Part 21

But that still wasn’t enough. The people wanted no king at all to rule over them. So about a year later they started a real republic like our own, and the king was sentenced to death. A Frenchman had invented a kind of machine with a big knife for chopping off heads. This was called the guillotine, and it was used instead of an ax, for it was quicker and surer. So the king was taken to the guillotine, and his head was cut off.

But the people did not settle down quiet and contented when they had got rid of their king. They were afraid that those who were in favor of kings might start another kingdom. The people chose red, white, and blue as their colors and the “Marseillaise” as their national song; and everywhere they marched they carried the tricolor, as they called the three-colored flag, and as they marched they sang the “Marseillaise.”

Then began what is called the Reign of Terror, and this is a tale of blood. A man named Robespierre and two of his friends were leaders in this Reign of Terror. Any one whom the people suspected of being in favor of kings they caught and beheaded. The queen was one of the first to have her head cut off. If any one even whispered, “there’s a man, or there’s a woman, or there’s a child who is in favor of kings,” that man, woman, or child would be rushed to the guillotine. If any one simply hated another and wished to get rid of him, all he had to do was to point him out as in favor of kings, and off he would be taken to the guillotine. No one was sure of his life for a day. He never knew what moment some personal enemy might accuse him. Hundreds, then thousands, of suspected people were beheaded, and a special sewer had to be built to carry off the blood. But the guillotine, fast as it was, was too slow for the Terrorists. It could cut off but one head at a time, and so prisoners were lined up and shot down with cannons.

People seemed to have gone wild, crazy, mad! They insulted Christ and the Christian religion. They put a pretty woman called the Goddess of Reason on the altar of the beautiful Church of Notre Dame and worshiped her instead of the Lord. They pulled down statues and pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In their places they put statues and pictures of their own leaders. The guillotine was put up in place of the cross. They did away with Sundays. They made a week ten days long, and every tenth day they made a holiday instead of Sunday. They stopped counting time from Christ’s birth, because they didn’t want anything that had to do with Christ, and they began to call the year when the republic was started in 1792 the year 1.

But Robespierre wished to rule alone, and he plotted against his two friends. One of these he had beheaded, and the other was killed in his bath-tub by a girl named Charlotte Corday, who was in a rage at what he had done. So Robespierre was left alone. At last the people, in fear of this man who was such a monstrous and inhuman tyrant, rose up against him. When he found that he too, was to be put to death, he tried to commit suicide, but, before he could do so he was caught and taken to the guillotine, where he went to the same death to which he had sent countless others, and the Reign of Terror was ended. It was a pity that he hadn’t a thousand lives with which to pay for the thousands of lives he had taken away.

73

A Little Giant

At last the Revolution was stopped.

It was stopped by a young soldier only about twenty years old and sixty inches tall.

The Government was holding a meeting in the palace while a mad mob in the streets outside were trying to attack the palace. A young soldier had been given a few men and told to keep the mob away. The young soldier pointed cannons down each street that led to the palace, and no one dared to show himself. This young soldier was named Napoleon Bonaparte. He made such a fine record that people wanted to know who he was and where he came from.

Napoleon had been born on a little island called Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea. He was born just in time to be a Frenchman, for the island of Corsica had belonged to Italy and had only just been given to France a few weeks before he was born. As soon as he was old enough, he was sent off to a military school in France. There his French schoolmates looked upon him as a foreigner and didn’t have much to do with him. But Napoleon made high marks in arithmetic, and he loved hard problems. Once he shut himself up in his room to work over a hard problem, and there he stayed for three days and nights until he had found the answer.

Napoleon showed by the way he put an end to the French Revolution that he was going to be a fine soldier, and so when he was only twenty-six years old he was made a general.

Now, at this time all the other countries of Europe had kings. France had caught the fever of revolution from the Americans all the way across the ocean and had got rid of her kings. The kings of these other countries were afraid their people might catch the fever of revolution, too. So all of these other countries became enemies of France because France had put an end to her kings.

Napoleon was sent off to fight Italy. He had to cross the Alps, which Hannibal in the Punic Wars had crossed long before. But Hannibal had no heavy cannons when he crossed; it seemed impossible for Napoleon’s army to cross with cannons. Napoleon asked his engineers, the men who were supposed to know about such things, if it could be done. They said they thought it was impossible.

“Impossible,” Napoleon angrily replied, “is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.” Then he shouted:

“There shall be no Alps!” and went ahead and crossed them. His army won in Italy, and when he returned to France he was greeted by the people as a conquering hero. But the men who were then governing France were afraid of him. They feared he might try to make himself king because he was so popular with the people. Napoleon, however, asked to be sent to conquer Egypt because he had an idea he could get the better of the English there. He thought he might then cut England off from India, the new country that they had won in the reign of James I. England had lost America, but she didn’t want to lose India.

The French Government was very glad to get rid of Napoleon, and so they sent him off to Egypt as he asked. He quickly conquered Egypt as Julius Cæsar had done, but there was no Cleopatra to upset his plans. While he was conquering Egypt, his fleet, which was waiting for him at the mouth of the Nile, was caught and destroyed by the English fleet under a great admiral, if not the greatest that ever lived. His name was Lord Nelson.

Napoleon had no way to take his army back to France. So he left his army in Egypt under command of another. He himself, however, managed to find a ship to take him back home. When he reached France he found that the men who were supposed to be governing were quarreling among themselves, and, seeing his chance, he had himself made one of three men chosen to rule France. He was called first consul; and there were supposed to be two assistant consuls, but the assistants were little more than clerks to do Napoleon’s bidding. It was only a very short time before he was next made first consul for life. Then, not long after that, he became emperor of France and also king of Italy.

The other countries of Europe began to fear that Napoleon would conquer them, too, and make them also a part of France. So all the other countries joined together to beat him. Napoleon planned to conquer England first, and he got ready a fleet to cross over to England. But his fleet was caught off Spain near a point called Trafalgar by the same English admiral, Lord Nelson, who had beaten him in Egypt. Before this battle, Nelson said to his sailors, “England expects that every man will do his duty,” and they did it. Napoleon’s fleet was utterly destroyed, though Nelson himself was killed.

Napoleon then gave up the idea of conquering England, and he turned his attention in the opposite direction. He had beaten Spain and Prussia and Austria. Almost all Europe either belonged to him or had to do what he said. Then he attacked Russia. It was a great mistake he made, for Russia was far off, and it was wintertime and very cold. Still, he managed to reach Moscow way off in the center of Russia with his army. But the Russians burned the city and destroyed all the food, so that Napoleon had nothing with which to feed his army. It was terribly cold; there were deep snows; and, in retreating, his army suffered enormous losses. Napoleon himself soon made a bee-line to Paris leaving his army to get back the best way they could. Men and horses died of cold and hunger by the thousands. Napoleon reached Paris, but his fortune had turned. All of Europe was getting ready to put an end to the tyrant, and it was not long after this that he was hemmed in and beaten by his enemies.

When Napoleon saw that he was beaten, he signed a paper saying that he would give up and leave France. And so he did, sailing away to a little island called Elba, just off the coast of Italy, not far from the island where he was born.

But Napoleon on the island of Elba got an idea that all was not lost and that he might return to France and get back his power again. So all of a sudden, to the surprise of France and the rest of the world, he landed on the coast of France. The French Government at Paris sent an army of his old soldiers against him with orders to meet him and bring him to Paris in an iron cage. But when his old soldiers met their old general they went over to his side, and so with them he marched on to Paris. The English and German armies were north of France and preparing to fight. Napoleon quickly got together an army and went forth to meet them. At a little town called Waterloo, Napoleon fought his last battle, for there he was utterly beaten by an English general named Wellington. This was the Year 1815. We still speak and probably always will speak of any great defeat as “Waterloo.”

There is a peculiar sentence which reads backward the same as forward. It is what Napoleon might have said after all was over. It is:

ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA

After Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo, the English took him away and put him on a little island far off in the ocean where he could not possibly escape. It was a lonely spot named St. Helena after the mother of Constantine. Here he lived for six years before he died.

Napoleon was probably the greatest general that ever lived, but that does not mean that he was the greatest man. Some say he was the worst, for just to make himself great, he killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought destruction and ruin to the whole of Europe wherever he fought his battles.

This brings us up into the nineteenth century, for Napoleon died in 1821. How long ago is that?

74

From Pan and His Pipes to the Phonograph

Frogs croak; Cats me-ow; Dogs bark; Sheep bleat; Cows moo; Lions roar; Hyenas laugh; But only birds and people _sing_. All other animals simply make noises. But people can do what birds cannot. They can also make music out of _things_.

Have you ever made a cigar-box fiddle or a pin piano or musical glasses?

In the long-ago story-book times Apollo took a pair of cow-horns and fastened between them seven strings made from the cow’s skin. This was called a lyre. These strings he picked with his fingers or with a quill, making a little tinkling sound that could hardly have been very beautiful. Yet Apollo’s son Orpheus is said to have learned from his father to play so beautifully on the lyre that the birds and wild beasts and even trees and rocks gathered round to hear him.

Pan, the god of the woods, who had goat’s horns and ears and legs and feet, tied together several whistles of different lengths and played on these as you might on a mouth-organ. This instrument was called Pan’s pipes.

The lyre and Pan’s pipes were the two earliest musical instruments. The first was a stringed instrument; the second a wind instrument. The long strings and long pipes made low notes; the short strings and short pipes made high tones.

From Apollo’s lyre we get the piano with its many, many strings. Did you ever look at the inside of a piano and see the many strings of different lengths? They are, however, not picked as the strings of a lyre or harp are picked, but hammered by little felt-covered blocks as you touch the keys.

From Pan’s pipes we get the great church organ with its pipes like giant whistles. You don’t, of course, blow the pipes with your mouth as you do a whistle. The pipes are so big you must blow them with a machine like a tire-pump, and you do this as you touch the keys.

We know what the instruments in olden times were like, but we don’t know what the music that people made was really like; there were no phonographs to bottle up the sounds and, when uncorked a thousand years later, to pour forth the old notes once again. The music went off into thin air and was lost.

It was not until about the Year 1000 A.D. that music could even be written down. Before then all music was played “by ear,” for there was no written music. A Benedictine monk named Guy, or, in Italian, Guido, thought of a way to write down musical notes, and he named the notes do, re, mi, fa, and so on. These were the first letters of the words of a hymn to St. John which the monks sang like the scale.

Another Italian is sometimes called the “father of modern music.” His name is Palestrina, and he died about 1600. He set the church service to music, and the pope ordered all churches to follow it, but the people didn’t like his music very much; that is, it was not what we call “popular.”

It was not until a hundred years later--that is, about 1700--that the first great musician lived who wrote music that was really popular, that the people loved, and that we still love to-day.

He was a German named Handel. His father was a barber, a dentist, and doctor, and he wanted his boy to become a great lawyer. But the only thing the boy liked was music.

In those days there were no pianos. There was a little instrument with strings which was played by touching keys. This was called a clavichord. Sometimes it had legs like a table. Sometimes it had no legs and was just laid on a table.

Handel, though only six years old, got hold of one of these instruments, and, without any one finding out about it, he had it put up in his room in the attic of his house. After every one had gone to bed at night he would practise on this clavichord until late, when he was supposed to be in bed. One night his family heard sounds up under the roof. Wondering what it could be, they took a lantern, and, quietly climbing the attic stairs, they suddenly opened the door, and there sat little Handel in his night-clothes on a chair with his feet reaching only half-way to the floor, playing on the clavichord.

After that Handel’s father saw it was no use trying to make his son a lawyer. So he got teachers for him, and before long the boy amazed the world with his playing. He went to England, lived there, became an Englishman, and when he died the English people buried him in Westminster Abbey, a church in which famous Englishmen were buried.

Handel “set the Bible to music.” These songs with the Bible words to be sung by a chorus of voices were called _oratorios_, and one of these oratorios named “The Messiah” is sung almost everywhere at Christmas-time.

Living at the same time with Handel was another German musician named Bach. Bach played divinely on the organ as Handel did on the clavichord and wrote some of the finest music for the organ that ever has been written. Strange that both Handel and Bach went blind in their old age, but to them it was sound, not sight, that counted most. Here is another good subject for an argument: would you rather be deaf or blind?

Almost all musical geniuses have been musical wonders when they were still babies. They have been great musicians even before learning to read and write.

One such genius was born just before Handel died. He was an Austrian named Mozart.

Mozart when only four years old played the piano wonderfully. He also wrote music--composing, it is called--for others to play.

Mozart’s father and sister played very well, so the three went on a concert tour. Mozart, the boy wonder, played before the empress, and everywhere he went he was treated like a prince, petted and praised and given parties and presents.

Then he grew up and married, and ever after he had the hardest kind of a time trying to make a living. He composed all sorts of things, plays with music called operas, and symphonies, which are written for whole orchestras to play; but he made so little money that when he died he had to be buried where they put people who were too poor to have a grave for themselves alone. People afterward thought it a shame that such a great composer should have no monument over his grave, but then it was too late to find where he was buried. A monument was put up, but to this day no one knows where Mozart’s body lies.

A German named Beethoven had read the stories of the boy wonder, Mozart, and he thought he, too, would like to have a boy wonder to play before kings and queens. So when his son Louis was only five years old he kept the boy practising long hours at the piano until he became so tired that the tears ran down his cheeks. But Louis Beethoven, or Ludwig, as he was called in German, finally came to be one of the greatest musicians that have ever lived. He could sit at the piano and make up the most beautiful music as he went along--improvise, as it is called--but he was never satisfied with it when written down. Time and time again he would scratch out and rewrite his music until it had been rewritten often a dozen times.

But Beethoven’s hearing began to grow dull. He was worried that he might lose it entirely--a terrible thing to happen to any one, but to one whose hearing was his fortune nothing could be worse. And at last he did become deaf. This loss of his hearing made Beethoven hopelessly sad and bad-tempered, cross with everything and everybody. Nevertheless, he didn’t give up; he kept on composing just the same, even after he could no longer hear what he had written.

Another great and unusual German musician named Wagner lived until 1883. Though he practised all his life, he never could play very well. But he composed the most wonderful operas that have ever been written, and he wrote not only the music but the words, too. He took old myths and fairy-tales and made them into plays to be sung to music. At first some people made fun of his music, for it seemed to them so noisy and “slam-bangy” and without tune. But people now make fun of those “some people” who don’t like it!

I have told you in other places of painters and poets, of architects and wise men, of kings and heroes, of wars and troubles. I have put this story of music of all ages in one chapter which I have tucked in here between the acts, to give you a rest for a moment from wars and rumors of wars.

When I was a boy I never heard any great musicians play. Now you and I can turn on the phonograph any time and hear the music of Palestrina or Mozart, of Beethoven or Wagner, of dozens of other masters, played or sung to us whenever we wish; the greatest musicians become our slaves. No caliph in the “Arabian Nights” could command such service to his pleasure!

75

The Daily Papers of 1854-1865

If you could go up into your grandfather’s attic or the attic of somebody else’s grandfather, or would dig down into some old trunk, you might find some of the newspapers that were printed during the years from 1854 to 1865. Then you might actually read in these daily papers the happenings that I am now going to tell you about. Many people still alive have taken part in some of these events themselves or know those who have. Under the heading, “Foreign News,” you would probably find some of the following things told about:

ENGLISH NEWS. At this time the queen of England was named Victoria. She was much beloved by her people because she had such a kindly nature and Christian spirit. She was more like a mother to her people than like a queen. She ruled for more than half a century, and the time when she ruled is called the Victorian Age.

The English news of 1854 would tell about a war that the English were then fighting with Russia. Russia was a long way off, and so the English had to send their soldiers in boats through the Mediterranean Sea to the end, then past Constantinople in to the Black Sea. There in a little spot of land that jutted out from Russia into the Black Sea most of the fighting was done. This little spot of land was called the Crimea, and the war therefore was called the Crimean War. In this war in that far-off land thousands of English soldiers died from wounds and disease.

Now, there was living in England at the time of this war a lady named Florence Nightingale. She was very tender-hearted and always looking out for and taking care of those that were sick. Even as a little girl she had played that her dolls were sick with headache or a broken leg, and she would bandage the aching head or broken leg and pretend to take care of her sick patient. When her dog was ill she nursed him as carefully as if he were a human being.

Florence Nightingale heard that English soldiers were dying by the thousands in that distant land far away from home and that there were no nurses to take care of the wounded. So she got together a number of ladies, and they went out to the Crimea. Before she arrived almost half the soldiers who were wounded died--fifty soldiers out of a hundred; after she and her nurses came, only two in a hundred died. She went about through the camps and over the battlefields at night carrying a lamp looking for the wounded. The soldiers called her the Lady of the Lamp, and they all loved her.

When at last the war was over and she returned to England, the Government voted to give her a large sum of money for what she had done. She, however, refused the money for herself but took it to found a home for training nurses. Nowadays trained nurses are thought almost as necessary as doctors, and any one who is sick can call in a trained nurse to take care of him, but at that time there were no trained nurses and no one had ever heard of such a thing. Florence Nightingale was the first to start trained nursing, and so she is looked upon almost as a saint by trained nurses.

In one battle in the Crimea a company of soldiers mounted on horseback were given by mistake an order to attack the enemy. Though they knew it meant certain death, they never hesitated but charged, and two-thirds of them were killed or wounded in less than half an hour. Lord Tennyson, the English poet, has told this story in verse which you may know. It is called “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

JAPANESE NEWS. Japan is a group of islands near China. Although I have not told you about it before, it was an old country, settled in its ways even before Rome was founded. In Europe there have been constant changes of kings and rulers and people and countries. But in Japan they have had the same line of kings since before Christ.