Chapter 5

Nature to a great extent fore-ordained the high destiny of the larger island, to at least an equal extent she fore-ordained the sad destiny of the smaller island. Irish history, studied impartially, is a grand lesson in political charity; so clear is it that in these deplorable annals the more important part was played by adverse circumstance, the less important by the malignity of man. That the stronger nation is entitled by the law of force to conquer its weaker neighbour and to govern the conquered in its own interest is a doctrine which civilized morality abhors; but in the days before civilized morality, in the days when the only law was that of natural selection, to which philosophy, by a strange counter-revolution seems now inclined to return, the smaller island was almost sure to be conquered by the possessors of the larger, more especially as the smaller, cut off from the Continent by the larger, lay completely within its grasp. The map, in short, tells us plainly that the destiny of Ireland was subordinated to that of Great Britain. At the same time, the smaller island being of considerable size and the channel of considerable breadth, it was likely that the resistance would be tough and the conquest slow. The unsettled state of Ireland, and the half-nomad condition in which at a comparatively late period its tribes remained, would also help to protract the bitter process of subjugation; and these again were the inevitable results of the rainy climate, which, while it clothed the island with green and made pasture abundant, forbade the cultivation of grain. Ireland and Wales alike appear to have been the scenes of a precocious civilization, merely intellectual and literary in its character, and closely connected with the Church, though including also a bardic element derived from the times before Christianity, the fruits of which were poetry, fantastic law-making, and probably the germs of scholastic theology, combined, in the case of Ireland, with missionary enterprise and such ecclesiastical architecture as the Round Towers. But cities there were none, and it is evident that the native Church with difficulty sustained her higher life amidst the influences and encroachments of surrounding barbarism. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland was a supplement to the Norman conquest of England; and, like the Norman conquest of England, it was a religious as well as a political enterprise. As Hildebrand had commissioned William to bring the national Church of England into complete submission to the See of Rome, so Adrian, by the Bull which is the stumbling-block of Irish Catholics, granted Ireland to Henry upon condition of his reforming, that is, Romanizing, its primitive and schismatic Church. Ecclesiastical intrigue had already been working in the same direction, and had in some measure prepared the way for the conqueror by disposing the heads of the Irish clergy to receive him as the emancipator of the Church from the secular oppression and imposts of the chiefs. But in the case of England, a settled and agricultural country, the conquest was complete and final; the conquerors formed everywhere a new upper class which, though at first alien and oppressive, became in time a national nobility, and ultimately blended with the subject race. In the case of Ireland, though the Septs were easily defeated by the Norman soldiery, and the formal submission of their chiefs was easily extorted, the conquest was neither complete nor final. In their hills and bogs the wandering Septs easily evaded the Norman arms. The Irish Channel was wide; the road lay through North Wales, long unsubdued, and, even when subdued, mutinous, and presenting natural obstacles to the passage of heavy troops; the centre of Anglo-Norman power was far away in the south-east of England, and the force of the monarchy was either attracted to Continental fields or absorbed by struggles with baronial factions. Richard II., coming to a throne which had been strengthened and exalted by the achievements of his grandfather, seems in one of his moods of fitful ambition to have conceived the design of completing the conquest of Ireland, and he passed over with a great power; but his fate showed that the arm of the monarchy was still too short to reach the dependency without losing hold upon the imperial country. As a rule, the subjugation of Ireland during the period before the Tudors was in effect left to private enterprise, which of course confined its efforts to objects of private gain, and never thought of undertaking the systematic subjugation of native fortresses in the interest of order and civilization. Instead of a national aristocracy the result was a military colony or Pale, between the inhabitants of which and the natives raged a perpetual border war, as savage as that between the settlers at the Cape and the Kaffirs, or that between the American frontierman and the Red Indian. The religious quarrel was and has always been secondary in importance to the struggle of the races for the land. In the period following the conquest it was the Pale that was distinctively Romanist; but when at the Reformation the Pale became Protestant the natives, from antagonism of race, became more intensely Catholic, and were drawn into the league of Catholic powers on the Continent, in which they suffered the usual fate of the dwarf who goes to battle with the giant. By the strong monarchy of the Tudors the conquest of Ireland was completed with circumstances of cruelty sufficient to plant undying hatred in the breasts of the people. But the struggle for the land did not end there, instead of the form of conquest it took that of confiscation, and was waged by the intruder with the arms of legal chicane. In the form of eviction it has lasted to the present hour; and eviction in Ireland is not like eviction in England, where great manufacturing cities receive and employ the evicted; it is starvation or exile. Into exile the Irish people have gone by millions, and thus, though neither maritime nor by nature colonists, they have had a great share in the peopling of the New World. The cities and railroads of the United States are to a great extent the monuments of their labour. In the political sphere they have retained the weakness produced by ages of political serfage, and are still the _debris_ of broken clans, with little about them of the genuine republican, apt blindly to follow the leader who stands to them as a chief, while they are instinctively hostile to law and government as their immemorial oppressors in their native land. British statesmen, when they had conceded Catholic emancipation and afterwards Disestablishment, may have fancied that they had removed the root of the evil. But the real root was not touched till Parliament took up the question of the land, and effected a compromise which may perhaps have to be again revised before complete pacification is attained.

In another way geography has exercised a sinister influence on the fortunes of Ireland. Closely approaching Scotland, the northern coast of Ireland in course of time invited Scotch immigration, which formed as it were a Presbyterian Pale. If the antagonism between the English Episcopalian and the Irish Catholic was strong, that between the Scotch Presbyterian and the Irish Catholic was stronger. To the English Episcopalian the Irish Catholic was a barbarian and a Romanist; to the Scotch Presbyterian he was a Canaanite and an idolater. Nothing in history is more hideous than the conflict in the north of Ireland in the time of Charles I. This is the feud which has been tenacious enough of its evil life to propagate itself even in the New World, and to renew in the streets of Canadian cities the brutal and scandalous conflicts which disgrace Belfast. On the other hand, through the Scotch colony, the larger island has a second hold upon the smaller. Of all political projects a federal union of England and Ireland with separate Parliaments under the same Crown seems the most hopeless, at least if government is to remain parliamentary; it may be safely said that the normal relation between the two Parliaments would be collision, and collision on a question of peace or war would be disruption. But an independent Ireland might be a feasible as well as natural object of Irish aspiration if it were not for the strength, moral as well as numerical, of the two intrusive elements. How could the Catholic majority be restrained from legislation which the Protestant minority would deem oppressive? And how could the Protestant minority, being as it is more English or Scotch than Irish, be restrained from stretching its hands to England or Scotland for aid? It is true that if scepticism continues to advance at its present rate, the lines of religious separation may be obliterated or become too faint to exercise a great practical influence, and the bond of the soil may then prevail. But the feeling against England which is the strength of Irish Nationalism is likely to subside at the same time.

Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies is not invariably barren. It is interesting at all events to consider what would have been the consequences to the people of the two islands, and humanity generally, if a Saxon England and a Celtic Ireland had been allowed to grow up and develop by the side of each other untouched by Norman conquest. In the case of Ireland we should have been spared centuries of oppression which has profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of the oppressor; and it is difficult to believe that the Isle of Saints and of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruits of its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees a great political and intellectual blessing beneath the disguise of barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was the continuation of the process of migratory invasions by which the nations of modern Europe were founded, from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased to be beneficent. It was not the superposition of one primitive element of population on another, to the ultimate advantage, possibly, of the compound; but the destruction of a nationality, the nationality of Alfred and Harold, of Bede and AElfric. The French were superior in military organization; that they had superior gifts of any kind, or that their promise was higher than that of the native English, it would not be easy to prove. The language, we are told, is enriched by the intrusion of the French element. If it was enriched it was shattered; and the result is a mixture so heterogeneous as to be hardly available for the purposes of exact thought, while the language of science is borrowed from the Greek, and as regards the unlearned mass of the people is hardly a medium of thought at all. There are great calamity in history, though their effects may in time be worked off, and they may be attended by some incidental good. Perhaps the greatest calamity in history were the wars of Napoleon, in which some incidental good may nevertheless be found.

To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to be added, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the influence of climate. But in the case of the British Islands we must speak not of climate, but of climates, for within the compass of one small realm are climates moist and comparatively dry, warm and cold, bracing and enervating, the results of special influences the range of which is limited. Civilized man to a great extent makes a climate for himself; his life in the North is spent mainly indoors, where artificial heat replaces the sun. The idea which still haunts us, that formidable vigour and aptitude for conquest are the appanage of Northern races, is a survival from the state in which the rigour of nature selected and hardened the destined conquerors of the Roman Empire. The stoves of St. Petersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America not the least vigorous soldiers were those who came from Louisiana. In the barbarous state the action of a Northern climate as a force of natural selection must be tremendous. Of the races which peopled the British Islands the most important had already undergone that action in their original abodes. They would, however, still feel the beneficent influence of a climate on the whole eminently favourable to health and to activity; bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill those tender plants of humanity which often bear in them the most precious germs of civilization, neither confining the inhabitant too much to the shelter of his dwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to do, drawing him too much from home. The climate and the soil together formed a good school for the character of the young nation, as they exacted the toil of the husbandman and rewarded it. Of the varieties of temperature and weather within the island the national character still bears the impress, though in a degree always decreasing as the assimilating agencies of civilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of special employments, and perhaps even of peculiarity of race, mental vigour, independence, and reasoning power are always ascribed to the people of the North. Variety, in this as in other respects, would naturally produce a balance of tendencies in the nation conductive to moderation and evenness of progress.

The islands are now the centre of an Empire which to some minds seems more important than the islands themselves. An empire it is called, but the name is really applicable only to India. The relation of England to her free colonies is not in the proper sense of the term imperial, while her relation to such dependencies as Gibraltar and Malta is military alone. Colonization is the natural and entirely beneficent result of general causes, obvious enough and already mentioned, including that power of self-government, fostered by the circumstances of the colonizing country, which made the character and destiny of New England so different from those of New France.

Equally natural was the choice of the situation for the original colonies on the shore of the New World. The foundation of the Australian Colonies, on the other hand, was determined by political accident, compensation for the loss of the American Colonies being sought on the other side of the globe. It will perhaps be thought hereafter that the quarrel with New England was calamitous in its consequences as well as in itself, since it led to the diversion of British emigration from America, where it supplied, in a democracy of mixed but not uncongenial races, the necessary element of guidance and control, to Australia, where, as there must be a limit to its own multiplication, it may hereafter have to struggle for mastery with swarming multitudes of Chinese, almost as incurable of incorporation with it as the negro. India and the other conquered dependencies are the fruits of strength as a war power at sea combined with weakness on land. Though not so generally noticed, the second of these two factors has not been less operative than the first. Chatham attacked France in her distant dependencies when he had failed to make any impression on her own coasts. Still more clearly was Chatham's son, the most incapable of war ministers, driven to the capture of sugar islands by his inability to take part, otherwise than by subsidies, in the decisive struggle on the Continental fields. This may deserve the attention of those who do not think it criminal to examine the policy of Empire. Outlying pawns picked up by a feeble chessplayer merely because he could not mate the king do not at first sight necessarily commend themselves as invaluable possessions. Carthage and Venice were merely great commercial cities, which, when they entered on a career of conquest, were compelled at once to form armies of mercenaries, and to incur all the evil consequences by which the employment of those vile and fatal instruments of ambition is attended. England being, not a commercial city, but a nation, and a nation endowed with the highest military qualities, has escaped the fell necessity except in the case of India; and India, under the reign of the Company, and even for some time after its legal annexation to the Crown, was regarded and treated almost as a realm in another planet, with an army, a political system, and a morality of its own. But now it appears that the wrongs of the Hindoo are going to be avenged, as the wrongs of the conquered have often been, by their moral effect upon the conqueror. A body of barbarian mercenaries has appeared upon the European scene as an integral part of the British army, while the reflex influence of Indian Empire upon the political character and tendencies of the imperial nation is too manifest to be any longer overlooked. England now stands where the paths divide, the one leading by industrial and commercial progress to increase of political liberty; the other, by a career of conquest, to the political results in which such a career has never yet failed to end. At present the influences in favour of taking the path of conquest seemed to preponderate, [Footnote: Written in 1878.] and the probability seems to be that the leadership of political progress, which has hitherto belonged to England and has constituted the special interest of her history, will, in the near future, pass into other hands.

THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[Footnote: In this lecture free use has been made of recent writers-- Mitchell, Chapman, Vehse, Freytag and Ranke, as well as of the older authorities. To Chapman's excellent Life of Gustavus Adolphus we are under special obligations. In some passages it has been closely followed. Colonel Mitchell has also supplied some remarks and touches, such as are to be found only in a military writer.]

AN EPISODE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

The Thirty Years' War is an old story, but its interest has been recently revived. The conflict between Austria and German Independence commenced in the struggle of the Protestant Princes against Charles V., and, continued on those battle-fields, was renewed and decided at Sadowa. At Sadowa Germany was fighting for unity as well as for independence. But in the Thirty Years' War it was Austria that with her Croats, the Jesuits who inspired her councils, and her Spanish allies, sought to impose a unity of death, against which Protestant Germany struggled, preserving herself for a unity of life which, opened by the victories of Frederick the Great, and, more nobly promoted by the great uprising of the nation against the tyranny of Napoleon, was finally accomplished at Sadowa, and ratified against French jealousy at Sedan. Costly has been the achievement; lavish has been the expenditure of German blood, severe the sufferings of the German people. It is the lot of all who aspire high--no man or nation ever was dandled into greatness.

The Thirty Years' War was a real world-contest. Austria and Spain drew after them all the powers of reaction; all the powers of liberty and progress were arrayed on the other side. The half-barbarous races that lay between civilized Europe and Turkey mingled in the conflict: Turkey herself was drawn diplomatically into the vortex. In the mines of Mexico and Peru the Indian toiled to furnish both the Austrian and Spanish hosts. The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the struggle, long remained the Public Law of Europe.

Half religious, half political, in its character, this war stands midway between the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and the political wars of the eighteenth. France took the political view; and, while she crushed her own Huguenots at home, supported the German Protestants against the House of Austria. Even the Pope, Urban VIII., more politician than churchman, more careful of Peter's patrimony than of Peter's creed, went with France to the Protestant side. With the princes, as usual, political motives were the strongest, with the people religious motives. The politics were to a sad extent those of Machiavelli and the Jesuit; but above the meaner characters who crowd the scene rise at least two grand forms.

In a military point of view, the Thirty Years' War will bear no comparison with that which has just run its marvellous course. The armies were small, seldom exceeding thirty thousand. Tilly thought forty thousand the largest number which a general could handle, while Von Moltke has handled half a million. There was no regular commissariat, there were no railroads, there were no good roads, there were no accurate maps, there was no trained staff. The general had to be everything and to do everything himself. The financial resources of the powers were small: their regular revenues soon failed; and they had to fly for loans to great banking houses, such as that of the Fuggers at Augsburgh, so that the money power became the arbiter even of Imperial elections. The country on which the armies lived was soon eaten up by their rapine. Hence the feebleness of the operations, the absence of anything which Von Moltke would call strategy: and hence again the cruel length of the war, a whole generation of German agony.

But if the war was weak, not so were the warriors. On the Imperial side especially, they were types of a class of men, the most terrible perhaps, as well as the vilest, who ever plied the soldier's trade: of those mercenary bands, _soldados_, in the literal and original sense of the term, free companions, _condottieri_, lansquenets, who came between the feudal militia and the standing armies of modern times. In the wars of Italy and the Low Countries, under Alva and Parma and Freundsberg, these men had opened new abysses of cruelty and lust in human nature. They were the lineal representatives of the Great Companies which ravaged France in the time of Edward III. They were near of kin to the buccaneers, and Scott's Bertram Risingham is the portrait of a lansquenet as well as of a rover of the Spanish Main. Many of them were Croats, a race well known through all history in the ranks of Austrian tyranny, and Walloons, a name synonymous with that of hired butcher and marauder.