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THE GREAT EVENTS

BY

FAMOUS HISTORIANS

A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS

NON-SECTARIAN

NON-PARTISAN

NON-SECTIONAL

ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

With a staff of specialists

VOLUME IV

The National Alumni

1905

---

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV

• 
  CHARLES F. HORNE
• 
  EDWARD GIBBON
• Huns Invade the Eastern Roman Empire
  Attila Dictates a Treaty of Peace (A.D. 441)
  EDWARD GIBBON
• 
  JOHN R. GREEN
  CHARLES KNIGHT
• Attila Invades Western Europe
  Battle of Chlons (A.D. 451)
  SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
  EDWARD GIBBON
• 
  THOMAS HODGKIN
  JOHN RUSKIN
• Clovis Founds the Kingdom of the Franks
  It Becomes Christian (A.D. 486-511)
  FRANOIS P.G. GUIZOT
• 
  EDWARD GIBBON
• 
  THE VENERABLE BEDE
  JOHN R. GREEN
• The Hegira: Career of Mahomet
  The Koran: and Mahometan Creed (A.D. 622)
  WASHINGTON IRVING
  SIMON OCKLEY
• 
  SIMON OCKLEY
• Saracens Conquer Egypt
  Destruction of the Library at Alexandria (A.D. 640)
  WASHINGTON IRVING
• 
  WILLIAM C. HAZLITT
• Saracens in Spain
  Battle of the Guadalete (A.D. 711)
  AHMED IBN MAHOMET AL-MAKKARI
• 
  SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
• Founding of the Carlovingian Dynasty
  Ppin the Short Usurps the Frankish Crown (A.D. 751)
  FRANOIS P.G. GUIZOT
• 
  FRANOIS P.G. GUIZOT
• Egbert Becomes King of the Anglo-Saxon
  Heptarchy (A.D. 827)
  DAVID HUME
• 
  JOHN RUDD

---

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME IV

• A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the life of her husband, Frontispiece
  Painting by R. Peacock.
• Mahomet, preaching the unity of God, enters Mecca
  at the head of his victorious followers,
  Painting by A. Mueller.

A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the life of her husband
A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the life of her husband, Frontispiece
Painting by R. Peacock.

---

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE)

CHARLES F. HORNE

Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Grco-Roman civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea, which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons gave us a healthy, sturdy, uncontaminated physique, honest bodies and clean minds, the lack of which had made further progress impossible to the ancient world.

This last is what made necessary the barbarian overthrow of Rome, if the world was still to advance. The slowly progressing knowledge of the arts and handicrafts which we have seen passed down from Egypt to Babylonia, to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss. The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the type. Man had become wise, but worthless.

As though on purpose to prove to future generations how utterly worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in emphasizing how futile their culture had become.

The entire ten centuries that followed the overthrow of Rome have long been spoken of as the "Dark Ages," but, considering how infinitely darker those same ages must have become without the intervention of the Teutons, present criticism begins to protest against the term. All that was lost with the ancient world was something of intellectual keenness, something of artistic culture, quickly regained when man was once more ripe for them. What the Teutons had to offer of infinitely greater worth, what they had developed in their cold, northern forests, was their sense of liberty and equality, their love of honesty, their respect for womankind. It is not too much to say that, without these, any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible.

In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit. The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race, for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way.

Who were these Teutons? Rome knew them only vaguely as wild tribes dwelling in the gloom of the great forest wilderness. In reality they were but the vanguard of vast races of human beings who through ages had been slowly populating all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Beyond the Teutons were other Aryans, the Slavs. Beyond these were vague non-Aryan races like the Huns, content to direct their careers of slaughter against one another, and only occasionally and for a moment flaring with red-fire beacons of ruin along the edge of the Aryan world.

Some at least of the Teutonic tribes had grown partly civilized. The Germans along the Rhine, and the Goths along the Danube, had been from the time of Augustus in more or less close contact with Rome. Germanicus had once subdued almost the whole of Germany; later emperors had held temporarily the broad province of Dacia, beyond the Danube. The barbarians were eagerly enlisted in the Roman army. During the closing centuries of decadence they became its main support; they rose to high commands; there were even barbarian emperors at last. The intermingling of the two worlds thus became extensive, and the Teutons learned much of Rome. The Goths whom Theodosius permitted to settle within its dominions were already partly Christian.

THE PERIOD OF INVASION

It was these same Goths who became the immediate cause of Rome's downfall. Theodosius had kept them in restraint; his feeble sons scarce even attempted it. The intruders found a famous leader in Alaric, and, after plundering most of the Grecian peninsula, they ravaged Italy, ending in 410 with the sack of Rome itself.

This seems to us, perhaps, a greater event than it did to its own generation. The "Emperor of the West," the degenerate son of Theodosius, was not within the city when it fell; and the story is told that, on hearing the news, he expressed relief, because he had at first understood that the evil tidings referred to the death of a favorite hen named Rome. The tale emphasizes the disgrace of the famous capital; it had sunk to be but one city among many. Alaric's Goths had been nominally an army belonging to the Emperor of the East; their invasion was regarded as only one more civil war.

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