Part 765

"Its geographical situation gave … importance to Nicaragua. It contains a great lake, which is approached from the Atlantic by the river San Juan; and from the west end of the lake there are only 20 miles to the coast of the Pacific. Ever since the time of Cortes there have been projects for connecting the two oceans through the lake of Nicaragua. … Hence Nicaragua has always been thought of great importance to the United States. The political struggles of the state, ever since the failure of the confederation, had sunk into a petty rivalry between the two towns of Leon and Granada. Leon enjoys the distinction of being the first important town in Central America to raise the cry of independence in 1815, and it had always maintained the liberal character which this disclosed. Castellon, the leader of the Radical party, of which Leon was the seat, called in to help him an American named William Walker. Walker, who was born in 1824, was a young roving American who had gone during the gold rush of 1850 to California, and become editor of a newspaper in San Francisco. In those days it was supposed in the United States that the time for engulfing the whole of Spanish America had come. Lopez had already made his descent on Cuba; and Walker, in July, 1853, had organized a band of filibusters for the conquest of Sonora, and the peninsula of California, which had been left to Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This wild expedition … was a total failure; but when Walker came back to his newspapers after an absence of seven months, he found himself a hero. His fame, as we see, had reached Central America; and he at once accepted Castellon's offer. In 1855, having collected a band of 70 adventurers in California, he landed in the country, captured the town of Granada, and, aided by the intrigues of the American consul, procured his own appointment as General-in-Chief of the Nicaraguan army. Walker was now master of the place: and his own provisional President, Rivas, having turned against him, he displaced him, and in 1856 became President himself. He remained master of Nicaragua for nearly two years, levying arbitrary customs on the traffic of the lake, and forming plans for a great military state to be erected on the ruins of Spanish America. One of Walker's first objects was to seize the famous gold-mines of Chontales, and the sudden discovery that the entire sierra of America is a gold-bearing region had a good deal to do with his extraordinary enterprise. Having assured himself of the wealth of the country, he now resolved to keep it for himself, and this proved in the end to be his ruin. The statesmen of the United States, who had at first supposed that he would cede them the territory, now withdrew their support from him: the people of the neighbouring states rose in arms against him, and Walker was obliged to capitulate, with the remains of his filibustering party, at Rivas in 1857. Walker, still claiming to be President of Nicaragua, went to New Orleans, where he collected a second band of filibusters, at the head of whom he again landed near the San Juan river towards the end of the year: this time he was arrested and sent back home by the American commodore. His third and last expedition, in 1860, was directed against Honduras, where he hoped to meet with a good reception at the hands of the Liberal party. Instead of this he fell into the hands of the soldiers of Guardiola, by whom he was tried as a pirate and shot, September 12, 1860."

_E. J. Payne, History of European Colonies, chapter 21, section 8._

"Though he never evinced much military or other capacity, Walker, so long as he acted under color of authority from the chiefs of the faction he patronized, was generally successful against the pitiful rabble styled soldiers by whom his progress was resisted. … But his very successes proved the ruin of the faction to which he had attached himself, by exciting the natural jealousy and alarm of the natives who mainly composed it; and his assumption … of the title of President of Nicaragua, speedily followed by a decree reestablishing Slavery in that country, exposed his purpose and insured his downfall. As if madly bent on ruin, he proceeded to confiscate the steamboats and other property of the Nicaragua Transit Company, thereby arresting all American travel to and from California through that country, and cutting himself off from all hope of further recruiting his forces from the throngs of sanguine or of baffled gold-seekers, who might otherwise have been attracted to his standard. Yet he maintained the unequal contest for about two years."

_H. Greeley, The American Conflict, volume 1, chapter 19._

ALSO IN: _H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, volume 3, chapters 16-17._

_J. J. Roche, The Story of the Filibusters, chapters 5-18._

NICARAGUA: End--------

NICE (NIZZA), Asia Minor.

See NICÆA.

NICE, France: Start--------

NICE (NIZZA), France: A. D. 1388. Acquisition by the House of Savoy.

See SAVOY: 11-15TH CENTURIES.

{2361}

NICE: A. D. 1542. Siege by French and Turks. Capture of the town. Successful resistance of the citadel.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

NICE: A. D. 1792. Annexation to the French Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

NICE: A. D. 1860. Cession to France.

See ITALY: A. D. 1859-1861.

NICE, France: End--------

NICEPHORUS I., Emperor in the East (Byzantine or Greek), A. D. 802-811.

Nicephorus II., Emperor in the East (Byzantine or Greek), 963-969.

Nicephorus III., Emperor in the East (Byzantine or Greek), 1078-1081.

NICHOLAS, Czar of Russia, A. D. 1825-1855.

Nicholas I., Pope, 858-867.

Nicholas II., Pope, 1058-1061.

Nicholas III., Pope, 1277-1280.

Nicholas IV., Pope, 1288-1292.

Nicholas V., Pope, 1447-1455.

Nicholas Swendson, King of Denmark, 1103-1134.

NICIAS (NIKIAS), and the Siege of Syracuse.

See SYRACUSE: B. C. 415-413.

NICIAS (NIKIAS), The Peace of.

See GREECE: B. C. 424-421.

NICOLET, Jean, Explorations of.

See CANADA: A. D. 1634-1673.

NICOMEDIA: Start--------

NICOMEDIA: A. D. 258. Capture by the Goths.

See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

NICOMEDIA: A. D. 292-305. The court of Diocletian.

"To rival the majesty of Rome was the ambition … of Diocletian, who employed his leisure, and the wealth of the east, in the embellishment of Nicomedia, a city placed on the verge of Europe and Asia, almost at an equal distance between the Danube and the Euphrates. By the taste of the monarch, and at the expense of the people, Nicomedia acquired, in the space of a few years, a degree of magnificence which might appear to have required the labour of ages, and became inferior only to Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in extent or populousness. … Till Diocletian, in the twentieth year of his reign, celebrated his Roman triumph, it is extremely doubtful whether he ever visited the ancient capital of the empire."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 13._

See ROME: A. D. 284-305.

NICOMEDIA: A. D. 1326. Capture by the Turks.

See TURKS (OTTOMAN): A. D. 1326-1359.

NICOMEDIA: End--------

NICOPOLIS.

Augustus gave this name to a city which he founded, B. C. 31, in commemoration of the victory at Actium, on the site of the camp which his army occupied.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 28.

NICOPOLIS: Start--------

NICOPOLIS, Armenia, Battle of (B. C. 66).

The decisive battle in which Pompeius defeated Mithridates and ended the long Mithridatic wars was fought, B. C. 66, in Lesser Armenia, at a place near which Pompeius founded a city called Nicopolis, the site of which is uncertain.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 3, chapter 8._

NICOPOLIS: Battle of (B. C. 48).

See ROME: B. C. 47-46.

NICOPOLIS, Armenia: End--------

NICOPOLIS, Bulgaria, Battle of (A. D. 1396).

See TURKS (THE OTTOMAN): A. D. 1389-1403.

NICOSIA: Taken and sacked by the Turks (1570).

See TURKS: A. D. 1566-1571.

NIEUPORT, Battle of (1600).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1609.

NIGER COMPANY, The Royal.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891.

NIHILISM. NIHILISTS.

"In Tikomirov's work on Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of the use of the expressions 'nihilism' and 'nihilist.' Nevertheless … they are employed universally, and all the world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative way. … It was a novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time, 'new men.' It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the characters in his celebrated novel, 'Fathers and Sons,' gave the young generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage; Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary generations; but it was reserved for the author of 'Virgin Soil' to bring to light and make famous this word; which after making a great stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world. The reign of Nicholas I. was an epoch of hard oppression. When he ascended the throne, the conspiracy of the Decembrists broke out, and this sudden revelation of the revolutionary spirit steeled the already inflexible soul of the Czar. Nicholas, although fond of letters and an assiduous reader of Homer, was disposed to throttle his enemies, and would not have hesitated to pluck out the brains of Russia; he was very near suppressing all the universities and schools, and inaugurating a voluntary retrocession to Asiatic barbarism. He did mutilate and reduce the instruction, he suppressed the chair of European political laws, and after the events of 1848 in France he seriously considered the idea of closing his frontiers with a cordon of troops to beat back foreign liberalism like the cholera or the plague. … However, it was under his sceptre, under his systematic oppression, that, by confession of the great revolutionary statesman Herzen, Russian thought developed as never before; that the emancipation of the intelligence, which this very statesman calls a tragic event, was accomplished, and a national literature was brought to light and began to flourish. When Alexander II. succeeded to the throne, when the bonds of despotism were loosened and the blockade with which Nicholas vainly tried to isolate his empire was raised, the field was ready for the intellectual and political strife. … Before explaining how nihilism is the outcome of intelligence, we must understand what is meant by intelligence in Russia. It means a class composed of all those, of whatever profession or estate, who have at heart the advancement of intellectual life, and contribute in every way toward it. It may be said, indeed, that such a class is to be found in every country; but there is this difference,—in other countries the class is not a unit; there are factions, or a large number of its members shun political and social discussion in order to enjoy the serene atmosphere of the world of art, while in Russia the intelligence means a common cause, a homogeneous spirit, subversive and revolutionary withal. … Whence came the revolutionary element in Russia? {2362} From the Occident, from France, from the negative, materialist, sensualist philosophy of the Encyclopædia, imported into Russia by Catherine II.; and later from Germany, from Kantism and Hegelianism, imbibed by Russian youth at the German universities, and which they diffused throughout their own country with characteristic Sclav impetuosity. By 'Pure Reason' and transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and revolutionary movement. … Nihilism had no political color about it at the beginning. During the decade between 1860 and 1870 the youth of Russia was seized with a sort of fever for negation, a fierce antipathy toward everything that was,—authorities, institutions, customary ideas, and old-fashioned dogmas. In Turguenief's novel, 'Fathers and Sons,' we meet with Bazarof, a froward, ill-mannered, intolerable fellow, who represents this type. After 1871 the echo of the Paris Commune and emissaries of the Internationals crossed the frontier, and the nihilists began to bestir themselves, to meet together clandestinely, and to send out propaganda. Seven years later they organized an era of terror, assassination, and explosions. Thus three phases have followed upon one another,—thought, word, and deed,—along that road which is never so long as it looks, the road that leads from the word to the act, from Utopia to crime. And yet nihilism never became a political party as we understand the term. It has no defined creed or official programme. The fulness of its despair embraces all negatives and all acute revolutionary forms. Anarchists, federalists, cantonalists, covenanters, terrorists, all who are unanimous in a desire to sweep away the present order, are grouped under the ensign of nihil."

_E. P. Bazan, Russia, its People and its Literature, book 2, chapters 1-2._

"Out of Russia, an already extended list of revolutionary spirits in this land has attracted the attention and kept curiosity on the alert. We call them Nihilists,—of which the Russian pronunciation is neegilist, which, however, is now obsolete. Confined to the terrorist group in Europe, the number of these persons is certainly very small. Perhaps, as is thought in Russia, there are 500 in all, who busy themselves, even if reluctantly, with thoughts of resorting to bombs and murderous weapons to inspire terror. But it is not exactly this group that is meant when we speak of that nihilistic force in society which extends everywhere, into all circles, and finds support and strongholds at widely spread points. It is indeed not very different from what elsewhere in Europe is regarded as culture, advanced culture: the profound scepticism in regard to our existing institutions in their present form, what we call royal prerogative, church, marriage, property."

_Georg Brandes, Impressions of Russia, chapter 4._

"The genuine Nihilism was a philosophical and literary movement, which flourished in the first decade after the Emancipation of the Serfs, that is to say, between 1860 and 1870. It is now (1883] absolutely extinct, and only a few traces are left of it, which are rapidly disappearing. … Nihilism was a struggle for the emancipation of intelligence from every kind of dependence, and it advanced side by side with that for the emancipation of the labouring classes from serfdom. The fundamental principle of Nihilism, properly so-called, was absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual liberty of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society, by family life, and by religion. Nihilism was a passionate and powerful reaction, not against political despotism, but against the moral despotism that weighs upon the private and inner life of the individual. But it must be confessed that our predecessors, at least in the earlier days, introduced into this highly pacific struggle the same spirit of rebellion and almost the same fanaticism that characterises the present movement."

_Stepniak, Underground Russia, introduction._

ALSO IN: _Stepniak, The Russian Storm-Cloud._

_L. Tikhomirov, Russia, Political and Social, books 6-7 (volume 2)._

_E. Noble, The Russian Revolt._

_A. Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, part 1, book 3, chapter 4._

See, also, RUSSIA: A. D. 1879-1881; and ANARCHISTS.

NIKA SEDITION, The.

See CIRCUS, FACTIONS OF THE ROMAN.

NIKIAS.

See NICIAS.

NILE, Naval Battle of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (MAY-AUGUST).

NIMEGUEN: Origin.

See BATAVIANS.

NIMEGUEN: A. D. 1591. Siege and capture by Prince Maurice.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1588-1593.

NIMEGUEN, The Peace of (1678-1679).

The war which Louis XIV. began in 1672 by attacking Holland, with the co-operation of his English pensioner, Charles II., and which roused against him a defensive coalition of Spain, Germany and Denmark with the Dutch (see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1672-1674, and 1674-1678), was ended by a series of treaties negotiated at Nimeguen in 1678 and 1679. The first of these treaties, signed August 10, 1678, was between France and Holland. "France and Holland kept what was in their possession, except Maestricht and its dependencies which were restored to Holland. France therefore kept her conquests in Senegal and Guiana. This was all the territory lost by Holland in the terrible war which had almost annihilated her. The United Provinces pledged themselves to neutrality in the war which might continue between France and the other powers, and guaranteed the neutrality of Spain, after the latter should have signed the peace. France included Sweden in the treaty; Holland included in it Spain and the other allies who should make peace within six weeks after the exchange of ratifications. To the treaty of peace was annexed a treaty of commerce, concluded for twenty-five years."

_H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., (translated by M. L. Booth), volume 1, chapter 6._

The peace between France and Spain was signed September 17. France gave back, in the Spanish Netherlands and elsewhere, "Charleroi, Binch, Ath, Oudenarde, and Courtrai, which she had gained by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; the town and duchy of Limburg, all the country beyond the Meuse, Ghent, Rodenhus, and the district of the Waes, Leuze, and St. Ghislain, with Puycerda in Catalonia, these having been taken since that peace. {2363} But she retained Franche Comté, with the towns of Valenciènnes, Bouchain, Condé, Cambrai and the Cambresis, Aire, St. Omer, Ypres, Werwick, Warneton, Poperinge, Bailleul, Cassel, Bavai, and Maubeuge. … On February 2, 1679, peace was declared between Louis, the Emperor, and the Empire. Louis gave back Philippsburg, retaining Freiburg with the desired liberty of passage across the Rhine to Breisach; in all other respects the Treaty of Munster, of October 24, 1648, was reestablished. … The treaty then dealt with the Duke of Lorraine. To his restitution Louis annexed conditions which rendered Lorraine little more than a French province. Not only was Nancy to become French, but, in conformity with the treaty of 1661, Louis was to have possession of four large roads traversing the country, with half a league's breadth of territory throughout their length, and the places contained therein. … To these conditions the Duke refused to subscribe, preferring continual exile until the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, when at length his son regained the ancestral estates." Treaties between the Emperor and Sweden, between Brandenburg and France and Sweden, between Denmark and the same, and between Sweden, Spain and Holland, were successively concluded during the year 1679. "The effect of the Peace of Nimwegen was, … speaking generally, to reaffirm the Peace of Westphalia. But … it did not, like the Peace of Westphalia, close for any length of time the sources of strife."

_O. Airy, The English Restoration and Louis XIV., chapter 22._

ALSO IN: _Sir W. Temple, Memoirs, part 2 (Works, volume 2)._

NINE WAYS, The.

See AMPHIPOLIS; also, ATHENS: B. C. 466-454.

NINETY-FIVE THESES OF LUTHER, The.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1517.

NINETY-TWO, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1767-1768.

NINEVEH.

"In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor, her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters; army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around [the Medes and the Babylonians, with their lesser allies]. Popular tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender, thus saved himself, his treasures and his, capital from the shame of bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been." The very knowledge of the existence of Nineveh was lost so soon that, two centuries later, when Xenophon passed the ruins, with his Ten Thousand retreating Greeks, he reported them to be the ruins of a deserted city of the Medes and called it Larissa. Twenty-four centuries went by, and the winds and the rains, in their slow fashion, covered the bricks and stones of the desolated Assyrian capital with a shapeless mound of earth. Then came the searching modern scholar and explorer, and began to excavate the mound, to see what lay beneath it. First the French Consul, Botta, in 1842; then the Englishman Layard, in 1845; then the later English scholar, George Smith, and others; until buried Nineveh has been in great part brought to light. Not only the imperishable monuments of its splendid art have been exposed, but a veritable library of its literature, written on tablets and cylinders of clay, has been found and read. The discoveries of the past half-century, on the site of Nineveh, under the mound called Koyunjik, and elsewhere in other similarly-buried cities of ancient Babylonia and Assyria, may reasonably be called the most extraordinary additions to human knowledge which our age has acquired.

_Z. A. Ragozin, Story of Chaldea, introduction, chapters 1-4._

ALSO IN: _A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains; and Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon._

_G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries_

See, also, ASSYRIA; and LIBRARIES, ANCIENT.

NINEVEH, Battle of (A.D. 627).

See PERSIA: A. D. 226-627.

NINFEO, Treaty of.

See GENOA: A. D. 1261-1299.

NINIQUIQUILAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

NIPAL NEPAUL: English war with the Ghorkas.

See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816.

NIPMUCKS, NIPNETS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY; also, NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1674-1675, 1675, and 1676-1678 KING PHILIP'S WAR.

NISÆAN PLAINS, The.