Part 16

John got into a quarrel with the pope in Rome. The pope at that time was head of all Christians in the world and said what should be done and what should not be done in all churches everywhere. The pope ordered John to make a certain man bishop in England, and John said he wouldn’t do it. He wanted another man, a friend of his, to be bishop. The pope then said he would close up all the churches in England if John didn’t do as he was told. John said he didn’t care. Let the pope go ahead and close up all the churches if he wanted to. So the pope ordered all churches in England to be closed until John should give in. Nowadays this might not have made much difference, but then, as I have told you, the church was the one most important thing in every one’s life; in fact, nothing else mattered so much. The closing of the churches meant that no services could be held in any church. It meant that children could not be baptized, and so, if they died, it was believed they could not go to heaven. It meant that couples could not be married. It meant that the dead could not be given a Christian burial.

The people of England were shocked. It was as if Heaven had put a curse on them. They were afraid that terrible things would happen to them. Of course the people blamed John, for he was the cause of the churches’ being closed. They were so angry at him that he became scared--afraid what his people might do to him. When at last the pope threatened to make another man king of England in his place--yes, the pope had as much power as that--John in fear and trembling gave in and agreed to do everything that at first he had said he would not do and more besides. But John was pig-headed. He was always doing the wrong thing and sticking to it.

John had an idea that the world was made for the king and that people were put upon the earth simply so that the king might have servants to work for him, to earn money for him, to do what he wished them to do. Many of the kings of olden days felt the same way, though they did not go as far as John did. John would order people who were rich to give him whatever money he wanted. If they refused to give him all he asked, he would put them in prison, have their hands squeezed in an iron press until the bones cracked and the blood ran, or he would even put them to death.

John got worse and worse until at last his barons could not stand his actions any longer. So they made him prisoner and took him to a little island in the Thames River called Runnymede. Here they forced John to agree to certain things which they had written down in Latin. This was in the Year 1215; and 1215 was a bad date for John, but a good date for the English people. This list of things which the barons made John agree to was called by the Latin name for a great agreement, which is Magna Carta, or Charta.

John did not agree to Magna Carta willingly, however. He was as angry and furious as a spoiled child, who kicks and screams when forced to do something he does not want to do. But he had to agree, nevertheless.

John was unable to write his name, and so he could not sign the agreement as people sign contracts nowadays. But he wore a seal-ring which was used by people who could not sign their names, and this seal he pressed into a piece of hot wax which was dropped on the agreement where one would have signed.

John agreed in Magna Carta to give the barons some of the rights that we think every human being should have anyway, without an agreement. For instance, a person certainly has the right to keep the money that he earns, and he has the right not to have it taken away from him unlawfully. A person also has the right not to be put in prison or be punished by the king or any one else unless he has done something wrong and unless he has had a fair trial. These are two of the rights that John agreed to in Magna Carta. There were quite a number of others.

John didn’t keep his agreement, however. He broke it the very first time he had a good chance, as a person usually does when he is forced to agree to something against his will. But John died pretty soon; and so, as far as he was concerned, Magna Carta didn’t matter much. But kings who came after him were made to agree to the same things. So ever after 1215 the king in England was supposed to be the servant of the people, and not the people servants of the king as they had been before that time.

55

A Great Story-Teller

Far away from England,

Far off in the direction of the rising sun,

’Way beyond Italy and Jerusalem and the Tigris and Euphrates and Persia and all the other places we have so far heard about, was a country called Cathay--C-A-T-H-A-Y.

If you looked down at your feet, and the world were glass, you would see it on the other side.

Cathay is the same place we now call China. The people in Cathay belonged to the yellow race, the same race to which the Chinese belong.

There had been people living in Cathay, of course, all through the centuries that had passed, but little was known of this land or of its people.

But in the thirteenth century or twelve hundreds, one of these tribes of yellow people called Mongols or Tartars, arose out of the East, like a black and terrifying thunderstorm, and it seemed for a while as if they might destroy all the other countries whose histories we have been hearing about. The ruler of these people was a terrible fighter named Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan had an army of Tartar horsemen who were terrific fighters. Genghis and his Tartars were a good deal like Attila and his Huns--only worse. Indeed, some people think Attila and his Huns were Tartars also.

Genghis usually found some excuse for making war on others, but if he couldn’t find a good excuse he made up one, for he was bent on conquering. He and his Tartars thought no more of killing than would tigers or lions let loose.

So Genghis and his horsemen swept over the land from Cathay toward Europe. They burned and destroyed thousands upon thousands of towns and cities and everything in their way. They slew men, women, and children by the million. No one was able to stop them. It seemed as if they were going to wipe off of the face of the earth all white people and everything that white people had built.

Genghis Khan had conquered the whole land from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern part of Europe. But at last he stopped. With this kingdom he seemed to be satisfied. And he might well have been satisfied, for it was larger than the Roman Empire or that of even Alexander the Great.

Even when Genghis died, things were no better, for his son was just as frightful as his father and conquered still more country.

But the grandson of Genghis Khan was much less ferocious than his grandfather had been. He was named Kublai Khan, and he was quite different from his father and grandfather. He made his capital at a place in China now called Peking and ruled over this vast empire that he had inherited from his father. Kublai’s chief interest was in building magnificent palaces and surrounding himself with beautiful gardens, and he made such a wonderful capital for himself that Solomon in all his glory did not live in such splendor as did Kublai Khan.

Now, far, far off from Peking and the palace of Kublai Khan, in the north of Italy was a city built on the water. Its streets were of water, and boats were used instead of carriages. This city was called Venice. About the Year 1300 there were living in Venice two men named Polo. The Polos got an idea in their heads that they would like to see something of the world. So these two Venetians, and the son of one of them named Marco Polo, started off toward the rising sun looking for adventure, just like boys in story-books who go off to seek their fortunes. After several years of travel, always toward the east, they at last came to the gardens and to the magnificent palace of Kublai Khan.

When Kublai Khan heard that strange white men from a far-off place and an unknown country were outside the palace, he wanted to see them. So they were brought into his presence. They told Kublai Khan all about their own land. They were good story-tellers, and they made it interesting. They told him also about the Christian religion and many other things that he had never heard of.

The emperor was so much interested in the Polos and in the stories they told about their country that he wanted to hear more. So he persuaded them to stay with him and tell him more. He gave them rich presents. Then he made them his advisers and assistants in ruling his empire. So the Polos stayed on for years and years and years and learned the language and came to be very important people in Cathay.

At last after they had spent about twenty years in Cathay the Polos thought it was about time to go home and see their own people again. So they begged leave to return. Kublai Khan did not want them to go. They were so useful to him and helped him so much in ruling that he didn’t want to lose them. But in the end he did let them go, and they started back to what once had been their home.

When they at last arrived in Venice, they had been away so long and had been traveling so far that no one knew them. They had almost forgotten how to speak their own language, and they talked like foreigners. Their clothes had become worn out and ragged by their long trip. They looked like tramps, and not even their old friends recognized them. No one would believe that these ragged, dirty strangers were the same fine Venetian gentlemen who had disappeared almost twenty years before.

The Polos told their townspeople all about their adventures and the wonderfully rich lands and cities that they had visited. But the townspeople only laughed at them, for they thought them story-tellers.

Then the Polos ripped open their ragged garments, and out fell piles of magnificent and costly jewels, diamonds and rubies and sapphires and pearls--enough to buy a kingdom. The people looked in wonder and amazement and began to believe.

Marco Polo told his stories to a man who wrote them down and made a book of them called “The Travels of Marco Polo.” This is an interesting book for you to read even to-day, although we cannot believe all the tales he told. We know that he exaggerated a great many things, for he liked to amaze people.

Marco Polo described the magnificence of Kublai Khan’s palace. He told of its enormous dining-hall, where thousands of guests could sit down at the table at one time. He told of a bird so huge that it could fly away with an elephant. He said that Noah’s Ark was still on Mount Ararat, only the mountain was so high and so dangerous to climb on account of the ice and snow with which it was covered that no one could go to see if the ark really were there.

56

“Thing-a-ma-jigger” and “What-cher-may-call-it” or a Magic Needle and a Magic Powder

About this same time that Marco Polo returned from his travels, people in Europe began to hear and talk about a magic needle and a magic powder that did remarkable things, and some say that Marco brought them back from Cathay, but this we doubt. The little magic needle when floated on a straw or held up only at its middle would always turn towards the north no matter how much you twisted it. Such a needle put in a case was called a compass.

Now, you may not see why such a little thing was so remarkable. But strange as it may seem, this little thing really made it possible to discover a new world.

Perhaps you have played the game in which a child is blindfolded, twisted around several times in the center of the room, and then told to go toward the door or the window or some other point in the room. You know how impossible it is for one who has been so turned round to tell which way to go, and you know how absurd one looks who goes in quite the opposite direction when he thinks he is going straight.

Well, the sailor at sea was something like such a blindfolded child. Of course, if the weather were fine he could tell by the sun or the stars which way he should go. But when the weather was cloudy and bad there was nothing for him to go by. He was then like the blindfolded child. He might easily become confused and sail in just the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go without knowing the difference.

This was perhaps one of the chief reasons why sailors, before the compass was used, had not gone far out of sight of land. They were afraid they might not be able to find their way back. So only that part of the world was known which could be reached by land or without going far out of sight of land.

But, with the compass, sailors could sail on and on through storm and cloudy weather and keep always in the direction they wanted to go. They simply had to follow the little magnetic needle suspended in its box. No matter how much the boat turned or twisted or tossed, the little needle always pointed to the north. Of course sailors did not always want to go north, but it was very easy to tell any other direction if they knew which was north. South was exactly opposite, east was to the right, and west was to the left. So all they had to do was to steer the boat on the course in whatever direction they wished.

It was a long while, however, before sailors would use a compass. They thought it was bewitched by some magic, and they were afraid to have anything to do with such a thing. Sailors are likely to be superstitious, and they were afraid that if they took the compass on board it might bewitch their ship and bring them bad luck.

The other magic thing was gunpowder.

Never before 1300 had there been such things in Europe as guns or cannons or pistols. All fighting had been done with bows and arrows or swords or spears or with some such weapons. A sword can only be used on a man a few feet away, but with guns an enemy may be killed and walls battered down miles away. But after gunpowder was invented the armor which the old knights wore was of course no longer of any use, for it could not protect them from shot and shell. So gunpowder has changed fighting completely and made war the terrible thing it has become.

Although Marco Polo was supposed to have told about gunpowder and its use in cannons as he had seen it in the East, most people think that an English monk named Roger Bacon knew about gunpowder and also about the compass and perhaps invented them. The monk Bacon knew about so many things which people at that time thought were magic that he was supposed to be in league with the devil, and so he was put in prison. Bacon was the wisest man of his time, but he was ahead of his time. If he were living now he would be honored as a great scientist and inventor. But people thought he knew _too_ much--that any one who knew as much as he did was wicked--that he was prying into God’s secrets, which God did not want any one to know.

Others, however, give the credit or the blame for the invention of gunpowder to a German chemist named Schwarz. They say that one day Schwarz was mixing some chemicals in an iron bowl with an iron mixer called a _pestle_, such as druggists use, when, all of a sudden, the mixture exploded and shot the iron pestle right up through the ceiling. Schwarz was much surprised; he had had a narrow escape from being killed; but this gave him an idea. Immediately he set to work to think out a way to use the same mixture in battle to shoot iron pestles at the enemy. Some people think it would have been far better if the pestle had struck and killed Mr. Schwarz at the time, and if his secret had been destroyed with him. We might then never have had the terrible wars and the killing of millions of human beings which have resulted from this discovery. It was quite a while, however, before gunpowder was made strong enough to do much damage. In fact, it was over a hundred years before fighting with guns entirely took the place of fighting with bows and arrows.

57

Thelon Gest Wart Hate Verwas

Is this another Latin heading?

No, it’s English.

Don’t you understand English?

It was 1338, and Edward III was king of England. Edward III wanted to rule France as well as England. He said he was related to the former king of France and had a better right to the country than the one who was ruling. So he started a war to take France, and the war he started lasted more than a hundred years. So this is known as the Hundred Years’ War and it is:

The Longest War that Ever Was!

The English army sailed over from England and landed in France. The first great battle was fought at a little place called Crécy. The English army was on foot and was made up chiefly of the common people. The French army were mostly knights clad in armor on horseback--the society people.

The French knights on horseback thought themselves much finer than the common English soldiers who were on foot, as a man in a motor-car is likely to look down on the man who is walking.

The English soldiers, however, used a weapon called the _longbow_, which shot arrows with terrific force, and they completely whipped the French knights in spite of the fact that the knights were nobles, were trained to be fighters, rode on horses, and were protected by armor.

Cannon were used by the English in this battle for the first time. The cannon, however, did not amount to much nor do very much harm. They were so weak that they simply tossed the cannon-balls at the enemy as one might throw a basketball or football. They scared the horses of the French but did little other damage. But this was the beginning of what was before long to be the end of knights and armor and feudalism.

The battle of Crécy was only the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War. The next year after the battle of Crécy a horribly contagious disease called the Black Death attacked the people of Europe. It was like the plague in Athens in the Age of Pericles, but the Black Death did not attack just one city or country. It was supposed to have started in Cathay, but it spread westward until it reached Europe. There was no running away from it. It spread far and wide over the whole land and killed more human beings than any war that has ever been. It was called Black Death because black spots came out all over the body of any one who caught it, and he was certain to die within a few hours or a day or two. There was no hope. No medicine had any effect. Many people committed suicide just as soon as they found they had the disease. Many died just from fright, actually “scared to death.”

It lasted two years, and millions upon millions caught the disease. Half of the people of Europe died of it. Whole towns were wiped out, and in many places no one was left to bury the dead. Dead bodies lay where they had fallen--on the street, in the doorway, in the market-place.

The crops in the fields went to waste, for there was no one to gather them. Horses and cows roamed over the country at will, for there was no one to care for them. The plague attacked even sailors at sea, and ships were found drifting about on the water with not a soul alive left on board, with not even one left to steer the ship.

What if it had killed every last man, woman, and child in the world! What then would have been the future history of the world?

But, as if there were not enough people dead already, the Hundred Years’ War still went on year after year. The soldiers who had fought at Crécy had been dead for years. Their children had grown up, fought, and died; their grandchildren had grown up, fought and died, and their great-grandchildren had done the same; and the English army was still fighting in France. The French prince at that time was very young and weak, and the French were almost in despair--hopeless--because they had no strong leader to help them drive out the English after all these many years.

Now, in a little French village there was living a poor peasant girl, a shepherdess, called Joan of Arc. As she watched her flocks of sheep, she had wonderful visions. She heard voices calling to her, telling her she was the one who must lead the French armies and save France from England. She went to the prince’s nobles and told them her visions. But they did not put any faith in her or her visions, and they did not believe she was able to do the things she thought she could.

To test her, however, they dressed up another man as the prince and put him on the throne while the prince stood at one side with the nobles. Then they let Joan into the room. When Joan entered the royal hall, she gave one look at the man who was seated on the throne and dressed up as prince. Then without hesitating she walked directly past him and went straight to the _real_ prince. Before him she knelt and said, “I have come to lead your armies to victory.” The prince at once gave her his flag and a suit of armor, and she rode out at the head of all the army and had him crowned king.

The French soldiers took heart again. It seemed as if the Lord had sent an angel to lead them, and they fought so hard and so bravely that they won many battles.

The English soldiers, however, thought that it was not the Lord but the devil who had sent Joan and that she was not an angel but a witch, and they were very much afraid of her. At last, the English made her prisoner. The French king, whom she had saved, in spite of all she had done for him, didn’t even try to save her. Now that things were going his way, he didn’t like to have a woman running things, and the soldiers didn’t like to have a woman ordering them around, and they were glad to be rid of her.

The English tried her for a witch, judged her guilty of being a witch, and then they burned her alive at the stake.

But Joan seemed to have brought the French good luck, to have put new life into their armies, for from that time on, France increased in strength, and after more than a hundred years of fighting at last drove the English out of the country. In one hundred years of fighting hundreds of thousands of people had been wounded and crippled and blinded and killed, and after it all England was no better off, just the same as when she started--all the fighting all for nothing.

58

Print and Powder or Off with the Old On with the New

Up to this time there was not a printed book in the whole world. There was not a newspaper. There was not a magazine. All books had to be written by hand. This, of course, was extremely slow and expensive, so there were very few of even these handwritten books in all the world. Only kings and very wealthy people had any books at all. Such a book as the Bible, for instance, cost almost as much as a house, and so no poor people could own such a thing. Even when there was a Bible in a church, it was so valuable that it had to be chained to keep it from being stolen. Think of stealing a Bible!

But about 1440 a man thought of a new way to make books. First he put together wooden letters called type, and then smeared them with ink. Then he pressed paper against this inky type and made a copy. After the type was once set up, thousands of copies could be made quickly and easily. This, as you of course know, was printing. It all seems so simple, the wonder is that no one had thought of printing thousands of years before.

It is generally believed that a German named Gutenberg made the first printed books about 1440, so he is called the inventor of printing. And what do you suppose was the first book ever printed? Why, the book that people thought the most important book in the world--the Bible. This Bible was not printed in English, however, nor in German, but in Latin!

The first book printed in English was made in England by an English man named Caxton, and you would never guess what the English book was. It was a description of the game of chess, the game that the Arabs had invented.