a poisoned stream. Another version of the story is that Roland died of starvation while trying to find his way, wounded and alone, through the mountains to catch up with the army.
Charlemagne and his valiant paladins rode and fought in all parts of Europe, beating the savage Germans beyond the Rhine, and conquering tribes and peoples all over Europe almost as far as Constantinople, the great capital of the Eastern Empire. At last the dream of the twelve-year-old lad at his father’s crowning came true, when Charlemagne himself was crowned at Rome, the city of the Cæsars, as Emperor of the Western World, on Christmas Day, in the year of our Lord 800.
It is written that the crowning of Charlemagne was prepared as a surprise to him by the Pope and his people in Rome. While Charles and his sons were kneeling before a shrine very early on that Christmas morning, Pope Leo appeared in the great church with a crown of gold set with many precious gems, and placed it on the head of the kneeling king, thus proclaiming him Emperor of the Western World. In an instant the Pope, the cardinals, the priests, and the people rose from their knees and chanted these words:
“To Charles the Augustus, crowned of God, the great and pacific emperor, long life and victory!”
Charlemagne was a wise and good emperor who did many things to help his people. He built a lighthouse at Boulogne to guide ships to port, encouraged farming and made wise laws. He was kind to scholars and his favorite recreation was talking to them. He spoke several languages very well and wrote a great deal. Among his writings were a grammar, poems in Latin and many letters.
OVER one thousand years ago, the king of the West Saxons on the island of Britain, now England, had four sons. Alfred, the youngest of these, was his father’s favorite. When this boy was only five, his royal father sent him to Rome to be confirmed by the Pope. After Alfred came back his queen-mother died, and the father made a pilgrimage, or religious journey, to Rome, taking young Prince Alfred, with many court gentlemen, soldiers, and servants.
On their way the king and his train were given a royal welcome by the king of France. Alfred’s father fell in love with the beautiful young daughter of the French king, and asked her hand in marriage. Her father consented, so the royal wedding took place on the Saxon king’s return from Rome.
Alfred’s new mother soon became very fond of him. Young as he was, he had learned to play the harp. But when he was twelve years old, Alfred had not been taught to read. Saxon kings and princes thought most kinds of learning were for priests and lawyers. When gentlemen made contracts or signed law papers, they did not write their names, but “set their signs and seals thereunto,” as is done to-day in legal documents. All the books were written on parchments in Latin.
One day Alfred saw his French stepmother reading a roll of parchment on which Latin words were printed by hand in many colors. As the lad admired it, the queen told him she would make him a present of the scroll as soon as he learned to read and understand it. He went right out and coaxed a monk, or priest, to teach him Latin, and he soon became the happy owner of the beautiful parchment.
Learning to read opened a new world to Prince Alfred. He wrote verses and songs for his harp, and began to compose both words and music of hymns to be sung in the cathedral near his father’s palace.
When Alfred was fourteen his father died. Each of his three older brothers became king, one after another, and died within a few years.
Alfred was twenty-two when the last brother died and left him to be king. Some rough people, called Danes, from the north countries across the sea, had landed on the island of Britain, and the Saxons were compelled to give battle to them so as not to be killed or made slaves to those rough Northmen. So Alfred had to fight to keep on being king. When he began to reign, he ruled like all the other kings he had known. His father and brothers had treated the people as if they were made only to work and pay their way, like cattle; so Alfred did the same at first.
The fierce Danes kept coming over in larger numbers. In a hard-fought battle, Alfred was defeated and most of his army was slain. Flying for his life, the young king found a hiding place in the hut of a swineherd, a man who tends hogs. This man knew who Alfred was, but kept the king’s secret from his wife, who thought the stranger was a poor soldier from the Saxon army.
Many stories are told of what the king did while he lived in the hut of this swineherd. These tales have changed so much, all the hundreds of years which have passed since Alfred’s time, that they are called legends. The best known of these is the story of the king and the cakes. Once when the housewife was going out to do some work, she asked him, while he was fixing his bow and arrows, to mind the cakes she had left baking in the ashes of the fireplace. The distracted king’s mind was on higher things than coarse meal cakes. When the woman came in she found them burning. She was so angry that she called Alfred a good-for-nothing beggar, and added that if he could not pay for what she gave him to eat, he ought at least to look after her cakes a little while.
Alfred had the good sense to see his own conduct through the poor woman’s eyes. So, instead of being angry or telling her who he was, he said gently, “I am sorry I was so careless. I will try not to forget again.”
“A soft answer turneth away wrath,” Alfred had read in the roll of Proverbs in his Latin Bible. It may have been during the long months he spent in the home of this shepherd that the humbled king decided to translate the best parts of the Bible into the Saxon language so that the people could read it.
Another story is that Alfred stayed in the hut alone while the family were away fishing. He had only a loaf of bread to last until their return. A beggar came and asked for bread. Alfred broke his little loaf in two, gave the man half, and ate his half with the beggar. The swineherd returned that day with fish enough for a family feast. In the night the beggar of the day before appeared, as an angel, to the captive king, and said that God had seen how Alfred had humbled his heart so that he was now fitted to rule his people wisely and well.
The Danish army was now encamped not far from the king’s hiding place. Encouraged by the vision of the shining pilgrim, Alfred started out to see for himself how strong the enemy were and what they were going to do. So he disguised himself as a wandering musician, playing a harp. He played and sang for the Danish soldiers, and was soon taken before their fierce leader, like David, with his harp, before King Saul. The Danes were so pleased with him and his music that they asked him to stay with them. As soon as he had found out all he wanted to know, he took up his harp and left the camp of the enemy. The Danes invited him to come again.
Hurrying back to the swineherd’s hut, Alfred sent word to the leaders among his people that he was alive and ready to go on with the war against the Danes. The people had been in despair, for they had believed that their brave young king was dead.
The Saxon chiefs came at once and knelt to King Alfred. When the poor woman realized who her guest was, she fell on her knees and begged him to forgive all she had said to him. Alfred lifted her tenderly from the ground, and told her he would reward her and her loyal husband when he was safe on his throne again.
The Danish army was astonished, early one morning, to hear three trumpet blasts, and to see a great army of Saxon soldiers marching to meet them, led by that wandering minstrel! Of course, the Saxons gained the victory and made the Danes promise not to come and attack them again. They agreed, but did not keep their word long. After that, instead of waiting for the Danes to land in Britain, King Alfred fitted up a fleet of ships so that he could go out and fight them on the sea. This has been called “the beginning of the British navy.”
Then Alfred improved the years of peace by making laws which allowed the people more rights and privileges. He invented a simple clock of candles, by which the people could tell the time of day. He rebuilt the towns that had been destroyed in the war and trained his people not only to fight but to till their farms. He made wise laws and did much to educate his subjects by having books translated from the Latin into Anglo-Saxon, the language of the Saxons. Best of all, he translated the Bible into the language of the people. Because of all the acts which taught the people how to make their lives better and happier he is known in history as Alfred the Great. In one of his histories, King Alfred wrote what he tried to do in his own life:
“My will was to live worthily as long as I lived and, after my life, to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works.”
WHEN the first son was born to Robert, Duke of Normandy, and Arlette, the daughter of a tanner, the nurse laid the day-old baby on the straw carpet of the castle. In those days most of the floors of the houses, whether huts or castles, were of earth or stone, covered with straw which could be cleared out, as from a modern stable, to allow fresh straw to be laid down. When placed on the floor in his little blanket, Baby William reached out and clutched some of the straws so tightly in his small pink fists that one of those who noticed smiled and said, “He will take fast hold on everything he lays his hands on when he grows up.”
When William was seven, Duke Robert, his father, being about to make the voyage to the Holy Land, called some of his nobles together and said, “I am resolved to journey to the place where our Lord Christ died and was buried. But because I know this journey is full of dangers, I would have it settled who should be duke if I should die.”
The nobles and knights took an oath that they would stand by his son William and not let any one keep him from being duke of Normandy. Then Duke Robert sailed away and died during the long voyage.
William was away hunting in a Norman forest when his faithful fool (as they called a sort of clown kept by a king to amuse the court) broke in where he lay asleep and shouted, “Fly, or you will never leave here a living man!” The young duke jumped up, dressed in haste, and mounted his horse, riding through the forest in the moonlight and fording rivers till he came to the castle of a friend who was sure to be faithful to him. This knight and his three sons rode with William to his own castle.
It turned out that a number of the Norman lords who had taken the oath to satisfy Duke Robert were now declaring that they would not serve under the low-born grandson of a tanner. The fool had learned that they were plotting rebellion and the death of his young master.
William, who was now twenty years old, gathered an army of loyal knights and men, and waged fierce warfare against the traitors, who retreated within the walls of a Norman town. The young duke soon captured the town, and proved to these rebels, as well as to the men of the neighboring kingdom of France, that the grandson of a tanner might be a greater general than the son of a king. At the beginning of a great battle of brave knights against braver knights, a champion of heroic size came out from the ranks of the enemy and threw down his gauntlet, or glove, challenging any knight of Normandy to come and fight him with the sword. William himself took up the gauntlet, and drove his sword through an open place in the big knight’s armor, so that he fell from his horse dead.
Then, like the Philistines of old when David slew their giant, the Duke’s enemies fled in all directions. Many of them were slain in battle, others while running away were cut down by the battle-axes of Norman knights, and many more perished in the flooded river.
Those were brutal days, when people thought that whatever a great king or noble might do was all right if he only had the power to put it through. An example of such high-handed dealing is William’s conquest of England. He had once paid a visit to Edward the Confessor, the priestly king of England. The duke claimed, on his return to Normandy, that Edward had promised to leave the kingdom to him, as a relative. It happened that Harold, an English earl, was shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy. William seized Harold, shut him up in prison, and kept him there until he promised to do his best to make William King of England at the death of Edward.
Two years later, when Edward the Confessor died, it was found that in spite of his promise to William he had advised in his will that Harold be elected king by the witan, an assembly of English freemen. This body of men took the good old king’s advice, chose Harold king, and saw that he was crowned at once. Harold excused himself for breaking his word to William because King Edward had decided in his favor instead of William’s, and because the oath he had made had been forced from him while he was a prisoner.
William, however, was very angry when he heard that Harold had allowed himself to be crowned king of England. Getting together as large an army as he could in Normandy, he sailed across the Channel. In leaping ashore from his boat he tripped and fell forward with his hands upon the ground. Realizing that his soldiers would think this a bad sign, he clutched both hands full of earth, and rising he held them up, exclaiming, “See, I have taken possession of this land of England.”
The Normans took position in the village of Hastings. Harold went into camp on top of Senlac hill, now called Battle, about six miles from Hastings, and dug trenches around. Here a great battle began at four o’clock in the morning of the 14th of October, 1066. In advance of the Norman lines rode a knight in armor, bearing the duke’s colors, singing the Song of Roland, the great paladin in the army of Charlemagne, who had lived and fought nearly three hundred years before. It was a brave combat, with many knights and nobles on each side. The Norman found the Englishman a foeman worthy of his steel.
The Saxons, entrenched on Battle Hill, held their ground so well that William saw he could not gain the day unless he drew them away from that point of vantage. So he ordered a retreat, and the honest Saxons chased the flying Normans, expecting to catch and slay them. But to their great surprise, the Normans turned and fought harder than before. Harold was killed by an arrow shot into his eyes. The Saxon army, without a commander, was thrown into confusion, and thus the day was won by strategy. William, Duke of Normandy, became William the Conqueror of England.
No one now had a better claim to the throne of England than William; so, in the new Westminster Abbey, on Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned, and took his proud place in history as William the First of England. He had to fight four years longer to break down all opposition from the northern counties. In rewarding the Norman knights and nobles who had helped him gain possession of England, the king gave them great estates scattered over the kingdom. William brought to the island many scholars and bishops, and did much to establish the Church of England. Though he had been rough and cruel, he was both shrewd and wise in proving his own rights and in strengthening his kingdom.
William ruled England with a strong hand for twenty-one years. He forbade the buying and selling of slaves; yet he reduced the Saxon farmers to serfs almost as low as slaves. He ordered a record like a census made, and a survey of the kingdom which was recorded in what is called the Domesday Book.
It was terribly hard for the good, honest Anglo-Saxon people to see the Normans move into their homes and force them to work like slaves on the very places they themselves had owned. But the Normans had the power and the Saxons could not help themselves. For hundreds of years the Normans spoke the French language, and the Saxons, the English. The very names of the meats on your table at home are signs of the Norman Conquest, nearly nine hundred years ago. The animals in the pastures and stables of England were called by the names the Saxons gave them—as cow, calf, sheep, swine. But the meats of those animals when cooked and served upon the tables of the masters are still known by the Norman French names, as beef (Norman name for cow), veal (Norman for calf), mutton (Norman for sheep), pork (Norman for hog or swine). Milk is a Saxon word, but cream is from the French, because the Saxons had to milk the cows and drink only milk, while they served their Norman lords the cream.
The Norman traits of keenness, tact, and worldly wisdom have been mingling for many centuries with the honest, sturdy integrity of the Anglo-Saxons. Little by little, as the races grew together, the nobles became less haughty and cruel and the poorer people were lifted out of their poverty. But it took many centuries for men to learn the lesson that
THE great-grandson of William the Conqueror was Henry the Second of England, a great and powerful king. At his death, in 1189, he left two sons, Richard and John. As Richard was the older he was at once proclaimed king and duly crowned in Westminster Abbey. He was also Duke of Normandy, and thought this a greater honor than to be king of England.
About a hundred years before the time of Richard, great armies had begun to sail from several of the countries of western Europe to the Holy Land in Syria. The rock-hewn tomb of Jesus, near Jerusalem, was in possession of the followers of Mohammed—Turks, Arabs, and Saracens—who controlled the country. The Christian people of Europe thought it very wrong that the Saracens owned the Holy City of Jerusalem and could keep Christians from coming to worship at the tomb of their Lord. So throngs of soldiers went to the Holy Land to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, or tomb. The wars which they fought for this cause were known as the Crusades.
In the First Crusade, the Christian knights captured not only the Holy Sepulchre but also the city of Jerusalem. In the Second Crusade, about fifty years later, the crusaders were beaten back by the Saracens. Two years before Richard became king, the Mohammedans again captured Jerusalem and the sacred tomb.
Young King Richard was fired with a holy zeal to win back the Holy City and the Sepulchre, and, if possible, to find the cross upon which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. This relic was believed to have been hidden by the Saracens.
King Richard made many sacrifices to raise money for a Third Crusade. His brother John was glad to have Richard go away on such a distant and dangerous mission, leaving the younger brother to rule over England during the king’s long absence. John was as cowardly as Richard was brave, and, down in his heart, he hoped the Turk would kill his brother so that he could have the throne. Because of the king’s knightly courage he was given the title of Richard Lion-heart. If John had been named for the animal he was most like, he would have been called John Wolf-heart.
Richard was joined by King Philip of France, and the two kings, with their armies and those of the Archduke of Austria, reached the Holy Land in due time. They attacked the walled city of Acre—called Akka by the Arabs—and captured it after a long, hard fight and the loss of many thousands of soldiers.
But Richard was as overbearing as he was brave. He ordered other kings and dukes about, and his manner was so masterful that he made Philip and the Archduke of Austria very angry. After several bitter quarrels, the king of France left Richard to fight on without him. The French king sailed away home with most of his army, and plotted with Prince John to injure the absent brother and make John King of England while Richard was still alive.
Many tales are told of the struggle between Richard, king of England, and Saladin, the sultan of the Saracens. For hundreds of years after Richard Lion-heart’s campaign in the Holy Land, Arab mothers would frighten their children by warning them that Richard would get them if they were not good. Sir Walter Scott’s great novels, “Ivanhoe” and “The Talisman,” are stories of life in England at this time, and of knightly tournaments which took place between Richard and Saladin during this Crusade.
While the Crusaders were trying to capture Ascalon, it became necessary for them to work like stone masons in rebuilding certain walls. Richard went to work with a royal will, and most of the nobles and knights followed his example. But the Archduke of Austria said he was the son neither of a carpenter nor of a mason, and flatly refused to help. This made King Richard so angry that he struck the Archduke a blow with his mailed fist and gave him a resounding kick with his heavy iron boot. With all his holy zeal to take the Holy City, Richard Lion-heart had not learned that “he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city.” Then the Archduke and his Austrian army also left Richard to fight on alone with his few remaining soldiers.
What Richard had found hard enough with the help of the king of France and the Archduke of Austria was impossible without them. But Lion-heart was not only a very brave man but a fine general. He defeated the army of Saladin in a great battle at Arsuf and twice led the Christian forces within a few miles of Jerusalem. Quarrels among the crusaders however made it impossible to continue the war. King Richard also received bad news from home, that his brother John was plotting against him aided by King Philip of France. So he and Saladin made a truce to stop fighting for three years, three months, three weeks, and three days. Then the brave king of England started for home. Richard sent his army the long way round by water, while he and a few knights, disguised as pilgrims, tried to go the short way by land, across Austria and Germany. In spite of his disguise, Richard was recognized by an Austrian soldier. When the Archduke heard that Richard was crossing his dukedom, he sent soldiers at once to capture the king who had insulted him.
Richard was a prisoner in a great castle for two years. A story is told of a young troubadour, or wandering minstrel, who started out to find his royal master by playing a lute and singing songs of love and hymns of the Crusaders. After months of wandering, he sang under a castle wall a favorite song of Richard’s, and heard, to his great joy, a deep bass voice within the German fortress joining in the hymn. He well knew that the voice was none other than Richard Lion-heart’s. Saying nothing, he hurried away and told some English friends where their lost king was. They rushed to Richard’s rescue and paid the Emperor of Germany, who was over the Archduke in rank and power, a royal ransom to have their brave king set free.
When Philip of France heard that Richard was out of prison, he sent word to John, who had been making believe that his brother the king was dead, “Take care of yourself. The devil has broke loose!” When Richard reached London, John pretended to be very glad to receive his dear brother back as from the dead.
Richard reigned only a few years after that, for he was killed in one of his wars with Philip of France. While he was as brave as a lion, Richard was also as fierce and cruel as the king of beasts. He was not a good man as people to-day regard manhood, but he was much better than his cowardly brother John, who became king after Richard’s death.
FIVE hundred years ago a little French peasant girl was working outside the stone hut where her father’s large family lived, when she heard, or thought she heard, a voice saying to her, “Joan, be a good child; go often to church.”
This Joan of Arc was so kind-hearted and so thoughtful for others that her friends made fun of her and said she was not like other girls; and her parents feared that she was growing too good to live. But Joan only wondered and smiled, said her prayers, and went often to church. When she was twelve or thirteen, she began to see visions and hear what she called “the Voices,” saying over and over, “Joan, trust in God; for there is great sorrow in the kingdom of France.”
“It must be St. Catherine and St. Margaret,” Joan said to herself, as she sat spinning for hours at a time. What was the sorrow in France, and how could she make things better just by being good? She even doubted whether the visions she had seen and the Voices she had heard were anything but her own half-waking dreams.
One day she overheard the parish priest of Domremy, where she lived, telling of the troubles of France. For almost a hundred years the kings of England had claimed and fought for the right to rule over France, and lately, under their soldier king, Henry the Fifth, had defeated the French and driven their armies into the southern part of their own land. Henry the Fifth had died, but his son still claimed the French throne; and the French prince, or Dauphin, as he was called, had not been crowned king, because the English held the city of Rheims, where all French kings were crowned. The English armies were pushing southward to lay siege to the French city of Orleans.
Joan heard the good priest and her father and mother sighing over the sad day that had come when foreigners were fighting to make slaves of the French people. And the dear Dauphin whom God had given them for their king was now flying from place to place before the armies of England.
After that day the Voices grew more earnest and definite. “Go to the governor,” they urged her; “go and ask him to give you soldiers, and send you to the help of the king.” Poor little Joan’s heart sank within her, and she protested, “I am only a young girl. I don’t know how to ride or to fight. They will only laugh at me.” But the Voices kept on insisting, “Go! go! go! and we will help you save France.”
Joan told her parents what the Voices were telling her to do. Her father laughed and threatened to punish her if he heard any more of such talk, and her mother was afraid her strange little daughter was going to die. Joan’s brothers and sisters made fun of her and asked if she wished to marry the Dauphin and be Queen of France.
But Joan had a kind uncle who loved and sympathized with her. Her mother let her go to visit Uncle Durant, hoping her poor little girl might forget the Voices. When Joan told her uncle what she kept seeing and hearing, he promised to help her all he could. So he went with his anxious little niece to the governor of that part of France, and stood by her as she told the great man about the Voices, and repeated the latest command they had given her for him:
“Send and tell the Dauphin to wait, and not offer battle to his enemies; because God will give him help before the middle of Lent. The kingdom belongs not to the Dauphin, but to my Lord; but my Lord wishes that the Dauphin shall be king and hold it in trust. In spite of his enemies he shall be king of France, and I will lead him to be crowned.”
“And who is your lord?” demanded the governor with a sneer. “The King of Heaven,” said Joan of Arc proudly. The governor, who was a rough military man, laughed loud and long at the faith of the little peasant girl in a white cap, red petticoat, and wooden shoes. Instead of doing as she asked, he told her uncle to give her a good whipping, to beat the foolishness out of her head, and send her home to her father.
Baffled and discouraged, Joan went home with her uncle. But the Voices kept saying in her ears, “Go! go!” Back to the governor she went, but he treated her as badly as before. Then they found another man to whom she told her story and added, “God in Heaven has told me to go to the Dauphin; with His help I must do it, even if I have to go on my knees.” This friendly gentleman was deeply touched by her earnest words.
The people in the country who knew and believed in Joan of Arc pleaded with the men of influence in the neighborhood, and it was at last arranged that Joan should go and tell her story to the young king of France. To see if God were guiding her, as she claimed, the king changed places with a noble in his court; but instead of going up to the pretended king who sat in the seat of honor, Joan walked straight to the prince, where he stood behind some men of the court.
It is easy to believe what we will. The Dauphin listened to the burning words of the peasant girl with the pure,
Madonna-like face. After she had won the king’s approval it was not so hard for Joan to go on obeying the Voices. Dressed in a suit of armor which shone like silver, she led a French army to the relief of Orleans. She carried everywhere a beautiful white banner, embroidered with lilies.
The English laughed at that silly girl trying to be a man, and called her insulting names; but Joan did not mind, for she felt safe under the protection of the saints in heaven. One day, in an attack upon a fort held by the English, the Maid, as the French army now called her, was wounded in the foot; but she would not stop fighting. She mounted her horse again and led the charge as though nothing had happened. The English then thought she was a witch—that is, a woman working for the devil.
In another battle an arrow was shot clear through her shoulder so that the barb stuck out five inches. Then the enemy raised a shout of triumph. “The Maid can be wounded and killed,” they yelled. “She is not a witch, so we are not afraid of her.” But one of Joan’s company pulled out the arrow and she led them fiercely in the assault. The English soldiers were frightened, for in those days every one believed in witches. Joan drove the enemy from one place to another until all the south country was cleared of the English forces. Then the Maid of Orleans, as she was now called, led the king, with his court and the French army, to the old city of Rheims, where he was crowned, with great joy and splendor, as Charles the Seventh.
The Maid had put the lilies on her banner as the symbol of purity and of God’s love and care over France. The French lily, or fleur-de-lys, has been the emblem of France through all the centuries since the days of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans.
Now the Maid, who had done all that the Voices had commanded, was ready to return home to spin and to tend the sheep on the hills of Domremy; but weak-hearted King Charles begged her to stay long enough to drive all the English out of France.
Against her wish, Joan yielded. While fighting outside the walls of a town not far from Paris, she was surrounded by armed men of the enemy. By mistake or through fear, some French people shut the gate in such haste that the Maid was left outside fighting a dozen soldiers single-handed. She was captured and put in a dark, damp prison. Here the poor girl, then only nineteen, was frightened and tortured to make her sign a paper confessing that she was a wicked witch, and that all she had done was by the help of the devil.
After waiting a long time in vain for the ungrateful prince, whom she had made king of France, to come and save her with his army, or to pay a large sum of money to ransom her, she was compelled to stand an unjust trial during which she was many times abused and insulted. This wicked trial was conducted by a false bishop, who condemned that sweet, heroic young girl to be burned at the stake in the market-place of Rouen on the 24th of May, 1431.
Twenty-five years after her death the Pope reversed the decision of the corrupt bishop. In 1920, nearly five hundred years after the Maid was burned to death, high and holy men in the ancient Church to which she belonged took the great step of declaring Joan of Arc, the peasant girl of Domremy, one of the noble army of martyrs in the communion of saints.
PERHAPS there is no one who has done so much for the world, yet about whose life so little is known, as William Shakespeare. His father was a farmer and market man, and his mother was Mary Arden, a prosperous farmer’s daughter. The father was so highly respected that he was made high bailiff, or mayor, of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shakespeare family lived.
It was one of the father’s duties to give out licenses to players or actors who went from town to town performing their plays. Sometimes they gave their shows out of doors; and when theaters were built they were galleries around a space of ground. The people who paid the most stood or sat in the galleries and the poor people saw the play from the ground, called the pit. Strolling players were looked upon in those days almost as tramps are to-day. They had to have licenses like street bands nowadays. They often gave their shows in a town square and took up a collection for their pay.
John Shakespeare was fond of these shows, and there is no doubt that his son William was taken to see them before he went to the Stratford Grammar School when he was seven years old. Here the boy is said to have studied Latin, writing, and arithmetic. Judging from the specimens that are still to be seen of William Shakespeare’s penmanship, it was not a great success. One of the great
play-writers of Shakespeare’s time wrote that Will had learned “small Latin and less Greek” at school. But Latin was the chief study in the schools of that time. It was sung and spoken in church, and it was thought necessary for even a farmer’s son to study that language.
When William was thirteen his father was unfortunate in business, and the boy had to leave school to earn his living. There is a legend that he started in to learn the butcher’s trade, but it seems more likely that he worked as a lawyer’s boy and clerk. If all accounts are true, he must have been a mischievous lad, for the story goes that he was once taken up for poaching, or shooting a deer, in the park of one of the great men in the county.
When he was eighteen Will Shakespeare married a farmer’s daughter eight years older than himself. By the time he was twenty-one the young father had three children. Two of these, Hamnet and Judith, were twins. Hamnet died before he grew to manhood, and about all that is known of Judith Shakespeare is that she, like her mother, never learned to read. It was not thought necessary then for farmers’ wives and daughters to read and write.
A lawyer’s clerk with five mouths to feed could hardly find enough to do in Stratford to earn a living, so William Shakespeare went to London to seek his fortune. It is said that he began life in the great city by holding horses in front of one of the theaters, as they did not have hitching-posts in Shakespeare’s days. Then he was promoted to be prompter’s boy. One of his duties was to tell the actors when it was time for them to go on the stage and play their parts.
Nothing is really known of what the young man from Stratford was doing for six or seven years. He made his living in one way or another in connection with the theaters. At the end of that time a dying actor left some bitter lines about Will “Shake-scene.” But another actor at this time called Shakespeare a good man, a graceful actor, and a witty writer of plays. Shakespeare seems not to have been a leading actor. It is said that he took the part of the Ghost in his own play of “Hamlet.” He became so successful as a writer that he was “commanded” to bring his company and produce a play before Queen Elizabeth in one of her palaces.
It is recorded that Shakespeare was paid from thirty to seventy-five dollars for one of his plays. While it is true that thirty dollars would buy as much then as three hundred dollars to-day, yet that was a very small price to pay for the greatest dramas ever written. But the real value of the greatest things of the world cannot be measured by money.
Every one is said to have at least one great chance in life. Shakespeare’s Door of Opportunity was the door of a theater. He did not wait for it to open; he opened it himself. Shakespeare’s life showed that “poets are born, not made.” He had the keenest insight into the human heart and life of all the writers who ever lived.
IN Shakespeare’s day Queen Elizabeth came first in the thoughts of all the people of England. She was almost worshiped by the men of wealth and genius whom she gathered at her court, and by the people at large. By her cleverness and wisdom she kept England peaceful and prosperous almost all through her reign. But she never married; so, when she died, her cousin, James Stuart, king of Scotland, became king of England.
James had been brought up to think that because he was king, everybody must bow to him as the Lord’s anointed. It was he and his councilors who drove the Pilgrim Fathers out of England because they would not worship God, as James wished them to, in the Church of England, of which he was the head.
On his way down to London to be crowned, James stopped at the beautiful estate of Sir Oliver Cromwell. In the royal company was the king’s eldest son, Charles, called by the Scottish people “the bonnie prince.” The little Scotch boy, only six years old, already thought that the world was created for him and that no other boy had any rights which he, Prince Charles, was bound to respect.
The story goes that Sir Oliver Cromwell sent for his nephew, whose name was Oliver Cromwell also, to play with the prince. When little Noll, as they nicknamed Oliver, came in, his uncle presented him to the boy prince. Young Oliver tried to shake hands with Charles. Old Oliver, who wanted the boy to bow and kiss the prince’s hand, said, “Pay your duty to Prince Charles.”
“I owe him no duty,” said Noll Cromwell. “Why should I kiss that boy’s hand?”
King James only laughed at the Cromwell lad’s spirit, and Charles and Noll were left to play together. The prince soon struck the other boy, as he was in the habit of doing, but naughty Noll struck back and sent “the bonnie prince” howling to the king with royal blood streaming from his little freckled nose.
Sir Oliver and the members of the royal party looked with holy horror at the boy who had laid his hands on the Lord’s anointed. Some of them thought young Oliver ought to be imprisoned in the Tower of London or even beheaded for his wickedness. But King James had sense enough to see that it was well for the prince to get “tit for tat” once in a while; so he only looked hard at little Oliver and said:
“Thou art a bold lad; and if thou live to be a man, my son Charlie would do wisely to be friends with thee.” Then he turned to Sir Oliver and the frightened friends standing there, saying, “Harm not the lad. He has taught my son a good lesson, if heaven do but give him grace to profit by it. If he be tempted to play the tyrant over the stubborn English, let him remember little Oliver Cromwell.”
Young Oliver went to Free School and then to a Puritan college in Cambridge University; but he had to leave school on account of the death of his father. Before he was thirty Cromwell was elected to Parliament, of which his cousin, John Hampden, was also a member.
Meanwhile King James died and his son, the prince with whom Oliver had quarreled when a boy, became King Charles the First. King James had been so sensible at times and so foolish at others that he has been called “the wisest fool in Europe.” But Charles had even less sense than his royal father. He tried to abolish Parliament, thus setting up his own will against the will of the people of all England and Scotland.
Parliament, led by such men as Cromwell and Hampden, stood up for the rights of the people against tyranny. All lovers of liberty and human rights are greatly in debt to these two brave men who risked their lives to save their country from the selfish wilfulness of kings. Englishmen now were divided into two parties. The king’s party were the Cavaliers, or Church of England men, who wore wigs or long curls and dressed in velvets, silks, and laces like grown-up Lord Fauntleroys. The parliamentary party were called Roundheads, so named because they cut their hair short, as men do to-day. Oliver Cromwell, who never saw an army until he was forty, was suddenly found to be a great general. Because of their stern, unyielding courage, Cromwell’s soldiers were called “Ironsides.” They often went into battle with a prayer on their lips, or, in a grand chorus, sang a psalm of David while striking valiantly for the right.
At last it became necessary to sacrifice King Charles in order to secure the victory for Parliament, which stood for the freedom of Englishmen against the tyranny of kings. So a court set up by Parliament voted to put the king to death, and Oliver Cromwell was one of the signers of the death-warrant. As James, the king’s father, had driven the Pilgrims out of the country, so now the Puritans in Parliament forced the king’s sons to leave the country for their country’s good.
During the few years in which Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of England, he did much to strengthen the nation and to repair the great harm brought upon it by the foolish whims of its extravagant kings. It was then that England learned the terrible lesson which Europe had to be taught almost three hundred years later—that no king has a divine right to do wrong to the people.
THOUGH Napoleon Bonaparte was the greatest soldier of his time, he was small in body. His fullest height was a little above five feet. The story of his strange career shows how a poor, puny little lad made himself emperor of France and master of Europe, so that kings, generals, and prime ministers bowed, like so many servants, to his imperial will.
He began, while he wore petticoats, to wish to be a soldier. He threw away his baby rattle for a brass cannon, and his first playthings were little iron soldiers. When he was old enough to play with other boys, he always chose to be a soldier and, small as he was, he was the one who told the bigger boys just what to do. Even then, if his mother gave him a piece of cake, he would go out to the edge of the little town and trade it to an old soldier for some coarse, black army bread. As he grew older, this soldier-longing became his ambition. His health was never very good. He was often nervous, wilful, and hard to manage. But he had a keen sense of honor, and always despised a coward.
Napoleon’s home was the rugged island of Corsica. While he was still a little boy, he found, between some rocks, near the shore, a cave which he claimed for his own. This is still pointed out to thousands who come to visit the boy’s birthplace, as “Napoleon’s Grotto.”
At that time there was a feud between the boys of the town and the shepherd lads on the hills around. Little Napoleon told the other town boys that if they would do as he said, he would make those big country boys stop throwing stones at them whenever they met. The town lads agreed to this; so Napoleon told them to gather stones and pile them in a row a little distance below the fortress which the shepherds had chosen behind some rocks on top of their hill.
The pale Bonaparte boy led his young army up till the country youths fired a volley of stones at them. Then he turned and ran down the hill followed by his company. The enemy came out and gave chase, pell-mell. This was just what Napoleon expected. When the little leader got down to the piles of stones he shouted—“Halt!”
“Stones!”
Each boy gathered up as many as he could carry.
“About face!—FIRE!”
Before the astonished shepherds could stop they were met by a shower of rocks. The big fellows broke and scattered in all directions, and two of them were taken prisoner. Captain Bonaparte would not let them go till the other country boys pledged themselves not to touch his “men” again.
Thus eight-year-old Napoleon became the leader of the boys in his home town.
Before he was ten, he was sent to a military school in France, where sons of noblemen were educated. Some of those French boys were wayward, mean, and savagely cruel. They made fun of the shy country lad, for his rough Corsican ways and speech, and because he was small and sallow. Napoleon had entered the school on a scholarship, so they sneered at him as “the charity boy.” He could not speak French at first, and pronounced his own name so that it sounded like the French words for “Nose of straw.” As Napoleon’s nose was long, straight, and thin, they laughed and shouted his nickname, “Mr. Straw Nose!”
All this made the proud, sensitive lad speechless with rage. He kept himself away from the rest. A garden plot was assigned for each cadet to tend. A few of the others were too idle to take care of theirs, so they gave them to Napoleon and he kept them in order as his own. In the center of his little kingdom he built an arbor where he could stay alone to study and plan as he had done in his little cave in Corsica, and woe to those who entered there without his permission. He had suffered this sort of life nearly four years before his father and mother managed to visit their boy, who was almost a prisoner in military school. Napoleon wrote of the shock the visit gave his mother:
“When she came to see me at Brienne she was frightened at my thinness. I was indeed much changed, because I employed the hours of recreation in working, and often passed the nights in thinking about the days’ lessons. My nature could not bear the idea of not being first in my class.”
After finishing at this academy, Napoleon went to the military college at Paris. Father Bonaparte’s death, about this time, left the family poorer than ever. Sometimes Napoleon did not have enough to eat. But that did not prevent him from studying hard. His great ambition kept him from starving. Some time after his graduation he was assigned to a small command in Paris. “Red” revolutionists were trying to destroy the city. Young Napoleon thought it high time to stop them. A mob gathered in a public square threatening to kill people and burn their houses. He opened fire on the mob and cleared that square in short order. It was said afterward, “Bonaparte stopped the French Revolution with a whiff of grapeshot!”
From being “the Man of the Hour” Napoleon went on until he became “the Man of Destiny.” He was raised to the highest rank, and as General Bonaparte became commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy, where he gained brilliant victories over the Austrians. But the Austrians would not stay beaten, and while Napoleon was away in Egypt, Austria started in to win back its control of northern Italy.
When Napoleon returned to Paris he was the idol of the people. They elected him consul, a kind of president, of the French republic. The Austrians were pleased at this, as it would keep “the Little Corporal,” as the soldiers called Napoleon, in Paris. He would have to send another commander to Italy, and the Austrians had gotten such a start that they could win the victory before the French forces could go around the Alps.
Austria was already crowing over its triumph and all Europe was laughing because General Bonaparte had been “caught napping,” when one May morning Consul Napoleon and a great army came tobogganing down the mountain sides into the plains of Italy, as if they had fallen from the sky.
In a letter to his older brother, Napoleon wrote of this:
“We have dropped here like a thunderbolt; the enemy didn’t expect it, and hardly believe it yet.”
He had made his soldiers climb up the Alps Mountains in the highest, steepest place, dragging heavy cannon and army supplies after them. By his wonderful feat of crossing the Alps, Napoleon won by surprise the victory at Marengo, just as he had beaten the shepherd lads when he was a boy of eight.
The people now made their hero consul for life. After that it was easy for him to make himself Emperor of the French. At his coronation Napoleon snatched the crown out of the hands of the pope and placed it on his own head, to show that he was emperor by the right of his own might. Yet Emperor Napoleon kept on leading his armies in person. He still had to fight with other nations to hold his place as master of Europe. He gained even more brilliant victories, as Emperor Napoleon, than he had won as General Bonaparte. Not content with his record as a great conqueror, he gave the French people the Code Napoléon, a set of laws