- The Flight to Varennes
One June night in 1791, between eleven o’clock and midnight, the king and queen and their two children slipped out of the Tuileries disguised, threaded their palpitating way through Paris, circled round from the north of the city to the east, and got at last into a travelling-carriage that was waiting upon the road to Chalons. They were flying to the army of the east.[439] The army of the east was “loyal,” that is to say, its general and officers at least were prepared to betray France to the king and court. Here was adventure at last after the queen’s heart, and one can understand the pleasurable excitement of the little party as the miles lengthened between themselves and Paris. Away over the hills were reverence, deep bows, and the kissing of hands. Then back to Versailles. A little shooting of the mob in Paris—artillery, if need be. A few executions—but not of the sort of people who matter. A White Terror for a few months. Then all would be well{v2-323} again. Perhaps Calonne might return too, with fresh financial expedients. He was busy just then gathering support among the German princes. There were a lot of chateaux to rebuild, but the people who burnt them down could hardly complain if the task of rebuilding them pressed rather heavily upon their grimy necks.... All such bright anticipations were cruelly dashed that night at Varennes. The king had been recognized at Sainte Menehould by the landlord of the post house, and as the night fell, the eastward roads clattered with galloping messengers rousing the country, and trying to intercept the fugitives. - Napoleon as Emperor
He was scheming to make himself a real emperor, with a crown upon his head and all his rivals and school-fellows and friends at his feet. This could give him no fresh power that he did not already exercise, but it would be more splendid—it would astonish his mother. What response was there in a head of that sort for the splendid creative challenge of the time? But first France must be prosperous. France hungry would certainly not endure an emperor. - Louis XIV
On such terms of unrighteousness what we may call “Grand Monarchy” established itself in France. Louis XIV, styled the Grand Monarque, reigned for the unparalleled length of seventy-two years (1643-1715), and set a pattern for all the kings of Europe. At first he was guided by his Machiavellian minister, Cardinal Mazarin; after the death of the Cardinal he himself in his own proper person became the ideal “Prince.” He was, within his limitations, an exceptionally capable king; his ambition was stronger than his baser passions, and he guided his country towards bankruptcy through the complication of a spirited foreign policy, with an elaborate dignity that still extorts our admiration. - Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England, who had begun his career with a book written against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with the title of “Defender of the Faith,” being anxious to divorce his first wife in favour of an animated young lady named Anne Boleyn,and wishing also to turn against the Emperor in favour of Francis I and to loot the vast wealth of the church in England, joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway had already gone over to the Protestant side. - Francis I
Charles realized that his great empire was in very serious danger both from the west and from the east. On the west of him was his spirited rival, Francis I; to the east was the Turk in Hungary, in alliance with Francis and clamouring for certain arrears of tribute from the Austrian dominions. - Emperor William II
By one of those accidents in history that personify and precipitate catastrophes, the ruler of Germany, the emperor William II, embodied the new education of his people and the Hohenzollern tradition in the completest form. He came to the throne in 1888 at the age of twenty-nine; his father, Frederick III, had succeeded his grandfather, William I, in the March, to die in the June of that year. William II was the grandson of Queen Victoria on his mother’s side, but his temperament showed no traces of the liberal German tradition that distinguished the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family. His head was full of the frothy stuff of the new imperialism. He signalized his accession by an address to his army and navy; his address to his people followed three days later. A high note of contempt for democracy was sounded: “The soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities, have welded together the German Empire. My trust is placed in the army.” So the patient work of the German schoolmasters was disowned, and the Hohenzollern declared himself triumphant. - Bismarck
Prussian affairs were then very much in the hands of a minister of the seventeenth-century type, Von Bismarck (count in 1865, prince in 1871), and he saw brilliant opportunities in this trouble. He became the champion of the German nationality in these duchies—it must be remembered that the King of Prussia had refused to undertake this rôle for democratic Germany in 1848—and he persuaded Austria to side with Prussia in a military intervention. Denmark had no chance against these Great Powers; she was easily beaten and obliged to relinquish the duchies. Then Bismarck picked a quarrel with Austria for the possession of these two small states. So he brought about a needless and fratricidal war of Germans for the greater glory of Prussia and the ascendancy of the Hohenzollern dynasty in Germany. German writers of a romantic turn of mind represent Bismarck as a great statesman planning the unity of Germany; but indeed he was doing nothing of the kind. - Philip of Macedon
When Philip became king of Macedonia in 359 B.C., his country was a little country without a seaport or industries or any considerable city. It had a peasant population, Greek almost in language and ready to be Greek in sympathies, but more purely Nordic in blood than any people to the south of it. Philip made this little barbaric state into a great one; he created the most efficient military organization the world had so far seen, and he had brought most of Greece into one confederacy under his leadership at the time of his death. And his extraordinary quality, his power of thinking out beyond the current ideas of his time, is shown not so much in those matters as in the care with which he had his son trained to carry on the policy he had created. He is one of the few monarchs in history who cared for his successor. Alexander was, as few other monarchs have ever been, a specially educated king; he was educated for empire. Aristotle was but one of the several able tutors his father chose for him. Philip confided his policy to him, and entrusted him with commands and authority by the time he was sixteen. He commanded the cavalry at Chæronea under his father’s eye. He was nursed into power—generously and unsuspiciously. - An Assyrian King and His Chief Minister
It was out of those two main weaknesses of all priesthoods, namely, the incapacity for efficient military leadership and their inevitable jealousy of all other religious cults, that the power of secular kingship arose. The foreign enemy either prevailed and set up a king over the people, or the priesthoods who would not give way to each other set up a common fighting captain, who retained more or less power in peace time. This secular king developed a group of officials about him and began, in relation to military organization, to take a share in the priestly administration of the people’s affairs. So, growing out of priestcraft and beside the priest, the king, the protagonist of the priest,appears upon the stage of human history, and a very large amount of the subsequent experiences of mankind is only to be understood as an elaboration, complication, and distortion of the struggle, unconscious or deliberate, between these two systems of human control, the temple and the palace. And it was in the original centres of civilization that this antagonism was most completely developed. - Assassination of Henry IV
Assassination of Henry IV, Rue de la Ferronnerie, may 14, 1610. - A Merovingian Queen
A Merovingian Queen - Kien Lung
Kien Lung was the fourth Emperor of the Tartar dynasty, which now possesses the throne of China. When the sketch was taken he was eighty-three years of age, but had all the appearance of a hale, vigorous man of sixty. Indeed his whole life had been spent in the active discharge of public business, and in the violent exercise of hunting and shooting in the wild regions of Tartary, which he continued with unabated zeal almost to the period of life above mentioned. He always commenced public business at two or three in the morning, and gave audience to foreign ambassadors at that early hour, whether in winter or summer, and he generally retired to rest at sunset; and to this invariable habit of rising and retiring at an early hour, he attributed much of his healthy and vigorous constitution. - William I, surnamed the Conqueror
Had it not been for the impossibility of keeping the English host together, and for the absence of Harold in the north, it is difficult to see how William could ever have effected a landing. As it was, however, his course was perfectly unopposed upon the sea, and a landing was safely effected at Pevensey on September 29th, four days after the battle of Stamford Bridge. - George III
George III. could not understand the feelings of the colonists, and he had no sympathy with their views. His mother had said to him when he was crowned, "George, be King," and this advice had pleased him. For he was wilful, and desired to have his own way as a ruler. Thus far he had shown little respect for the British Parliament, and he felt even less for Colonial Assemblies. Certainly if he was to rule in his own way in England, he must compel the obedience of the stubborn colonists in America. The standing army which the King wished to send to America was designed not so much to protect the colonies as to enforce the will of the King, and this the colonists knew. They therefore opposed with bitter indignation the payment of taxes levied for the army's support. - Queen Elizabeth
Queen Elizabeth - King Assur-nasir-pal
King Assur-nasir-pal - Darius, king of Persia
Darius, king of Persia - Queen of Assur-nasir-pal
Queen of Assur-nasir-pal - Jeanne de Bourbon
Jeanne de Bourbon, Wife of Charles V From a Statue formerly in the Church of the Célestins, Paris. A fact worthy of remark is, that whilst male attire, through a depravity of taste, had extended to the utmost limit of extravagance, women's dress, on the contrary, owing to a strenuous effort towards a dignified and elegant simplicity, became of such a character that it combined all the most approved fashions of female costume which had been in use in former periods. The statue of Queen Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V., formerly placed with that of her husband in the Church of the Célestins at Paris, gives the most faithful representation of this charming costume, to which our artists continually have recourse when they wish to depict any poetical scenes of the French Middle Ages - Imperial Procession
Imperial Procession. From an Engraving of the "Solemn Entry of Charles V. and Clement VII. into Bologna," by L. de Cranach, from a Fresco by Brusasorci, of Verona. - Entry of Loius XI
The Entry of Louis XI. into Paris From the "Chroniques" of Monstrelet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century - King Louis le Jeune
King Louis le Jeune Miniature of the "Rois de France," by Du Tillet (Sixteenth Century), in the National Library of Paris. - King Childebert
King Childebert III (Seventh Century).--From a Statue formerly placed in the Refectory of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés. - Costume of Emperors at their Coronation
Costume of Emperors at their Coronation since the Time of Charlemagne.--From an Engraving in a Work entitled "Insignia Sacre Majistatis Cæsarum Principum." Frankfort, 1579, in folio. - Coronation of Charlemagme
Coronation of Charlemagne.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the "Chroniques de Saint-Denis," Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris). - Charlotte of Savoy
Charlotte of Savoy second Wife of Louis XI. - Charles V of France
Charles V of France - Charles the Simple
Charles the Simple (Charles III) of Francia - Ballet
Representation of a Ballet before Henri III. and his Court, in the Gallery of the Louvre.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper of the "Ballet de la Royne," by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx (folio, Paris, Mamert Patisson, 1582.) - Young Nobles
Costumes of Young Nobles of the Court of Charles VIII., before and after the Expedition into Italy.--From Miniatures in two Manuscripts of the Period in the National Library of Paris. - Tournaments
Tournaments in honour of the Entry of Queen Isabel into Paris--From a Miniature in the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (National Library of Paris). - Sandal and Buskin
Sandal and Buskin of Charlemagne.--From the Abbey of St. Denis. - Princess
Costume of a Princess dressed in a Cloak lined with Fur.--From a Miniature of the Thirteenth Century. - Presenting the sword
"How the King-at-Arms presents the Sword to the Duke of Bourbon."--From a Miniature in "Tournois du Roi René," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris). - Phillip the Good
Costume of Philip the Good, with Hood and "Cockade."--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period. - Mary of Burgundy
Costume of Mary of Burgundy, Daughter of Charles the Bold, Wife of Maximilian of Austria (end of the Fifteenth Century). From an old Engraving in the Collection of the Imperial Library, Paris. - King Clovis
Costume of King Clovis (Sixth Century).--From a Statue on his Tomb, formerly in the Abbey of St. Geneviève. - William, Duke of Normandy
William, Duke of Normandy, accompanied by Eustatius, Count of Boulogne, and followed by his Knights in arms.--Military Dress of the Eleventh Century, from Bayeux Tapestry said to have been worked by Queen Matilda. - Supreme Court
Supreme Court, presided over by the King, who is in the act of issuing a Decree which is being registered by the Usher.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Camareu of the "Information des Rois," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal of Paris. - The Chess-Players.
After a miniature of "The Three Ages of Man", a ms. of the fifteenth century attributed to Estienne Porchier. (Bibl. of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.) The scene is laid in one of the saloons of the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, the residence of Louis XI; in the player to the right, the features of the king are recognisable. - Prince Albert as a young man
Prince Albert at the age of 20 From a miniature by Sir W Ross - Prince Albert as a child
Prince Albert at the age of four - One of the guard of the King of the Sandwich Islands
One of the guard of the King of the Sandwich Islands - Louis XVI
Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Dauphin - Joan of Navarre
Queen of Henry IV - King Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity
King Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity and Homage from one of his great Feudatories or High Barons Originally, the possession of a benefice or fief meant no more than the privilege of enjoying the profits derived from the land, a concession which made the holder dependent upon the proprietor. He was in fact his "man," to whom he owed homage, service in case of war, and assistance in any suit the proprietor might have before the King's tribunal. - King or Chief of Franks armed with the Seramasax, from a Miniature of the Ninth Century
When the Franks took root in Gaul, their dress and institutions were adopted by the Roman society. This had the most disastrous influence in every point of view, and it is easy to prove that civilisation did not emerge from this chaos until by degrees the Teutonic spirit disappeared from the world. As long as this spirit reigned, neither private nor public liberty existed. Individual patriotism only extended as far as the border of a man's family, and the nation became broken up into clans. Gaul soon found itself parcelled off into domains which were almost independent of one another. It was thus that Germanic genius became developed. - King of the Franks
The King of the Franks, in the midst of the Military Chiefs who formed his Treuste, or armed Court, dictates the Salic Law (Code of the Barbaric Laws). The tariff of indemnities or compensations to be paid for each crime formed the basis of the code of laws amongst the principal tribes of Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of the Salians. Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to be subservient to the `rank` of individuals. The more powerful a man was, the more he was protected by the law; the lower his `rank`, the less the law protected him.