CHAPTER XXI: THE ANGLO-SAXONS "This happy breed of men, this little world,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."
The history of England is the history of the Anglo-Saxons. It therefore commences on the Continent; for as Arnold says, "The English are wholly unconnected with the Romans and Britons, who inhabited this country before the coming of the Saxons, and, nationally speaking, the history of Caesar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited the forests."
A glance at the map of Europe, at the accession of Augustus, indicates chaos in Northern Europe and order in Rome. The chaos in Northern Europe, however, was merely political as the order in Rome was merely political. Racially the North was homogeneous, Rome was a chaos. The German tribes of Europe then differed from one another not more than the people of Hanover differ from the people of Westphalia, Bavaria, or Holland to-day. The Romans classified the German tribes into two main divisions, the Suevic tribes and the Saxon tribes. Among the Saxon tribes they reckoned the Cherusci, Saxons, Vandals, Chattuari, Chaucii, Frisii, and others. More than two hundred years before Hengist and Horsa put out for England, the Cheruscans, Saxons, Angrivarii and other tribes had coalesced, and they were all known as Saxons.
Extreme individualism characterized all people of the Teutonic race. The individual is everything. His person and his liberty are sacred. He will not disappear in a mass. In the herds of Slavic, post-Roman, and post-Hellenic mongrels, the individual disappeared. They counted as masses only. The greater the race jumble became, the less important and the more worthless became the individual.
The Teuton is a personality. He has self-respect and commands the respect of others. Contrast his rough worth with the depravity of the post-Roman Italiot. His manliness, his bravery, his spirit of personal freedom, his loathing of pollution and meanness, his domestic virtues, his love of home, his respect for women, and the purity of his women. Elsewhere women were considered incapable of judging of higher things; among the Germans, duties of the highest kind were entrusted to their care. They were nurses to the sick and wounded, they were the preservers of the medical knowledge and of the sacred runes.
Teutonic women handed down to us some of the songs of the Sagamen, among others the Niblung or Volsungen Saga, which, while inferior to Homer in execution, has other excellencies which make it in many respects superior to the Greek masterpiece. The German Nibelungenlied (the German Iliad) of the twelfth century is still a great epic, but has lost some of the grandeur of the old tale. Thus Brynhild, the heroine of the Volsungen Saga, the most fascinating heroine that ever figured in poetry, disappears in the later epic as the clown does in King Lear. In both epics, however, breathes the Titanic temper which belongs to the Teutons.
Tacitus points out the important part played by the women in the life of the Germans. Two characteristics which chiefly distinguish them from all other races are their respect for women and their chastity, and their independence and love of personal liberty as far as was consistent with the liberty of their equals.
The Teutonic religion was in accord with the high spirit of the race. The gods and life after death were to them not theories, but convictions; more than that, they were an internal experience. There was no death. Death was a transition, a thoroughfare, and scarce that. There was nothing about death that changed their character, their tendencies. They were not through fear of death subject to bondage. They knew that five minutes after death they would be what they were five minutes before death. Why, then, should they yield to any power whether of earth, or of heaven, or of hell?
Cry out for quarter? Never! Neither to gods nor Nornes. Defy destiny, and the Nornes must cringe. We, the bravest of men, are invincible. Fate must falter. Our life was short, but was it not beautiful? Have we not been valiant men, and have we not loved brave women? And when death comes, does the Valkyr not carry the fallen hero to Valhalla? What kind of a place will that be? It will be as we and the gods make it. Who will be over there? We and the gods. Whom shall we meet? The gods and our ancestors, the best of men.
Life after death was with them not an open question, it was a self-evident truth. To them "God was closer than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." Entertaining such convictions, many preferred not to live to the last stage, —
"That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
They were not willing to go out like a snuffed candle, and they wrote death runes on their own breasts and wrists. They knew that the day prophesied, the day of Ragnarok, was sure, when they became the equals of the gods, when, shoulder to shoulder, the gods and they should fight the brood of evil and destroy it. In the combat they themselves will perish with their gods; but has Wodan, when god Balder the beautiful died, not whispered in Balder's ear the word " Resurrection? " The gods will return greater than before, and the brave will outlive the dusk of the gods? (v. Note.)
These were the men and women who were the ancestors of the English as well as of the Germans. Their chief vice was their excessive desire for independence, which led them to split up into little tribes, every tribe suspicious of its next neighbour. The Romans recognized that Teutonic strength alone could break Teutonic strength. They therefore fostered jealousies among German families and tribes, and fomented dissensions and wars among them. By the employment of craft, duplicity, insinuations, and bribery they set one German tribe against the other. Thus they were successful in having the Bructeri destroyed by the neighbouring tribes.
It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to systematically corrupt young Germans, who had either been persuaded to go to Rome, or who had been carried to Rome. On these Rome conferred rank and privileges. In Rome many Germans persuaded themselves to believe that Rome and civilization were synonymous terms; that the civilization of the German tribes was desirable; and that, therefore, the Romanization of Germany was a necessity, not a calamity to be striven against, but an opportunity eagerly to be sought. It was an insidious system that Rome employed, and it helped Rome gain many advantages over the Germans. The mongrel was very crafty and cunning, and Rome extended her frontier from the Alps to the Danube and to the Rhine.
Had Rome been successful in Romanizing the Germans there would never have been a Germany, never an England, never a United States. A herd of worthless pan-Europeans, such as infested Rome, would have infested all of Europe; incapable of withstanding the attacks of the Mongols, Saracens, Huns, and Turks that at different times attempted the subjugation of Europe, and who would have destroyed the Aryan races, had Teutonic strength not expelled them. The resistance of the Teutons to Rome was therefore the most momentous struggle of history, and in it the Saxons took the chief part.
Between the years 12 and 9 B.C. Drusus made four campaigns in Germany, in all of which he fought principally with Saxons. Cassius Dion tells us that in his fourth campaign Drusus was stopped near the Elbe by a German woman, a prophetess, who bade him return, and warned him that he was near his grave. The Valleda spoke the truth. On his return Drusus fell from his horse and died. To Tiberius was now given the command of the Roman forces in Germany. He had to wage war almost constantly against the tribes of Northwestern Germany. In the year 4 B.C., he advanced with a large army to the Elbe, while Roman fleets, sailing from Gaul and Britain, cooperated with the land forces. After this, peace prevailed for a number of years. It was the calm before the storm.
In the year 6 A.D. Quintilius Varus became governor of Germany. He attempted to Romanize the Germans, as the Gauls had been Romanized before. He believed, as many now pretend to believe, that all men (that were not Romans) were born equal. He had been proconsul of Syria before he came to Germany; and, accustomed to govern the depraved Eastern mongrels, thought that he might with equal impunity make himself "master absolute" of the Germans.
While this subjugation was attempted, the avenger of his people's wrongs, Herman, a prince of the Saxon tribe of the Cheruscans, was being raised up. He had served in the Roman army, and had been raised to the rank of the equestrian order. He had remained unbought by money and privileges, uncorrupted by the Roman poison. He was conscious of the power of Rome. He knew that the Roman legions in Germany were the best that Rome had, veterans in the highest state of equipment, officered by the most skilful of Roman generals, and ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular uprising might be attempted, and that half of Germany was occupied by Roman garrisons and covered by Roman fortifications.
The Germans, on the other hand, were ill-armed and undisciplined, without a single walled town, and without military stores. They had never stormed a fortification. There was no hope of foreign aid. The task of liberating Germany seemed hopeless. Nevertheless it was attempted. Herman, and other leaders of Northwestern Germany, formed a conspiracy and swore death to every Roman on German soil. To encounter the legions in a pitched battle would have been a suicidal undertaking. The Germans were ill armed and had no defensive armour. The Romans were fully equipped with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield. Stratagem was therefore indispensable. In order not to arouse the suspicion of Varus, the German chieftains continued to frequent his headquarters, until Herman gave the tribes the secret order to take up arms and collect near the Weser and Ems.
In order to quell the insurrection, Varus marched his legions thither. When he reached the Teutoburg forest, the time of the Germans had come. Woods, marshes, and ravines rendered the march difficult, and heavy rains increased the difficulties. Here the Germans fell upon the Romans. Here the battle was fought which decided the history of the world more than any other, either before or since. It was the bloodiest butchery which had yet befallen the Romans. The battle lasted three days. On the second day Numonius Vala attempted to escape with the cavalry of which he was the commander. The Germans intercepted the squadrons; the horsemen were overpowered and slaughtered to the last man. When all hope of success or escape had vanished, Varus fell upon his own sword, to escape captivity. The Roman infantry still held out. At last, on the third day, in a series of desperate attacks, led by Herman, the columns were broken through and the Romans either fell sword in hand or perished in the swamps in their effort at flight. Those who laid down their arms in hope of quarter were massacred on the spot. The few that were taken prisoners were offered up at the altars of the German gods.
Klopstock has the bards sing this hymn after the battle:
"Herman outspoke: 'Now victory or death.'
The Romans: 'Victory.'
And onward rushed their eagles with the cry.
So ended the first day.
"'Victory or death,' began
Then first the Roman chief; and Herman spoke
Not, but homestruck; the eagles fluttered — broke.
So sped the second day.
"And the third came — the cry was 'Flight or death.'
Flight left we not for them who'd make us slaves —
Men who stab children. Flight for them? No. Graves.
'Twas their last day."
At about the same time that the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg forest, the Roman garrisons were cut off throughout Germany, and within a few weeks the Romans were driven out of the country. Never was victory more decisive, never was the liberation of an oppressed people more complete. Rome was in an agony of terror. Suetonius tells us that even months after the battle, Augustus, in grief and alarm, beat his head against the wall and exclaimed, "Quintilius Varus, give me my legions back."
So great was the horror of the Romans, that they believed a number of terrific portents to have occurred at the time. The summits of the Alps were said to have fallen. Many comets blazed forth together. The statue of Victory, pointing toward Germany, had of its own account turned around and now pointed to Italy. The Romans recognized the importance of the German victory. And indeed, as the result of this battle, the face of the world was changed. By it were determined the characteristics of our own time. Its narrative forms as much a part of the national history of England as it does of Germany. For it was the fatherland of the English which the brave Teutons there rescued, and many of the men who fought in the battle were ancestors of the men and women who, four centuries later, crossed the German ocean to take possession of England.
Herman himself was a Saxon, for the Cherusci were a Saxon tribe; and with the Angles and Saxons came to England the spirit of Herman and of the old Saxons. It can be traced throughout England's history, and it is alive to-day. Herman is the one hero who belongs to all the Teutonic peoples; for, without that battle in the marshy glens between the Lippe and the Ems, there never would have been a rejuvenated Europe, and the race which is the greatest that the world has produced would have been destroyed by Roman promiscuity. That the Anglo-Saxons considered Herman as one of theirs is evident from the fact that traces of the divine honours that were paid to him for centuries in Germany are found also among the Anglo-Saxons, after their settlement in England. During the middle ages his fame survived both among the Germans and among the English, (v. E. C. Creasy, "Decisive Battles.")
In the year 15 A.D. Drusus, the son of the first Germanicus, attempted to avenge the terrible defeat sustained by Varus. With eighty thousand men he invaded Germany. He had no less than a thousand ships built to cooperate with the land forces. Drusus marched his army to the Teutoburg forest, and, in gloomy silence, the men passed the place of the awful carnage. Naked skulls stared down on them from the branches of the trees. The altars on which Roman centurions had been sacrificed to the gods were still standing. Drusus had the ghastly relics of the legions of Varus buried and had funeral honours paid to them. He advanced farther into the country and was met by Herman. A battle was fought, in which the Roman losses were so great that he resolved on retreating across the Rhine. Rome abandoned all hopes of ever avenging the death of Varus. Herman had secured the independence of the Teutonic race for ever.
When Drusus withdrew his legions, he had one legion retreat by land, and embarked with the others, in order to return to the Rhine by way of the North Sea. The fleet met with a severe tempest. Tacitus says: "A number of the ships went down, a greater number were driven out of their course to distant islands, and, as the islands were uninhabited, many of the soldiers perished of hunger. The trireme of Drusus ran ashore not far from the land of the Chauci. Day and night Drusus wandered about the rocks and projections of the coast, and accused himself of having caused the destruction of the fleet. It was with difficulty that his friends prevented him from seeking death in the same sea." While the misfortune that their fleet had encountered intimidated the Romans and scared them from the North Sea, it had the opposite effect on the Saxons. It awakened their naval genius, which so far had slumbered, and which was henceforth destined to play a most important part in the development of the world. They saw that the Romans were not able to cope with the northern gales and the uncouth northern sea. They saw, from the misfortune that the Romans had suffered, that the Roman vessels were not suitable for the North Sea, and their reason told them that their own imperfect boats were likewise inefficient.
They had to invent forms and constructions suitable to their needs. They succeeded in this in a remarkably short time. They soon became the terror of the coasts of Gaul and Britain, and the Romans had to recognize that, on the sea, they had found their master. As early as 47 A.D., the Romans experienced this. Gannask, a Saxon, led piratical expeditions to Gaul. The brave Saxon's name struck terror into the heart of Corbulo, the Roman governor, and he had Gannask secretly poisoned. The remarkable rapidity with which the seamanship of the Saxons developed is incontestably proved by the boat found in the Nydamer Moor in Schleswig. It is a perfectly seaworthy boat. It is certain that the Saxons used the sail very early, and that they discovered how to sail close to the wind, and to tack about.
Claudian, in "De laudibus Stilich, II," has Britannia say:
"Illius effectum curis, ne litore tuto
Prospicerem dubiis venturum Saxoni ventis," —
[Google translate: The effect of that induce his subjects to the shore in safety,
Prospicerem uncertain future Saxon winds,]
Fear the Saxons, even though the wind is against them. The Edda makes mention of this discovery, which the Saxons kept secret for centuries.
In the year 70 A.D. the Batavians, Frisii, and the Kaninefates, a Saxon tribe, rose against the Romans. The war began with unheard of fury. Whole cohorts of Romans were cut down; whole legions were made captives, and their prefects and centurions were killed. Brinno, a Saxon, unexpectedly attacked a Roman camp from the sea, cut the garrison down, and sacked the camp. The Romans considered their fleet endangered, and concentrated it in the Rhine. Brinno attacked it, and took all the twenty-four ships. Then Cerialis, the Roman commander, secured the aid of the Roman fleet from Britain. Again the valiant Saxons attacked it and sunk or took most of the vessels. A few days later the Romans suffered another naval defeat. The Saxons boarded the ships, overpowered the crew, and took the vessels. The ship of Cerialis they presented to their prophetess Velleda.
In the third century the Saxons undertook piratical expeditions, not only to Gaul and Britain, but into the Atlantic. They visited Spain, went through the Strait of Gibraltar and sacked Tarragona, laid Syracuse under contribution, made a landing in Egypt, sacked the cities on the coast of Greece, and returned. Their naval ability Hengist and Horsa and their followers took with them to England; and, like the spirit of Herman, it can be traced throughout England's history and is as alive to-day as ever.
Teutonic seamanship is superior to the seamanship of other races. This is shown by the fact that, provided the disparity was not too great, Teutonic seamen were never vanquished except by Teutonic seamen. In her naval wars with the Latin nations, England very rarely suffered defeat, and that only when the disparity was very great. Usually the English were victors, whatever the disparity of numbers. In England's wars with the Hansa, the Dutch, and the Americans, she was defeated as often as she was victorious. It takes Teutonic strength to break Teutonic strength.
As the decomposition of Rome increased, it had to leave Britain to herself. According to Saxon sources, Vortiger called Hengist and Horsa to aid him against the Picts and Scots. They defeated Vortiger's enemies; and he, in order to hold them in England for his protection, allotted them lands. Hengist and Horsa saw that the land was fair, and called other Saxons to Britain, in order to conquer the land they coveted. The Celts had to yield to them the south of Britain. This decided the fate of England; for it was the spirit of Herman, the spirit of the Saxons, that made England the power to which Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared. It is this spirit that made England the ruler of the waves. The racial characteristics of the Saxons differ as much from the racial characteristics of the Celts as the history of England differs from the history of Ireland.
It was in the year 449 A.D. that the three Saxon "keels" landed in England. Gildas says: "A multitude of whelps came from the lair of the barbaric lioness." They soon seized the land for themselves. Their conquest was the complete displacement of one people by another. The land was gained by the edge of the sword. They destroyed everything that Rome had left so completely that now there is no trace that a Latin speech ever was spoken at any time in England. The Saxons tell us that the Britons fled before them as from fire. The wars were wars of exterminations. It was a struggle for life and death. There was no blending of Saxons and Celts. Nowhere did the conquerors and the conquered live on side by side as the Lombards and Romans did in Italy.
It is true that the Saxons spared many women. It is true that British blood was infused into the English. But the quantity was so small that nature soon expelled everything Celtic that was out of harmony with the tendencies of the Teutonic race. The Celtic element does not exist in the English makeup. It was absorbed; and it is for this reason that the Celtic blood had no effect whatsoever on the national being of England. The English are as Teutonic to-day as they were in the time of Herman. When they came to England, they displaced the Britons everywhere. They accepted nothing from the Britons, neither language, customs, traditions, nor religion.
The conquest was a gradual one, spread over several centuries, so that the little British blood that was inoculated could be completely absorbed before more of it was injected. It was only after most of the land was thoroughly conquered, that is, after the old inhabitants of most of the land had been destroyed, that the Teutonic invaders began to carry on their conquest in such a fashion that death or flight was no longer the only alternative for the Britons. At this stage the Teutonic element in England was so strong that a slight infusion of British blood was no longer of racial importance. Moreover, the sentiments of Saxons and Celts were such as to prevent intermarriages.
It is for this reason that the conquest of England was never completed. A large part of Britain remained in Celtic hands, and the ancient race, their language, their customs, their traditions, lived on. A part of the island still speaks its ancient speech. Very gradually Wessex extended her dominion at the expense of the Britons. At first the Britons were either killed or forced to flee; later the Saxons were content with bringing them into subjugation. As late as the time of the laws of Ine (675-693) the Britons were considered an inferior class, an inferiority which their legal status expressed. The Briton's oath was of no value against the Saxon's word. A Briton's life was not considered as being of much value. This different legal status again had the effect of preventing any large infusion of British blood into English veins. The Britons were absorbed slowly. There never was promiscuity. By the time of Alfred (871-901), Wessex had become purely English.
It seems as if the naval genius of the Saxons had succumbed during the centuries of the conquest of England. For centuries we hear nothing of their seamanship. They seemed to have forgotten the time in which they were a power on the ocean. It was another Teutonic tribe that aroused them. The Danes visited England, and devastated the country, for the Saxons had neither ships nor seamen to oppose them. The Scandinavian incursions continued until the time of Alfred.
Alfred recognized that the Saxons would be able to navigate as soon as they were aboard. He therefore had war-vessels constructed by Frisian workmen from designs made by himself; and, as early as 872, in the second year of his reign, the Vikings were defeated off the coast of Dorsetshire. At first Alfred's crew consisted of Frisians. When, however, twenty-five years later, the sea-king Hasting, after he had sacked Wight and Devonshire, was met by an English fleet, the vessels that defeated him were manned by Englishmen. Alfred's fleet is the beginning of the English navy. He roused the old Saxon spirit, and England continued to develop it until she became the mistress of the ocean.
The Normans, finding the Saxons strong on the element they considered their own, now turned to Gaul, and in 912 took possession of Normandy. Not content with Normandy, the Normans coveted England, and in 1066 Duke William, with about sixty thousand men, crossed the channel. The English navy, by a strange fatality, could not be there to intercept him. He landed on the 14th day of October, 1066, and the hostile forces met near Hastings. A harder battle was never fought in England. The Saxons were defeated, and William became king of England. The history of England after 1066 is not the history of a new race. Normans and English sprang from the same parent stock; and although they had become differentiated to an extent, the deviation was not yet great. Nevertheless, several centuries passed before they were completely blended. The infusion of Norman blood was no crossing, and consequently did not interfere with the development of the English race.
The Normans brought a Roman tongue with them; the English language, however, did not become Latinized. It is true that, of the words in the English dictionary, only one-quarter are original English words. The number of words between the two covers of a book is, however, of very little significance; the words used in speaking and writing alone are of importance, and the words so used, the words of the Bible, of literature, of the street, of business, of the fireside, include all the Teutonic words and only a very small number of the other words. About ninety per cent, of the words used in an ordinary book are Teutonic words. In scientific treatises the number of Anglo-Saxon words is very much smaller. Scientific men of every Teutonic nation still prefer semi-Latin to their mother tongue, and the pseudo-scientists find a Latin word or a Latin phrase most convenient to conceal the absence of a thought.
Most of the English idioms are Teutonic, and many are common to both the German and the English languages. They cannot, in spite of slight deviations, deny their common origin. Thus, the German is blind as a "mole," his English cousin is blind as a "bat;" the former is "over his ears," the latter "over head and and ears," in love. The German girl is as "homely as night," the English girl as "homely as sin;" the former is as cold as "ice " and hands him a "basket," the latter is as cold as a "cucumber" and hands out "mittens." The German is "outside of himself," the Englishman is "beside himself." Later, the former laughs "in the fist," the latter "in the sleeve." The former has "his hand in the game," the latter only "his finger in the pie." The former "escapes with a blue eye," the latter with "a black eye." The German takes time by "the top lock," the Englishman by the "forelock." At last the German "bites the grass," the Englishman "the dust." Both cross the bar, and the former goes to the " great army," the latter to the "majority," and so forth. Not only are all the words that are in common use Teutonic, but the words of foreign origin must conform themselves to Teutonic usage. English is therefore in every respect a Teutonic language.
In 1204 England lost Normandy. This was a fortunate event, for thereafter the prejudices that the Normans entertained against the English abated. Normans and English recognized that there were no essential differences between them, that they were one race, and one people.
Teutonic people were always characterized by their love of independence and the love of their free institutions. A loss of these could never be more than temporary; and it was the assertion of this spirit which forced King John to grant the Great Charter, which provided that:
"No free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers or the law of the land.
"Justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
"All dues from the people to the king, unless otherwise distinctly specified, shall be imposed only with the consent of the National Council."
The charter rendered secure to the English the free institutions, which had been theirs since time out of mind. It was this same spirit that dethroned Edward II, and the same spirit that demanded the emancipation of the working classes.
It is the same Anglo-Saxon spirit that in Scotland resisted the English. Scotland resisted because it refused to become a part of England on unfair terms. "Scotland," says Carlyle, "is not Ireland. No. Because men arose there and said, ' Behold ye must not tread us down like slaves, and ye shall not, and ye cannot.'" They might have added: "For we are Saxons, like yourself."
Part of England was at an early time detached from England to form a part of Scotland, and it is from this southern part of Scotland that the Anglo-Saxon character and the English language spread with English blood over Scotland. It is from this southern, Anglo-Saxon Scotland that the stubborn resistance against England came. The Celts of Scotland, the Scots proper, had nothing to do with it. Bruce, Hastings, Balliol, and the other brave men that Carlyle alludes to, were essentially Englishmen. The Anglo-Saxons of Southern Scotland had adopted Scottish names and had acquired a patriotism hostile to England. That, however, did not change their race. And the Anglo-Saxons of England found it impossible to impose conditions upon the Anglo-Saxons of Scotland which they themselves would have refused to accept. It was on just and equal terms only that Scotland became a part of England. It is from the Anglo-Saxon Scotland that the great men of Scotland came.
The spirit of rebellion against authority is a trait of the Teutons. This same spirit, which characterized Luther, also characterized Wickliffe. Wickliffe's place in religion, in political history, and in the history of English literature is analogous to that of Luther in the history of Germany. The kinship cannot be denied. It was at about this same time that the merchant adventurers began to compete successfully with the Hansa. Here again it took Teutonic strength to break Teutonic strength. It was the Hansa spirit that animated the bold adventurers, for both were animated by the old Saxon spirit.
The reformation was preached. Its hero, Luther, was a man of a Teutonic race, and he found his followers chiefly among men of the Teutonic stock. In the time of Henry VIII steps were taken which made reformation in England inevitable. England entered the lists in the spirit of the new doctrine. England was its place of refuge in the gloomy days of the Smalkaldic war. Elizabeth ascended to the throne. Never did a greater monarch sit on any throne. Now the English Church was organized in the spirit of the reformation on the Continent, on a strictly national foundation.
This meant opposition to Spain. The power of Spain was then at its height. The resources of England to cope with it seemed most scanty. At her accession Elizabeth had found an encumbered revenue, a foreign war, a divided people, and a pretender to the crown. Many of her subjects looked upon her as an heretical usurper. England had no ally against Spain except the Dutch. Philip II desired to strike a decisive blow at England, the bulwark of Protestantism, and he fitted out his "Invincible Armada."
Again, as in the time of Herman, Teutonism and Latinism stood against each other. "The fate of humanity was in the balance," writes Ranke. It was the spirit of Herman, however, that animated England.
The spirit of the old Saxons was alive in Francis Drake, the "arch-pirate," the terror of every Spanish coast; in John Hawkins, in Martin Frobisher, in Lord Howard, in Walter Raleigh, and in the other brave mariners aboard the English ships. The English Catholics fought for their country as valiantly as the Protestants. The whole energy of Spain was directed toward the equipment of the Armada. In 1587 Drake dashed into the port of Cadiz and destroyed many of the Spanish ships. This delayed the sailing of the fleet for a year. In May the Armada sailed. It consisted of 129 large vessels, carried 27,755 men, besides slaves as rowers, and 2,431 cannons.
The ships of the royal English navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but, by the addition of merchantmen, it was increased to about one hundred and eighty vessels. These carried about eighteen thousand men, but they had not half the weight of the Spanish artillery, and were scantily supplied with ammunition and provision. In spite of the disparity of numbers, the English commenced the engagement. The English ships were so admirably handled that the Spaniards found it impossible to inflict any injury on them. For more than a week the English harassed the Armada, and had the ammunition held out, the English would have completely destroyed it. As it was, the injury inflicted was enormous.
The Spaniards, rather than face the English fleet again, resolved on retreating by the North Sea. Howard and Drake chased them for some distance northward, till the want of provision compelled them to return. "They left them," as Drake said, "to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas." Fifty-four shattered vessels reached Spain, and they conveyed only nine thousand men. " The Armada did not in all their sailing around about England so much as sink or take one ship, barque, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheepcote on this land " (Drake). (v. E. C. Creasy, " Decisive Battles.")
Protestants were jubilant everywhere. With resounding steps England took the leadership of the world. Wealth and well-being increased, and commerce expanded. In a short time England's flag waved on every sea.
During the revolution, Cromwell, that epitome of everything Anglo-Saxon, saw that, if the country was to be kept together, it must be by decided measures which neither law nor constitution justified. He was not a zealot, yet he conducted a war of extermination against the Irish. He was not a tyrant, yet he expelled Parliament and made himself protector. He knew what England needed. He was cruel, it is true; but deliberate cruelty, when necessary, has always been, since the time of the Sagamen, a trait of the Teutonic races. And who will deny that they accomplished most where they were most cruel; as, for instance, the Anglo-Saxons in England, the Teutonic Order in Prussia, and the Anglo-Saxons in America?
After the revolution, in the consciousness of her strength, England dictated a law to the whole world, the Navigation Act. Since that time England has continued to expand and to increase in power and wealth. Not even the loss of her best American colonies weakened England materially. England attempted to force America to become a part of the English empire on unfair and tyrannical terms; she encountered, however, the same spirit that animates herself, the Saxon spirit, with its love for free national institutions, and consequently she failed. In 1782 England had to acknowledge the independence of her former colonies.
In the Napoleonic wars it was the spirit of the Saxons that led England from victory to victory. It was that spirit which ran up the signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." It was the spirit of Herman that fought with Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo. After the Napoleonic wars, England was supreme, and forced her will on the European powers. England's constitution represents the development of the old free national institutions of the Saxons. It is their spirit that made England the leader in the development of constitutional government. To this spirit are due the Great Charter, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, the Bill of Attainder, and the Habeas Corpus Act.
The English colonial empire is not as old as its magnitude leads us to think. In Elizabeth's time there was not a single English settlement outside of Europe. All attempts at colonization, from those of Hore in the time of Henry VIII to those of Gilbert and Raleigh, had proved failures, and even in Ireland there were very few English colonists. It was in the eighteenth century that the English empire expanded to enormous proportions. The battle of Arcot, 1751, gave England control of Southern India. The battle of Plassey, 1757, permanently established the English power in India. As a result of the Seven Years' War in Europe and America, England gained an empire in America. Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Bahama Islands she took from Spain; South Africa, Guiana, and Ceylon from Holland. In the year 1788 England commenced to deport convicts to Botany Bay; to-day Australia is one of the leaders of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The same is true of New Zealand. At the time of Queen Victoria's accession, England had an area of less than 3,000,000 square miles; to-day more than one-fifth of the earth is under English rule. The English realm embraces about twelve million square miles. During Queen Victoria's reign about one hundred and fifty thousand square miles on the average were added every year to England's possession. Anglo-Saxon enterprise is now transforming Egypt.
The southern extremity of every continent is in one form or another in England's hands. Nearly all the narrow friths and straits are under English control. No ship can pass them without England's good will. The eastern passage from England to Japan is controlled by the following possessions: Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, the Suez Canal, Aden, Socotra, Ceylon, Singapore, North Borneo, and Hongkong. England expects to control the western passage to Japan, by way of the Panama Canal, as effectually as the eastern passage, by the possession of the chain of islands that stretches from Florida to South America, — the Bahama Islands, St. Croix, Anguilla, Barbuda, Antigua, Dominica, S. Lucia, Barbadoes, Grenada, and Trinidad, and by the possession of Jamaica and British Honduras in Central America, and Guiana in South America.
In South Africa England is not as strong to-day as she was before the Boer War. England, by destroying the homes of thirty thousand Boers, sacrificing twenty-two thousand of her own men, and spending more than one billion dollars, has succeeded in consolidating the Boers and in making them more powerful than they ever were before the war. The English bona-fide settlers (not the vagrants that gathered about Johannesburg) are supporting the Boers, because they recognize that the Boers knew more about the negroes than Downing Street.
Before the white man came to Africa, the negro's property and the negro's life had no value whatsoever; to-day the white man gives him protection. The white man builds streets and railways. The negro accepts and makes full use of these gifts, and does voluntarily nothing in return. In America and in Europe men are taxed; that is, they pay for the protection that the state gives them; in Europe every healthy man is in addition liable to military duty. There is no reason whatsoever why the negro should not be taxed so that he is forced to work. The English settlers agree with the Boers that work alone will raise the negro to that very moderate degree of civilization which he is capable of producing. They agree with the Boers that the English native policy is most pernicious. Is it not the height of folly that coolies are imported to do some of the necessary work in a country that abounds in healthy muscle?
The taxation of the white man is not considered a brutality; why should the taxation of the black man be considered a brutality? It is not true that the white man is taxed according to his income. He is taxed without regard to his income; and, in order to be able to pay that tax (in the form of the higher prices of food and other necessaries, such as rent), he is forced to work. If he cannot pay that tax, he becomes a vagrant, and soon lands in the penitentiary, where forced labour is exacted from him. Why a system of taxation, which is considered just in the case of the white man, is slavery in the case of the black man, reason fails to grasp.
The present system prevents the development of Africa. As long as the superiority of the white man is not recognized, as long as his superiority finds no adequate expression in his legal status, the white man cannot prosper in Africa. This system is not less detrimental to the black man; because it makes him, for the sake of theoretical considerations and liberality phrases, a lazy lout. It encourages slavery; for the negro, instead of working, forces his wives to work, and keeps them in most abject slavery. Probably reason will eventually prevail, for the good of the white man as well as for the good of the black man. The Teutonic genius has solved more difficult problems than the negro problem.
Vast as the English empire is, its boundaries do not mark the limit of England's power. Portugal has for generations been England's obedient vassal. Belgium and Holland, mere splinters of a nation, suffering from the paranoical delusion that they are complete nationalities, must on account of that delusion be the shield- bearers, the knaves of England. Spain is in the position of Portugal. The South American herds owe their national existence to England.
When Canning, referring to South America, said, "I have called the new world into being in order to establish the equilibrium in the old," he stated a fact. Many of these so-called republics, among them Chili, are England's vassals. Several of the Balkan states owe their nominal independence to England, and the pariahs of that part of the world are England's serfs. One of these countries is Greece. When the king of "independent Greece," Otho the Bavarian, refused to be England's "man," England secured his dethronement. Since then the Greek rulers have been on their good behaviour. France follows England's leadership, and in the Far East, Japan is doing England's work.
"England is a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared," said Webster. At that time England's foothold in India was uncertain, the settlement of Australia, New Zealand, and Africa had scarcely commenced. To-day, with the expansion which took place in the last hundred years, the British Empire is the most extensive, the most populous, the greatest that the world has ever seen. More than seventy per cent, of the world's commerce is in its hands. In industries, in manufactures, in agricultural and pastoral pursuits, the British Empire is second to none. Sixty per cent, of the merchantmen of the world wave the English flag. As a naval power England is supreme.
In her literature, in her science, is readily recognized that fearless spirit of investigation, that spirit of rebellion against authority in religion as in science, which is the heirloom of all Teutonic races. Who can deny that a kindred spirit animates Darwin, Lyell, Livingstone, Tyndall, Spencer, Kant, Huxley, Haeckel, Shakespeare, Gothe, Wickliffe, Luther, Parker, Channing, the Dissenters, in fact, all Teutonic thinkers, and the Sagamen of old, who yielded to no power, who took a buffet from the "All Father" himself and returned it?
It is the doubting attitude of mind, which is as far removed from atheism as it is from superstition, that characterizes all Teutonic thinkers. They are, in a certain sense, all mystics; the deepest of Teutonic minds, Shakespeare and Gothe, not less so than the Sagaman of old. Compare Hamlet, Faust, and the old Teutonic songs. "Who knows God, who knows him not?" And is not this true also of Kant ("Critic of Practical Reason"), and of Spencer, when he declares that the one thing we know more certainly than anything else in the world is the existence of an infinite and eternal energy back of all phenomena, from which all things proceed; that this energy is akin to us; that that which wells up in us under the form of consciousness is of the same essence as this infinite and eternal energy? Is it not true of Huxley, when he says that, as an honourable scientist, if he were compelled to choose between Buchner and Berkeley, he would be obliged to stand with Berkeley? Is it not true of Tyndall, who tells us that it is utterly impossible to explain consciousness in any materialistic way; that the gulf between matter, force, and consciousness is as impassable in the height of modern science as it was to primeval man?
In literature and in science the old spirit is alive. England is great because Englishmen are great; Englishmen are great because the spirit of their ancestors is alive in them; and that spirit is alive in them because the blood that courses in their veins is the blood that rolled in the veins of the old Saxons. Never have Englishmen practised promiscuity, never have they vitiated their blood. This race purity makes the English the greatest and the strongest of races.
There are a few people the nationality of which is a biological fact. The English is one of them. In that sense the English dictum, "Once an Englishman, always an Englishman," is certainly true. Citizenship, allegiance to a country, is something external, superficial, temporary, and revocable. Nationality is something inborn, sacred, irrevocable. A little ink on a little piece of paper changes a man's citizenship. Nationality is changed only by destroying it. Men of a distinct nationality can become absorbed by another nation if that nation is of a strong race and sufficiently numerous. In that case several generations make the descendants of these men members of that other race. Nature expels everything that is out of harmony with that race. Where no such absorption is possible, nationality is destroyed by promiscuity alone; and it takes several generations of promiscuity before the destruction is complete. Change of nationality in the latter case always and without exception leads to deterioration, degeneration, and ultimately to utter depravity. The mongrel is worthless.
Allegiance to a state is a matter of convenience and of choice; nationality is a matter of necessity. It is the epitome of the capacities, tendencies, and labours of many generations. Nationality is infinitely better than citizenship, just as blood is better than ink.
The English became great, because they remained true to themselves, true to their race instincts. Their conservative adherence to race, their repulsion of foreign races, is the source of their greatness.
The innate qualities of the race have, in peace and war, won imperishable glory. Who can doubt that its future will be as great as its past?
Note. "Then comes another,
Yet more mighty.
But him dare I not
Venture to name.
Few farther may look
Than to where Wodan
To meet the wolf goes."
-- The Edda.