But if the pleasure-loving old king was listless, young Helena was not. The misty records speak of her determined efforts, and though it is hard to understand how a girl of fifteen can do any thing toward successful generalship, much can be granted to a young lady who, if the records speak truth, was, even while a girl, “a Minerva in wisdom, and not deficient in statecraft.”
So, while she advised with her father’s boldest captains and strengthened so wisely the walls of ancient Colchester, or Camalodunum, that traces of her work still remain as proof of her untiring zeal, she still cherished the hope of British freedom and release from Rome. And the loving old king, deep in his pleasures, still recognized the will and wisdom of his valiant daughter, and bade his artists make in her honor a memorial that should ever speak of her valor. And this memorial, lately unearthed, and known as the Colchester Sphinx, perpetuates the lion-like qualities of a girl in her teens, who dared withstand the power of Imperial Rome.
And still no help came from her cousin, the admiral. But one day a galley speeding up the Colne brought this unsigned message to King Coel:
“To Coel, Camalodunum, Greeting:
“Save thyself. Constantius the sallow-faced, prefect of the Western praetorians, is even now on his way from Spain to crush thy revolt. Save thyself. I wait. Justice will come.”
“Thou seest, O daughter,” said King Coel as Helena read the craven missive, “the end cometh as I knew it would. Well, man can but die.” And with this philosophic reflection the “jolly old soul” only dipped his red nose still deeper into his big bowl, and bade his musicians play their loudest and merriest.
But Helena, “not deficient in statecraft,” thought for both. She would save her father, her country, and herself, and shame her disloyal cousin. Discretion is the better part of valor. Let us see how discreet a little lady was this fair young Princess Helena.
The legions came to Camalodunum. Across Gaul and over the choppy channel they came, borne by the very galleys that were to have succored the British king. Up through the mouth of Thames they sailed, and landing at Londinium, marched in close array along the broad Roman road that led straight up to the gates of Camalodunum. Before the walls of Camalodunum was pitched the Roman camp, and the British king was besieged in his own palace-town.
The Roman trumpets sounded before the gate of the beleaguered city, and the herald of the prefect, standing out from his circle of guards, cried the summons to surrender:
“Coel of Britain, traitor to the Roman people and to thy lord the Emperor, hear thou! In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I, Constantius the prefect, charge thee to deliver up to them ere this day’s sun shall set, this, their City of Camalodunum, and thine own rebel body as well. Which done they will in mercy pardon the crime of treason to the city, and will work their will and punishment only upon thee—the chief rebel. And if this be not done within the appointed time, then will the walls of this their town of Camalodunum be overthrown, and thou and all thy people be given the certain death of traitors.”
King Coel heard the summons, and some spark of that very patriotism that had inspired and incited his valiant little daughter flamed in his heart. He would have returned an answer of defiance. “I can at least die with my people,” he said, but young Helena interposed.
“Leave this to me, my father,” she said. “As I have been the cause, so let me be the end of trouble. Say to the prefect that in three hours’ time the British envoy will come to his camp with the king’s answer to his summons.”
The old king would have replied otherwise, but his daughter’s entreaties and the counsels of his captains who knew the hopelessness of resistance, forced him to assent, and his herald made answer accordingly.
Constantius the prefect—a manly, pleasant looking young commander, called Chlorus or “the sallow,” from his pale face,—sat in his tent within the Roman camp. The three hours’ grace allowed had scarcely expired when his sentry announced the arrival of the envoy of Coel of Britain.
“Bid him enter,” said the prefect. Then, as the curtains of his tent were drawn aside, the prefect started in surprise, for there before him stood, not the rugged form of a British fighting man, but a fair young girl, who bent her graceful head in reverent obeisance to the youthful representative of the Imperial Caesars.
“What would’st thou with me, maiden?” asked the prefect.
“I am the daughter of Coel of Britain,” said the girl, “and I am come to sue for pardon and for peace.”
“The Roman people have no quarrel with the girls of Britain,” said the prefect. “Hath then King Coel fallen so low in state that a maiden must plead for him?”
“He hath not fallen at all, O Prefect,” replied the girl proudly; “the king, my father, would withstand thy force but that I, his daughter, know the cause of this unequal strife, and seek to make terms with the victors.”
The girl’s fearlessness pleased the prefect, for Constantius Chlorus was a humane and gentle man, fierce enough in fight, but seeking never to needlessly wound an enemy or lose a friend.
“And what are thy terms, fair envoy of Britain?” he demanded.
“These, O Prefect,” replied Helena, “If but thou wilt remove thy cohorts to Londinium, I pledge my father’s faith and mine, that he will, within five days, deliver to thee as hostage for his fealty, myself and twenty children of his councillors and captains. And further, I, Helena the princess, will bind myself to deliver up to thee, with the hostages, the chief rebel in this revolt, and the one to whose counselling this strife with Rome is due.”
Both the matter and the manner of the offered terms still further pleased the prefect, and he said: “Be it so, Princess.” Then summoning his lieutenant, he said: “Conduct the envoy of Coel of Britain with all courtesy to the gates of the the city,” and with a herald’s escort the girl returned to her father.
Again the old king rebelled at the terms his daughter had made.
“I know the ways of Rome,” he said. “I know what their mercy meaneth. Thou shalt never go as hostage for my faith, O daughter, nor carry out this hazardous plan.”
“I have pledged my word and thine, O King,” said Helena. “Surely a Briton’s pledge should be as binding as a Roman’s.”
So she carried her point, and, in five days’ time, she, with twenty of the boys and girls of Camalodunum, went as hostages to the Roman camp in London.
“Here be thy hostages, fair Princess,” said Constantius the prefect as he received the children; “and this is well. But remember the rest of thy compact. Deliver to me now, according to thy promise, the chief rebel against Rome.”
“She is here, O Prefect,” said the intrepid girl. “I am that rebel—Helena of Britain!”
The smile upon the prefect’s face changed to sudden sternness.
“Trifle not with Roman justice, girl,” he said, “I demand the keeping of thy word.”
“It is kept,” replied the princess. “Helena of Britain is the cause and motive of this revolt against Rome. If it be rebellion for a free prince to claim his own, if it be rebellion for a prince to withstand for the sake of his people the unjust demands of the conqueror, if it be rebellion for one who loveth her father to urge that father to valiant deeds in defence of the liberties of the land over which he ruleth as king, then am I a rebel, for I have done all these, and only because of my words did the king, my father, take up arms against the might and power of Rome. I am the chief rebel. Do with me as thou wilt.”
And now the prefect saw that the girl spoke the truth, and that she had indeed kept her pledge.
“Thy father and his city are pardoned,” he announced after a few moments of deliberation. “Remain thou here, thou and thy companions, as hostages for Britain, until such time as I shall determine upon the punishment due to one who is so fierce a rebel against the power of Rome.”
So the siege of Camalodunum was raised, and the bloodless rebellion ended. Constantius the prefect took up his residence for a while within King Coel’s city, and at last returned to his command in Gaul and Spain, well pleased with the spirit of the little maiden whom, so he claimed, he still held in his power as the prisoner of Rome.
Constantius the prefect came again to Britain, and with a greater following, fully ten years after King Coel’s revolt, for now, again, rebellion was afoot in the island province.
Carausius the admiral, biding his time, sought at last to carry out his scheme of sole supremacy. Sailing with his entire war-fleet to Britain, he won the legions to his side, proclaimed himself Emperor of Britain, and defied the power of Rome.
So daring and successful was his move that Rome for a time was powerless. Carausius was recognized as “associate” emperor by Rome, until such time as she should be ready to punish his rebellion, and for seven years he reigned as emperor of Britain.
But ere this came to pass, Helena the princess had gone over to Gaul, and had become the wife of Constantius the prefect,—“Since only thus,” said he, “may I keep in safe custody this prisoner of Rome.”
The imperial power of Carausius was but short-lived. Crafty himself, he fell a victim to the craft of others, and the sword of Allectus, his chief minister and most trusted confidant, ended his life when once again the power of Rome seemed closing about the little kingdom of Britain.
Constantius became governor of Britain, and finally caesar and emperor. But, long before that day arrived, the Princess Helena had grown into a loyal Roman wife and mother, dearly loving her little son Constantine, who, in after years, became the first and greatest Christian emperor of Rome.
She bestowed much loving care upon her native province of Britain. She became a Christian even before her renowned son had his historic vision of the flaming cross. When more than eighty years old she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There she did many good and kindly deeds, erected temples above the Sepulchre of the Saviour, at his birthplace at Bethlehem, and on the Mount of Olives. She is said, also, to have discovered upon Calvary the cross, upon which had suffered and died the Saviour she had learned to worship.
Beloved throughout her long and useful life she was canonized after her death, and is now recognized one of the saints of the Romish church.
To-day in the city of London you may see the memorial church reared to her memory—the Church of Great St. Helena, in Bishopgate. A loving, noble, wonderful, and zealous woman, she is a type of the brave young girlhood of the long ago, and, however much of fiction there may be mingled with the fact of her life-story, she was, we may feel assured, all that the chroniclers have claimed for her—“one of the grandest women of the earlier centuries.”
There was trouble and confusion in the imperial palace of Theodosius the Little, Emperor of the East. Now, this Theodosius was called “the Little” because, though he bore the name of his mighty grandfather, Theodosius the Great, emperor of both the East and West, he had as yet done nothing worthy any other title than that of “the Little,” or “the Child.” For Theodosius emperor though he was called, was only a boy of twelve, and not a very bright boy at that.
His father, Arcadius the emperor, and his mother, Eudoxia the empress, were dead; and in the great palace at Constantinople, in this year of grace, 413, Theodosius, the boy emperor, and his three sisters, Pulcheria, Marina, and Arcadia, alone were left to uphold the tottering dignity and the empty name of the once mighty Empire of the East, which their great ancestors, Constantine and Theodosius, had established and strengthened.
And now there was confusion in the imperial palace; for word came in haste from the Dacian border that Ruas, king of the Huns, sweeping down from the east, was ravaging the lands along the Upper Danube, and with his host of barbarous warriors was defeating the legions and devastating the lands of the empire.
The wise Anthemius, prefect of the east, and governor or guardian of the young emperor, was greatly disturbed by the tidings of this new invasion. Already he had repelled at great cost the first advance of these terrible Huns, and had quelled into a sort of half submission the less ferocious followers of Ulpin the Thracian; but now he knew that his armies along the Danube were in no condition to withstand the hordes of Huns, that, pouring in from distant Siberia, were following the lead of Ruas, their king, for plunder and booty, and were even now encamped scarce two hundred and fifty miles from the seven gates and the triple walls of splendid Constantinople.
Turbaned Turks, mosques and minarets, muftis and cadis, veiled eastern ladies, Mohammedains and muezzins, Arabian Nights and attar of roses, bazars, dogs, and donkeys—these, I suppose, are what Constantinople suggests whenever its name is mentioned to any girl or boy of to-day,—the capital of modern Turkey, the city of the Sublime Porte. But the greatest glory of Constantinople was away back in the early days before the time of Mohammed, or of the Crusaders, when it was the centre of the Christian religion, the chief and gorgeous capital of a Christian empire, and the residence of Christian emperors,—from the days of Constantine the conqueror to those of Justinian the law-giver and of Irene the empress. It was the metropolis of the eastern half of the great Roman Empire, and during this period of over five hundred years all the wealth and treasure of the east poured into Constantinople, while all the glories of the empire, even the treasures of old Rome itself, were drawn upon to adorn and beautify this rival city by the Golden Horn. And so in the days of Theodosius the Little, the court of Constantinople, although troubled with fear of a barbarian invasion and attack, glittered with all the gorgeousness and display of the most magnificent empire in the world.
In the great daphne, or central space of the imperial palace, the prefect Anthemius, with the young emperor, the three princesses, and their gorgeously arrayed nobles and attendants, awaited, one day, the envoys of Ruas the Hun, who sought lands and power within the limits of the empire.
They came, at last,—great, fierce-looking fellows, not at all pleasant to contemplate—big-boned broad-shouldered, flat-nosed, swarthy, and small-eyed, with war-cloaks of shaggy skins, leathern armor, wolf-crowned helmets, and barbaric decorations, and the royal children shrunk from them in terror, even as they watched them with wondering curiosity. Imperial guards, gleaming in golden armor, accompanied them, while with the envoys came also as escort a small retinue of Hunnish spearmen. And in the company of these, the Princess Pulcheria noted a lad of ten or twelve years—short, swarthy, big-headed, and flat-nosed, like his brother barbarians, but with an air of open and hostile superiority that would not be moved even by all the glow and glitter of an imperial court.
Then Eslaw, the chief of the envoys of King Ruas the Hun, made known his master’s demands So much land, so much treasure, so much in the way of concession and power over the lands along the Danube, or Ruas the king would sweep down with his warriors, and lay waste the cities and lands of the empire.
“These be bold words,” said Anthemius the prefect. “And what if our lord the emperor shall say thee nay?”
But ere the chief of the envoys could reply, the lad whose presence in the escort the Princess Pulcheria had noted, sprang into the circle before the throne, brandishing his long spear in hot defiance.
“Dogs and children of dogs, ye dare not say us nay!” he cried harshly. “Except we be made the friends and allies of the emperor, and are given full store of southern gold and treasure, Ruas the king shall overturn these your palaces, and make you all captives and slaves. It shall be war between you and us forever. Thus saith my spear!”
And as he spoke he dashed his long spear upon the floor, until the mosaic pavement rang again.
Boy emperor and princesses, prefect and nobles and imperial guards, sprang to their feet as the spear clashed on the pavement, and even the barbarian envoys, while they smiled grimly at their young comrade’s energy, pulled him hastily back.
But ere the prefect Anthemius could sufficiently master his astonishment to reply, the young Princess Pulcheria faced the savage envoys, and pointing to the cause of the disturbance, asked calmly:
“Who is this brawling boy, and what doth he here in the palace of the emperor?”
And the boy made instant and defiant answer:
“I am Attila, the son of Mundzuk, kinsman to Ruas the king, and deadly foe to Rome.”
“Good Anthemius,” said the clear, calm voice of the unterrified girl, “were it not wise to tell this wild young prince from the northern forest that the great emperor hath gold for his friends, but only iron for his foes? ‘T is ever better to be friend than foe. Bid, I pray, that the arras of the Hippodrome be parted, and let our guests see the might and power of our arms.”
With a look of pleased surprise at this bold stroke of the Princess, the prefect clapped his hands in command, and the heavily brocaded curtain that screened the gilded columns parted as if by unseen hands, and the Hunnish envoys, with a gaze of stolid wonder, looked down upon the great Hippodrome of Constantinople.
It was a vast enclosure, spacious enough for the marshalling of an army. Around its sides ran tiers of marble seats, and all about it rose gleaming statues of marble, of bronze, of silver, and of gold—Augustus and the emperors, gods and goddesses of the old pagan days, heroes of the eastern and western empires. The bright oriental sun streamed down upon it, and as the trumpets sounded from beneath the imperial balcony, there filed into the arena the glittering troops of the empire, gorgeous in color and appointments, with lofty crests and gleaming armor, with shimmering spear-tips, prancing horses, towering elephants, and mighty engines of war and siege, with archers and spearmen, with sounding trumpets and swaying standards and, high over all, the purple labarum, woven in gold and jewels,—the sacred banner of Constantine. Marching and counter-marching, around and around, and in and out, until it seemed wellnigh endless, the martial procession passed before the eyes of the northern barbarians, watchful of every movement, eager as children to witness this royal review.
“These are but as a handful of dust amid the sands of the sea to the troops of the empire,” said the prefect Anthemius, when the glittering rear-guard had passed from the Hippodrome. And the Princess Pulcheria added, “And these, O men from the north, are to help and succor the friends of the great emperor, even as they are for the terror and destruction of his foes. Bid the messengers from Ruas the king consider, good Anthemius, whether it were not wiser for their master to be the friend rather than the foe of the emperor. Ask him whether it would not be in keeping with his valor and his might to be made one of the great captains of the empire, with a yearly stipend of many pounds of gold, as the recompense of the emperor for his services and his love.”
Again the prefect looked with pleasure and surprise upon this wise young girl of fifteen, who had seen so shrewdly and so well the way to the hearts of these northern barbarians, to whom gold and warlike display were as meat and drink.
“You hear the words of this wise young maid,” he said. “Would it not please Ruas the king to be the friend of the emperor, a general of the empire, and the acceptor, on each recurring season of the Circensian games, of full two hundred pounds of gold as recompense for service and friendship?”
“Say, rather, three hundred pounds,” said Eslaw, the chief of the envoys, “and our master may, perchance, esteem it wise and fair.”
“Nay, it is not for the great emperor to chaffer with his friends,” said Pulcheria, the princess. “Bid that the stipend be fixed at three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, good Anthemius, and let our guests bear to Ruas the king pledges and tokens of the emperor’s friendship.”
“And bid, too, that they do leave yon barbarian boy at our court as hostage of their faith,” demanded young Theodosius the emperor, now speaking for the first time and making a most stupid blunder at a critical moment.
For, with a sudden start of revengeful indignation, young Attila the Hun turned to the boy emperor: “I will be no man’s hostage,” he cried. “Freely I came, freely will I go! Come down from thy bauble of a chair and thou and I will try, even in your circus yonder, which is the better boy, and which should rightly be hostage for faith and promise given
“How now!” exclaimed the boy emperor, altogether unused to such uncourtier-like language; “this to me!” And the hasty young Hun continued:
“Ay, this and more! I tell thee, boy, that were I Ruas the king, the grass should never grow where the hoofs of my war-horse trod; Scythia should be mine; Persia should be mine; Rome should be mine. And look you, sir emperor, the time shall surely come when the king of the Huns shall be content not with paltry tribute and needless office, but with naught but Roman treasure and Roman slaves!”
But into this torrent of words came Pulcheria’s calm voice again. “Nay, good Attila, and nay, my brother and my lord,” she said. “‘T were not between friends and allies to talk of tribute, nor of slaves, nor yet of hostage. Freely did’st thou come and as freely shalt thou go; and let this pledge tell of friendship between Theodosius the emperor and Ruas the king.” And, with a step forward, she flung her own broad chain of gold around the stout and swarthy neck of the defiant young Attila.
So, through a girl’s ready tact and quiet speech, was the terror of barbarian invasion averted. Ruas the Hun rested content for years with his annual salary of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, or over seventy thousand dollars, and his title of General of the Empire; while not for twenty years did the hot-headed young Attila make good his threat against the Roman power.
Anthemius the prefect, like the wise man he was, recognized the worth of the young Princess Pulcheria; he saw how great was her influence over her brother the emperor, and noted with astonishment and pleasure her words of wisdom and her rare common-sense.
“Rule thou in my place, O Princess!” he said, soon after this interview with the barbarian envoys. “Thou alone, of all in this broad empire, art best fitted to take lead and direction in the duties of its governing.”
Pulcheria, though a wise young girl, was prudent and conscientious.
“Such high authority is not for a girl like me, good Anthemius,” she replied. “Rather let me shape the ways and the growth of the emperor my brother, and teach him how best to maintain himself in a deportment befitting his high estate, so that he may become a wise and just ruler; but do thou bear sway for him until such time as he may take the guidance on himself.”
“Nay, not so, Princess,” the old prefect said. “She who can shape the ways of a boy may guide the will of an empire. Be thou, then, Regent and Augusta, and rule this empire as becometh the daughter of Arcadius and the granddaughter of the great Theodosius.”
And as he desired, so it was decided. The Senate of the East decreed it and, in long procession, over flower-strewn pavements and through gorgeously decorated streets, with the trumpets sounding their loudest, with swaying standards, and rank upon rank of imperial troops, with great officers of the government and throngs of palace attendants, this young girl of sixteen, on the fourth day of July, in the year 414, proceeded to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and was there publicly proclaimed Pulcheria Augusta, Regent of the East, solemnly accepting the trust as a sacred and patriotic duty.
And, not many days after, before the high altar of this same Church of the Holy Apostles, Pulcheria the princess stood with her younger sisters, Arcadia and Marina, and with all the impressive ceremonial of the Eastern Church, made a solemn vow to devote their lives to the keeping of their father’s heritage and the assistance of their only brother; to forswear the world and all its allurements; never to marry; and to be in all things faithful and constant to each other in this their promise and their pledge.
And they were faithful and constant. The story of those three determined young maidens, yet scarcely “in their teens,” reads almost like a page from Tennyson’s beautiful poem, “The Princess,” with which many of my girl readers are doubtless familiar. The young regent and her sisters, with their train of attendant maidens, renounced the vanity of dress—wearing only plain and simple robes; they spent their time in making garments for the poor, and embroidered work for church decorations; and with song and prayer and frugal meals, interspersed with frequent fasts, they kept their vow to “forswear the world and its allurements,” in an altogether strict and monotonous manner. Of course this style of living is no more to be recommended to healthy, hearty, fun-loving girls of fifteen than is its extreme of gayety and indulgence, but it had its effect in those bad old days of dissipation and excess, and the simplicity and soberness of this wise young girl’s life in the very midst of so much power and luxury, made even the worst elements in the empire respect and honor her.
It would be interesting, did space permit, to sketch at length some of the devisings and doings of this girl regent of sixteen. “She superintended with extraordinary wisdom,” says the old chronicler Sozemon, “the transactions of the Roman government,” and “afforded the spectacle,” says Ozanam, a later historian, “of a girlish princess of sixteen, granddaughter and sole inheritor of the genius and courage of Theodosius the Great, governing the empires of the east and west, and being proclaimed on the death of her brother, Augusta, Imperatrix, and mistress of the world!”
This last event—the death of Theodosius the Younger—occurred in the year 449, and Pulcheria ascended the golden throne of Constantinople—the first woman that ever ruled as sole empress of the Roman world.
She died July 18, 453. That same year saw the death of her youthful acquaintance, Attila the Hun, that fierce barbarian whom men had called the “Scourge of God.” His mighty empire stretched from the great wall of China to the Western Alps; but, though he ravaged the lands of both eastern and western Rome, he seems to have been so managed or controlled by the wise and peaceful measures of the girl regent, that his destroying hordes never troubled the splendid city by the Golden Horn which offered so rare and tempting a booty.
It is not given to the girls of to-day to have any thing like the magnificent opportunities of the young Pulcheria. But duty in many a form faces them again and again, while not unfrequently the occasion comes for sacrifice of comfort or for devotion to a trust. To all such the example of this fair young princess of old Constantinople, who, fifteen centuries ago, saw her duty plainly and undertook it simply and without hesitation, comes to strengthen and incite; and the girl who feels herself overwhelmed by responsibility, or who is fearful of her own untried powers, may gather strength, courage, wisdom, and will from the story of this historic girl of the long ago—the wise young Regent of the East, Pulcheria of Constantinople.
(Afterward known as “St. Clotilda,” the first Queen of France.) A.D. 485.
It was little more than fourteen hundred years ago, in the year of our Lord 485, that a little girl crouched trembling and terrified, at the feet of a pitying priest in the palace of the kings of Burgundy. There has been many a sad little maid of ten, before and since the days of the fair-haired Princess Clotilda, but surely none had greater cause for terror and tears than she. For her cruel uncle, Gundebald, waging war against his brother Chilperic, the rightful king of Burgundy, had with a band of savage followers burst into his brother’s palace and, after the fierce and relentless fashion of those cruel days, had murdered King Chilperic, the father of little Clotilda, the queen, her mother, and the young princes, her brothers; and was now searching for her and her sister Sedelenda, to kill them also.
Poor Sedelenda had hidden away in some other far-off corner; but even as Clotilda hung for protection to the robe of the good stranger-priest Ugo of Rheims (whom the king, her father, had lodged in the palace, on his homeward journey from Jerusalem), the clash of steel drew nearer and nearer. Through the corridor came the rush of feet, the arras in the doorway was rudely flung aside, and the poor child’s fierce pursuers, with her cruel uncle at their head, rushed into the room.
“Hollo! Here hides the game!” he cried in savage exultation. “Thrust her away, Sir Priest, or thou diest in her stead. Not one of the tyrant’s brood shall live. I say it!”
“And who art thou to judge of life or death?” demanded the priest sternly, as he still shielded the trembling child.
“I am Gundebald, King of Burgundy by the grace of mine own good sword and the right of succession,” was the reply. “Trifle not with me, Sir Priest, but thrust away the child. She is my lawful prize to do with as I will. Ho, Sigebert, drag her forth!”
Quick as a flash the brave priest stepped before, the cowering child, and, with one hand still resting protectingly on the girl’s fair hair, he raised the other in stern and fearless protest, and boldly faced the murderous throng.
“Back, men of blood!” he cried. “Back! Nor dare to lay hand on this young maid who hath here sought sanctuary!”(1)
(1) Under the Goths and Franks the protection of churches and priests, when extended to persons in peril, was called the “right of sanctuary,” and was respected even by the fiercest of pursuers.
Fierce and savage men always respect bravery in others. There was something so courageous and heroic in the act of that single priest in thus facing a ferocious and determined band, in defence of a little girl,—for girls were but slightingly regarded in those far-off days,—that it caught the savage fancy of the cruel king. And this, joined with his respect for the Church’s right of sanctuary, and with the lessening of his thirst for blood, now that he had satisfied his first desire for revenge, led him to desist.
“So be it then,” he said, lowering his threatening sword. “I yield her to thee, Sir Priest. Look to her welfare and thine own. Surely a girl can do no harm.”
But King Gundebald and his house lived to learn how far wrong was that unguarded statement. For the very lowering of the murderous sword that thus brought life to the little Princess Clotilda meant the downfall of the kingdom of Burgundy and the rise of the great and victorious nation of France. The memories of even a little maid of ten are not easily blotted out.
Her sister, Sedelenda, had found refuge and safety in the convent of Ainay, near at hand, and there, too, Clotilda would have gone, but her uncle, the new king, said: “No, the maidens must be forever separated.” He expressed a willingness, however, to have the Princess Clotilda brought up in his palace, which had been her father’s, and requested the priest Ugo of Rheims to remain awhile, and look after the girl’s education. In those days a king’s request was a command, and the good Ugo, though stern and brave in the face of real danger, was shrewd enough to know that it was best for him to yield to the king’s wishes. So he continued in the palace of the king, looking after the welfare of his little charge, until suddenly the girl took matters into her own hands, and decided his future and her own.
The kingdom of Burgundy, in the days of the Princess Clotilda, was a large tract of country now embraced by Southern France and Western Switzerland. It had been given over by the Romans to the Goths, who had invaded it in the year 413. It was a land of forest and vineyards, of fair valleys and sheltered hill-sides, and of busy cities that the fostering hand of Rome had beautified; while through its broad domain the Rhone, pure and sparkling, swept with a rapid current from Swiss lake and glacier, southward to the broad and beautiful Mediterranean. Lyons was its capital, and on the hill of Fourviere, overlooking the city below it, rose the marble palace of the Burgundian kings, near to the spot where, to-day, the ruined forum of the old Roman days is still shown to tourists.
It had been a palace for centuries. Roman governors of “Imperial Gaul” had made it their head-quarters and their home; three Roman emperors had cooed and cried as babies within its walls; and it had witnessed also many a feast and foray, and the changing fortunes of Roman, Gallic, and Burgundian conquerors and over-lords. But it was no longer “home” to the little Princess Clotilda. She thought of her father and mother, and of her brothers, the little princes with whom she had played in this very palace, as it now seemed to her, so many years ago. And the more she feared her cruel uncle, the more did she desire to go far, far away from his presence. So, after thinking the whole matter over, as little girls of ten can sometimes think, she told her good friend Ugo, the priest, of her father’s youngest brother Godegesil, who ruled the dependent principality of Geneva, far up the valley of the Rhone.
“Yes, child, I know the place,” said Ugo. “A fair city indeed, on the blue and beautiful Lake Lemanus, walled in by mountains, and rich in corn and vineyards.”
“Then let us fly thither,” said the girl. “My uncle Godegesil I know will succor us, and I shall be freed from my fears of King Gundebald.”
Though it seemed at first to the good priest only a child’s desire, he learned to think better of it when he saw how unhappy the poor girl was in the hated palace, and how slight were her chances for improvement. And so, one fair spring morning in the year 486, the two slipped quietly out of the palace; and by slow and cautious stages, with help from friendly priests and nuns, and frequent rides in the heavy ox-wagons that were the only means of transport other than horseback, they finally reached the old city of Geneva.
And on the journey, the good Ugo had made the road seem less weary, and the lumbering ox-wagons less jolty and painful, by telling his bright young charge of all the wonders and relics he had seen in his journeyings in the East; but especially did the girl love to hear him tell of the boy king of the Franks, Hlodo-wig, or Clovis, who lived in the priest’s own boyhood home of Tournay, in far-off Belgium, and who, though so brave and daring, was still a pagan, when all the world was fast becoming Christian. And as Clotilda listened, she wished that she could turn this brave young chief away from his heathen deities, Thor and Odin, to the worship of the Christians’ God; and, revolving strange fancies in her mind, she determined what she would do when she “grew up,”—as many a girl since her day has determined. But even as they reached the fair city of Geneva—then half Roman, half Gallic, in its buildings and its life—the wonderful news met them how this boy-king Clovis, sending a challenge to combat to the prefect Syagrius, the last of the Roman governors, had defeated him in a battle at Soissons, and broken forever the power of Rome in Gaul.
War, which is never any thing but terrible, was doubly so in those savage days, and the plunder of the captured cities and homesteads was the chief return for which the barbarian soldiers followed their leaders. But when the Princess Clotilda heard how, even in the midst of his burning and plundering, the young Frankish chief spared some of the fairest Christian churches, he became still more her hero; and again the desire to convert him from paganism and to revenge her father’s murder took shape in her mind. For, devout and good though she was, this excellent little maiden of the year 485 was by no means the gentle-hearted girl of 1888, and, like most of the world about her, had but two desires: to become a good church-helper, and to be revenged on her enemies. Certainly, fourteen centuries of progress and education have made us more loving and less vindictive.
But now that the good priest Ugo of Rheims saw that his own home land was in trouble, he felt that there lay his duty. And Godegesil, the under-king of Geneva, feeling uneasy alike from the nearness of this boy conqueror and the possible displeasure of his brother and over-lord, King Gundebald, declined longer to shelter his niece in his palace at Geneva.
“And why may I not go with you?” the girl asked of Ugo; but the old priest knew that a conquered and plundered land was no place to which to convey a young maid for safety, and the princess, therefore, found refuge among the sisters of the church of St. Peter in Geneva. And here she passed her girlhood, as the record says, “in works of piety and charity.”
So four more years went by. In the north, the boy chieftain, reaching manhood, had been raised aloft on the shields of his fair-haired and long-limbed followers, and with many a “hael!” and shout had been proclaimed “King of the Franks.” In the south, the young Princess Clotilda, now nearly sixteen, had washed the feet of pilgrims, ministered to the poor, and, after the manner of her day, had proved herself a zealous church-worker in that low-roofed convent near the old church of St. Peter, high on that same hill in Geneva where to-day, hemmed in by narrow streets and tall houses, the cathedral of St. Peter, twice rebuilded since Clotilda’s time, overlooks the quaint city, the beautiful lake of Geneva, and the rushing Rhone, and sees across the valley of the Arve the gray and barren rocks of the Petit Seleve and the distant snows of Mont Blanc.
One bright summer day, as the young princess passed into the hospitium, or guest-room for poor pilgrims, attached to the convent, she saw there a stranger, dressed in rags. He had the wallet and staff of a mendicant, or begging pilgrim, and, coming toward her, he asked for “charity in the name of the blessed St. Peter, whose church thou servest.”
The young girl brought the pilgrim food, and then, according to the custom of the day, kneeling on the earthen floor, she began to bathe his feet. But as she did so, the pilgrim, bending forward, said in a low voice:
“Lady, I have great matters to announce to thee, if thou deign to permit me to reveal them.”
Pilgrims in those days were frequently made the bearers of special messages between distant friends; but this poor young orphan princess could think of no one from whom a message to her might come, Nevertheless, she simply said: “Say on.” In the same low tone the beggar continued, “Clovis, King of the Franks, sends thee greeting.”
The girl looked up now, thoroughly surprised. This beggar must be a madman, she thought. But the eyes of the pilgrim looked at her reassuringly, and he said: “In token whereof, he sendeth thee this ring by me, his confidant and comitatus,(1) Aurelian of Soissons.”
(1) One of the king’s special body-guard, from which comes the title comp, count.
The Princess Clotilda took, as if in a dream, the ring of transparent jacinth set in solid gold, and asked quietly:
“What would the king of the Franks with me?”
“The king, my master, hath heard from the holy Bishop Remi and the good priest Ugo of thy beauty and discreetness,” replied Aurelian; “and likewise of the sad condition of one who is the daughter of a royal line. He bade me use all my wit to come nigh to thee, and to say that, if it be the will of the gods, he would fain raise thee to his rank by marriage.”
Those were days of swift and sudden surprises, when kings made up their minds in royal haste, and princesses were not expected to be surprised at whatever they might hear. And so we must not feel surprised to learn that all the dreams of her younger days came into the girl’s mind, and that, as the record states, “she accepted the ring with great joy.”
“Return promptly to thy lord,” she said to the messenger, “and bid him, if he would fain unite me to him in marriage, to send messengers without delay to demand me of my uncle, King Gundebald, and let those same messengers take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have obtained permission.”
For this wise young princess knew that her uncle’s word was not to be long depended upon, and she feared, too, that certain advisers at her uncle’s court might counsel him to do her harm before the messengers of King Clovis could have conducted her beyond the borders of Burgundy.
Aurelian, still in his pilgrim’s disguise, for he feared discovery in a hostile country, hastened back to King Clovis, who, the record says, was “pleased with his success and with Clotilda’s notion, and at once sent a deputation to Gundebald to demand his niece in marriage.”
As Clotilda foresaw, her uncle stood in too much dread of this fierce young conqueror of the north to say him nay. And soon in the palace at Lyons, so full of terrible memories to this orphan girl, the courteous Aurelian, now no longer in beggar’s rags, but gorgeous in white silk and a flowing sagum, or mantle of vermilion, publicly engaged himself, as the representative of King Clovis, to the Princess Clotilda; and, according to the curious custom of the time, cemented the engagement by giving to the young girl a sou and a denier.(1)
(1) Two pieces of old French coin, equalling about a cent and a mill in American money.
“Now deliver the princess into our hand, O king,” said the messenger, “that we may take her to King Clovis, who waiteth for us even now at Chalons to conclude these nuptials.”
So, almost before he knew what he was doing, King Gundebald had bidden his niece farewell; and the princess, with her escort of Frankish spears, was rumbling away in a clumsy basterne, or covered ox-wagon, toward the frontier of Burgundy.
But the slow-moving ox-wagon by no means suited the impatience of this shrewd young princess. She knew her uncle, the king of Burgundy, too well. When once he was roused to action, he was fierce and furious.
“Good Aurelian,” she said at length to the king’s ambassador, who rode by her side: “if that thou wouldst take me into the presence of thy lord, the king of the Franks, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horseback, and let us speed hence as fast as we may, for never in this carriage shall I reach the presence of my lord, the king.”
And none too soon was her advice acted, upon for, the counsellors of King Gundebald, noticing Clotilda’s anxiety to be gone, concluded that, after all, they had made a mistake in betrothing her to King Clovis.
“Thou shouldst have remembered, my lord,” they said, “that thou didst slay Clotilda’s father, her mother, and the young princes, her brothers. If Clotilda become powerful, be sure she will avenge the wrong thou hast wrought her.”
And forthwith the king sent off an armed band, with orders to bring back both the princess and the treasure he had sent with her as her marriage portion. But already the princess and her escort were safely across the Seine, where, in the Campania, or plain-country,—later known as the province of Champagne—she met the king of the Franks.
I am sorry to be obliged to confess that the first recorded desire of this beautiful, brave, and devout young maiden, when she found herself safely among the fierce followers of King Clovis, was a request for vengeance. But we must remember, girls and boys, that this is a story of half-savage days when, as I have already said, the desire for revenge on one’s enemies was common to all.
From the midst of his skin-clad and green-robed guards and nobles, young Clovis—in a dress of “crimson and gold, and milk-white silk,” and with his yellow hair coiled in a great top-knot on his uncovered head—advanced to meet his bride.
“My lord king,” said Clotilda, “the bands of the king of Burgundy follow hard upon us to bear me off. Command, I pray thee, that these, my escort, scatter themselves right and left for twoscore miles, and plunder and burn the lands of the king of Burgundy.”
Probably in no other way could this wise young girl of seventeen have so thoroughly pleased the fierce and warlike young king. He gladly ordered her wishes to be carried out, and the plunderers forthwith departed to carry out the royal command.
So her troubles were ended, and this prince and princess,—Hlodo-wig, or Clovis (meaning the “warrior youth”), and Hlodo-hilde, or Clotilda (meaning the “brilliant and noble maid”),—in spite of the wicked uncle Gundebald, were married at Soissons, in the year 493, and, as the fairy stories say, “lived happily together ever after.”
The record of their later years has no place in this sketch of the girlhood of Clotilda; but it is one of the most interesting and dramatic of the old-time historic stories. The dream of that sad little princess in the old convent at Geneva, “to make her boy-hero a Christian, and to be revenged on the murderer of her parents,” was in time fulfilled. For on Christmas-day, in the year 493, the young king and three thousand of his followers were baptized amid gorgeous ceremonial in the great church of St. Martin at Rheims.
The story of the young queen’s revenge is not to be told in these pages. But, though terrible, it is only one among the many tales of vengeance that show us what fierce and cruel folk our ancestors were, in the days when passion instead of love ruled the hearts of men and women, and of boys and girls as well; and how favored are we of this nineteenth century, in all the peace and prosperity and home happiness that surround us.
But from this conversion, as also from this revenge, came the great power of Clovis and Clotilda; for, ere his death, in the year 511, he brought all the land under his sway from the Rhine to the Rhone, the ocean and the Pyrenees; he was hailed by his people with the old Roman titles of Consul and Augustus, and reigned victorious as the first king of France. Clotilda, after years of wise counsel and charitable works, upon which her determination for revenge seems to be the only stain, died long after her husband, in the year 545, and to-day, in the city of Paris, which was even then the capital of new France, the church of St. Clotilda stands as her memorial, while her marble statue may be seen by the traveller in the great palace of the Luxembourg.
A typical girl of those harsh old days of the long ago,—loving and generous toward her friends, unforgiving and revengeful to her enemies,—reared in the midst of cruelty and of charity, she did her duty according to the light given her, made France a Christian nation, and so helped on the progress of civilization. Certainly a place among the world’s historic girls may rightly be accorded to this fair-haired young princess of the summer-land of France, the beautiful Clotilda of Burgundy.