The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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But there came a time when the tribute of the provinces no
longer returned to the provinces to be expended on the public
buildings and the frontier garrisons and the military roads.
The rivers of gold which had so long flowed into Rome at last
dried up: the empire became poor, and yet its expenses remained
the same. The Praetorian Guards had still to be paid; the mob
of the capital had still to be rationed with bread, and bacon,
and wine, and oil, and costly shows. Accordingly the provinces
were made to suffer. Exorbitant taxes were imposed: the
aldermen and civil councillors of towns were compelled to pay
enormous fees in virtue of their office, and were forbidden to
evade such expensive honours by enlisting in the army, or by
taking holy orders. The rich were accused of crimes that their
property might be seized: the crops in the fields were gathered
by the police. A blight fell upon the land. Men would no longer
labour, since the fruits of their toil might at any time be
taken from them. Cornfield and meadow were again covered with
brambles and weeds; the cities were deserted; grass grew in all
the streets. The province of Gaul was taxed to death, and then
abandoned by the Romans. The government could no longer afford
to garrison the Rhine frontier: the legions were withdrawn, and
the Germans entered.
The invading armies were composed of free men, who, under their
respective captains or heads of clans, had joined the standard
of some noted warrior chief. The spoil of the army belonged to
the army, and was divided according to stipulated rules. The
kingβs share was large, but more than his share he might not
have. When the Germans, instead of returning with their booty,
remained upon the foreign soil, they partitioned the land in
the same manner as they partitioned the cattle and the slaves,
the gold crosses, the silver chalices; the vases, the tapestry,
the fine linen, and the purple robes. An immense region was
allotted to the king; other tracts of various sizes to the
generals and captains (or chiefs and chieftains) according to
the number of men whom they had brought into the field; and
each private soldier received a piece of ground. But the army,
although disbanded, was not extinct; its members remained under
martial law the barons or generals were bound to obey the king
when he summoned them to war; the soldiers to obey their
ancient chiefs. Sometimes the king and the great barons gave
lands to favourites and friends on similar conditions, and at a
later period money was paid instead of military service, thus
originating rent.
The nobles of Roman Gaul lived within the city except during
the villeggiatura in the autumn. The German lords preferred the
country, and either fortified the Roman villas or built new
castles of their own. They surrounded themselves with a
bodyguard of personal retainers; their prisoners of war were
made to till the ground as serfs. And soon they reduced to much
the same condition the German soldiers, and seized their humble
lands. In that troubled age none could hold property except by
means of the strong arm. Men found it difficult to preserve
their lives, and often presented their bodies to some powerful
lord in return for protection, in return for daily bread. The
power of the king was nominal: sovereignty was broken and
dispersed: Europe was divided among castles: and in each castle
was a prince who owned no authority above his own, who held a
high court of justice in his hall, issued laws to his estates,
lived by the court fees, by taxes levied on passing caravans,
and by ransoms for prisoners, sometimes obtained in fair war,
sometimes by falling upon peaceful travellers. Dark deeds were
done within those ivy-covered towers which now exist for the
pleasure of poets and pilgrims of the picturesque. Often from
turret chambers and grated windows arose the shrieks of
violated maidens and the yells of tortured Jews. Yet castle-life had also its brighter side. To cheer the solitude of the
isolated house minstrels and poets and scholars were courted by
the barons, and were offered a peaceful chamber and a place of
honour at the board. In the towns of ancient Italy and Greece
there was no family: the home did not exist. The women and
children dwelt together in secluded chambers: the men lived a
club life in the baths, the porticoes, and the gymnasiums. But
the castle lord had no companions of his own rank except the
members of his own family. On stormy days, when he could not
hunt, he found a pleasure in dancing his little ones upon his
knee, and in telling them tales of the wood and weald. Their
tender fondlings, and their merry laughs, their half formed
voices, which attempted to pronounce his name β all these were
sweet to him. And by the love of those in whom he saw his own
image mirrored, in whom his own childhood appeared to live
again, he was drawn closer and closer to his wife. She became
his counsellor and friend; she softened his rugged manners; she
soothed his fierce wrath; she pleaded for the prisoners and
captives, and the men condemned to die. And when he was absent,
she became the sovereign lady of the house, ruled the vassals,
sat in the judgment-seat, and often defended the castle in time of
siege. A charge so august could not but elevate the female
mind. Women became queens. The Lady was created. Within the
castle was formed that grand manner of gentleness, mingled with
hauteur, which art can never stimulate, and which ages of
dignity can alone confer.
The barons dwelt apart from one another, and were often engaged
in private war. Yet they had sons to educate and daughters to
marry; and so a singular kind of society arose. The kingβs
house or court, and the houses of the great barons, became
academies to which the inferior barons sent their boys and
girls to school. The young lady became the attendant of the
Dame, and was instructed in the arts of playing on the
virginals, of preparing simples, and of healing wounds; of
spinning, sewing, and embroidery. The young gentleman was at
first a Page. He was taught to manage a horse with grace and
skill, to use bow and sword, to sound the notes of venerie upon
the horn, to carve at table, to ride full tilt against the
quintaine with his lance in rest, to brittle a deer, to find
his way through the forest by the stars in the sky and by the
moss upon the trees. It was also his duty to wait upon the
ladies who tutored his youthful mind in other ways. He was
trained to deport himself with elegance; he was nurtured in all
the accomplishments of courtesy and love. He was encouraged to
select a mistress among the dames or demoiselles; to adore her
in his heart, to serve her with patience and fidelity, obeying
her least commands; to be modest in her presence; to be silent
and discreet. The reward of all this devotion was of no
ethereal kind, but it was not quickly or easily bestowed; and
vice almost ceases to be vice when it can only be gratified by
means of long discipline in virtue. When the page had arrived
at a certain age, he was clad in a brown frock; a sword was
fastened to his side, and he obtained the title of Esquire. He
attended his patron knight on military expeditions, until he
was old enough to be admitted to the order. Among the ancient
Germans of the forest, when a young man came of age, he was
solemnly invested with shield and spear. The ceremony of
knighthood at first was nothing more than this. Every man of gentle
birth became a knight, and then took an oath to be true to God and to
the ladies and to his plighted word; to be honourable in all
his actions, to succour the oppressed. Thus, within those
castle-colleges arose the sentiment of Honour, the institution
of Chivalry, which, as an old poet wrote, made women chaste and
men brave. The women were worshipped as goddesses, the men were
revered as heroes. Each sex aspired to possess those qualities
which the other sex approved. Women admire, above all things,
courage and truth; and so the men became courageous and true.
Men admire modesty, virtue, and refinement; and so the women
became virtuous, and modest, and refined. A higher standard of
propriety was required as time went on: the manners and customs
of the Dark Ages became the vices of a later period;
unchastity, which had once been regarded as the private wrong
of the husband, was stigmatised as a sin against society; and
society found a means of taking its revenge. At first the
notorious woman was insulted to her face at tournament and
banquet; or knights chalked an epithet upon her castle gates,
and then rode on. In the next age she was shunned by her own
sex: the discipline of social life was established as it exists
at the present day. Though it might sometimes be relaxed in a
vicious court, at least the ideal of right was preserved. But
in the period of the Troubadours the fair sinners resembled the
pirates of the Homeric age. Their pursuits were of a dangerous,
but not of a dishonourable nature: they might sometimes lose
their lives; they never lost their reputation.
We must now descend from ladies and gentlemen to the people in
the field, who are sometimes forgotten by historians. The
castle was built on the summit of a hill, and a village of
serfs was clustered round its foot. These poor peasants were
often hardly treated by their lords. Often they raised their
brown and horny hands and cursed the cruel castle which scowled
upon them from above. Humbly they made obeisance, and bitterly
they gnawed their lips as the baron rode down the narrow street
on his great war-horse, which would always have its fill of
corn, when they would starve, followed by his beef-fed varlets
with faces red from beer, who gave them jeering looks, who
called them by nicknames, who contemptuously caressed their
daughters before their eyes. Yet it was not always thus: the
lord was often a true nobleman, the parent of their village,
the god-father of their children, the guardian of their
happiness, the arbiter of their disputes. When there was
sickness among them, the ladies of the castle often came down,
bringing them soups and spiced morsels with their own white
hands; and the castle was the home of the good chaplain, who
told them of the happier world beyond the grave. It was there
also that they enjoyed such pleasures as they had. Sometimes
they were called up to the castle to feast on beef and beer in
commemoration of a happy anniversary or a Christian feast.
Sometimes their lord brought home a caravan of merchants whom
he had captured on the road and while the strange guests were
quaking for the safety of their bales, the people were being
amused with the songs of the minstrels, and the tricks of the
jugglers, and the antics of the dancing-bear. And sometimes a
tournament was held: the lords and ladies of the neighbourhood
rode over to the castle; turf banks were set for the serfs and
a gallery was erected for the ladies, above whom sat enthroned
the one who was chosen as the Queen of Beauty and of Love. Then
the heralds shouted, βLove of ladies, splintering of lances!
stand forth, gallant knights; fair eyes look upon your deeds!β
And the knights took up their position in two lines fronting
one another, and sat motionless upon
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