Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England
- Автор: Harding Samuel B.
- Год: 1909
- Язык: английский
- Год: Heritage History
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England». Краткое содержание книги:
Greek Gods and Heroes
City of the Seven Hills
The Story of the Middle Ages
The Story of England
After Odo's death the Carolignians regained the throne, but their hold upon it was weaker than ever. For about a hundred years the family of Odo continued to be the rivals of the Carolingians. Then in 987, another descendant of Robert the Strong seized the throne, and this time the change of rulers was permanent. From that date, for more than eight hundred years, all of the kings of France were descendants of this great family; and their rule did not cease until the kingship came to an end in France, and a republic was set up in its place (1792).
Twenty-five years after the great siege of Paris, a band of Northmen secured such a footing in France that it was never possible afterwards to drive them forth. Their leader was a man of enormous size, strength, and courage; his name was Rolf (or Rollo), and they called him "the Ganger," which meant "the Walker." Like Hastings, he was for nearly fifty years a sea-king, plundering Frisia, England, Scotland, and France. At the great siege of Paris, he was one of the chiefs. Unlike Hastings, however, Rolf was something more than a mere pirate and robber. When he captured a town, he strengthened its walls, and rebuilt its churches, and sought to rule over it as a conquering prince.
In this way he came to possess a number of towns which lay north and south of the mouth of the river Seine. At last, in the year 911, he secured a grant from the King of France to a wide stretch of country in that region, with the title of Duke. This grant was made on three conditions. First, he must settle his Northmen there and leave the rest of the country at peace; second, he must become a Christian; and third, he must do homage to the French King as his feudal lord. This last condition was very distasteful to Duke Rolf, and he could scarcely be induced to place his hands between the hands of the King, as was required. When he was told to kneel down and kiss the foot of the King, as was the custom, he refused, and calling one of his followers, commanded him to do it. This bold Northman, however, had no more liking for the deed than his chief; and when he raised the King's foot to touch it to his lips, he toppled the King over on his back!
In Normandy,—as his land was called,—Duke Rolf speedily showed that he was as good a ruler as he was a fighter. His followers settled down quietly, under his stern rule, and became landlords and cultivators of the soil. Before he died, it is said that gold rings could be hung on the limbs of the trees, and no one would touch them. The Northmen learned rapidly in other ways too. They followed the lead of their Duke in being baptized, and soon all were Christians. They also laid aside their old speech and law, and in less than a hundred years the fierce sea-rovers had become as good Frenchmen, in speech and everything else, as could be found in the kingdom. About the only thing to mark the difference between these Normans, as they were called, and the rest of the French, was their greater energy, their skill in governing, and their fondness for the sea and adventure.
Proof that they had not lost their energy or military skill was given in events which took place in the eleventh century. Within a little more than a hundred years after Duke Rolf and his followers were established in France, their descendants began to send forth new bands of conquerors. By accident their attention was turned to Sicily and the southern part of Italy. Soon the greater part of these lands was conquered from the Greeks and Saracens, and a Norman kingdom was established there called the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
This is not nearly all of the great deeds the Northmen and their descendants performed at this time; but we can only mention a few of the others. As every American boy and girl knows, the Northmen settled Iceland and Greenland, and discovered America long before Columbus was born. Twice bands of them attacked the city of Constantinople; and after that they entered the service of the Greek Emperor, and for centuries made up his faithful bodyguard. In the far North, they made settlements in Russia, and gave a line of rulers to the Great Russian Empire. And when the Crusaders set out to win Jerusalem from the infidels, the Normans of France, England, and Sicily took the leading part in these movements also.
These old Northmen were truly a wonderful people, and their coming into the Christian lands did much to make the southern nations stronger and more energetic than they would otherwise have been.
England in the Middle Ages
The British Isles were among the lands which suffered most from the raids of the viking Northmen, and it was there also that the Normans of France made their greatest conquest.
In the days when Rome was spreading her rule about the Mediterranean Sea, the larger of these islands was called Britain, from its inhabitants, the Britons, who were akin to the Gauls of the Continent. Some time after the Romans had conquered Gaul, Britain also was added to their Empire and was ruled by the Romans for about three hundred and fifty years. But when the Empire had grown weak and the German barbarians began to over-run Italy, Rome was obliged to withdraw her legions from Britain, and that island was then left to govern and defend itself.
The Britons, however, had lived so long under Roman rule that, by this time, they had almost forgotten how to fight. So, when wild tribes from Ireland and Scotland came to attack them, the Britons were in an evil situation. At one time they wrote a letter to the Roman commander in Gaul, in which they said:
"The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians. Thus two modes of death await us: we are either slain, or drowned."
AN EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH
Also, roving bands of Germans, called Angles and Saxons, now began to trouble the shores of Britain, coming in their swift pirate ships much as the Northmen were to do four hundred years later. When the Britons found that the Romans were not able to help them, they asked a band of these sea-rovers to aid them against their other enemies, promising them rich rewards (449 A.D.). When once the Angles and Saxons had secured a footing, they proceeded to conquer the island for themselves. In this way the Angles and Saxons won for themselves the fairest portion of the land. From the name of the first of these peoples, it came to be called "Angle-land" or England. It was only after two centuries of hard fighting, however, that the conquest was completed. In the western part of the island the Britons long kept their independence; and there, under the name of "Welsh," as they were styled by the new-comers (a word which meant foreigners), they continued for hundreds of years to use their own language, to follow their own laws, and to obey their own princes.
Meanwhile the "English," as the descendants of the Angles and Saxons are called, settled down into a num¬ber of little kingdoms. You have already read how captive boys from one of these kingdoms excited the pity of Pope Gregory when he saw them exposed for sale in the slave market at Rome, and how this led him to send the monk Au¬gustine to England, to convert these new-comers. The English became Christians and grew more civilized, and finally their little kingdoms were joined together under the rule of a single king.
But now they, in turn, were exposed to the danger of conquest; for like the Britons before them the English had, through long years of peace, lost much of their former warlike ability. The new enemy was the Northmen, whose deeds we have described in the preceding chapter. Little by little they overran the island, plundering and destroying monasteries and churches, until only the south-western part of the island was still unconquered. But there they were met by a young English King who stopped their conquests and saved his people from ruin at their hands.
This was the English national hero. Alfred, whom later ages called "Alfred the Truth-Teller" and "England's Darling." When he was a boy his mother one day said to him and his brothers: