The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11

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An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE

Henry Hudson Explores the Hudson River (A.D. 1609), 1 HENRY R. CLEVELAND

Galileo Overthrows Ancient Philosophy The Telescope and Its Discoveries (A.D. 1610), 14 SIR OLIVER LODGE

The Beginning of British Power in India (A.D. 1612), 30 BECKLES WILLSON

The Dutch Settlement of New York (A.D. 1614), 44 DAVID T. VALENTINE

Harvey Discovers the Circulation of the Blood (A.D. 1616), 50 THOMAS H. HUXLEY

The "Defenestration" at Prague (A.D. 1618) The Thirty Years War, 62 SAMUEL R. GARDINER CHARLES F. HORNE

The First American Legislature (A.D. 1619), 76 CHARLES CAMPBELL

Introduction of Negroes into Virginia (A.D. 1619) Spread of Slavery and Cultivation of Tobacco, 81 CHARLES CAMPBELL JOHN M. LUDLOW

English Pilgrims Settle at Plymouth (A.D. 1620), 93 JOHN S. BARRY

The Birth of Modern Scientific Methods (A.D. 1620) Bacon and Descartes, 116 GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Siege of La Rochelle (A.D. 1627) Richelieu Rules France, 129 ANDREW D. WHITE

The Great Puritan Exodus to New England The Founding of Boston (A.D. 1630), 153 JOHN G. PALFREY

Triumph and Death of Gustavus Adolphus at Luetzen (A.D. 1632), 174 BENJAMIN CHAPMAN

Recantation of Galileo (A.D. 1633), 184 SIR OLIVER LODGE

The Educational Reform of Comenius (A.D. 1638), 192 SIMON SOMERVILLE LAURIE

The First Written Free Constitution in the World (A.D. 1639) Earliest Union among American Colonies (A.D. 1643), 205 GIDEON H. HOLLISTER JOHN MARSHALL

Abolition of the Court of Star-chamber (A.D. 1641) The Popular Revolt against Charles I, 215 HENRY HALLAM LORD MACAULAY

The Founding of Montreal (A.D. 1642), 232 ALFRED SANDHAM

Presbyterianism Established Meeting of the Westminster Assembly (A.D. 1643), 238 DAVID MASSON

Masaniello's Revolt at Naples (A.D. 1647), 253 ALFRED VON REUMONT

The Peace of Westphalia (A.D. 1648) The War of the Fronde, 285 ARTHUR HASSALL

Religious Toleration Proclaimed in Maryland (A.D. 1649), 303 G. L. DAVIS

The Great Civil War in England The Execution of Charles I (A.D. 1649), 311 LORD MACAULAY CHARLES KNIGHT

Cromwell's Campaign in Ireland (A.D. 1649), 335 FREDERIC HARRISON

Molière Creates Modern Comedy (A.D. 1659), 347 HENRI VAN LAUN

Cromwell's Rule in England The Restoration (A.D. 1660), 357 THOMAS CARLYLE JOHN RICHARD GREEN SAMUEL PEPYS

Universal Chronology (A.D. 1609-1660), 387 JOHN RUDD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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The imperial Austrian Councillors are thrown out of the window of the castle of Hradschin by the enraged Bohemian Deputies, thus precipitating the Thirty Years' War (page 65), Frontispiece Painting by Vacslaw Brezik.

Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, 106 Painting by A. Gisbert.

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(ERA OF POLITICAL-RELIGIOUS WARS)

CHARLES F. HORNE

Gazing across the broader field of universal history, one comes more and more to overlook the merely temporary, constantly shifting border lines of states, and to see Western Europe as a whole, to watch its nations as a single people guided by similar developments of the mind, impelled by similar stirrings of the heart, taking part in but a single story, the marvellous tale of man's advance.

This sense of an all-enfolding unity, an ever-advancing common destiny, sinks weakest perhaps in the period we now approach. The nations seem sharply separated in their careers. In the preceding age the power of Spain and the fanaticism of its monarch, Philip II, had made the reëstablishment of Catholicism the dominant question throughout Europe. But in 1609 Philip III of Spain abandoned his father's attempt to conquer Holland and again enforce a universal religion. In 1610 Henry IV of France, who had brought peace and amity out of the savage religious wars within his own realm, fell under an assassin's knife. These two events may be accepted as marking a turn in the current of the world, a change in the thoughts of men. The next half-century saw wars indeed, bloody and bitter wars, but they were no longer primarily religious. The strife was more than half political, and men of opposite faiths found themselves at times allied upon the battle-field. The feeling of religious brotherhood grew weaker, that of political allegiance stronger.

GROWTH OF NATIONAL SPIRIT

The triumph of Holland had much to do with this. During almost a generation the Catholics of the Southern Netherlands had been united with the Protestants of the Northern Provinces in desperate war against the tyranny of Spain; and though only Holland finally achieved independence, her people could scarce forget their long brotherhood with the Catholic South. And now Holland was a republic, her people were self-governing! Looking with prophetic vision into the future, we may assert that this was only the first step toward a broader union of all the nations when every man shall be self-governing, and hence all shall be equal and united and progressive. But for its own time at least the freedom of Holland was a sharp influence toward division among the people of Europe, toward the establishment of differences, the growth of national as opposed to universal brotherhood.

There was, to be sure, an earlier republic in Europe, Switzerland. But the Swiss maintained themselves by their isolation, their remoteness from other nations and from one another in their bleak mountain valleys. The Dutch, on the contrary, inhabited a flat sea-coast; they were traders; their very existence depended on intercourse with other lands. Hence they had to be ever alert in defence of their hard-won freedom. The spirit of nationality, of patriotism grew strong within them. At one time they had been members of the German empire; at another, subjects of France, of Burgundy, of Spain. Now they were Hollanders, a distinct nation by themselves, and an example to all others of what a united land of men might do.

France also had learned a stronger sense of nationality from her hero-king, Henry IV. Always, through all his religious wars, he had insisted that he was king of all Frenchmen, both Catholic and Protestant, and would be a father to them all. He withdrew his Protestant army from besieging Paris when the surrender of the city seemed certain, abandoned his triumph "lest Frenchmen starve." Englishmen, too, in the age of Elizabeth, had learned to regard themselves not only as different from but as far superior to men of other races. Spain both by her victories and by her sufferings had opened a gap between her people and others. Only Germany, through her very importance and vague imperial predominance over the surrounding lands, failed to find within herself that necessity for union which made other kingdoms strong.

By this internal division Germany was now plunged into the awful tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, a partly political, partly religious contest in which all the nations of Europe by degrees took some part. Thus the war forms to a certain extent a centre around which the movements of the age are grouped. England also had her great religious strife, her Puritan revolution, which collapsed in 1660. Yet on the whole the age is political even more than religious, and the ablest statesman of the day, Richelieu, the most successful guardian France has ever known, reaped for his own land all the benefits of the world-wide turmoil. France, which had so often seemed on the point of assuming the foremost place in Europe and had been so often checked, now advanced definitely to the front. The Bourbons, descendants of Henry IV, took the rank of the decaying Hapsburg family as the chief rulers of Europe. Historians often call this the age of Richelieu.

DECAY OF THE HAPSBURG POWER

Spain and Austria, the two great Hapsburg states, both decayed in power. Italy, the Hapsburg dependent, lost the last vestiges of her ancient intellectual supremacy. Everywhere the South of Europe gave place to the North.

The blight of the Inquisition was upon Spain. The Moors were banished, the Jews were banished; and it had been the industry of these two races which had largely supported the pride and laziness of the hidalgos. In Italy, too, the Inquisition held sway. Galileo with his telescope revealed facts which proved the theories of Copernicus, and made impossible the ancient idea that our earth was the centre of the universe. All Europe rang with his discoveries; but the Church refused to understand, forbade him to teach doctrines which it declared heretical. For a time the astronomer's mouth was closed, but not so the minds of those who had listened to him. In England, where thought was free, Harvey founded medical science by his proof of the circulation of the blood; the Lord Chancellor Bacon wrote his celebrated Novum Organum, pointing out to modern investigators the methods they must follow. In Germany Comenius revitalized the dead world of education. In France Descartes created within his own mind a revolution scarce less important than that of Luther. He freed philosophy from its thraldom to religion. He bade the mind of man to stand by itself, lone in the midst of an unmeasured universe, and discover of what one thing it could feel assured by its own unbiassed thought. His famous first conclusion, "I think, therefore I exist," stands as the corner-stone of modern philosophy.

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