of the members
of the Reichsrath suspected that the King was implicated, but he feigned
absolute ignorance of the matter, and deceived his enemies so well that they
left him alone. Prompt action on their part, in arresting and guarding the

person of the King, would very likely have quelled the revolt at the very
outset. But the King was so powerless that he preferred to wait for news
from Christianstadt announcing the success of the movement before
resorting to active measures which might have caused the failure of the
whole plan.
Only when the Reichsrath ordered the troops of the whole country to be
concentrated at the capital, and also ordered Prince Charles to turn over his
command to a general who was strictly in sympathy with the existing
condition of things, the King thought the time for him to act had come, and
he hesitated no longer. It was the nineteenth of August, 1772, and Gustavus
knew that that day was to decide not only the success or failure of his
intended coup d’état, but very likely also his life or death, his honor or
disgrace. In taking the offensive so promptly, the King showed great
personal bravery and courage, and made good his claim to be a God-given
leader of men. At an early hour he went to the Assembly Room, where the
Reichsrath was already in session. At a glance he saw that the prevailing
sentiment was hostile to him. No sooner had he taken his seat than one of
the members in a rather insolent tone asked him whether he had not
received a letter during the night from Christianstadt, and on receiving an
affirmative answer, demanded that the King should communicate the letter
to the Reichsrath. The King refused to deliver the letter, stating that it was
private, and expressed indignation at the disrespectful request. A general
murmur arose among the members, and voices were heard saying that it
might be advisable to arrest the King. He hurriedly arose from his seat, and
placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, as if ready to kill the first one who
should stand in his way, he passed through the seats of the Senators with
head erect and haughty mien.
None dared oppose him, and he proceeded directly to the armory, where
two regiments of the Royal Guard were drawn up in line under the
command of officers devoted to him. He addressed them in an eloquent
speech, promising to restore the kingdom to its previous proud position
among the nations and make the army again a source of honor to the
Swedes and of terror to its enemies, such as it had been in the great days of
Gustavus Adolphus. The officers and the men cheered him enthusiastically,
and declared they would follow him to death or wherever he would lead
them. Not only the soldiers in the city, but thousands of armed citizens
gathered around him shouting, “Down with the nobility! Down with the

Reichsrath! Long live the King!” He mounted his horse and at the head of
this enthusiastic army proceeded to the State House, where the Reichsrath
was still in session, devising means to bring the King to terms. The troops
were so placed as to make it impossible for the members of the Reichsrath
to leave the building. The King, flushed with the excitement of victory, with
his flashing sword drawn, and surrounded by a few of the most popular
officers and citizens, rode through the streets, harangued the people on the
public squares, and carried them away by his eloquence and chivalrous
appearance. It was a personal triumph, which he relished to its fullest
extent, and which gave assurance of the complete success of his plans for
constitutional reform.
The revolution which Gustavus the Third had inaugurated so boldly at
Stockholm proved a complete success. The common people flocked to him
in great numbers; the women and girls offered him flowers and bouquets,
and threw kisses to him; the men knelt down and, with tears of joy in their
eyes, kissed his boots or his hands, blessing him as the savior of his country,
and calling the blessings of Heaven down upon his head. Surrounded by
thousands of enthusiastic adherents, he rode to the City Hall, where the
municipal authorities were already assembled, and received from them the
assurance of their unconditional allegiance and loyalty. The same ovation
and enthusiastic demonstration greeted him at the palace of the Board of
Admiralty. Not a shot was fired, not a sword was drawn, not a drop of
human blood was shed to overcome opposition to the royal plan of
changing the government and to end the rule of the nobility. Never before in
history had a revolution been so quickly, so successfully accomplished;
never before had a government in the full possession of all public powers
been so suddenly and so successfully overthrown as in this instance. The
coup d’état was a masterstroke of public policy which gave Gustavus a
wonderful prestige throughout Europe. Even the English and Russian
ambassadors, who were most interested in the contemplated change of
government, and who might have raised obstacles to the King’s autocratic
action, were disarmed entirely by a courteous invitation to the royal palace,
where they were entertained in the most pleasant manner until the whole
excitement was over and Gustavus the Third in complete possession of the
government. On the day following, the war department and all the high
state officials made haste to swear obedience to the King. The citizens of
the capital were called together on the public square and the King addressed

them again, this time in the full splendor of triumphant royalty and
surrounded by all the high dignitaries of the kingdom, telling them, amid
their enthusiastic shouts and applause, that he considered it his greatest
glory to be the first citizen of a free nation. He then took out of his pocket
the new constitution prepared by him and read it to them in his clear and
melodious voice. Renewed shouts and boisterous applause rewarded him
when he had concluded.
But the part most difficult for him remained to be done,—to get the
assent of the States. They were convened for the next day, August 21, and in
ordering them to appear, the King had added that any member not appearing
in his seat on that day would be treated as a traitor. During the night
preceding the meeting of the States a strong detachment of soldiers and
artillery was placed in a position commanding the State House. When the
King appeared and sat down on the throne his eye looked upon a hall well
filled. The most profound silence reigned when he got up and read the
constitution in a clear and firm voice. He supplemented the reading with a
very eloquent and patriotic speech, in which he referred to the degradation
and contempt to which the monarchy had been reduced by the incapacity,
venality and corruption of the government and of the nobility. He painted
this government and the disgrace it had brought upon Sweden in the darkest
colors, and then added, in a voice trembling with emotion: “If there is any
one among you who thinks that I am misstating facts or exaggerating the
disgraceful condition of our public affairs, I challenge him to contradict me,
and to state here in the presence of all in what respect I have misrepresented
the administration of the Reichsrath. I vow to God Almighty that I shall
devote all my energy to the task of restoring the welfare of my beloved
country and the happiness of its inhabitants, and I know of no other way to
accomplish these results than by the change of the constitution as I have
read it to you.” Then turning to the members individually, he asked whether
they were in favor of sanctioning the proposed change. They all answered
in the affirmative and swore the oath of allegiance. Thereupon the King
drew from his pocket a hymn-book, and removing the crown from his head,
he began to sing the “Te Deum Laudamus,” in which they all joined him.
Gustavus had won again in the most perilous stage of the dangerous game
he was playing.
The new constitution which had been adopted reinstated the King in all
those rights and prerogatives which his ancestors had possessed up to the

death of Charles the Twelfth. He was the commander of the army and navy;
the revenues of the state were to be under his exclusive care; he disposed
arbitrarily of all offices, civil and military; he alone had the right to
negotiate treaties and alliances; he had unlimited power to conduct a war of
defence, but for foreign wars he needed the consent of the States; he alone
had the right to convene the Congress, and the Congress was not to transact
other business than was submitted to it by the crown; the Reichsrath was
subordinate to the King; it became merely an advisory board, and its
decisions were not of binding force. It was a constitution which the
Emperor of Russia might have subscribed to.
While Gustavus had, by his boldness and eloquence, secured the success
of his coup d’état at Stockholm, his brothers travelled through the different
provinces, promulgated the new constitution, and were everywhere
welcomed enthusiastically. Gustavus himself made during the winter
months of the same year the traditional tour of the old kings through the
kingdom even to the farthest borders of Norway—the old riksgata—and
exactly in the same manner as the old kings had done—on horseback.
Wherever he went he was only escorted by the inhabitants of the
neighborhood, whom he delighted by his affability, his nobility of soul and
his eloquence. He seemed to have no enemies and needed no soldiers to
protect him. These were the golden days of his reign. The two parties which
had so bitterly fought for supremacy had been wiped out by his victory. The
“hats” and the “caps” were heard of no more, and Sweden seemed to be in a
fair way of entering upon a new era of greatness and prosperity.
Tempting as the task may be for the historian to go into the details of the
life of the extraordinary man who, endowed by nature with talents of a high
order, rose to the heights of human glory and then abruptly fell by reason of
his own folly, we must forego this pleasure and confine ourselves to a rapid
sketch of the events which led Gustavus the Third slowly to the terrible
tragedy of his assassination. It would seem almost incredible that a prince
so popular and so idolized by his people as Gustavus was on the morning of
his coup d’état could in the course of a few years so utterly lose the
confidence of his people and forfeit their love as to make the execution of
the conspiracy against his life even possible. But it must be admitted that
this loss of popularity and esteem was, in part at least, caused by grave
faults of the King, which, with reckless audacity, he committed again and
again, while the general loss of royal prestige and authority throughout

Europe as a consequence of the French Revolution of 1789 had also a great
deal to do with it.
During the first years after the coup d’état general satisfaction seemed to
prevail throughout the country; the common people felt relieved of many
unnecessary burdens, while the nobility, who had been so utterly routed,
kept silent in the consciousness of their weakness. Many measures of
reform, calculated to promote the national prosperity, were initiated by the
personal agency of the King. The currency, which was in a deplorable
condition, was put on a sounder basis; many benevolent institutions—
hospitals, orphan asylums, poor-houses, etc.—were established; the public
highways were improved; large canals connecting with the seacoast the
mines of the kingdom (which were among its most important industries)
were constructed; trade and industry were assisted according to the
prevailing theories of those times; free trade, both at home and with foreign
countries, was established; privileges and franchises which oppressed the
people at large for the benefit of the few were abolished; both the criminal
and the civil code of laws were revised and improved; strict impartiality in
the application of laws and in the punishment of criminals was insisted
upon; the torture, which up to that time had played an important part in
criminal trials, was done away with, and a more humane treatment of
convicts was introduced in prisons and penitentiaries. Gustavus was in this
respect a disciple of Montesquieu and Beccaria. His great ambition was also
to renew the ties of friendship and brotherhood between Finland and
Sweden, and in order to do so, he personally visited Finland, and
established there a number of valuable reforms which are gratefully
remembered by that unfortunate country to the present day.
But highly commendable and worthy of admiration as the young King’s
action was in these and many other respects, the defects of his character
soon appeared, and gave his enemies an opportunity to undermine his work
and his popularity. He lacked steadiness and firmness of purpose. He
wanted to see and enjoy immediately the beneficent results of his reforms.
Many of them were therefore abandoned before they had had time for full
development; many very costly undertakings were discontinued because the
King had either changed his mind or was tired of waiting. And then, he was
extravagant in his personal expenses and in arranging grand court
entertainments fashioned on the brilliant festivities of the French court at
Versailles, which remained his model in all matters of court etiquette and

royal display. Like Frederick the Great, to whom Gustavus the Third bears
in many respects a striking resemblance, although he lacked the great
Prussian’s military genius and wise frugality, he was fond of French
literature and art, and made strenuous efforts to give them a supreme place
in the educational institutions of the kingdom. The national genius of the
Swedish people and language were consequently relegated to a secondary
place. To make up for the unpopularity and protests which these efforts
caused among the people, he devised a national costume for all the
inhabitants; but in this attempt he failed entirely. The costume he had
devised was copied from an ancient Spanish one, and utterly unsuitable for
a northern country of short summers and severe winters. The King’s
ordinances introducing these Spanish garments were openly disobeyed and
laughed at. People began to look on him as a dreamer, and lost their respect
for him.
But that which more than anything else hurt his popularity was the way
in which he treated the liquor question. The mass of the Swedish people
were strongly addicted to the excessive use of intoxicating liquors. The vice
had assumed such proportions that measures of reform were urgently called
for. But, with the usual impracticability of temperance reformers, Gustavus
managed the matter so unskilfully that, instead of correcting the abuse, he
made himself highly unpopular and aroused the most stubborn resistance to
his reform policy. He had issued an edict prohibiting the manufacture and
use of distilled liquors, but he found it impossible to enforce the edict: the
peasants and farmers, who had been distilling their own whiskey, simply
ignored it, while in a number of cities where distilleries were maintained for
the manufacture and sale of the liquor, regular battles were fought between
the police trying to suppress them, and the inhabitants enraged at the
attempt to close them. Gustavus then repealed the edict and introduced a
new system, which he hoped would at once diminish the vice of
drunkenness and replenish his treasury, which was in a chronic state of
exhaustion. He made the right of manufacturing and selling alcoholic
liquors a crown monopoly, and established agencies for the sale of these
liquors in all large and small cities and towns of the kingdom. But the
peasants were not satisfied with this arrangement either. The whiskey they
were to buy at the agencies was much dearer than their own home-distilled
beverage; moreover, the towns and cities, at that time only thinly scattered
over Sweden, were often so remote from the farms, and the roads leading to

them were often in such an impassable condition that the purchase of
whiskey was a difficult matter for the rural population. The clandestine and
illicit manufacture of the beverage was carried on therefore as it had been
before. But the very name of the King became odious to the people. They
contemptuously called him “a crank, a visionary and a poet.” Writing
poetry, in which Gustavus excelled, was in their eyes a symptom of folly
and madness.
The hostility of the nobles and their rebellious spirit, which had been
overawed and silenced for some years by the great personal popularity of
the King, reappeared and gained ground with the disaffection of the people,
and especially of the rural population. For a King like Gustavus the Third,
ambitious and high-spirited, military glory had a tempting attraction, and he
had commenced soon after his successful coup d’état to prepare for winning
it. The army was in a really deplorable condition at the time of his accession
to the throne, being entirely without artillery and deficient in equipment.
Gustavus lost no time in remedying these defects. He modelled the Swedish
army after the Prussian army as reorganized by Frederick the Great, which
was then considered the finest and best equipped in Europe, and within two
years he had made it, with its splendid personnel and its modern material, a
formidable machine of war, which, under the leadership of a military
genius, might have renewed the great days of Gustavus Adolphus or
Charles the Twelfth. But it was the ambition of Gustavus the Third to
command the army himself, and he was not a military genius. He declared
war upon Russia, with the intention of recovering the lost provinces of
Finland, and proceeded to Finland himself in order to take command of the
invading army.
It was there that the first misfortune overtook him. After a few
engagements,—rather skirmishes than battles,—in which the Swedes were
victorious, the King decided to invest or take by assault the small fortress of
Frederickshamm. It would have been better for him if he had marched
directly upon Petersburg, which was not in a condition to resist an
immediate attack of a superior army. If he had done so, very likely the
Esths, first cousins of the Finns, and anxious to shake off the yoke of
Russia, would have joined him and would have placed him in possession of
the Russian borderland; but Gustavus frittered away the time and by his
inactivity enabled the commanders of his own regiments (generally
appointed from the ranks of the high nobility) to organize a conspiracy

against him and virtually drive him from the field. Very likely bribed with
Russian gold, they jointly issued a manifesto that Gustavus had violated the
constitution of Sweden by declaring war upon Russia without the consent of
the Reichsrath, and they were therefore not bound to obey him in this
criminal undertaking. They also used their influence on the other officers
and on the soldiers of their regiments, and made them rebellious against the
King’s commands. In vain Gustavus implored them not to abandon him and
the cause of their country; but they were deaf to his prayers and to his
threats, and he left the army as a humiliated and disgraced commander.
Upon his return to Stockholm, he made a journey through Dalecarlia, the
province in which his ancestor Gustavus Vasa had found the followers who
raised him to the throne; he used his extraordinary eloquence so
successfully that the people again rallied round him. They swore to stand by
him in his struggle against Russia, and not to lay down arms until a peace
honorable to Sweden could be secured. Gustavus then convened the
Reichstag for the twenty-sixth of January, 1789, in order to get authority to
continue the war and restore his kingly prerogatives, which by the revolt of
the army had been so signally impaired. The nobility at last openly threw
off the mask; but they were overpowered by the three other estates, who
would rather strengthen the King’s authority than return to their former
condition of bondage under the régime of a corrupt and arrogant nobility.
The Reichstag therefore fully sustained the King’s action, taking the view
that the offensive war against Russia was really a war of defence.
Sufficient appropriations were made to carry on the war to a successful
end, and thirty prominent members of the nobility were indicted for treason
and lèse majesté, and punished severely. At the same time an important
revision of the constitution was made in the interest of the King, and, in
spite of the violent protests of the nobility, his prerogatives were largely
extended. The Reichsrath was entirely abolished, and the King authorized to
declare war on other countries whenever war was deemed advisable to
protect the interests of the country. He also obtained the absolute right to
appoint all military and civil officers, while formerly many of these
appointments had to be confirmed by the Reichsrath. After having thus
secured the rights of the crown at home, Gustavus departed again for the
seat of war, with new regiments and new commanders. Russia had also
strengthened herself, and what might at first have been an easy undertaking,
and might have led to a brilliant success, was now a very serious one, and

one of very uncertain chances of success. It soon became evident that the
results of the war would depend on the naval supremacy of either of the two
powers, and all efforts were therefore directed on both sides toward
strengthening their navies.
Several big naval battles were fought, and in all of them the King, who
personally commanded his fleet, performed wonders of valor. The last of
these battles was that of Swenskasund on the ninth of July, 1790; and the
King, who fought with the bravery of despair because the fleet of the
Russians was considerably superior in numbers to his own, won a brilliant
victory. No less than fifty-nine Russian warships, carrying altogether six
hundred and forty-three guns, fell into the hands of the Swedes. But even
more than this great material success was the prestige which Gustavus
derived from the victory. He was tired of the war, and he could now as a
victorious hero offer terms of peace, honorable and advantageous to his
country, instead of humbly accepting terms from Russia. On the fourteenth
of August, 1790, a treaty of peace was concluded by which, while Sweden
did not receive any territorial indemnity, she secured rights and trade
privileges in the Baltic Sea which Russia until then had denied her. The
honors of the war were therefore on Sweden’s side, and the King
personally, for his unquestioned heroism, was entitled to a liberal share of
them.
On the other hand, the results of the war were disastrous for the country,
and the King was by his enemies, the nobility (who were more bitterly
opposed to him than ever), held responsible for these disasters. The heavy
expenditures for the war had necessitated extraordinary tax levies which
were burdensome to the whole people, rich as well as poor, and these could
not be abolished immediately on the termination of the war. The brilliant
festivities, balls and entertainments, which greeted the King on his return to
his capital, could not fully conceal the great distress and poverty of the
people; but with that levity which was a conspicuous feature of his
character and which gave him such a mental resemblance to Marie
Antoinette, whom he greatly admired, he tried to forget in the intoxication
of incessant amusements and pleasures the personal privations he had
suffered during the war and the sorrows and wants of the nation. That this
conduct, which he did not care to conceal from the public eye, irritated the
people and filled many of those who had been his admirers with disgust and
hatred may easily be imagined. But that by which he gave the greatest blow

to his popularity was his active and over-zealous sympathy in the
misfortunes of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and his
efforts to release them from captivity and save them from death.
Gustavus showed his lack of political sagacity in estranging the very
element upon which he had founded his autocratic power,—the great mass
of the people. Their devotion had made it possible for him, not only to
continue the war against Russia, but also to be more than a mere figure-
head in the government of his kingdom. The support of the nobility he had
lost beyond redemption. They hated him, and only hoped for opportunities
to humiliate him. All efforts on his part to reconcile them failed. His true
policy should have been to ingratiate himself still more with the people,
relieve their burdens, make the laws and institutions more liberal, and carry
out the promise he had made to them, that he wanted to be clothed with
supreme power in order to make the nation more happy and the country
more prosperous. But his character did not permit him to pursue this policy
dictated by common-sense. The French Revolution had broken out, and the
misfortunes of the French King and Queen enlisted his profound sympathy.
He watched the progress of the revolution with eager interest, and when it
became apparent that Louis could not master it, he formed the adventurous
and fantastic plan of placing himself at the head of a large army, composed
of contingents of all the European powers, and restoring absolute monarchy
in France, as he had restored absolute monarchy in Sweden. In order to
realize that dream which corresponded so well to his visionary, chivalrous,
poetical temperament, he opened negotiations with Russia, Prussia, Austria,
and especially with the French émigrés. These men had assembled in
Germany and other countries waiting for an opportunity to return to France
under the standards of some friendly power coming to the rescue of Louis
the Sixteenth and monarchical institutions. Gustavus had tried his best to
assist the French King in his flight from Paris. It was a Swedish carriage,
with Swedish attendants, which was to convey Louis the Sixteenth and the
royal family beyond the borders of France, and which was so abruptly
stopped at Varennes. After this attempt at flight had failed, Gustavus saw no
other means of saving the monarchy—not only in France, but throughout
Europe—than by making war upon the Jacobins, stamping out the
Revolution in the blood of its adherents, and seating Louis the Sixteenth in
the full glory of absolutism once more on the throne. The execution of this

plan, he imagined, would immortalize him, and would make him in effect
the dictator of Europe.
The Reichstag of Gefle, which was opened January 25, 1792, had
already greatly disappointed and incensed him, because it had unanimously
rejected his demand for an appropriation of ten million dollars which he
needed for his new undertaking. The utter disregard of his wishes and the
contempt with which his urgent appeals were ignored by the lower order,
which had so firmly stood by him in the Reichstag of 1789, showed also his
great unpopularity; and the nobility thought that the time had come for
striking a bold blow not only to get rid of him, but also to reinstate
themselves in power. As we have seen, the moment was very opportune.
The public debt was enormous; the distress was general; vague rumors of
another war, not against an enemy, but against the rights of the people, were
in the air. Then the conspiracy was formed. There were five principal
conspirators; and they all belonged to the highest nobility. While some of
them had personal grievances, not one of them would have thought of
raising his hand against the King, unless a much more important object had
been in view. These five were Ankarström, who had already been among
the rebellious officers in Finland, Count Ribbing, Count Horn, Count
Liliehorn and Baron Pechlin.
The mainspring of the conspiracy was the hope of overthrowing the
autocratic system of government, and reinstating the nobility in all its
prerogatives. At first the conspirators did not want to resort to murder, but
they hoped to be able to abduct the King, compel him to resign, and then to
extort from his successor the recognition of those rights and privileges of
which Gustavus the Third had deprived them. Having made two or three
attempts in that direction, they changed their plan, and concluded that the
easiest and safest way to accomplish their aim would be to assassinate the
King.
Ankarström volunteered to shoot the King at one of the popular masked
balls, which he was in the habit of visiting, and at which he freely mingled
with the other visitors. Twice he failed to recognize Gustavus. But the last
masquerade of the season at Stockholm was to come off on Friday, March
16, 1792, and Ankarström resolved to make a last effort to strike his victim.
And he did, although Gustavus was warned that very evening by one of the
conspirators (Count Liliehorn) that it would be dangerous for him to go to
the ball, for an attempt would be made on his life. The ball was to come off

at the Grand Opera House, and an immense crowd was expected. Four of
the conspirators—Pechlin, Ankarström, Horn and Ribbing—took supper
together, and afterwards went to the theatre. They wore black dominoes of a
uniform pattern, to be able to recognize each other easily. On the other
hand, Gustavus had taken supper with one of his closest friends, Count
Essen, in a little private room arranged for his use at the theatre itself.
During this supper, at ten o’clock in the evening, an anonymous letter was
handed to him, written in French and with a lead pencil. The author
revealed the whole plot, which, as he asserted, he had learned only during
the afternoon. He implored the King not to go to the ball, and to change his
conduct and his policy if he wanted to escape assassination. He confessed
having opposed the King’s autocratic measures and his coup d’état, which
he considered illegal and unconstitutional. But, being a man of honor, as he
said, the very idea of murder was horrid to him, and he therefore again
implored the King to keep away from the ball. This note came from Count
Liliehorn. Gustavus read it twice very attentively; but he did not say a word
about its contents. He quietly completed his supper and then, accompanied
by Count Essen, he proceeded to his box, where he was plainly to be seen
by all. It was then only that he showed the note to his companion, who also
implored him not to go on the floor among the dancers. Gustavus said he
would hereafter put on a coat of mail before going to such places of
amusement, but he insisted on going on the floor. They thereupon left the
box, put on light dominoes and descended to the floor, which was crowded
with a throng of brilliant, gay and grotesque masks.
The King had taken Essen’s arm, and while passing through the stage
scenery said to him: “Now let us see whether they’ll dare attack me!”
Although he wore a face-mask, the dancers whispered to each other: “There
is the King!” Gustavus made the tour of the ball-room without stopping;
then he stepped into the green-room in order to rest a moment; but on
leaving, he found himself surrounded by a group of black dominoes, one of
whom (it was Count Horn) laid his hand on the King’s shoulder, saying:
“Good-evening, my beautiful masquerader!” These words were the signal.
At the same moment Ankarström fired a shot from his pistol, which had
been wrapped up in raw wool in order to weaken the detonation, and the
shot was heard by but a few persons. Gustavus exclaimed in a loud voice: “I
am wounded! Arrest the assassin!” At the same time loud cries: “Fire! Fire!
Leave the hall!” resounded from different parts of the building, and a great

confusion followed. In the panic there was a general rush toward the doors,
and all the conspirators would have escaped, but for the presence of mind of
Count Armfeld, who ordered the doors to be closed, and assuring the
tumultuous crowd that there was no fire, but that a great crime had been
committed, ordered all the dancers and visitors to take off their masks. The
conspirators nevertheless managed to escape immediate discovery by their
very audacity, although they attracted attention and suspicion. As he passed
through the door, Ankarström with a haughty smile said to the officer: “I
hope you do not suspect me?” “On the contrary,” replied the officer, “I am
sure you are the assassin!” but before he could stop him, Ankarström had
passed out. He was, however, arrested the next morning, and also Liliehorn,
who had sent the anonymous note to the King. Counts Horn and Ribbing
were arrested a few days later, and Baron Pechlin some time afterwards.
Gustavus the Third was the only one who had kept his presence of mind
during the tremendous confusion. Essen, covered with the King’s blood,
had rather carried than conducted him first to one of the private boxes and
thence to a small adjoining parlor with a sofa, where he could lie down. The
King was the one who directed what measures were to be taken in the grave
situation. He ordered the gates of the city to be closed and the Duke of
Sodermanland to be sent for. As soon as the surgeons had applied the
necessary bandages, he was conveyed to the royal palace, and issued, with
perfect self-command, orders for the appointment of those officials who
during his illness should conduct the affairs of the kingdom. The King
himself ascribed the assault to the influence of the Jacobins of Paris, and the
murderers eagerly circulated this rumor, in order to mislead public opinion.
However, after Ankarström had been arrested and made a confession, there
could no longer be any doubt as to the motives which were at the bottom of
the conspiracy. Public opinion took the cue immediately.
From the very moment of the assassination the people of Stockholm
seemed to be delirious with grief. During the thirteen days of his agony all
the King’s mistakes and faults, which quite recently had been magnified
into crimes and atrocities, were forgotten; there was but one voice of
sympathy and affection for him and of condemnation for his assassins. All
the good and chivalrous qualities of Gustavus reappeared during the illness
preceding his death. When the public indignation threatened the families of
the conspirators, he immediately began to plead eloquently for them and
wished them to be protected. When delegations of the municipalities of

Stockholm and other cities were admitted to his presence to assure him of
the unfaltering loyalty of their cities to him and the royal family, he shed
tears of gratitude, and told them that such proofs of loyalty were not too
dearly purchased at the price of a serious and possibly fatal wound. When
old Count Brahe, one of the leaders of the opposition in the Reichstag, knelt
down at his bedside and swore to him that he was a stranger to the
conspiracy and condemned it with horror, Gustavus raised him to his feet
and embraced him, weak as he was, and told him with tearful eyes that he
blessed his wound, because it had reconciled him with a friend so valued
and noble-hearted. When his brother showed him a list of all those who had
been ferreted out as accessories to the crime, he refused to look at it, and
implored his brother to destroy it so that no further bloodshed might result.
When some one in his presence swore bloody vengeance on the
conspirators, he interfered in their behalf, adding: “If Ankarström is to die,
then let there be mercy at least for the others! One victim is enough!” At
first it looked as though he would get well. His conversation, fluent and
logical, at times even brilliant and eloquent, was taken as proof that his
vitality had not been exhausted, and that his excellent constitution would
carry him safely through this terrible ordeal. But late on the twelfth day
after the assault, he grew worse, and began to sink rapidly. The change
came so suddenly that even the physicians were surprised, and suspected
foul play. But nothing has ever come to light to give confirmation to that
suspicion.
Thus ended, most sadly and prematurely, one of the most brilliant
careers of the eighteenth century,—that of a man of splendid attainments,
who lacked perhaps depth, and certainly application, to become one of the
greatest men of his age and century; a man of noble, chivalrous character,
who had placed his ideals of human greatness unfortunately in the splendid
and brilliant outside of things instead of their solid, substantial and
imperishable worth.

CHAPTER XVIII

JEAN PAUL MARAT

JEAN PAUL MARAT

CHAPTER XVIII

ASSASSINATION OF JEAN PAUL MARAT

(July 13, 1793)

I N the letter of farewell which Charlotte Corday, from her prison cell as a
doomed murderess, addressed to her father, she used the phrase (the
French words are a well-known verse from a famous tragedy):
“ ’Tis not the scaffold, but the crime, that brings disgrace”;

for she still adhered to the belief that in killing Marat she had not
committed a crime, but an act of patriotic devotion for which posterity
would honor her, and history would place her name among the benefactors
of mankind. In this belief she was more than half right, for in the long list of
political crimes and assassinations there is not one which has been so
willingly condoned by the world, so eloquently defended by historians, so
enthusiastically immortalized by poets, and so leniently criticised even by
moralists as that of Charlotte Corday. In her defence the law of heredity has
been invoked, for it has been maintained that Charlotte Corday, who was a
great-grandniece of the great Corneille, had inherited those sublime
patriotic and republican sentiments which the great tragic poet so often and
so eloquently expresses in his dramatic poems. In fact everything has been
done to surround her crime with the halo of martyrdom, and to secure for
her the glory of a national heroine.
It was in the middle of the year 1793. The French Revolution had
reached that turning-point when the Revolutionists had almost exhausted
their fury against the Royalists, and engaged in factional fights among
themselves, always ending in the execution of the members of the
vanquished party. The National Assembly—transformed into the National
Convention—was under the absolute control of the Jacobins, and Marat,
Danton and Robespierre were the absolute rulers of Paris and consequently
of France. The King had been guillotined, the Queen and the other members
of the royal family were imprisoned, and their execution was only a
question of time. An insane craving for blood seemed to have taken
possession of the men who were guiding the destinies of France. Danton, by
far the most gifted of these Jacobins, had forever sullied his name as the

author of the “September Massacres”; but far more odious was Marat, “the
friend of the people,” the blood-thirsty demon of the Revolution, who quite
seriously demanded, in the paper of which he was the editor and publisher,
that two hundred thousand persons should be guillotined to purify the
aristocratic atmosphere of France.
The powerful party of the Girondists, who were distinguished by a
certain degree of moderation and had been a sort of counterpoise in the
Convention to the Jacobins, had not only been defeated, but had been
actually driven out of the Convention and been branded as traitors and
enemies to the Republic. With Marat, Robespierre and Danton in the
absolute and unrestrained possession of power, the destruction and
execution of the Girondists was therefore only a question of time,—of
months, weeks, perhaps only of days,—and most of them fled from Paris,
seeking refuge in those parts of France which were known to be strongly
attached to the moderate views of the defeated party. Normandy was one of
these provinces, and in its ancient towns and villages quite a number of the
proscribed leaders of the Girondist party—Buzot, Pétion, Barbaroux,
Louvet and others—appeared with the outspoken intention of arousing the
population and inducing them to march against Paris. There had been great
excitement before their arrival. The enemies of the Terrorists were in a large
majority, and had been active in organizing, equipping, and drilling an
army, and General Wimpfen, the commandant at Cherbourg, was bold and
imprudent enough to announce that he would march upon Paris with an
army of sixty thousand men.
At that time there lived at Caen in Normandy a young girl of noble
descent, very beautiful and ingenious, but poor. Her name was Charlotte
Corday, or rather Marie Anna Charlotte Corday; she lived at Caen in the
house of her aunt, Madame de Bretteville. Charlotte was the daughter of
Monsieur de Corday d’Armans, and a great-grandniece of Pierre Corneille,
the greatest of the tragic poets of France. The statement that she was the
great-granddaughter of the poet is erroneous. She was the great-
granddaughter of Marie Corneille, the only sister of Pierre Corneille, whose
daughter married Adrian Corday, Baron of Cauvigny. This lineage makes
the claim of heredity for Charlotte’s sublime character, which is so often
insisted on, rather fanciful, especially since no other members of the great
poet’s family have manifested these characteristics. Charlotte had a sister
and two brothers, who had left their father’s house after he married his

second wife. Her two brothers went to Germany to take service in the army
of the Prince of Condé in his campaign against the French Revolutionists.
Charlotte had been placed in a convent at Caen when only twelve years
of age, and being naturally contemplative, the retirement and silence of the
convent made her even more so. She abandoned herself entirely to those
vague dreams and exaltations which so often fill the minds and souls of
young girls on the threshold of womanhood. Especially the proud, exalted,
grandiose heroines, whom her great-granduncle had immortalized in his
tragedies, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Cid, made a profound impression
upon her, and she learned the most beautiful passages by heart. Her very
education seemed to prepare her for the great historic rôle which she was to
play some ten or twelve years later. At the age of seventeen or eighteen she
left the convent and was kindly received in the house of Madame de
Bretteville. Her mind was filled with the exalted sentiments of Corneille
and Plutarch, whom she read and reread with great delight. Her soul was
restless at the sight of the increasing agitation against the corruption of the
aristocratic classes and of the profound misery and degradation of the poor.
The house of Madame de Bretteville was one of those sombre, sad-looking,
narrow residences which are still found occasionally in the silent and sleepy
streets of old Norman towns, and well adapted to the stern and dreamy
character of Charlotte. In the rear of the house there was a garden,
surrounded by high walls, and this garden became the favorite spot of
Charlotte in her readings and studies. Her extraordinary beauty, which
consisted as much in the classical cast of her features, her dazzling
complexion, her magnificent eyes, as in the intellectual expression of her
countenance and her queenlike bearing, had fully unfolded itself in the
quietude of her home.
Those who have found in books the greatest joys and pleasures of their
lives know what an immense enthusiasm, what an ardent and insatiable
curiosity fills the soul when circumstances permit them to explore the vast
field of human thought and inspiration and to dive into its treasury. Madame
de Bretteville’s library was well filled with translations of the great classics
of Greece and Rome, and also with the works of Voltaire, Rousseau,
Montesquieu and other modern writers. These became the favorite study of
Charlotte. One of her greatest favorites was Raynal, whose famous History
of the two Indies had just appeared and filled Europe with admiration. Very
likely that which appealed so strongly to Charlotte’s heart was the sympathy

which the author felt for the oppressed races, and especially for the black
slaves. With untiring zeal and passion she devoured everything in her aunt’s
library,—novels, history, philosophy,—and these studies finally led her to
politics, which engaged at that time the minds of the foremost writers of
France and became the favorite subject of public and private discussion. In
this way two parallel currents of ideas had formed themselves in Charlotte’s
mind,—on the one hand, a powerful desire for greater liberty and the
elevation of the oppressed and degraded; on the other hand, a profound
admiration for those who devote and sacrifice themselves to the great cause
of humanity, and a vague but ardent desire to adorn her name with the halo
of heroism and immortality. Left entirely to the instincts and aspirations of
her own nature, the young royalist (for her entire family was strictly
royalistic) had become a republican, but a republican in the sense of
Plutarch and Tacitus, nourished by the sentiments of Corneille and
Rousseau. Nothing in her appearance indicated her enthusiastic and soul-
devouring ambition to make herself the deliverer of her country from the
terrible calamities which had recently befallen it. Her political studies had
filled her, republican though she was, with extreme disgust and hatred for
the Terrorists, and especially for Marat, who seemed to be their inspiring
genius. This was the general situation and also the personal frame of mind
of Charlotte Corday at the time the Girondists who had escaped from Paris
came to Caen to organize armed resistance to the terrorism of the
“Mountain.”
Charlotte Corday had zealously followed the reports in the newspapers
she could get hold of concerning the situation at Paris, and her heart beat
warmly for the cause of the Girondists. Like all others in the city she lived
in, she believed that Marat was the secret spring that kept the entire
machinery of the Revolution in motion, that he was the head and soul of the
anarchists and murderers, that he was the centre of all conspiracies, the
originator of all crimes, and that, with him out of the way, peace and liberty
would soon regain the ascendency, and a freer, nobler, greater France would
arise from the ruins. With such convictions in her mind she attended the
meetings of the Girondists, where appeals were made to the citizens of
Caen and all Normandy to enroll themselves in the service of their country,
of liberty, of humanity, against the tyrants at Paris. The impression which
these meetings made upon her soul can hardly be described. For the first
time she saw and heard the men she had read so much about, and whose

patriotic utterances had so often found a loud echo in her own heart; they
were there, young, beautiful, enthusiastic, made doubly interesting by the
ban of proscription which had exiled them from Paris; they were there with
their inspiring eloquence and patriotic appeals, and in the tumultuous
audience there was no one more fully enchanted and carried away than the
young girl, the disciple of Plutarch and Rousseau. The words: “Country!”
“Duty!” “Public Welfare!” repeated again and again by the orators, were
deeply engraved upon her impressionable heart. An extraordinary exaltation
took possession of Charlotte’s soul; she aspired to a part as grand as that of
these orators; she longed for a chance to devote herself to the holy cause of
liberty and to suffer for it.
These projects and aspirations remained mere vague dreams, until an
event occurred which gave them definite shape. On the seventh of July the
volunteers who were to march on Paris assembled on a large plain in the
immediate vicinity of Caen. The plain was large enough to hold one
hundred thousand men; but only thirty volunteers appeared. General
disappointment was visible among the spectators; but no one was more
deeply affected than Charlotte Corday, who was also present. It seems that
from that very sorrow there sprang up within her mind a project both heroic
and terrible,—to assassinate Marat, whose words had been most influential
in expelling and proscribing the Girondists. To Charlotte’s mind the cause
of the Girondists was identical with that of liberty, country, and justice. And
how often in the past had a pure and blameless life sacrificed for a great
cause appeased the wrath of Destiny! She went home and requested an
interview with the Girondist deputies.
Charlotte Corday was then twenty-four years old, but looked much
younger. She was tall, and of beautiful proportions; her complexion was of
dazzling whiteness, her hair was blond, her luminous eyes of charming
sweetness, her nose finely cut, and her chin indicated firmness and
determination. Her face was a perfect oval, and the total impression was
that of perfect beauty. Both her smile and her voice were of angelic
sweetness. Charlotte made a profound impression upon the deputies; but
they were not inclined to take her seriously. One day Pétion came in while
she was in conversation with Barbaroux. “Ah, ah,” said he, “there is the
beautiful young aristocrat paying a visit to the Republicans.” “You judge
me wrongly,” she replied, “but some day you will know who I am.”

The question has often been asked whether the Girondists put the dagger
in Charlotte Corday’s hand to assassinate Marat. The enemies of the
Girondists persistently asserted this, but there is no evidence to that effect.
Possibly in her two conversations with Barbaroux her determination to
assassinate Marat, and not Danton or Robespierre, became confirmed by the
intensity of hatred and contempt manifested for him by the famous
Girondist leader. At all events, after these interviews she made her
preparations to go to Paris with great circumspection, and great tranquillity
of mind. A little dressing-case, a night-gown and a volume of Plutarch’s
Lives, with some money, was all her baggage. But before going to Paris she
proceeded to Argentan to bid her family farewell. Her father and her sister
were living there, and she told them that she intended to go to England, and
would remain there until the storm of the Revolution had blown over. She
bade them farewell without showing an excess of emotion, but also without
faintness, and then departed for Paris in the public stage-coach.

During the journey, which at that period lasted two days, she appeared
serene and happy; no preoccupation seemed to disturb the tranquillity of her
mind. Her fellow-travellers all fell in love with her and treated her with
distinguished courtesy. One of them offered to marry her. Charlotte smiled,
but refused politely. Moreover they were all radical revolutionists, and
swore by Danton, Robespierre and Marat.
At Caen nobody had any idea of her plan. She had told her aunt she
would go to Argentan and thence to England. She had always concealed her
political views so carefully that nobody could have suspected her.
She arrived at Paris on the forenoon of the eleventh of July, and put up at
the Providence Hotel. Tired out by the long and tedious journey, she went to
bed early in the afternoon and slept well till the next morning. No
conscientious scruples disturbed her. Her mind was fully made up, and she
did not for a minute hesitate to execute her project. The next morning she
went to the Palais Royal, purchased a strong and sharp steel knife, and
carefully hid it in her bosom. She then asked herself when and where she
was to use her weapon. She would have preferred to give her act a certain
solemnity. At Caen, while brooding over her purpose, she had conceived the
plan to assassinate Marat on the Champ de Mars, on the fourteenth of July,
during the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile

and the overthrow of the monarchy. She hoped to slay this king of anarchy,
surrounded as he would then be by thousands of his murderous followers;
but when the celebration was postponed, she planned to assassinate him at
one of the sessions of the Convention, the scene of his crimes and
proscriptions. When she learned that Marat was ill and did not attend the
sessions of the Convention, there seemed no way left for her except to go to
his residence and meet him there. She addressed a letter to him asking for a
private interview. The letter remained unanswered. She sent a second letter,
more urgent than the first, in which she requested an immediate interview
for the purpose of communicating to him a secret of great importance.
Moreover she represented herself as unhappy, as a victim of political
persecution and appealed to his protection. After this appeal she hoped to be
admitted.
At about seven o’clock in the evening of July 13 she left her hotel, took
a cab and proceeded to the residence of Marat, a dismal old building, No.
20 in the Rue des Cordeliers. There Marat lived, and there also he had the
office and the press and composing-rooms of his newspaper, “The Friend of
the People.” Marat’s living apartments, which were furnished with a certain
elegance strangely contrasting with the general appearance of the building,
were situated on the second floor and were shared by his mistress, or rather
his wife, who loved him passionately, and who watched over him with the
fidelity of a dog. Knowing the great peril to which the idol of her heart
might be exposed from foreign visitors, she subjected each of them, before
admitting him, to a careful scrutiny and painstaking examination.
When Charlotte Corday had ascended the stairway leading to Marat’s
office, she suddenly found herself in the presence of Catherine Evrard—she
continued to call herself by that name, although afterwards it appeared that
she had been married to Marat. Catherine was surprised at the strange
visitor, who, with a firm and melodious voice, inquired for the citizen Marat
and desired to see him. With great attention Catherine scanned the young
woman, who was dressed with great modesty and looked like a lady from
the provinces, and demanded the object of her visit, and as Charlotte either
refused to give her that information or failed to impress her favorably, she
declined to admit her to Marat’s room, who, she said, was just taking a bath
and could not be seen. At this moment Marat’s voice was heard from a
room whose door was not tightly closed, and he told Catherine to admit the
young stranger. He thought it was the young woman who had written to

him, and who had announced her visit for that evening. Thus invited,
Charlotte entered the room, much against the wish of Catherine. It was a
small and dark room. A bath-tub stood in the centre, and Marat was taking a
bath, covered up to the neck, except his right arm and shoulder, for he was
in the act of writing an editorial for his newspaper. A board had been placed
across the tub, and in this way a table had been formed to hold his
manuscript. As she stepped up to him he began to ask her concerning the
important news from Normandy she had promised in her letter. He also
inquired about the Girondists who had gone there, and wanted to know
what they were doing. She told him. “It is all right,” he said, while marking
down their names. “Within a week they will all be guillotined.” If anything
had been needed to confirm her resolution and to stir her up to speedy
action, it was this announcement. She quickly drew the dagger from her
bosom and plunged it into Marat’s breast up to the handle. This thrust,
aimed from above, and executed with wonderful force and firmness,
pierced the lungs, and severed the main arteries, from which a stream of
blood rushed forth.
“Ah, this to me, my dear friend?” exclaimed the wounded man. It was all
he could say. A moment later he was dead.
The assassination of Marat created a rage, a frenzy among the lowest
classes of the population of Paris which it is impossible to describe. That
the courageous young woman who had slain the demon of blood was not
torn to pieces is a wonder. Charlotte, in thinking of the fate which might
befall her after her task was performed, had not forgotten the possibility or
even probability of falling a victim to the fury of the people, but even this
terrible prospect did not deter her. She received what may be called a fair
trial and she had the benefit of an official defender. Since she did not deny
the act of assassination and readily admitted that it was an act of
premeditation and careful preparation, any painstaking investigation might
have been deemed unnecessary but for the hope which the Terrorists
entertained, of connecting the Girondist party, and especially the Girondists
assembled at Caen, with her crime,—a hope in which they were utterly
disappointed. She was therefore arraigned before the Revolutionary
Tribunal and subjected to a rigorous examination as to her accomplices.
“Who filled your mind with so much hatred for Marat?” asked the judge.

“I did not need the hatred of others,” she replied; “my own was
sufficient.”
“But somebody must have instigated you to commit this deed?”
“We do but poorly what others tell us to do.”
“What did you hate him for?”
“For the enormity of his crimes.”
“What do you mean by his crimes?”
“His crimes against France and humanity.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“In order to give back peace to my country.”
“Do you believe you have killed all the Marats of France?”
“His death may frighten the others.”
“Do you regret and repent your deed?”
“I rejoice that it was successful.”
Only once during this trial her heart failed her. It was when Catherine
Evrard, Marat’s mistress, took the stand to testify against her, and in a voice
choked with tears told the story of her visit to Marat’s house. Looking at the
woman who through her deed had lost him whom she loved, the tears burst
from her own eyes, and she exclaimed: “No more! No more! I implore you.
It is I who killed him; I do not deny it!”
Again she was deeply moved when the dagger with which she killed
Marat was presented to her. “Do you recognize this instrument?” She turned
away her face and exclaimed: “I do! I do!” The public prosecutor called
attention to the fact that she had plunged the dagger into the breast of her
victim from above, that it was a difficult thrust, and that she must have
practised it before she acquired so much skill.
She listened attentively to what he said, and exclaimed with unfeigned
indignation, “Shame! Shame! The wretch wants to brand me as an
assassin!”
Her words caused a sensation. The audience and even the judges were
struck with admiration, so much energy and patriotic devotion were
expressed in her answers. She stood before them like an antique heroine,
not trembling for her life, but provoking death and inviting it by her
justification of the crime she had committed to save her country. The trial

resulted in her conviction. She received her sentence of death without
showing any emotion; was it not the crown of immortality to which she had
aspired? Her official defender, Chauveau Lagarde,—the same who three
months later so nobly defended Marie Antoinette,—might have saved her
by pleading insanity, but he comprehended her nobility of soul and would
not offend her by such a plea. “She refuses to be defended,” he said; “she
pleads guilty and is beyond the fear of death!” After the death sentence had
been pronounced, she stepped up to her defender, and with a smile of
angelic sweetness thanked him for his noble-minded, graceful and kind
defence. “You understood me,” she said, “and your esteem consoles me for
the contempt of the ignorant masses.”
One thing remarkable about this trial was the respect, not to say the
admiration, with which this young woman, who had killed their idol, was
looked upon by the spectators. They seemed to feel instinctively that a
divine inspiration, a heaven-born principle of humanity and patriotism, had
prompted her to commit an act which human law condemned and punished,
but which posterity would forgive, if not glorify.
From the very hour of her conviction, she became a national heroine.
The wild Maratists clamored against her, but there were thousands and
thousands even among the Revolutionists who sympathized with her and
admired her. Brutus ceased to be the patron saint of patriotic assassins; his
place in the hearts of enemies of tyranny and despotism was taken by the
young girl who had so heroically thrown life and beauty away to redeem
her country. Poets and authors immediately celebrated her in song and
prose; it may be said that her immortality commenced even before her
beautiful head fell under the knife of the guillotine. She died on the evening
of the nineteenth of July.
When she was taken to the place of execution in the costume of the
condemned victims—a scarlet shirt—the sun was setting. His last rays sent
a farewell greeting to the young heroine, who seemed to be bathed in a halo
of glory, as she ascended the steps of the scaffold with firm step and serene
countenance. A shudder passed through the multitude as her head fell into
the basket.
She was not insane; she was an exalted, enthusiastic dreamer, who
looked upon her crime as an act of justice demanded by the necessities of
the times,—an act inspired by a higher Power which had guided her in her

design and helped her in its execution. Thinking of Jeanne d’Arc, who had
saved France and immortalized herself by her self-sacrificing devotion, she
felt convinced that God often chooses woman as his instrument for
interposition in the history of nations. If she deceived herself in the nature
of the act by which she hoped to restore the happiness of France and to
terminate the era of bloody hecatombs sacrificed to the fury of sanguinary
monsters, is it the duty of the historian to judge her severely? Should he not
rather, while pointing out the error of her judgment, be willing to bestow on
her the laurel-wreath of a patriotic heroine, which has been accorded to her
by poets, by her grateful countrymen, and by the whole world?

CHAPTER XIX

PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA

PAUL I.

CHAPTER XIX

ASSASSINATION OF PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA

(March 24, 1801)

T HOSE who have followed the preceding chapters will remember that
Catherine the Second of Russia got possession of the throne by the
murder of her husband, fortified that possession by the murder of
another Czar imprisoned in the fortress of Schlüsselburg (the weak-minded
Ivan the Sixth), and finally, haunted by the constant fear of being dethroned
by some new pretender, sacrificed all those whose claims might become
dangerous to her security. History, which is filled with the crimes of
remorseless rulers, furnishes, however, abundant proof that such crimes,
although successful at first, are frequently visited upon their authors or their
authors’ children, and that blood cruelly and unjustly shed will blossom
forth in a new crop of crime and bloodshed. It was so in the case of the
murders committed by Catherine the Second; and while she, very likely,
personally suffered from a mental agony which made her life on the throne
miserable in the extreme, it was her son who finally paid the penalty.
The life of this unfortunate son had been full of disappointment and
sorrow, almost from the moment of his birth. Born as the son of Peter the
Third, he was almost openly repudiated by his reputed father as a bastard.
Quite often Peter the Third had declared in the presence of gentlemen and
ladies of the court that the little Grand-Duke Paul was not his son, but either
Alexis or Gregor Orloff’s, and that he had no right to the succession.
Catherine, however, insisted that Paul was Peter’s son, and as the boy grew
up, his many peculiarities of mind showed such a remarkable similarity to
those of Peter the Third, that the legitimacy of his birth could hardly be
doubted. It was really the manifestation of these peculiarities that filled the
mind of the mother with that insuperable aversion, not to say hatred, for the
son, which would have been incomprehensible but for the remorseful
recollections which the traits of the father necessarily awakened in her
mind. The boy could not fail to notice this aversion and hostility on the part
of his mother, especially since the courtiers, modelling their conduct toward
him on the sentiments of the Czarina, treated him with the same coldness
and contempt. His whole education was carefully arranged on a

premeditated plan to keep him as much as possible in ignorance of those
very things which might be useful to him as a ruler, while his character was
rendered distrustful and suspicious to such a degree that he became a
misanthropist of the blackest hue. Not a day passed but he discovered
espionage, treachery, ingratitude and intentional hostility among those
whom the Empress had placed near his person as his tutors, teachers and
confidants. They shamelessly deceived him, betrayed him, and lied about
him. They cautiously instilled into his mind the story of the assassination of
his father and of his mother’s knowledge of the crime, and when the young
man, horror-struck at this disclosure, clenched his fists and gnashed his
teeth, they reported to their imperial mistress that the young Grand Duke
had manifested dangerous symptoms of impatience and independence,
which would require even greater care and watchfulness on the part of his
tutors and a more severe isolation of the young prince. Their only intention
was, of course, to show their indefatigable zeal in the task entrusted to them
and to make themselves absolutely indispensable to their imperial employer
or her favorites; but the effect on his mind was most disastrous. Burdened
with the suspicion that his own mother was a murderess, and with the
evidence afforded by thousands of little occurrences of her hatred toward
himself, and of the treachery of his attendants, in constant fear of
impending assassination,—is it not almost wonderful that his mind, not
naturally strong, did not absolutely give way?
When Paul had grown up to manhood, he was married to a lovely young
German princess; but since his mother had selected this wife for him, he
regarded her with constant suspicion. She died without having succeeded in
overcoming his distrust. A second marriage, which he was compelled to
contract, had no happier results, although his wife bore him four sons. By
special order of the Empress these sons were taken away from him and
educated under the special supervision of Catherine herself, while Paul was
ordered to proceed to Gatschina, a country-seat near St. Petersburg, where
he amused himself with drilling a battalion of soldiers and arranging sham
battles, just as Peter the Third, his father, had done before his elevation to
the throne. But rarely was he permitted to receive his children, and when
they came to see him, he was always afraid that some secret danger might
surprise him.
In this manner thirty-five years had elapsed since the death of Peter the
Third. During these thirty-five years the name of Peter had hardly ever been

heard at the court, or at least not in the presence of the Empress. Then
Catherine herself falls a prey to the grim destroyer; and Paul inherits the
crown. His mother’s body is laid out in state on a catafalque, by whose side
stands another coffin, magnificently ornamented and with an imperial
crown on its top. It is the coffin of Peter the Third, whose remains had been
deposited in a vault of the Alexander Nevski Monastery. It was one of
Paul’s first official acts to proceed to this convent, to open the vault and the
coffin containing his father’s mortal remains. One of the gloves of Peter the
Third was still well preserved. Paul took it out of the coffin, knelt down in
the presence of the whole court and reverently kissed it. Then he ordered
the coffin to be carried to the imperial palace where the body of his mother
lay in state, and an imperial crown to be placed on it. It was, perhaps, the
most unique coronation which ever took place in history. But Paul wanted
not only to honor his father’s memory; he wanted also to punish and to hand
over to public contempt his murderer. He therefore ordered Alexis Orloff,
who had planned the assassination of Peter the Third, to act as chief
mourner at the funeral. Orloff obeyed: but immediately after the obsequies,
during which he was the target of the contemptuous eyes of the whole
people, he was thrown into a kibitka and sent into exile. Such was the
opening of Paul’s reign.
In his physical make-up Paul bore not the slightest resemblance to Peter
the Third, and this circumstance seemed to give confirmation to the
circulating rumors that he was not Peter’s son. But if, as a great historian
has pointed out, Catherine’s intense hatred of her son could have left any
doubt in that respect, Paul’s personal acts of government, almost from the
very first day after the funeral of his mother, absolutely removed it. For,
intellectually and morally, never a son bore a greater resemblance to his
father than Paul the First did to Peter the Third. Paul had good qualities, and
with proper education and assistance, he would very likely have made a
good ruler; but without both, his well-meant but ill-timed plans of reform
failed to do the people any good, while they created untold enemies for him.
Exactly like Peter the Third, he had prepared a number of plans of reform,
which he immediately promulgated without consulting with any one about
their opportuneness or advisability. Like Peter’s reform plans, Paul’s turned
mostly on trivialities,—on the style of hats or coats or military uniforms,—
and by strenuously trying to enforce these edicts he made himself odious.
He hated anything that might remind him of the French Revolution, and

would not permit a Frenchman to enter the Russian Empire without a
passport signed by one of the French Bourbon princes (then living in exile);
like his father he idolized the Prussians and wanted Prussian military
regulations, uniforms and equipment introduced into the Russian army; in
these efforts he was strongly opposed by the Russian officers and soldiers.
They made fun of the imperial ordinances and (admitting then that he was
Peter’s son) said that he had inherited Peter’s Prussomania and insanity.
Citizens and peasants were equally indignant at Paul’s arbitrary interference
with their personal rights and liberties. He also tried to introduce church
reforms, which irritated the clergy and caused angry protests throughout the
Empire. In attempting to introduce these “reforms” he sometimes
manifested symptoms of real insanity. He declared war upon round hats,
which he considered revolutionary and hostile to the government. He
carried this war to such an extent that he ordered the police and even the
soldiery to confiscate the obnoxious hats and arrest the owners, even while
the latter were promenading in the streets, and without any regard to the
weather. In this manner it was not long before he had estranged the good
feelings of the aristocracy, the army, the clergy and the people at large. They
began to regard him as a trifler and maniac, who was imbued with an
excessive idea of his own authority, who defied national sentiment and
prejudice, and who would not counsel with anybody because he distrusted
everybody.
In his foreign policy he was selfish and vacillating. He subordinated the
national interests of Russia entirely to his own personal whims and
prejudices. He formed alliances and cancelled them without cause, and thus
made enemies of all foreign powers. The most prominent statesmen and
generals became convinced that Russia, which under Catherine’s rule had
won a commanding position among the powers of Europe, would lose all
prestige if forced into a state of political isolation by the foolish policy of
Paul the First.
Plots and conspiracies were formed, of which the most prominent court
officials in immediate attendance on the Emperor became members. Some
of these men he hated because they had been favorites and counsellors of
his mother; others he had in his sudden fits of passion abused and insulted.
Most prominent among these were Count Pahlen, the brothers Zubow, and
Count Talizin, commander of the Imperial Guards. They added their
personal grievances to the public dissatisfaction, and joined hands in

bringing about Paul’s dethronement. They commenced working on the
Grand Dukes, Paul’s sons, and especially upon the oldest of them,
Alexander, whom Count Pahlen convinced that the Emperor held in
readiness an order for the arrest of the Grand Dukes, with the exception of
Nicholas, his third son, whom he had designated for the succession to the
crown. Alexander was of a sentimental turn of mind. For a while he resisted
the tempting offers of the conspirators, but when the reports of his
impending arrest and transfer to Schlüsselburg were confirmed by others,
he finally consented to the arrest of the Emperor and to the demand for his
forced abdication. This he did with tears and heart-rending supplications not
to harm his father and to treat him with becoming respect. Having received
this consent, the conspirators proceeded to work with great promptness and
energy. The time was propitious for the immediate execution of their
conspiracy; for they knew very well that what originally had been planned
only as dethronement by abdication might easily lead to the assassination of
the Czar, and they had taken precautions and measures tending towards
such a result.
It was during the Masnaliza, the Russian Carnival, that the conspirators
resolved to carry their plot into execution. The whole population was in a
state of frenzy, drunkenness, and wild excesses. The conspirators knew that
during these days they could meet and make all necessary arrangements
without attracting the least attention. Paul the First resided in the palace of
St. Michael, which he claimed to have built on a direct order of St. Michael
himself. He had entirely isolated himself; his most faithful servant, Count
Rostopchin, and his wife, whom he had really loved, had been banished
from his apartments. It was this Rostopchin who twelve years afterwards
burned the city of Moscow. He distrusted them as well as all others. His
only confidante (and, as is asserted, his mistress at the same time) was an
ugly old cook, who prepared his meals in a kitchen adjoining his bedroom,
that he might be secure against poison. The Empress Maria, distinguished
by the gentleness and tenderness of her sentiments, who had given him
innumerable proofs of her affection and devotion, was in his eyes a traitress
who he supposed was plotting with his enemies against his life. He had
therefore ordered the doors leading from his own apartments to hers to be
walled up.
The assassination itself presents some points of resemblance to that of
Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland. On the evening of March 23, 1801, General

Talizin, chief of the Imperial Guards, gave a brilliant party, to which only
gentlemen of great intrepidity and resoluteness, all of whom were known to
be personal enemies of the Emperor, had been invited. When the guests
were heated with wine and in a condition of semi-intoxication, Count
Pahlen entered the salon in which the guests were assembled; he referred in
a few impressive words to the despotism and tyranny of the Emperor, to the
widespread spirit of rebellion, to the dissatisfaction prevailing among
officers, people, and clergy, to the public disorders and disturbances
breaking out on all sides, and closed his inflammatory harangue by
appealing to his hearers to make an end of these intolerable conditions. He
knew his speech would be enthusiastically received, and for several minutes
there was perfect bedlam among the guests. Some of them hurled chairs
above their heads, others grasped their knives or swords, and swore that
they would kill the insane fool who had already too long disgraced the
imperial throne.
The plan according to which the conspirators proceeded had been
carefully projected. Pahlen, who was Governor-General of St. Petersburg,
left the palace in the general confusion, but returned soon with a
detachment of cavalry and guarded the one side of the Winter Palace.
Talizin marched up from the other side with a regiment of grenadiers. When
these soldiers marched through the botanical garden of the palace, their
loud and heavy steps frightened away many thousand crows, which were
sleeping upon the high lime-trees of the garden. The loud croaking of this
immense army of black birds ought to have aroused Paul from his sleep and
warned him of his impending danger. But he slept on.
After the palace was fully surrounded, the conspirators crossed the ditch
on the ice. A battalion of soldiers, who were not in the secret, and who were
on guard on the outposts, offered some resistance, but were easily
overpowered and disarmed. Not a shot had been fired. After having passed
the gates of the palace, the conspirators were joined by Colonel Marin, the
Commandant of the palace, who conducted the riotous throng, among
whom were hardly any sober persons, over winding-stairs up to the door of
the Emperor’s bedroom. On the threshold of the door the guard was asleep,
and when aroused and trying to resist, was very rudely handled and barely
escaped alive. He ran down the stairs and called the guards to arms. They
demanded to be taken to the Emperor’s rooms, but Marin interfered. He

made them present arms, and in this position no Russian soldier dares move
a limb or speak a word.
The crowd entered the bedroom. Prince Zubow and General Benningsen
—the latter a Hanoverian by birth, but of great authority in the army on
account of his energy and reckless audacity—stepped up to the bed of the
Czar, brandishing their swords. “Sire,” said Benningsen, “you are my
prisoner!” The Emperor stared at them in speechless surprise. “Sire,”
continued Benningsen, “it is a question of life or death for you! Yield to
circumstances and sign this act of abdication!” The room was becoming
filled up with drunken conspirators, all of whom wanted to see what was
going on, and tried to get in. In a moment of confusion caused by this
pushing and crowding in, which others tried to prevent, the Emperor sprang
from his bed and took refuge behind the screen of a stove, where he
staggered over some obstacle and fell to the ground. “Sire,” exclaimed
Benningsen once more, “submit to the inevitable! Your life is at stake!” At
this moment a new noise was heard from the anteroom, and Benningsen,
who so far had been the only protector of Paul’s life, turned to the door, to
see whether the new-comers were friends or enemies. Paul was, for the
moment, alone with his assailants. His courage returned. He ran up to a
table upon which lay several pistols. He reached for them, but some of the
conspirators had watched the motion of his hand; one of them almost
severed it from his arm by a stroke of his sword. Agonized with pain the
Czar rushed upon his enemies. A short struggle, a heavy fall, and it was all
over.
The murder of Peter the Third was brought about by the use of a napkin;
his son, Paul the First, was strangled with an officer’s sash. There is another
point of resemblance in the assassination of the two Czars, father and son.
Alexis Orloff and Nicholas Zubow, the murderers of the two Czars, had
both taken dinner with their victims on the day of the murder.
When the death of their father was reported to the Grand Dukes,
Alexander especially, the heir to the crown, was almost overcome with
emotion and terror. The details of the murder were carefully concealed from
him; on the contrary, he was made to believe that a fit of apoplexy brought
on by the excitement of the scene had caused the Czar’s death. After much
lamentation he was finally persuaded to address a proclamation to the
Russian people in which apoplexy was given as the cause of the sudden and
unexpected death of Czar Paul the First during the night of the twenty-third

of March. Quite early next day this proclamation was promulgated
throughout the city of Petersburg by military heralds. But the people were
not deceived by these official lies. Everybody knew in what manner Paul
the First had died. The news of the murder in all its details had spread with
lightning-like rapidity through the streets and alleys to the remotest corners
of the city.
The conspirators, far from denying their guilt, boasted of the crime as of
an act of heroism and patriotism. Many officers who were at the time miles
away from the palace of St. Michael claimed to have been witnesses of the
tragedy and to have lent a helping hand in slaying “the tyrant.” It is
recorded that Count Münster, the Prussian ambassador at the court of St.
Petersburg, a short time after Paul’s assassination, spoke with horror and
indignation of the catastrophe at a dinner party at which a number of the
most prominent army officers and state officials were present; one of these
officers quite unconcernedly defended the crime, saying: “Count, you
should not blame us for defending ourselves! Our Magna Charta is tyranny,
or if you prefer to call it so, absolutism, tempered by assassination, and our
rulers should regulate their conduct accordingly!” And this state of affairs
has existed in Russia to the present day.

CHAPTER XX

AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE

AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE

CHAPTER XX

ASSASSINATION OF AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE

(March 23, 1819)

A FTER the downfall of Napoleon the monarchs of Europe had a very
difficult task to perform. Not only were the domestic institutions of
their states, which had been overthrown by the French conquest and in
many cases altered by French decrees, to be regulated anew or reinstated on
a firm footing, but the relations between governments and subjects were to
be reorganized on a new basis, in conformity with the liberal principles
which had spread from France and been adopted readily by the intelligent
and educated classes in Germany. Solemn promises had been made by the
German princes to their peoples in order to enlist their sympathies in their
final efforts against Napoleon, and after the Corsican had been dethroned,
they were expected to carry out these promises. Especially was this true of
Prussia and the smaller German states, whose inhabitants had been
promised a system of representative government and a constitution limiting
the powers of the executive. Such promises were very inconvenient to some
of these governments, and they were rather inclined to forget and abandon
them than to carry them out in good faith. Moreover Russia and Austria, the
representatives of autocratic power in Europe, exerted their influence on the
German governments in a direction opposite to the popular aspirations, and
encouraged them to ignore their pledges given under the stress of invasion.
It should be remembered that the Holy Alliance, of which Metternich was
the inspiring genius, had been formed not only against Napoleon, but also
against the freedom and the popular rights of the nations of Europe. In spite
of its high-sounding and sanctimonious title, the Holy Alliance was the
curse of nations, and it would have extended its nefarious influence even
beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and would have crushed the national aspirations
for independence and self-government in the states of Central and South
America but for the timely issue of the Monroe Doctrine, which saved the
Western hemisphere from “Holy Alliance” interference.
It was only after the united efforts of the nations culminated in the final
dethronement of Napoleon, and after the Vienna Congress had apportioned
the heritage of the Empire among the victorious monarchs that the nations

became aware that the liberal promises they had received while these
monarchs were in distress were either not to be redeemed at all, or
redeemed only in part. The sagacity of the statesmen of continental Europe
was bent on defrauding the people of those civil and political rights which
had been held out to them as part of the reward to be won by repelling the
attacks of Napoleon, and the sovereigns were only too willing to assist them
in carrying out this deception.
Unfortunately some of these sovereigns were of inferior mental calibre
and not at all fitted for the great work of reconstructing their shattered
monarchies after the tremendous convulsions of the preceding twenty years,
and they were perfectly dwarfed by a comparison with the colossus who
had moulded Europe so long solely according to the inspirations of his
genius or ambition. Alexander of Russia had the reputation of being a man
of ability; but this reputation was without solid foundation. At the period
immediately following the overthrow of Napoleon he was entirely under the
influence of Madame Krüdener, a religious enthusiast and visionary, who
skilfully concealed her immorality under pietistic propagandism. She filled
Alexander’s mind with vague and mystic ideas of his divine mission as a
ruler, in which the human rights of his subjects had no place. Frederick
William the Third, King of Prussia, was a weakling of the worst sort. He
had actually been forced into the anti-Napoleonic movement by the
enthusiasm of his people, and after national independence had been
accomplished he trembled lest anything might occur to endanger the public
order and tranquillity so dearly purchased. It was therefore comparatively
easy for the reactionary elements to get full control of the Prussian
government and to prevent any bold reform in a democratic direction. All
they had to do was to fill the mind of the timid King with a vague fear that
the scenes of the French Revolution might be renewed by inviting the
people to coöperation in the government. Even less reliable was the
Emperor of Austria, Francis the First, a man naturally distrustful and
suspicious, who knew how to conceal his cunning and his antagonism to
liberal ideas under the appearance of great personal kindness and bonhomie.
These were the three men of whom Europe expected a great political
reform, and never perhaps, in political history, were hopes and expectations
so woefully misplaced and doomed to more cruel disappointment than in
this case.

It would be unjust to assert that the great mass of the German people felt
a deep interest in the introduction of those measures of political reform
which the sovereigns had promised when they appealed to the patriotism of
their subjects. Most of the Germans, even those belonging to the educated
classes, had up to that time paid but little attention to politics, and their
political indifference had survived the war for national independence. The
nobility, with a few noble exceptions, were not at all anxious to see
measures of political reform introduced, because they knew that such
measures would curtail their aristocratic privileges and prerogatives.
But there was one class of citizens which had hailed the promises of the
sovereigns with unbounded enthusiasm, for they had hoped from their
realization a political renaissance for the whole Fatherland and a new era of
greatness and world-wide influence recalling the days of the Hohenstaufen,
—the glorious days when the German Empire was the first power in the
world, and when all civilized nations from the Baltic Sea to the southern
shores of the Mediterranean bowed their necks in obedience to the demands
of its rulers. This class was the students of the many German universities,
scattered over Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, and the smaller German states.
Inspired by Schiller, Körner, Arndt, and other poets, these young men had
flocked to the standards of Blücher, Scharnhorst, York, and Bülow, and had
fought with the courage of lions on the battle-fields of Germany and France
for the holy cause of German independence. The hope and dream of another
Germany, greater, nobler, more progressive and worthier of being the leader
of nations than they had known it before the war, had fanned their
enthusiasm into a flame which nothing could extinguish, and which after
their return from the war burst forth, here and there, in great patriotic
demonstrations.
Dreamers and idealists though they were, they began to transform some
of their dreams into reality. They formed a great association embracing the
students of all the German universities, north and south,—the German
Burschenschaft, in whose organization they embodied the noblest principles
of manhood, patriotism, and civic devotion. The ancient German colors,
black, red and gold, were revived to adorn their banners, their caps, their
sashes and badges. Quite a literature of patriotic and students’ songs
suddenly sprang into existence, in which the dream of a great united
Germany appeared in the mind’s eye as a living reality. Many of the
professors of the universities, who had also been volunteers in the war and

had shared the enthusiasm of the students, joined them in their patriotic
devotion and lent the authority of their names and writings to their
aspirations of national political revival. Arndt’s famous national song,
“Where is the German’s Fatherland?” with the reply, that the German
fatherland embraces all the countries in which the German tongue is heard
and in which German song rises heavenward, is the typical expression of
that most enthusiastic period of German student-life.
The Burschenschaft became an organization of national importance. It
had its admirers, but it had also its enemies; and unfortunately the latter
were mostly to be found among the nobility. The feeling prevailing against
the Burschenschaft in the government circles of the different German states
was therefore decidedly hostile, and waited only for an opportunity to show
that hostility. This opportunity soon presented itself and, it must be
admitted, was brought about by the reckless audacity of the members of the
association. In the year 1817 the tercentenary of the great German
Reformation was to be celebrated with unusual splendor, and the
Burschenschaft profited by this occasion to make a public demonstration in
behalf of its patriotic principles. It selected as the place of its convention the
Wartburg, where Martin Luther resided upon his return from the Diet of
Worms and, to make the convention especially noteworthy and solemn, had
chosen the eighteenth of October, the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic, as
the principal day for the celebration.
An immense number of visitors from all parts of Germany came to
Eisenach, situated at the foot of the Wartburg, and delegations of students
from all German universities, adorned with their German colors and
carrying black, red and gold banners with patriotic inscriptions, assembled
on the historic ground and participated in the festivities, for which an
elaborate programme had been arranged. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed,
and for the time being all those petty jealousies which had so often
disturbed the cordial fellowship of the inhabitants of different German
states had disappeared, and all those present revelled in the exuberance of
patriotic sentiment; they were all the children of one great fatherland, a
great united nation! The songs and the speeches repeated and echoed this
one thought. It lived uppermost in the hearts of those young enthusiasts, but
presented itself to their minds rather as a vague poetic ideal than as a stern
political reality. Among the thousands of visitors there was, perhaps, not
one who had seriously thought of the political realization of the dream.

Imprudent as these too boisterous demonstrations had been during the day,
there was enacted late in the evening, when most of the guests had already
left the famous castle, a sort of theatrical performance, which irritated the
conservative and reactionary classes exceedingly and resulted disastrously
for the Burschenschaft. This performance was gotten up in imitation of a
famous scene in Luther’s life—the burning of the papal bull. Massmann, a
student of the university of Jena, represented the Luther of the nineteenth
century. A large bonfire was built, and amidst boundless enthusiasm a
number of books and other materials, odious to the students, were thrown
into the flames and destroyed. Among the books was Kotzebue’s “History
of the German Empire,” Haller’s “Restoration of Political Science,” Section
13 of the Federal Constitution, etc. Besides the books, a corset such as used
to be worn by the officers of the Prussian guards, a Hessian queue, and an
Austrian corporal’s mace were also thrown into the fire.
The Wartburg celebration produced tremendous excitement throughout
Germany. The reactionary elements were wild with indignation. They
accused not only the managers of the festivity and the Burschenschaft of
revolutionary tendencies, but they included in this charge all the young men
of the Empire, averring that they had grown up under the influence of the
pernicious doctrines of the French Revolution and French armies of
occupation, and wanted now to apply those doctrines to the reorganization
of German institutions. They also demanded that the organizers of the
Wartburg celebration should be prosecuted and punished as traitors. All the
conservative and government papers opened a regular war upon the
seditious and revolutionary tendencies of the universities, and the agitation
reached its climax by the publication of a memorandum addressed by Baron
Stourdza, a Russian councillor of state, to the Emperor Alexander, in which
he predicted that a bloody revolution would result unless these seditious
tendencies were speedily repressed. The Stourdza memorandum had
originally been intended for the use of the governments only. The Czar had
sent a copy to each European government, but one copy of it had found its
way to the office of a Paris newspaper and had been published. The
excitement among the German students rose to the boiling-point, and their
wrath was concentrated against Russia. It was only too well known that
Russia had in her employ a number of spies scattered throughout the
German states, who kept her government well posted on the political and
social currents. The most prominent of these spies was August von

Kotzebue, a man of great literary talent and distinguished as the author of
many comedies and dramas, but politically of extreme conservative views.
The attacks of the liberal press were therefore mainly directed against
Kotzebue, whose reports to the Russian government were supposed to have
inspired Stourdza’s memorandum.
At that time there was at Jena a student of the University, of
irreproachable character, excellent conduct, not especially distinguished by
eminent ability or talent, but inclined to religious and patriotic exaltation.
His name was Carl Ludwig Sand; he came from Wunsiedel, the birthplace
of the famous German humorist, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. He had been a
volunteer in the war against France and had embraced the doctrines of the
Burschenschaft with the greatest enthusiasm. The denunciations of the
German students in Stourdza’s memorandum filled him with profound
indignation, especially against Kotzebue, whom he blamed as the principal
sinner. Moreover the frivolous, half indecent character of many of
Kotzebue’s plays had often revolted Sand’s moral sentiment. He considered
him a source of corruption for the young men and women of the nation, and
when to this wrong the charge of political treason and espionage was added,
Sand thought that nothing but death was an adequate punishment for
Kotzebue. He considered also that it was not only a moral, but a patriotic
duty to inflict upon him that punishment. He knew that the act would cost
him his life, but that consideration did not for a moment deter him from
undertaking it. He did not consult with anybody about it, but he conceived,
planned, and executed it all alone.
On the ninth of March, 1819, Sand left Jena and proceeded to
Mannheim, where Kotzebue lived. Two weeks later, on the twenty-third of
March, 1819, a young stranger appeared at the Kotzebue residence, and said
that he wished to see the councillor in order to hand him personally a letter
of introduction. The servant delivered the message, and after a few minutes
Kotzebue himself appeared in the hall and invited Sand—for it was he—to
come in. Sand handed him the letter; but no sooner had Kotzebue opened it
and begun to read it than Sand plunged a long dirk-knife into his breast with
the words, “Take this as your reward, traitor to your country!” And he
stabbed him again and again with fatal effect. Thereupon he thrust the knife
into his own breast, but had strength enough to run out into the hall, where
he handed the astounded servant a sealed document containing a well-
written justification of his murderous act, and inscribed: “Death Punishment

for August von Kotzebue in the name of virtue.” Running out into the street,
where a crowd of people assembled, attracted by the screams of the servant,
he called out in a loud voice: “Long live my German fatherland!” and
kneeling down he forcibly plunged the knife into his breast once more,
exclaiming: “Great God, I thank thee for this victory.”
Sand’s wound was serious, but a skilful operation saved his life. On the
twentieth of May, 1820, he was executed at Mannheim, after a lengthy trial
and a painstaking investigation, in the course of which the German and the
Russian police made great efforts to discover accessories to his crime. All
these efforts failed, however, and the murder of Kotzebue could be
accounted only an individual act of patriotic exaltation. The result of Sand’s
self-sacrifice was very different from what he had expected. In fact,
Kotzebue’s assassination proved disastrous to the liberal movement
throughout Germany; it furnished a welcome pretext for the most repressive
measures against the press, against the universities, against the
Burschenschaft, against liberty in whatever shape or form it might manifest
itself. That long era of political reaction was inaugurated against which the
German people rebelled with only partial success in 1848 and 1849, and
from which only the ejection of Austria and the reorganization of a new
German Empire on a more liberal basis in 1871 gave them permanent relief.

CHAPTER XXI

DUC DE BERRY

DUC DE BERRY

CHAPTER XXI

ASSASSINATION OF THE DUC DE BERRY

(February 13, 1820)

T HE political situation in France, after the overthrow of Napoleon and
the restoration of the Bourbons, was even more difficult and more
precarious for the governing classes than it was in Germany. The French
nation, proud in the consciousness of having occupied the first place in
Europe for twenty years, chafed at the idea of living under a king whom
foreign rulers and foreign armies had imposed on France, and who, in
consequence, had to act in blind obedience to the dictates of these
foreigners. The danger of a new violent outbreak against the Bourbon
government was therefore ever present not only to the French mind, but to
the mind of Europe, and to guard against it the foreign powers had made it
one of the terms of peace with France that a foreign army of occupation
should hold possession of the northern and northeastern provinces of France
until the entire war indemnity exacted from the vanquished country had
been paid. While the foreign occupation was ostensibly a financial measure,
it was in reality a military measure giving to the foreign powers the keys to
the interior of France and to Paris, in case a new invasion should become
necessary. Not only was the position of the King rendered difficult by his
political opponents, the Imperialists and the Republicans, but its hardships
and difficulties were materially aggravated by the senseless and extravagant
demands of the Royalists, who had in large number returned to France with
the foreign armies. These Royalists, many of whom had been absent from
France for twenty years or more, on their return from their voluntary exile,
found their estates and manors, which had been confiscated under the
Revolution, in the possession of strangers; all the superior offices in the
civil service and the higher positions in the army, which they claimed as
their own by right of birth, were filled by men of low extraction. They
therefore turned to the King and demanded of him the restoration of their
lost estates of their aristocratic privileges.
The King, Louis the Eighteenth, was perhaps the most intelligent of all
the monarchs of Europe, but he lacked force of character, and, moreover,
his long life in exile, with its pleasures and enjoyments as a sybarite and

epicurean, had but poorly qualified him for his suddenly imposed tasks. He
was expected by Europe to hold his own in a population the majority of
whom were opposed to him, and who had learned that a king could be
easily got rid of, if the people did not want him. Although Louis the
Eighteenth, with his penetrating sagacity, clearly saw the instability of his
throne, he honestly wished to make the best of the chance the fortune of war
had given him. He was willing to give the French people a liberal
government, provided it could be done without endangering the throne, and
without violating the pledges given to the monarchs who had reinstated
him. He might have even more energetically opposed the reactionary
demands of the ultra-Royalists, who recognized his younger brother, the
Comte d’Artois, as their leader, if his experiences, especially during the
“Hundred Days,” had not filled him with disgust and suspicion toward the
Imperialists. While Napoleon was in Elba, Louis the Eighteenth kept all the
Bonapartist generals and high officials in office, relying on their promises
and assurances of fidelity; but on Napoleon’s return they all betrayed him,
and either flocked to the standards of the Emperor or declared their
adhesion to his cause as soon as he had set foot on French soil.
Perhaps the man who had sinned most in this respect was Marshal Ney,
who in a personal interview asked of the King as a personal favor to be
placed in command of an army corps and to be sent against the Emperor,
pledging himself to bring Napoleon in chains before his throne. Louis
granted the Marshal’s request, but instead of capturing the Emperor, Ney
went over to him with his entire army corps and fought at Waterloo again as
the “bravest of the brave” in the imperial army. In vain he sought death on
the field, when he saw that the battle was lost; it was reserved for him to die
by French bullets in the Luxembourg garden of Paris, fired by royalist
officers, disguised as common soldiers. From party hatred, these men had
volunteered to act as executioners of one of the greatest military heroes of
revolutionary France. Labédoyère and other famous generals who were
traitors to Louis were executed; others saved their lives by flight. The great
Carnot and other Imperialists were banished from France.
The impression made upon the ultra-Royalists by these severe measures
against men who had shed lustre upon France, was in the highest degree
deplorable. These fanatics supposed that the Bonapartists and Republicans
of the whole kingdom were utterly at their mercy. They secretly organized a
special government, under the presidency of the Comte d’Artois, at the

Pavilion Marsan for the purpose of bringing to justice all those who had
participated in the Napoleonic coup d’état or in the Revolution of 1789. A
new era of terrorism was organized by these “white Jacobins,” as they were
significantly called, and the most cruel excesses were committed in the
provinces. La Vendée, which had fought so heroically for the Bourbon
dynasty, treated the Imperialists and Republicans generously; but in the
South, where religious fanaticism added fuel to the flame of political hatred,
the most atrocious excesses and murders were committed. Avignon, Nîmes,
Montpellier, Toulouse and other cities of the South were disgraced by the
butchery of hundreds of Protestants; in some of them the victims of
religious and political persecution died at the stake. At Avignon the famous
Marshal Brune was assassinated; at Toulouse, General Ramel; at Nîmes,
Count de la Garde. Wholesale assassinations and butcheries were
organized; armed bands, fanaticized by the priests, roamed through the
country, and butchered the Protestants en masse. Ten thousand of the
unfortunates fled to the mountain recesses of the Cevennes, choosing rather
to die from hunger and cold than to be tortured to death. Juries composed of
the most intolerant Royalists lent their aid to these outrages, by condemning
the Protestants to death and acquitting the assassins. The veterans of
Napoleon’s army and forty thousand officers, many of whom had served
with distinction under the imperial eagles, were driven from their homes
and wandered from village to village begging for bread and shelter. The
northern provinces were spared these outrages, but the one hundred and
fifty thousand foreign soldiers stationed in their towns and fortresses were
terrible reminders of the humiliation and shame which the restoration of the
Bourbons had brought upon France.
The French Chambers were entirely under the control of the extreme
Royalists. They enacted laws which reduced the political conditions of
France to those which had existed prior to 1789. They looked upon the
Revolutionary era and the Empire as upon a lawless interregnum which
should be ignored by the government, and they demanded that all the old
institutions of the kingdom should be revived. They were so bold and so
insolent that they overawed the government for a while. Very reluctantly the
King consented to several tyrannical laws,—for instance, the law referring
all political crimes to special courts, composed of one officer and four
judges, from whose decision no appeal could be taken. But the King saw to
his regret that his acquiescence in these immoderate demands had no other

effect than to make the ultra-Royalists bolder and more arrogant. They
demanded a curtailment of the right of suffrage, a reënactment of the right
of primogeniture and other feudal measures.
The King’s patience was exhausted; he refused to sanction any of these
laws and dissolved the Chambers. In their impotent rage the disappointed
ultra-Royalists applied to the foreign powers, asking their intervention in
behalf of absolute royalty, and imploring them to compel the King to desist
from his pernicious protection of Jacobins and regicides. Metternich sent
this strange petition to the French government. But neither the King nor his
favorite minister, M. Decazes, was scared by such foolhardy steps. They
coolly ignored them and courageously inaugurated a series of political
reforms in order to reassure public opinion. Instead of reducing the number
of electors (as the ultras demanded), they largely increased it. To the
periodical press and the daily newspapers was given greater liberty; the
censorship, which had been exceedingly annoying, was abolished. At the
same time, by the able financial management of the Duc de Richelieu, the
1,600,000,000 francs war indemnity was reduced to 502,000,000 francs and
a large number of the foreign troops were withdrawn from the northern
provinces. These liberal and patriotic measures followed one another in
quick succession and made a very favorable impression upon the people.
The liberal parties were willing to coöperate with the government in its
endeavor to restore the prosperity of the country, to relieve the distress of
the masses, and to free France from foreign occupation. The Chambers of
1818 and 1819 also coöperated with the government, and the liberal party
was represented in them by a small number of illustrious men,—such men
as Lafayette, General Foy, Benjamin Constant,—men who were more
patriots than partisans. In fact, everything indicated a return of speedy
prosperity, when an event occurred which at one blow crushed the hopes of
the patriots, paralyzed the hand of the government, and reinstated the
extremists in power. This event was the assassination of the Duc de Berry,
the hope of the Bourbon dynasty.
On its return from exile the royal family of France consisted of:
The King, formerly Comte de Provence.
The King’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, and his two sons:
The Duc d’Angoulême, and
The Duc de Berry.

The Comte d’Artois, the presumptive heir to the throne, was born in
1757, and was consequently fifty-seven years old on his return to Paris. He
was ultra-Royalistic in his political views and was considered the head of
the extremists. His eldest son, the Duc d’Angoulême, was born in 1775, and
had retired from France with his father at the commencement of the
Revolution. He was a man of very mediocre ability, but of exemplary
character. In 1799 he was married to his cousin Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte,
daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, who had passed her unhappy childhood in
prison, which she had left only in 1795. She was worshipped by the entire
royal family as an angel of kindness and mercy. They had no children.
The younger son, the Duc de Berry, was born in 1778, and had passed
his youth and early manhood in exile. He had a more manly character than
his brother, and the French nobility of the old régime looked upon him as
the hope of the Bourbon dynasty. Far from being a genius, the Duc de Berry
was a man of good intelligence, brave, dashing, and the very type of a
French officer, prior to the Revolution. He had many of the generous traits,
but also some of the vices of that elegant and high-spirited class of young
men. While living in exile, in England, he formed a liaison with a young
Englishwoman, who bore him two daughters, to whom he was greatly
attached and whom he took to Paris and placed in a young ladies’ academy.
In 1816 the King married him to a Neapolitan princess, Caroline, daughter
of the Crown Prince of that kingdom, a handsome, high-spirited, healthy
young woman, who gave promise of giving the dynasty direct heirs. The
newly married couple lived very happily together, and enjoyed life in the
French capital to its fullest extent. They were really the official
representatives of royalty and its splendors,—neither the King nor the Duc
d’Angoulême caring much for the entertainments, balls, and receptions of
court life. The prominence thus given to the Duc de Berry, and the
expectation that through him the elder line of the Bourbons would be
continued explain fully why he was singled out as the victim of
assassination. He was not only identified with the extreme Royalists, so
odious to the people, but, with him out of the way, it was only a question of
time when the elder branch of the dynasty would die out entirely, no more
issue being expected from the Duc d’Angoulême, who had been married
already twenty years without having children. Such were at least the
considerations of the young man who undertook the perilous task of killing
the Duc de Berry, and who fully accomplished his purpose.

This young man was Jean Pierre Louvel, a resident of Versailles, an
enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, whom he considered the living
embodiment of the greatness and honor of France. Napoleon’s
dethronement he wanted to revenge on the Bourbons, in whose interest it
had taken place, and who, in his opinion, were utterly unworthy to rule over
the French nation. Louvel was a saddler, thirty-two years of age, debilitated
in appearance, and considered a political fanatic by all who knew him. He
had no family or relations except one sister, considerably older than
himself, who had brought him up, and with whom he lived. He hated the
Bourbons so intensely that in 1814, when the royal family landed at Calais
on their return from exile, he intended to make an attempt on the life of
Louis the Eighteenth; but the great enthusiasm of the people discouraged
him. During all these years his wrath against the Bourbons had steadily
grown, and he had never for a moment abandoned his plan of killing the
whole family,—first the Duc de Berry, then the Duc d’Angoulême, then the
Comte d’Artois, and finally the King. He considered De Berry the most
important and the most dangerous man of the whole family because in him
were centred the hopes of continuing the dynasty.
He had been very persistent; he had found employment in the royal
stables at Versailles, and whenever the Duc de Berry was out hunting, he
tried to find an opportunity to get near him; he frequently went to Paris and
studied the advertisements of new plays or operas, expecting that the Duke
would attend a first performance. Twenty times he had been close to him on
such occasions, but had always been prevented by the number of friends or
attendants surrounding him from getting near enough to stab him, and stab
him so well that he could not escape; for everything depended on making a
success of the attempt.
After long and patient waiting he found his opportunity. It was during
the last days of the carnival preceding the season of Lent, in February,
1820. The grand masquerade ball at the opera was to take place on the
thirteenth, and it was a matter of absolute certainty that both the Duc and
the Duchesse de Berry, who were very fond of dancing, would attend it.
When Louvel got up and dressed, he had a joyful presentiment that that day
would bring him the realization of his long-cherished plan. He had in his
possession two daggers of very superior quality, both sharp as razors and
strong enough to penetrate flesh and sinew to the handle. He had studied the
human anatomy well enough to know exactly where to strike his victim. He

chose the smaller dagger of the two because he could more easily conceal
it; took his supper with good appetite and without betraying unusual
agitation; and then he started on his mission of death. He was promptly at
his post at eight o’clock when the carriage of the Duc de Berry drove up to
the private entrance reserved for the members of the royal family. The Duke
was not expected so early in the evening, and consequently there were not
so many attendants gathered near the entrance. The Duke jumped out of the
carriage, and held out his arm to help the Duchess to alight. This was the
proper moment for Louvel, if he wanted to commit the crime. He was on
the point of rushing toward the Duke, when the smiling and lovely face of
the Duchess appeared in the light of the lantern, and this sight paralyzed the
arm of the murderer. He hesitated at the thought that his crime would
plunge these two happy persons into nameless misery, and before he had
recovered his equanimity, the Duke and his wife had disappeared behind the
entrance door of the theatre.
Louvel blamed himself for his faintness of heart and wanted to postpone
the deed to some later day; but the thought that he would have to go back to
Versailles in a few days and that no such opportunity might offer itself for a
long time, caused him to change his mind. That very night his plan must be
executed, and either the Duke or himself should perish. For several hours he
strolled through the streets in the neighborhood of the Opera House, went to
the garden of the Palais Royal and back again, always keeping a watchful
eye on the carriages that stood waiting for the call of their owners. At
twenty minutes past eleven the carriage of the Duc de Berry drove up to the
entrance door. Louvel stood near by, almost hidden in the shadow of the
wall, and entirely unnoticed by the attendants of the royal equipage. He was
not kept waiting for a long time; for a little accident had occurred which
induced the Duchess to return much sooner than they had anticipated. Their
box at the Opera House was near that of the Duc and Duchesse d’Orléans,
who were also at the theatre that evening; the two families were on terms of
great intimacy, especially the two duchesses, both being Neapolitan
princesses. At one of the intermissions of the performance De Berry and his
wife went to the box of the Duc d’Orléans for a friendly chat, but on their
return to their own box, a door opposite was quickly opened and struck the
Duchess with such violence that she felt very unwell. In her delicate
condition (she was enceinte at the time) she thought it would be better for
her to return home than to wait for the close of the performance and the

masquerade ball. The Duke therefore conducts his wife back to the carriage
and lifts her into it; the Comtesse de Bétysi, her lady of honor, takes her
seat by her side; the duke shakes hands with both ladies and with a smiling
“au revoir, I’ll be home soon,” steps back from the carriage. At this moment
Louvel rushes forward, lays his left hand on the duke’s right shoulder and
plunges his dagger with so much force into the Duke’s right side that the
weapon remains in the wound. The Duke, mortally wounded, sinks to his
knees, and utters a slight scream, more of surprise than of pain. As is
usually the case in such assaults, the victim had rather felt the shock than
the wound, and only when he reached out with his hand to the spot where
he had been hurt, he found the handle of the dagger, and comprehended the
meaning of the attack. He then cried out: “I am struck to death, I have been
assassinated!” and as he pulled the dagger from the wound, a stream of
blood gushed forth. The Duke fainted in consequence of the loss of blood,
and was carried back into the Opera House, where the Duchess followed
him with loud screams. In the first confusion Louvel made his escape, but
he was soon overtaken and brought back to the scene of the murder. The
excitement and the indignation of the people were so great that he would
have been torn to pieces but for the active protection of the police and of the
servants of the Duc de Berry who were afraid that by his death his
accomplices and accessories to the crime might be shielded.
The most eminent surgeons of Paris were immediately summoned to the
assistance of the Prince. But the wound was fatal, and all their efforts were
in vain. In the presence of death the Duc de Berry showed a very generous
and magnanimous heart. He implored his wife, his brother, and all others
surrounding his bed to use their influence with the King to get his murderer
pardoned, and expressed his profound sorrow that he had been stabbed by a
Frenchman. Up to his last moment the thought that his murderer would be
executed in a cruel manner disturbed him, and when toward morning the
King came to bid him farewell, he repeated his request that the murderer
should be forgiven and not be executed; but without eliciting the promise
from his uncle. With this dying request for the life of his murderer on his
lips, he expired very early in the morning.
The sensation which the assassination of the Duc de Berry created not
only in Paris, but throughout France and Europe, was enormous. All parties
equally condemned and lamented the crime. While the ultra-Royalists
deplored in the murder the extinction of all their hopes for the establishment

of the old Bourbon dynasty on a sure foundation, the liberal parties foresaw
that it would put an end to the liberal tendencies of the government of Louis
the Eighteenth. The sinister forebodings of the liberals were only too well
founded. The Royalists tried at first to create the impression that the murder
was but the symptom of a widespread conspiracy organized by the
revolutionary elements of the kingdom against the royal family and the
entire nobility, and boldly charged the liberal policy of the government as
being the cause of it. In a session of the Chambers one of the deputies went
even so far as to move the impeachment of M. Decazes, Minister of the
Interior, as an accessory to the crime committed by Louvel. While the
Chambers refused to act upon this infamous motion, the entire Royalistic
press demanded the dismissal of Decazes, and the King reluctantly yielded
to the universal demand. “M. Decazes has slipped in the blood shed by
Louvel’s dagger,” wrote Chateaubriand in commenting on the dismissal of
the liberal minister. And that era of reaction and repression commenced
which ten years later ended in the dethronement of the elder branch of the
Bourbon dynasty and in the flight and exile of Charles the Tenth. The entire
liberal party was punished for the crime of one fanatic.
Louvel was tried before the Chamber of Peers. He pleaded guilty. He
denied having any accomplices. He had conferred with nobody. He
recognized the dagger as his own; he gave his hatred and abhorrence of the
Bourbon family as his only motive for the crime. He was convicted
unanimously. He expressed no regret for what he had done, and died with
stoical indifference. He was guillotined June 7, 1820.

CHAPTER XXII

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CHAPTER XXII

ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(April 14, 1865)

I N the annals of this nation no tragedy more pathetic has been recorded
than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.
The Civil War which had divided the country into two hostile camps
for four years and had laid waste the Southern States of the Union—or the
Confederate States of America, to designate them by the name they adopted
—was at an end. General Lee had surrendered the army of Virginia, the
flower of the Confederate fighting forces, to General Grant at Appomattox
Court House, and while General Johnston’s army in North Carolina, and a
few separate minor corps, still remained in the field, Lee’s surrender was
generally construed as the termination of the long and cruel war, and joy
ruled supreme throughout the North. Liberty had triumphed, and four
million slaves had been emancipated!
The surrender of Lee took place on the eighth of April, 1865. On the
following day President Lincoln visited the late capital of the Confederacy.
He traversed the city in all directions, and everywhere he manifested the
kindest disposition towards the South, and expressed the wish that all traces
of the unfortunate war should disappear as soon as possible and that cordial
relations between the two sections of the country should be reëstablished at
once. Very likely there was not a man in all the Northern States happier at
the prospect of a lasting peace than Abraham Lincoln. His great and noble
heart, sensitive as a woman’s, had been bleeding for years at the sight of the
gigantic fratricidal war, of which Providence had made him the most
conspicuous figure. But five weeks before, he had entered upon his second
presidential term, and in his inaugural address he had foreshadowed the
policy of leniency and moderation which he intended to show to the
“rebels” in case of the final victory of the Union armies. That address
revealed the true inwardness of the great man; it was spoken with an
eloquence peculiarly his own; it was full of thought, sweetness, firmness,
unswerving fidelity to duty, high morality made more impressive even by
the simplicity and originality of language. At the same time it breathed a
tenderness for the vanquished which made it almost an olive-branch

tendered to those who were still in arms against the government and
inviting them to return to the hearthstones of the nation of which they had
been the favored sons and daughters for nearly a century. Although the
triumph of the Union and its armies was already in sight as an event of the
near future, nothing in that address indicated boastfulness and supercilious
pride. No arrogance, no pompous reference to the superiority of the North
in heroism or exploits! On the contrary, the President humbles himself
before the decrees of the Almighty, he confesses the great national crime
and the justice of the immense punishment.
In the tone of sadness pervading the beautiful oration there is almost the
presentiment of death and that supreme resignation which sometimes takes
possession of the soul on the verge of the grave. Already he had planned a
proclamation of pardon,—a general amnesty, excluding none, a full and
complete restoration of concord and brotherhood between the North and the
South, when all at once the terrible news “Lincoln has been assassinated!
Lincoln is dead!” flashed over the telegraph wires and filled the whole
North with terror. As if nothing was to be wanting to make this gigantic
Civil War a tragedy to both sides, the man whose very name was the
embodiment of liberty and the symbol of emancipation, and who more than
any other man had contributed to the great triumph, had to succumb at the
moment of victory. The election of Abraham Lincoln had given the signal
for the organization and outbreak of the slaveholders’ rebellion, and it was
certainly a remarkable coincidence that the tolling of the church-bells in
towns and cities through which Lincoln’s funeral train slowly wended its
way from the capital to his Western home was heard simultaneously with
the news of the collapse of that rebellion and of the final extinction of
human slavery on American soil. This coincidence was almost providential,
and if the great Emancipator could have chosen his own time for his death,
he certainly could not have made a more appropriate and glorious choice.
He became, so to speak, the hero of the great epic of the Civil War—one of
the greatest the world had seen,—and his tragical death marked the
conclusion of the strife. In the eyes of the fanatical advocates of the
Southern cause Abraham Lincoln had always held this prominent position
as the principal author of the feud dividing the North and the South, and it
is therefore not surprising that some of these fanatics had formed a
conspiracy to assassinate him and some of his most intimate advisers.

About a week after Mr. Lincoln’s visit at Richmond this plot was to be
executed.
On the fourteenth of April, 1865, an especially brilliant performance was
to be given at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, and Mr. Lincoln, General Grant,
and Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, were expected to be present; in fact, the
Washington newspapers of that date had announced that they would be
present. But at the very last moment General Grant was compelled to leave
Washington and go North. Mr. Stanton, being overburdened with business
and unable to find time to go to the theatre, remained at his office, and only
Mr. Lincoln went, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and a few friends. His
appearance was the signal for a grand ovation. He seemed to follow the
presentation of the play with close attention and great interest. The third act
had just commenced, when the audience was startled by the sound of a
pistol-shot proceeding from the President’s box. At the same moment a man
appeared in the foreground of that box, jumped upon the balustrade, and
thence down to the stage, shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” In leaping from
the box, one of the man’s spurs got entangled with the flag with which Mr.
Lincoln’s box was decorated. He fell and broke a leg, but immediately
recovering himself and getting on his feet he had sufficient presence of
mind and power of will to make his escape. He knocked down those who
tried to stop him, ran through the aisles of the scenery, jumped upon a horse
which was kept in readiness for him by an accomplice, and disappeared in
the darkness of the night.
This man, who with lightning-like rapidity had appeared on the stage
and disappeared from it, was the murderer of Abraham Lincoln; and the
murder had been committed so suddenly that the great majority of the
audience, even after his flight, were in profound ignorance of what had
happened. It was then only that the cries of horror, the loud lamentations of
Mrs. Lincoln and of the other persons in the President’s box conveyed to
the awe-stricken audience the news of the tragedy which had occurred in
their midst. The President, shot through the head from behind, had lost
consciousness immediately, and the blood oozed slowly from the wound.
However, life was not extinct, and immediately the hope arose that Mr.
Lincoln’s life might be saved. He was carried into a neighboring house, and
the best surgeons were called to his assistance. But alas! the murderer’s ball
having passed through the cerebellum had pierced the cerebrum, and the
wound was fatal beyond all hope. Mr. Lincoln died early in the morning

without having regained consciousness. The North had lost its greatest
citizen and the South its best friend.

While this murder was being committed at Ford’s Theatre, another
assassin entered the residence of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who
had been seriously injured by an accident a few days before. The assassin
pretended to be the bearer of a medical prescription, and demanded to be
admitted to the room of the patient. The servant refused to admit him, but
was rudely pushed aside, whereupon the visitor, who evidently was familiar
with the location of the rooms, burst into the one where Mr. Seward was
lying ill in bed, rushed toward him, seriously wounded Mr. Seward’s son,
who threw himself in his way, and thereupon engaged the invalid in a
furious combat, stabbing him several times. In spite of his disability, the
Secretary defended himself bravely and fought with the courage of despair,
until at last the assassin, after having badly cut and disfigured his face,
made his escape.
As has been stated already, the plan of the conspirators was to kill not
only President Lincoln, but other prominent men, such as Andrew Johnson,
the new Vice-President, Secretary Seward, Secretary Stanton, and General
Grant. On several occasions the assassins had been on the point of
perpetrating these murders, but always unforeseen circumstances had
occurred and prevented them. At last this gala performance at Ford’s
Theatre seemed to invite them to execute their plot, and they resolved to
assassinate Lincoln, Grant, and Stanton at the theatre, and Seward and
Johnson at their private residences. By removing these five men the
assassins hoped to decapitate the republic itself and imagined that very
likely during the terror and confusion which these assassinations would
cause, the Southern rebels would take up arms again and capture
Washington city. But only one of the five victims designated was killed—
alas! it was the most illustrious one of the five—while the others escaped
owing to fortuitous circumstances.
As to the murderer of Lincoln, who was identified as John Wilkes Booth,
it was ascertained that he had been inspired by an implacable and sincere
fanaticism. Son of a celebrated English tragedian who had lived several
years in the United States, John Wilkes Booth was himself an actor of
considerable ability, who had frequently played on the very stage which he

was to desecrate by one of the most infamous assassinations of modern
times. Young, handsome, eloquent, and audacious as he was, Booth had a
certain prestige among his companions and great success with the ladies of
his profession. He was an enthusiastic Democrat, became a prominent
member of the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” and believed in the divine
origin of the institution of slavery. He had been among the lynchers of John
Brown and frequently boasted of his participation in that crime. He often
expressed the wish that all such abolitionists should die on the gallows. He
and some others, equally extreme in their views on the slavery question,
met frequently at the house of a Mrs. Surratt, who was also fanatically
devoted to the Southern cause, and concocted there the plot to murder the
President and his associates.
After having performed that part of the plot which he had reserved for
himself—the assassination of the President—with almost incredible
boldness, Booth fled to Virginia. He had intended to continue his flight until
he had reached the extreme South, and possibly Mexico, but his injury
prevented him from carrying out this plan. In company with one of his
accomplices he hid himself in an isolated barn on the banks of the
Rappahannock, hoping that as soon as the first storm of indignation had
blown over, the search for the murderer would gradually relax, if not cease
altogether, and that he would then have an opportunity to escape. But in this
calculation he was mistaken. A roving detachment of federal soldiers
discovered him in his hiding-place, during the night of the twenty-sixth of
April. His companion, realizing that all resistance would be useless,
surrendered immediately. But Booth wanted to sell his life as dearly as
possible. He tried to break out and escape from his pursuers, but a pistol-
shot brought him down with a fatal wound in his head, from which he soon
afterwards died. The assassin who had assaulted and seriously wounded
Secretary Seward had, a few days before, been captured at Mrs. Surratt’s
house.
The effect of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination on the people of the North was
indescribable. It filled their hearts with bitterness and their minds with
thoughts of revenge. It was averred that the murderer in crossing the stage
of the theatre and defiantly brandishing a long knife had exclaimed: “The
South is avenged!” This exclamation seemed to implicate the whole South,
or at least its government, in the murderous act of Booth. The natural
consequence was that the people of the North, who immediately after the

surrender of Lee’s army were inclined to great leniency toward the
vanquished and willing to receive them back into the Union with open
arms, suddenly turned against them. The army and the government circles,
and in fact the entire population of the national capital, who had learned to
love Mr. Lincoln, demanded the most severe punishment for the rebels.
Then began the long and tedious work of reconstruction, retarded by party
spirit and retaliatory measures on both sides. It was terminated to the
satisfaction of both only during the last few years, when the sons of the
South fought shoulder to shoulder with the sons of the North for the
deliverance of Cuba from Spanish oppression under the glorious banner of
the Union. But how often during these years of contention, was the great
man missed whose truly humane spirit would have contributed so much to
bring the discordant elements of both sections together in fraternal harmony
and mutual respect, and whose hands had penned the noblest document of
the nineteenth century—the proclamation of emancipation—setting free
four million slaves. Such deeds as his can never be forgotten.
The assassination did a great deal for Mr. Lincoln’s standing in history. It
added the halo of martyrdom to his renown as a statesman, and it has made
him a national hero, who, next to Washington—or with Washington—holds
the highest place in the estimation of the American people. It is doubtful
whether Abraham Lincoln, if he had not crowned his career with a martyr’s
death, would have held this place. It had especially the effect of wiping out
an impression which many had formed of Mr. Lincoln’s character, and
which, during the first years of his presidential term, lowered him
considerably in the eyes of the people. His Southern enemies and detractors
made a great deal of Mr. Lincoln’s “undignified bearing,” his “lack of tact,”
“his mania for telling funny stories, in and out of season,” and the Northern
Democrats were only too busy repeating and circulating these stories,
because they could not forgive Lincoln for having beaten their idol, Stephen
Arnold Douglas.
Mr. Lincoln’s distinction was his strong originality and self-reliance. As
a young man, with no adviser to guide him through the hardships and
embarrassments of life, he took counsel with his own mind, which
fortunately was of peculiar depth, rich in resources,—and the advice he
received from this consultation, the instruction he gained by this appeal to
the fund of his own knowledge and experience served him splendidly as
schooling for the task which was in store for him. And joined to this self-

education nature had bestowed on him some of her rarest gifts,—humor,
kind, genial, and peculiarly humane, blending tears with laughter, and a
mother-wit always ready to make fun of his own misfortunes and
shortcomings, and to joke away any embarrassing situation in which either
untoward circumstances or his own mistakes might have placed him. In
addition to all this he possessed that truly American characteristic—
shrewdness, which far from being an objectionable quality with him, was
modified by his kindness of heart and his moral uprightness.
In that great and distinctly English book, Robinson Crusoe, we find a
young Englishman in consequence of a shipwreck thrown upon a deserted
island in midocean. He is cut off from civilization and its resources and
thrown upon his own ingenuity to carve out a living for himself which, to a
degree at least, comes up to the experience which he has had while living in
civilized society. A few tools and instruments which he saves from the
wrecked ship are the only things to assist him in the building up of his
future life, yet by industry, shrewdness, and perseverance he really succeeds
in making that life not only tolerable, but to a degree comfortable. Possibly
the trying circumstances in which young Robinson was placed whetted and
sharpened his wits, strengthened his nerve, and inspired him with enough
confidence to become equal to his difficult task; at all events, he succeeded,
and the book narrating his experience, his trials, and his sufferings forms
one of the most delightful and at the same time one of the most instructive
books for young and old ever written. Its educational value can hardly be
overestimated. It may be said that Robinson Crusoe is but a novel, and that
his adventures and achievements all originated in the fertile mind of Daniel
Defoe. But even if it was so, which is by no means proven, the feat of
Defoe’s genius shows that a young man of strong character and full of
resources, with an ideal placed before his mental eye, can find the means to
raise himself to a higher level than he could have reached under ordinary
circumstances and without the stimulating influence of personal hardships
and pressing necessity.
It was so with Abraham Lincoln. The means of education which the wild
West offered to him were of the most elementary kind, but his innate genius
and energy knew how to make them serviceable to the high aim and to the
ideals which he had proposed to himself. The loneliness of the primeval
forests in which his childhood was passed fostered the tendency to reverie
and thoughtfulness which formed one of the principal traits of his character.

An American boy in the full meaning of the word he learned to love and
appreciate that Union from which the West expected its development, and
on which it depended as on the natural source of its future greatness. As if
to prepare him for the great part he was to act in American history, he was
made to see at an early day the wrongs and cruelties of slavery. His pure
mind, which had been strengthened and refined by immediate contact with
nature, felt the stain which soiled the American name and flag. As he went
down the Mississippi river on a flatboat and became witness of a slave-
auction, where family ties were brutally torn asunder, he vowed to himself
to do his share as a man and citizen to wipe out that wrong against
humanity. How nobly he redeemed that vow and how cruelly he suffered
for redeeming it, we have told in the preceding pages, and the crown of
immortality is his just reward.
If we should wish to compare the great martyr-president with any
historical personage of preceding ages, it would be Henry the Fourth of
France. While unquestionably there are many differences in their traits of
character, they have nevertheless so many traits in common that the
comparison is, in our opinion, a decidedly just one. Both were placed in
leading positions at a time when their country was torn up by civil war. In
the case of Henry the Fourth religion, or rather Protestantism, was the cause
of the fratricidal strife; in the case of Abraham Lincoln it was negro slavery.
Both were enlisted in the cause of humanity and progress. It is true, Henry
the Fourth renounced Protestantism to win a crown, in the possession of
which he alone could hope to render immortal service to the Protestant
Church and the principle upon which it is founded, religious toleration; and
by the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes he gloriously performed the
historical task which Providence had allotted to him. Abraham Lincoln was
willing to make any sacrifice for the maintenance of the American Union,
for only as President of the United States and as conqueror of the rebellious
South, could he hope to become the champion of the abolition of negro
slavery. He was fortunate enough to live through the gigantic Civil War, and
Clio, the Muse, of History, has entered in imperishable letters on the
asbestos leaves of our national annals his immortal declaration of the
emancipation of the black race. As two great reformers they will both live
in history,—Henry the Fourth, as the embodiment of the principle of
religious toleration, Lincoln as the evangelist of negro emancipation. It is a
strange coincidence that these two great men were endowed by nature with

so many analogous traits, but rarely found in other great men. Both had a
keen relish for humor, fun, and wit, and indulged this taste under the most
trying circumstances; both were lenient and forgiving to a fault; both
displayed statesmanship and executive ability of a high order; and if Henry
the Fourth has won greater laurels as a warrior, Lincoln has crowned his
great life with the glory of being a great orator. Mankind has grown better
by having produced these two men.

CHAPTER XXIII

ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA

ALEXANDER II.

CHAPTER XXIII

ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA

(March 13, 1881)

T HE assassination of Abraham Lincoln leads up to that of the other great
emancipator of the nineteenth century, Alexander the Second of Russia,
which occurred on the thirteenth of March, 1881, and which filled the
world with horror.
In one of Goethe’s most famous poems a magician’s apprentice, in the
absence of his learned master, sets free the secret powers of nature which
his master can control by a magical formula. The apprentice has overheard
the formula, and has appropriated it to his own use; but lo! when the
apprentice wants to get rid of the powers he has let loose, he has forgotten
the magic words by which to banish them, and miserably perishes in the
attempt. The poem is symbolical of the life and experience of Czar
Alexander the Second of Russia. As a young man, enthusiastic and desirous
to promote his country’s welfare, he set loose the turbulent and
revolutionary powers slumbering in his gigantic empire, and they grew to
such enormous proportions that even his power, great though it was, was
insufficient to curb them; finally he paid with his life for his attempt to
confer blessings upon his subjects. In order to comprehend the difficulties
which confronted Alexander the Second on his accession, it is necessary to
take a retrospect of the preceding reign.
The Emperor Nicholas the First died on the second of March, 1855. He
had reigned twenty-nine years and nine months. During all these years he
had ruled his gigantic empire with an iron hand and had stood before the
world as the most brilliant as well as the most imperious ruler who had sat
upon the throne of the Czars since the death of Peter the Great. He was the
model for the other sovereigns of Europe, and his policy was adopted with
almost servile humility by the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the former
of whom he reinstated on his throne by overthrowing the Hungarian
revolution, while the latter was allied to him by ties of marriage. His dislike
for reform and “the modern spirit” was caused, it is said, by the sad
experience he had made but a few weeks after his accession, when a
rebellion of the Imperial Guards in his own capital compelled him to throw

shot and shell into his own regiments, and to quell a widespread conspiracy
by the severest measures. At that time cheers coming from the ranks for
“Constantine and the Constitution” had made the very name of a
constitution odious to him. He might not have taken the demonstration so
seriously if he had known that the soldiers, on being asked by their officers
to cheer for Constantine and the Constitution had asked: “Who is the
Constitution?” and were told that she was Constantine’s wife, whereupon
the soldiers cheered lustily. At all events, Nicholas, who had intended to
introduce a number of Western reforms, took suddenly a great aversion to
anything which deviated in the least from the most autocratic form of
government; he punished the slightest disagreement in political opinion or
the most timid opposition to his imperial will as an act of rebellion. The
whole system of government had been fashioned upon a half Asiatic, half
European model; it combined the absolute—almost divine—power of the
Oriental ruler with a formidable and well-drilled bureaucracy blindly
obedient to the Czar and knowing no other law than his will.
Nicholas the First was a man of superior intelligence, of indomitable
will, and of great vigor of mind, which enabled him to pay strict attention to
the different departments of the public service. His most effective
instrument was the third section of the Czar’s personal bureau,—a secret
political police by which he overawed the empire and whose very name
caused terror in the heart and home of every Russian family. Whosoever
was unfortunate enough to fall under the suspicion of this terrible
Hermandad—more cruel and more vindictive than the Spanish Inquisition
—might just as well resign himself at once to his fate,—life-long exile to
Siberia or a secret execution, most probably by strangulation, in one of the
prisons of Russia. It was the office of this secret police, which reported
directly to the Emperor, not only to ferret out crime and bring criminals to
justice, but to protect the subjects of the Czar from contact with hurtful
foreign influences, to confiscate books and newspapers from abroad, to
open and read letters, and to learn family secrets which might be used
against the correspondents or their friends. Everything, in fact, which the
imperial government could think of to cut off Russia from the current of
European ideas, to prevent its subjects from receiving a liberal education at
the universities, to expand their minds by travelling abroad, to become
familiar with the great political and philosophical questions of the day by a

study of literature and newspapers, was done with rigorous care by the
police and approved by the Czar.
Occasionally the Emperor became indignant at the venality and
corruption of high public officials; but he did not see that this venality and
corruption were but the logical consequence of the system of despotism and
Byzantinism which his will imposed even on the highest members of the
aristocracy. His smile, his praise, was the highest distinction, the highest
aim of the ambition of the aristocracy, and for this servile subjection to the
imperial will they compensated themselves by unbridled licentiousness and
beastly excesses, and by robbing the public treasury. Because it was well
known that the Emperor looked with suspicion on the universities as
nurseries of liberal or revolutionary ideas, the nobility did not send their
sons thither, for fear that the young men might become infected with these
ideas, and that transportation to Siberia might suddenly interrupt their
studies. The nobility, therefore, deemed it more prudent to send the lads to
court or to the military schools, where they were safe at least from the
contagion of European liberalism. It is really a wonder that, with such an
organization of society and with a system of police surveillance perhaps
never equalled in the world, with a Damocles’ sword always suspended
over their heads, there still remained a number of liberal-minded men, who
never abandoned the hope of better days, never renounced their dream that
the time would come for Russia, as it had come for western Europe, to enter
socially and politically the family of enlightened nations, blessed with
liberal institutions and freed from the despotism of semi-Oriental rulers.
These liberal-minded men and true patriots—professors of the universities,
literary men, and a very small number of young noblemen—lived mostly at
Moscow, where the distance from the observing eye of the ruler and his
court saved them from detection, although their secret influence pervaded
the whole empire, and kept the flame of liberalism burning in the hearts of
the intellectual élite. While Nicholas had thus succeeded in building up an
Eastern despotism on the banks of the Neva, he endeavored at the same
time to impress Europe with the idea of his unrivalled power. His army was
considered one of the best in Europe, and the immense population of his
empire—larger than that of any two of the other great powers—gave him
almost unlimited material for recruits. The generals commanding these
armies were also renowned throughout Europe. They had won their laurels
in the battles against the revolutionary armies of Poland and Hungary, in

conquering the warlike population of the Caucasus, and subjecting large
territories in western Asia to the white eagle of the Czar. The Russian
diplomats had the reputation of being the shrewdest in Europe, and had
either by secret treaties or by matrimonial alliances succeeded in making
Russian influence preponderant on the continent of Europe. The Emperor
Nicholas stood, therefore, on a commanding height when he provoked the
great western powers of Europe, together with Turkey, to mortal combat. It
was a challenge born in arrogance and political short-sightedness, and it
found its deserved rebuke in a total defeat of the Russian armies and a
thorough humiliation of the Russian Emperor. Nicholas ought to have
known that, in engaging in war with the western powers, he not only
endangered his military prestige, but put to the test also his system of
domestic administration, based entirely on his autocratic will, and silently,
although reluctantly, submitted to by his subjects, as a tribute to his
dominant position in Europe. When by the disasters of the Crimean War
that position was lost, when it became clear to the Russian people that the
Emperor was not absolutely the universal dictator of Europe, not only his
military prestige was destroyed, but his system of domestic government lost
immensely in public estimation. Nicholas felt this double humiliation so
keenly that it was just as much personal chagrin as physical disease which
caused his death even before the war was over.
It was therefore a heavy burden which his successor, Alexander the
Second, assumed when he ascended the throne on the second of March,
1855. His first duty—and it was a painful and humiliating duty—was to
terminate the Crimean War by accepting the unfavorable terms demanded
by the western powers. In the exhausted condition of the Russian treasury,
and after the disorganization of the Russian armies by a series of disastrous
defeats, nothing was left to the young Czar but to submit to the inevitable.
In doing so he also signed the sentence of death of the autocratic rule
established by his father. A general clamor for reform, for greater freedom
and more liberal laws arose, and Alexander the Second was only too willing
to grant them. He was liberal-minded himself and kind-hearted, and he was
anxious to let the Russian nation partake of the progress of European
civilization. He opened the Russian universities to all who desired a higher
education. He reduced to a reasonable rate the price for passports, which
had been enormous under Nicholas, he rescinded the burdensome press
laws, and modified the law subjecting all publications to a most rigorous