Part 4

Eleusis was originally one of the twelve confederate townships into which Attica was said to have been divided before the time of Theseus. It "was advantageously situated [about fourteen miles Northwest of Athens] on a height, at a small distance from the shore of an extensive bay, to which there is access only through narrow channels, at the two extremities of the island of Salamis: its position was important, as commanding the shortest and most level route by land from Athens to the Isthmus by the pass which leads at the foot of Mount Cerata along the shore to Megara. ... Eleusis was built at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which lies parallel to the sea-shore. ... The eastern extremity of the hill was levelled artificially for the reception of the Hierum of Ceres and the other sacred buildings. Above these are the traces of an Acropolis. A triangular space of about 500 yards each side, lying between the hill and the shore, was occupied by the town of Eleusis. ... To those who approached Eleusis from Athens, the sacred buildings standing on the eastern extremity of the height concealed the greater part of the town, and on a nearer approach presented a succession of magnificent objects, well calculated to heighten the solemn grandeur of the ceremonies and the awe and reverence of the Mystæ in their initiation. ... In the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence of the pylæ or gateways, in the absence of any general symmetry of plan, in the small auxiliary temples, we recognize a great resemblance between the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philæ. And this resemblance is the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time one of the most frequented places in Greece; and perhaps it was never so populous as under the emperors of the first two centuries of our æra. During the two following centuries, its mysteries were the chief support of declining polytheism, and almost the only remaining bond of national union among the Greeks; but at length the destructive visit of the Goths in the year 396, the extinction of paganism and the ruin of maritime commerce, left Eleusis deprived of every source of prosperity, except those which are inseparable from its fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on the road from Attica to the Isthmus. ... The village still preserves the ancient name, no further altered than is customary in Romaic conversions."

_W. M. Leake, Topography of Athens; volume 2: The Demi, section 5._

ELGIN, Lord. The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876.

ELIS.

Elis was an ancient Greek state, occupying the country on the western coast of Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north. It was noted for the fertility of its soil and the rich yield of its fisheries. But Elis owed greater importance to the inclusion within its territory of the sacred ground of Olympia, where the celebration of the most famous festival of Zeus came to be established at an early time. The Elians had acquired Olympia by conquest of the city and territory of Pisa, to which it originally belonged, and the presidency of the Olympic games was always disputed with them by the latter. Elis was the close ally of Sparta down to the year B. C. 421, when a bitter quarrel arose between them, and Elis suffered heavily in the wars which ensued. It was afterwards at war with the Arcadians, and joined the Ætolian League against the Achaian League. The city of Elis was one of the most splendid in Greece; but little now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its departed glories.

See, also, OLYMPIC GAMES.

ELISII, The.

See LYGIANS.

ELIZABETH, Czarina of Russia, A. D. 1741-1761..

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and the Thirty Years War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623; 1631-1632, and 1648.

Elizabeth, Queen of England, A. D. 1558-1603.

Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain.

See ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735; and SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731.

ELIZABETH, N. J. The first settlement of.

See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667.

ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-MARCH: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS).

ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (AUGUST-DECEMBER: WEST VIRGINIA).

ELLANDUM, Battle of.

Decisive victory of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the Mercians, A. D. 823.

ELLEBRI, The.

See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845.

ELLSWORTH, Colonel, The death of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA).

ELMET.

A small kingdom of the Britons which was swallowed up in the English kingdom of Northumbria early in the seventh century. It answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of Yorkshire. ... Leeds "preserves the name of Loidis, by which Elmet seems also to have been known."

J. R. Green, The Making of England, page 254.

ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown). General Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

ELSASS.

See ALSACE.

ELTEKEH, Battle of.

A victory won by the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the Egyptians, before the disaster befell his army which is related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own account of the battle has been found among the Assyrian records.

{779}

_A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, chapter 6._

ELUSATES, The.

See AQUITAINE, TRIBES OF ANCIENT.

ELVIRA, Battle of(1319).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.

ELY, The Camp of Refuge at.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.

ELYMAIS.

See ELAM.

ELYMEIA.

See MACEDONIA.

ELYMIANS, The.

See SICILY: EARLY INHABITANTS.

ELYSIAN FIELDS.

See CANARY ISLANDS.

ELZEVIRS.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1617-1680.

EMANCIPATION, Catholic.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829.

EMANCIPATION, Compensated; Proposal of President Lincoln.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).

EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS, President Lincoln's.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY).

EMANUEL, King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521.

Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580.

EMBARGO OF 1807, The American.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.

EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204.

EMERITA AUGUSTA.

A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in Estremadura.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note.

EMESSA. Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636).

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639.

ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791; 1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792.

EMITES, The.

See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY.

EMMAUS, Battle of.

Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus, B. C. 166.

Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7.

EMMENDINGEN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). .

EMMET INSURRECTION, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803.

EMPEROR.

A title derived from the Roman title Imperator.

See IMPERATOR.

EMPORIA, The.

See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF.

ENCOMIENDAS.

See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS; also, REPARTIMIENTOS.

ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.

ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1864.

ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The.

"French literature had never been so brilliant as in the second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal, Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the 'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its conclusion in 1771."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter. 20 (volume 5).

ALSO IN: _J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopædists, chapter 5 (volume 1)._

_E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution, chapter 16._

ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after.

ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.

ENGADINE, The.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.

ENGEN, Battle of (1800).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).

ENGERN, Duchy of.

See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY.

ENGHIEN, Duc d', The abduction and execution of.

See FRANCE: 1804-1805.

ENGLAND: Before the coming of the English. The Celtic and Roman periods.

See BRITAIN.

ENGLAND: A. D.449-547. The three tribes of the English conquest. The naming of the country.

"It was by ... three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries, according to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the three, the Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration: the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers, had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German history from the eighth century to the present day."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 3._

"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it. {780} As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of the second great migration of our people [to America], so I venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues--two dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue--to differ. From these lands we came as a people. That was our first historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body, as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first migration as a people. ... Among the Teutonic tribes which settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have common national feelings and to feel the need of a common national name, the name which they chose was not the same as that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called themselves English and their land England. I used the word Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was England. ... And this is the more remarkable, because the age when English was fully established as the name of the people, and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island. In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries knew themselves by no name but English."

_E. A. Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes (Lectures to American Audiences, pages 30-31, and 45-47)._

See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473. The Beginning of English history. The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.

"In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'--so ran the legend of their conquest--and with their Ealdormen, Hengest and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his war-band English history begins. ... In the first years that followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes were successfully transferred from their island camp to the main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage. "The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway, "the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells ... only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name ... was held in aftertime to mark his grave. ... The victory of Aylesford was followed by a political change among the assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his son.' ... The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' ... If we trust British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a political revolution in Britain itself. ... It would seem ... that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. ... The revolution revived for a while the energy of the province." The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the mainland. {781} "In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle. ... The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems from this moment to have been abandoned; and ... no further struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement. It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held their ground. ... A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. ... With this advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any important part in the attack on the island, for their after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few districts on the Southampton Water."

_J. R. Green, The Making of England, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 1, pages 67-101._

A Logical Outline of English History

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

Physical or material (Orange). Ethnological (Dark Blue). Social and political (Green). Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan). Foreign (Black).

5th-7th centuries. Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.

The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding, moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it could give.

7th-11th Centuries.

Fused, after much warring with one another and with their Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the primitive system of their social and political organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires, and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther apart.

A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest.

Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country of the Franks.

11th-18th Centuries.

A new social and political system now formed itself in England as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to curb the king.

A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta.

English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.

A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament.

Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans and the Witenagemot of the older English time.

A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War.

From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole, suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in many ways; but politically the people took some good from the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on them for money and men.

A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses

So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively little, in numbers or estate.

A. D. 1348--The Great Plague.

But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing the independent common class.

A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers.