Part 11

As early as 1859 there were unofficial communications between the Russian and American governments, on the subject of the sale of Alaska by the former to the latter. Russia was more than willing to part with a piece of territory which she found difficulty in defending, in war; and the interests connected with the fisheries and the fur-trade in the north-west were disposed to promote the transfer. In March, 1867, definite negotiations on the subject were opened by the Russian minister at Washington, and on the 23d of that month he received from Secretary Seward an offer, subject to the President's approval, of $7,200,000, on condition that the cession be "free and unencumbered by any reservations, privileges, franchises, grants, or possessions by any associated companies, whether corporate or incorporate, Russian, or any other." "Two days later an answer was returned, stating that the minister believed himself authorized to accept these terms. On the 29th final instructions were received by cable from St. Petersburg. On the same day a note was addressed by the minister to the secretary of state, informing him that the tsar consented to the cession of Russian America for the stipulated sum of $7,200,000 in gold. At four o'clock the next morning the treaty was signed by the two parties without further phrase or negotiation. In May the treaty was ratified, and on June 20, 1867, the usual proclamation was issued by the president of the United States." On the 18th of October, 1867, the formal transfer of the territory was made, at Sitka, General Rousseau taking possession in the name of the Government of the United States.

_H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, volume 28, chapter 28._

ALSO IN _W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, part 2, chapter 2._

For some account of the aboriginal inhabitants,

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESKIMAUAN FAMILY and ATHAPASCAN FAMILY.

ALATOONA, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

ALBA. Alban Mount.

"Cantons … having their rendezvous in some stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the primitive political unities with which Italian history begins. At what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium, cannot be determined with precision; nor is it a matter of special historical interest. The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the new comers. Here accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between the Alban lake (Lago di Castello) and the Alban mount (Monte Cavo) extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of Rome, as well as of all the other Old Latin communities. Here, too, on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium, Aricia, and Tusculum. … All these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign, and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors. Nevertheless the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself in an important religious and political institution—the perpetual league of the collective Latin cantons. The presidency belonged originally, according to the universal Italian as well as Hellenic usage, to that canton within whose bounds lay the meeting-place of the league; in this case it was the canton of Alba. … The communities entitled to participate in the league were in the beginning thirty. … The rendezvous of this union was, like the Pambœotia and the Panionia among the similar confederacies of the Greeks, the 'Latin festival' (feriæ Latinæ) at which, on the Mount of Alba, upon a day annually appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the 'Latin god' (Jupiter Latiaris)."

_T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 3._

ALSO IN _Sir W. Gell, Topography of Rome, volume 1._

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ALBA DE TORMES, Battle of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER).

ALBAIS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

ALBAN, Kingdom of.

See ALBION; also, SCOTLAND: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES.

ALBANI, The.

See BRITAIN, TRIBES OF CELTIC.

ALBANIANS: Ancient.

See EPIRUS and ILLYRIANS.

ALBANIANS: Mediæval.

"From the settlement of the Servian Sclavonians within the bounds of the empire [during the reign of Heraclius, first half of the seventh century], we may … venture to date the earliest encroachments of the Illyrian or Albanian race on the Hellenic population. The Albanians or Arnauts, who are now called by themselves Skiptars, are supposed to be remains of the great Thracian race which, under various names, and more particularly as Paionians, Epirots and Macedonians, take an important part in early Grecian history. No distinct trace of the period at which they began to be co-proprietors of Greece with the Hellenic race can be found in history. … It seems very difficult to trace back the history of the Greek nation without suspecting that the germs of their modern condition, like those of their neighbours, are to be sought in the singular events which occurred in the reign of Heraclius."

_G. Finlay, Greece Under the Romans, chapter 4, section 6._

ALBANIANS: A. D. 1443-1467. Scanderbeg's War with the Turks.

"John Castriot, Lord of Emalthia (the modern district of Moghlene) [in Epirus or Albania] had submitted, like the other petty despots of those regions, to Amurath early in his reign, and had placed his four sons in the Sultan's hands as hostages for his fidelity. Three of them died young. The fourth, whose name was George, pleased the Sultan by his beauty, strength and intelligence. Amurath caused him to be brought up in the Mahometan creed; and, when he was only eighteen, conferred on him the government of one of the Sanjaks of the empire. The young Albanian proved his courage and skill in many exploits under Amurath's eye, and received from him the name of Iskanderbeg, the lord Alexander. When John Castriot died, Amurath took possession of his principalities and kept the son constantly employed in distant wars. Scanderbeg brooded over this injury; and when the Turkish armies were routed by Hunyades in the campaign of 1443, Scanderbeg determined to escape from their side and assume forcible possession of his patrimony. He suddenly entered the tent of the Sultan's chief secretary, and forced that functionary, with the poniard at his throat, to write and seal a formal order to the Turkish commander of the strong city of Croia, in Albania, to deliver that place and the adjacent territory to Scanderbeg, as the Sultan's viceroy. He then stabbed the secretary and hastened to Croia, where his strategem gained him instant admittance and submission. He now publicly abjured the Mahometan faith, and declared his intention of defending the creed of his forefathers, and restoring the independence of his native land. The Christian population flocked readily to his banner and the Turks were massacred without mercy. For nearly twenty-five years Scanderbeg contended against all the power of the Ottomans, though directed by the skill of Amurath and his successor Mahomet, the conqueror of Constantinople."

_Sir E. S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chapter 4._

"Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus on the Venetian territory [A. D. 1467]. His sepulchre was soon violated by the Turkish conquerors; but the janizaries, who wore his bones enchased in a bracelet, declared by this superstitious amulet their involuntary reverence for his valour. … His infant son was saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots were invested with a Neapolitan dukedom, and their blood continues to flow in the noblest families of the realm."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 67. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ALSO IN _A. Lamartine, History of Turkey, book 11, sections 11-25._

ALBANIANS: A. D. 1694-1696. Conquests by the Venetians.

See TURKS: A. D. 1684-1696.

ALBANIANS: End----------

ALBANY, NEW YORK: A. D. 1623. The first Settlement.

In 1614, the year after the first Dutch traders had established their operations on Manhattan Island, they built a trading house, which they called Fort Nassau, on Castle Island, in the Hudson River, a little below the site of the present city of Albany. Three years later this small fort was carried away by a flood and the island abandoned. In 1623 a more important fortification, named Fort Orange, was erected on the site afterwards covered by the business part of Albany. That year, "about eighteen families settled themselves at Fort Orange, under Adriaen Joris, who 'staid with them all winter,' after sending his ship home to Holland in charge of his son. As soon as the colonists had built themselves 'some huts of bark' around the fort, the Mahikanders or River Indians [Mohegans], the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, with the Mahawawa or Ottawawa Indians, 'came and made covenants of friendship … and desired that they might come and have a constant free trade with them, which was concluded upon.'"

_J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New York, volume 1, pages 55 and 151._

ALBANY, NEW YORK: A. D. 1630. Embraced in the land-purchase of Patroon Van Rensselaer.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1621-1646.

ALBANY, NEW YORK: A. D. 1664. Occupied and named by the English.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1664.

ALBANY, NEW YORK: A. D. 1673. Again occupied by the Dutch.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1673.

ALBANY, NEW YORK: A. D. 1754. The Colonial Congress and its plans of Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1754.

ALBANY, NEW YORK: End----------

ALBANY AND SCHENECTADY RAILROAD OPENING.

See STEAM LOCOMOTION ON LAND.

ALBANY REGENCY, The.

See NEW YORK; A. D. 1823.

ALBEMARLE, The Ram, and her destruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (APRIL-MAY: NORTH CAROLINA), and (OCTOBER: N. CAROLINA).

ALBERONI, Cardinal, The Spanish Ministry of.

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

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ALBERT, King of Sweden, A. D. 1365-1388. Albert, Elector of Brandenburg, A. D. 1470-1486. Albert I., Duke of Austria and King of Germany, A. D. 1298-1308. Albert II., Duke of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, A. D. 1437-1440; King of Germany, A. D. 1438-1440.

ALBERTA, The District of.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORIES OF CANADA.

ALBERTINE LINE OF SAXONY.

See SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553.

ALBICI, The.

A Gallic tribe which occupied the hills above Massilia (Marseilles) and who are described as a savage people even in the time of Cæsar, when they helped the Massiliots to defend their city against him.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 5, chapter 4._

ALBIGENSES, OR ALBIGEOIS, The.

"Nothing is more curious in Christian history than the vitality of the Manichean opinions. That wild, half poetic, half rationalistic theory of Christianity, … appears almost suddenly in the 12th century, in living, almost irresistible power, first in its intermediate settlement in Bulgaria, and on the borders of the Greek Empire, then in Italy, in France, in Germany, in the remoter West, at the foot of the Pyrenees. … The chief seat of these opinions was the south of France. Innocent III., on his accession, found not only these daring insurgents scattered in the cities of Italy, even, as it were, at his own gates (among his first acts was to subdue the Paterines of Viterbo), he found a whole province, a realm, in some respects the richest and noblest of his spiritual domain, absolutely dissevered from his Empire, in almost universal revolt from Latin Christianity. … In no [other] European country had the clergy so entirely, or it should seem so deservedly, forfeited its authority. In none had the Church more absolutely ceased to perform its proper functions."

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 9, chapter 8._

"By mere chance, the sects scattered in South France received the common name of Albigenses, from one of the districts where the agents of the church who came to combat them found them mostly to abound,—the district around the town of Alba, or Alby; and by this common name they were well known from the commencement of the thirteenth century. Under this general denomination parties of different tenets were comprehended together, but the Catharists seem to have constituted a predominant element among the people thus designated."

_A. Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 5th per., division 2, section 4, part 3._

"Of the sectaries who shared the errors of Gnosticism and Manichæism and opposed the Catholic Church and her hierarchy, the Albigenses were the most thorough and radical. Their errors were, indeed, partly Gnostic and partly Manichæan, but the latter was the more prominent and fully developed. They received their name from a district of Languedoc, inhabited by the Albigeois and surrounding the town of Albi. They are called Cathari and Patarini in the acts of the Council of Tours (A. D. 1163), and in those of the third Lateran, Publiciani (i. e., Pauliciani). Like the Cathari, they also held that the evil spirit created all visible things."

_Johannes Baptist Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, period 2, epoch 2, part 1, chapter 3, section 236. https://archive.org/details/manualofuniversa02alzo_

"The imputations of irreligion, heresy, and shameless debauchery, which have been cast with so much bitterness on the Albigenses by their persecutors, and which have been so zealously denied by their apologists, are probably not ill founded, if the word Albigenses be employed as synonymous with the words Provençaux or Languedocians; for they were apparently a race among whom the hallowed charities of domestic life, and the reverence due to divine ordinances and the homage due to divine truth, were often impaired, and not seldom extinguished, by ribald jests, by infidel scoffings, and by heart-hardening impurities. Like other voluptuaries, the Provençaux (as their remaining literature attests) were accustomed to find matter for merriment in vices which would have moved wise men to tears. But if by the word Albigenses be meant the Vaudois, or those followers (or associates) of Peter Waldo who revived the doctrines against which the Church of Rome directed her censures, then the accusation of dissoluteness of manners may be safely rejected as altogether calumnious, and the charge of heresy may be considered, if not as entirely unfounded, yet as a cruel and injurious exaggeration."

_Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 7._

ALSO IN _L. Mariotti, Frà Dolcino and his Times._

See, also, Paulicians, and Catharists.

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1209. The First Crusade.

"Pope Innocent III., in organizing the persecution of the Catharins [or Catharists], the Patarins, and the Pauvres de Lyons, exercised a spirit, and displayed a genius similar to those which had already elevated him to almost universal dominion; which had enabled him to dictate at once to Italy and to Germany; to control the kings of France, of Spain, and of England; to overthrow the Greek Empire, and to substitute in its stead a Latin dynasty at Constantinople. In the zeal of the Cistercian Order, and of their Abbot, Arnaud Amalric; in the fiery and unwearied preaching of the first Inquisitor, the Spanish Missionary, Dominic; in the remorseless activity of Foulquet, Bishop of Toulouse; and above all, in the strong and unpitying arm of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Innocent found ready instruments for his purpose. Thus aided; he excommunicated Raymond of Toulouse [A. D. 1207], as Chief of the Heretics, and he promised remission of sins, and all the privileges which had hitherto been exclusively conferred on adventurers in Palestine, to the champions who should enroll themselves as Crusaders in the far more easy enterprise of a Holy War against the Albigenses. In the first invasion of his territories [A. D. 1209], Raymond VI. gave way before the terrors excited by the 300,000 fanatics who precipitated themselves on Languedoc; and loudly declaring his personal freedom from heresy, he surrendered his chief castles, underwent a humiliating penance, and took the cross against his own subjects. The brave resistance of his nephew Raymond Roger, Viscount of Bezières, deserved but did not obtain success. When the crusaders surrounded his capital, which was occupied by a mixed population of the two Religions, a question was raised how, in the approaching sack, the Catholics should be distinguished from the Heretics. 'Kill them all,' was the ferocious reply of Amalric; 'the Lord will easily know His own.' In compliance with this advice, not one human being within the walls was permitted to survive; {33} and the tale of slaughter has been variously estimated, by those who have perhaps exaggerated the numbers, at 60,000, but even in the extenuating despatch, which the Abbot himself addressed to the Pope, at not fewer than 15,000. Raymond Roger was not included in this fearful massacre, and he repulsed two attacks upon Carcassonne, before a treacherous breach of faith placed him at the disposal of de Montfort, by whom he was poisoned after a short imprisonment. The removal of that young and gallant Prince was indeed most important to the ulterior project of his captor, who aimed at permanent establishment in the South. The family of de Montfort had ranked among the nobles of France for more than two centuries; and it is traced by some writers through an illegitimate channel even to the throne: but the possessions of Simon himself were scanty; necessity had compelled him to sell the County of Evreux to Philippe Auguste; and the English Earldom of Leicester which he inherited maternally, and the Lordship of a Castle about ten leagues distant from Paris, formed the whole of his revenues."

_E. Smedley, History of France, chapter _4.

ALSO IN _J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Crusades against the Albigenses, chapter 1._

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 9, chapter 8._

_J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, period 2, epoch 2, part 1, chapter 3 https://archive.org/details/manualofuniversa02alzo_.

See, also, INQUISITION: A. D. 1203-1525.

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1210-1213. The Second Crusade.

"The conquest of the Viscounty of Beziers had rather inflamed than satiated the cupidity of De Montfort and the fanaticism of Amalric [legate of the Pope] and of the monks of Citeaux. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, still possessed the fairest part of Languedoc, and was still suspected or accused of affording shelter, if not countenance, to his heretical subjects. … The unhappy Raymond was … again excommunicated from the Christian Church, and his dominions offered as a reward to the champions who should execute her sentence against him. To earn that reward De Montfort, at the head of a new host of Crusaders, attracted by the promise of earthly spoils and of heavenly blessedness, once more marched through the devoted land [A. D. 1210], and with him advanced Amalric. At each successive conquest, slaughter, rapine, and woes such as may not be described tracked and polluted their steps. Heretics, or those suspected of heresy, wherever they were found, were compelled by the legate to ascend vast piles of burning faggots. … At length the Crusaders reached and laid siege to the city of Toulouse. … Throwing himself into the place, Raymond … succeeded in repulsing De Montfort and Amalric. It was, however, but a temporary respite, and the prelude to a fearful destruction. From beyond the Pyrenees, at the head of 1,000 knights, Pedro of Arragon had marched to the rescue of Raymond, his kinsman, and of the counts of Foix and of Comminges, and of the Viscount of Béarn, his vassals; and their united forces came into communication with each other at Muret, a little town which is about three leagues distant from Toulouse. There, also, on the 12th of September [A. D. 1213], at the head of the champions of the Cross, and attended by seven bishops, appeared Simon de Montfort in full military array. The battle which followed was fierce, short and decisive. … Don Pedro was numbered with the slain. His army, deprived of his command, broke and dispersed, and the whole of the infantry of Raymond and his allies were either put to the sword, or swept a way by the current of the Garonne. Toulouse immediately surrendered, and the whole of the dominions of Raymond submitted to the conquerors. At a council subsequently held at Montpellier, composed of five archbishops and twenty-eight bishops, De Montfort was unanimously acknowledged as prince of the fief and city of Toulouse, and of the other counties conquered by the Crusaders under his command."

_Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 7._

ALSO IN _J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of Crusades against the Albigenses, chapter 2._

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1217-1229. The Renewed Crusades. Dissolution of the County of Toulouse. Pacification of Languedoc.