Curiosities of Literature Volume I Part 26

The t.i.tles which some chiefs a.s.sume are not always honourable in themselves; it is sufficient if the people respect them. The king of Quiterva calls himself the _great lion_; and for this reason lions are there so much respected, that they are not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings.

The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as _lord of the sun and moon_; _great magician_; and _great thief!_--where probably thievery is merely a term for dexterity.

The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridiculous t.i.tles of honour on their _princes_. The king of Arracan a.s.sumes the following ones: "Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet."

His majesty of Ava is called _G.o.d_: when he writes to a foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of all animals; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of the four-and-twenty umbrellas!

These umbrellas are always carried before him as a mark of his dignity.

The t.i.tles of the kings of Achem are singular, though voluminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the universe, whose body is luminous as the sun; whom G.o.d created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude; whose eye glitters like the northern star; a king as spiritual as a ball is round; who when he rises shades all his people; from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c. &c.

The Kandyan sovereign is called _Dewo_ (G.o.d). In a deed of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. "The protector of religion, whose fame is infinite, and of surpa.s.sing excellence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessamine buds, the stars, &c.; whose feet are as fragrant to the noses of other kings as flowers to bees; our most n.o.ble patron and G.o.d by custom," &c.

After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinctions: _the branch of honour_; _the mirror of virtue_; and _the rose of delight_.

ROYAL DIVINITIES.

There is a curious dissertation in the "Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," by the Abbe Mongault, "on the divine honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman republic;" in their lifetime these originally began in grat.i.tude, and at length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate unperceivably on it, and blind us in our absurdities. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ludicrous. When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the G.o.ds in the festival called _Lectisternium_, from the ridiculous circ.u.mstances of this solemn festival. On that day the G.o.ds were invited to a repast, which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate mouths more mortal. The G.o.ds were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their temples; pillows were placed under their marble heads; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with a magnificent repast. When Caesar had conquered Rome, the servile senate put him to dine with the G.o.ds! Fatigued by and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capitol the t.i.tle they had given him of a _demi-G.o.d_!

The adulations lavished on the first Roman emperors were extravagant; but perhaps few know that they were less offensive than the flatterers of the third century under the Pagan, and of the fourth under the Christian emperors. Those who are acquainted with the character of the age of Augustulus have only to look at the one, and the other _code_, to find an infinite number of pa.s.sages which had not been tolerable even in that age. For instance, here is a law of Arcadius and Honorius, published in 404:--

"Let the officers of the palace be warned to abstain from frequenting tumultuous meetings; and that those who, instigated by a _sacrilegious_ temerity, dare to oppose the authority of _our divinity_, shall be deprived of their employments, and their estates confiscated." The letters they write are _holy_. When the sons speak of their fathers, it is, "Their father of _divine_ memory;" or "Their _divine_ father." They call their own laws _oracles_, and _celestial_ oracles. So also their subjects address them by the t.i.tles of "_Your Perpetuity_, _your Eternity._" And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the emperors at length added this to their t.i.tles. It begins, "If any magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather than that of _Our Perpetuity_, let him be judged guilty of high-treason." All this reminds one of "the celestial empire" of the Chinese.

Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, "Wonder! wonder!

wonder!" And a proverb current in his dominion was, "If the king saith at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars!"

Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign without knowing what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on the throne, and it was he, rather than the spectators, who might have truly used the interjection of astonishment!

DETHRONED MONARCHS

Fortune never appears in a more extravagant humour than when she reduces monarchs to become mendicants. Half a century ago it was not imagined that our own times should have to record many such instances. After having contemplated _kings_ raised into _divinities_, we see them now depressed as _beggars_. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may emphatically be distinguished as the _age of kings_.

In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire's.

Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation, they are discovered to be _eight monarchs_ in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns!

What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were eight living monarchs at that moment wanderers on the earth;--a circ.u.mstance which has since occurred!

Adelaide, the widow of Lothario, king of Italy, one of the most beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by Berenger, who resolved to constrain her to marry his son after Pavia was taken; she escaped from her prison with her almoner. The archbishop of Reggio had offered her an asylum: to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on foot through the country by night, concealing herself in the day-time among the corn, while the almoner begged for alms and food through the villages.

The emperor Henry IV. after having been deposed and imprisoned by his son, Henry V., escaped from prison; poor, vagrant, and without aid, he entreated the bishop of Spires to grant him a lay prebend in his church.

"I have studied," said he, "and have learned to sing, and may therefore be of some service to you." The request was denied, and he died miserably and obscurely at Liege, after having drawn the attention of Europe to his victories and his grandeur!

Mary of Medicis, the widow of Henry the Great, mother of Louis XIII., mother-in-law of three sovereigns, and regent of France, frequently wanted the necessaries of life, and died at Cologne in the utmost misery. The intrigues of Richelieu compelled her to exile herself, and live an unhappy fugitive. Her pet.i.tion exists, with this supplicatory opening: "Supplie Marie, Reine de France et de Navarre, disant, que depuis le 23 Fevrier elle aurait ete arretee prisonniere au chateau de Compiegne, sans etre ni accusee ni soupconne," &c. Lilly, the astrologer, in his Life and Death of King Charles the First, presents us with a melancholy picture of this unfortunate monarch. He has also described the person of the old queen-mother of France:--

"In the month of August, 1641, I beheld the old queen-mother of France departing from London, in company of Thomas, Earl of Arundel. A sad spectacle of mortality it was, and produced tears from mine eyes and many other beholders, to see an aged, lean, decrepit, poor queen, ready for her grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no place of residence in this world left her, but where the courtesy of her hard fortune a.s.signed it. She had been the only stately and magnificent woman of Europe: wife to the greatest king that ever lived in France; mother unto one king and unto two queens."

In the year 1595, died at Paris, Antonio, king of Portugal. His body is interred at the Cordeliers, and his heart deposited at the Ave-Maria.

Nothing on earth could compel this prince to renounce his crown. He pa.s.sed over to England, and Elizabeth a.s.sisted him with troops; but at length he died in France in great poverty. This dethroned monarch was happy in one thing, which is indeed rare: in all his miseries he had a servant, who proved a tender and faithful friend, and who only desired to partic.i.p.ate in his misfortunes, and to soften his miseries; and for the recompense of his services he only wished to be buried at the feet of his dear master. This hero in loyalty, to whom the ancient Romans would have raised altars, was Don Diego Bothei, one of the greatest lords of the court of Portugal, and who drew his origin from the kings of Bohemia.

Hume supplies an anecdote of singular royal distress. The queen of England, with her son Charles, "had a moderate pension a.s.signed her; but it was so ill paid, and her credit ran so low, that one morning when the Cardinal de Retz waited on her, she informed him that her daughter, the Princess Henrietta, was obliged to lie a-bed for want of a fire to warm her. To such a condition was reduced, in the midst of Paris, a queen of England, and a daughter of Henry IV. of France!" We find another proof of her extreme poverty. Salmasius, after publis.h.i.+ng his celebrated political book, in favour of Charles I., the _Defensio Regia_, was much blamed by a friend for not having sent a copy to the widowed queen of Charles, who, he writes, "though poor, would yet have paid the bearer."

The daughter of James the First, who married the Elector Palatine, in her attempts to get her husband crowned, was reduced to the utmost distress, and wandered frequently in disguise.

A strange anecdote is related of Charles VII. of France. Our Henry V.

had shrunk his kingdom into the town of Bourges. It is said that having told a shoemaker, after he had just tried a pair of his boots, that he had no money to pay for them, Crispin had such callous feelings that he refused his majesty the boots. "It is for this reason," says Comines, "I praise those princes who are on good terms with the lowest of their people; for they know not at what hour they may want them."

Many monarchs of this day have experienced more than once the truth of the reflection of Comines.

We may add here, that in all conquered countries the descendants of royal families have been found among the dregs of the populace. An Irish prince has been discovered in the person of a miserable peasant; and in Mexico, its faithful historian Clavigero notices, that he has known a locksmith, who was a descendant of its ancient kings, and a tailor, the representative of one of its n.o.blest families.

FEUDAL CUSTOMS.

Barbarous as the feudal customs were, they were the first attempts at organising European society. The northern nations, in their irruptions and settlements in Europe, were barbarians independent of each other, till a sense of public safety induced these hordes to confederate. But the private individual reaped no benefit from the public union; on the contrary, he seems to have lost his wild liberty in the subjugation; he in a short time was compelled to suffer from his chieftain; and the curiosity of the philosopher is excited by contemplating in the feudal customs a barbarous people carrying into their first social inst.i.tutions their original ferocity. The inst.i.tution of forming cities into communities at length gradually diminished this military and aristocratic tyranny; and the freedom of cities, originating in the pursuits of commerce, shook off the yoke of insolent lords.h.i.+ps. A famous ecclesiastical writer of that day, who had imbibed the feudal prejudices, calls these communities, which were distinguished by the name of _libertates_ (hence probably our munic.i.p.al term the _liberties_), as "execrable inventions, by which, contrary to law and justice, slaves withdrew themselves from that obedience which they owed to their masters." Such was the expiring voice of aristocratic tyranny!

This subject has been ingeniously discussed by Robertson in his preliminary volume to Charles V.; but the following facts const.i.tute the picture which the historian leaves to be gleaned by the minuter inquirer.

The feudal government introduced a species of servitude which till that time was unknown, and which was called the servitude of the land. The bondmen or serfs, and the villains or country servants, did not reside in the house of the lord: but they entirely depended on his caprice; and he sold them, as he did the animals, with the field where they lived, and which they cultivated.

It is difficult to conceive with what insolence the petty lords of those times tyrannized over their villains: they not only oppressed their slaves with unremitted labour, instigated by a vile cupidity, but their whim and caprice led them to inflict miseries without even any motive of interest.

In Scotland they had a shameful inst.i.tution of maiden-rights; and Malcolm the Third only abolished it, by ordering that they might be redeemed by a quit-rent. The truth of this circ.u.mstance Dalrymple has attempted, with excusable patriotism, to render doubtful. There seems, however, to be no doubt of the existence of this custom; since it also spread through Germany, and various parts of Europe; and the French barons extended their domestic tyranny to three nights of involuntary prost.i.tution. Montesquieu is infinitely French, when he could turn this shameful species of tyranny into a _bon mot_; for he boldly observes on this, "_C'etoit bien ces trois nuits-la, qu'il falloit choisir; car pour les autres on n'auroit pas donne beaucoup d'argent_." The legislator in the wit forgot the feelings of his heart.

Others, to preserve this privilege when they could not enjoy it in all its extent, thrust their leg booted into the bed of the new-married couple. This was called the _droit de cuisse_. When the bride was in bed, the esquire or lord performed this ceremony, and stood there, his thigh in the bed, with a lance in his hand: in this ridiculous att.i.tude he remained till he was tired; and the bridegroom was not suffered to enter the chamber till his lords.h.i.+p had retired. Such indecent privileges must have originated in the worst of intentions; and when afterwards they advanced a step in more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved from avaricious motives. Others have compelled their subjects to pa.s.s the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consummate their marriage; to pa.s.s the bridal hours in a river; or to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as they were dragged; or to leap with their feet tied over the horns of stags.

Sometimes their caprice commanded the bridegroom to appear in drawers at their castle, and plunge into a ditch of mud; and sometimes they were compelled to beat the waters of the ponds to hinder the frogs from disturbing the lord!

Wards.h.i.+p, or the privilege of guardians.h.i.+p enjoyed by some lords, was one of the barbarous inventions of the feudal ages; the guardian had both the care of the person, and for his own use the revenue of the estates. This feudal custom was so far abused in England, that the king sold these lords.h.i.+ps to strangers; and when the guardian had fixed on a marriage for the infant, if the youth or maiden did not agree to this, they forfeited the value of the marriage; that is, the sum the guardian would have obtained by the other party had it taken place. This cruel custom was a source of domestic unhappiness, particularly in love-affairs, and has served as the ground-work of many a pathetic play by our elder dramatists.

There was a time when the German lords reckoned amongst their privileges that of robbing on the highways of their territory; which ended in raising up the famous Hanseatic Union, to protect their commerce against rapine and avaricious exactions of toll.

Geoffrey, lord of Coventry, compelled his wife to ride naked on a white pad through the streets of the town; that by this mode he might restore to the inhabitants those privileges of which his wantonness had deprived them. This anecdote some have suspected to be fict.i.tious, from its extreme barbarity; but the character of the middle ages will admit of any kind of wanton barbarism.

When the abbot of Figeac made his entry into that town, the lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, and one of his legs naked, was compelled by an ancient custom to conduct him to the door of his abbey, leading his horse by the bridle. Blount's "Jocular Tenures" is a curious collection of such capricious clauses in the grants of their lands.[57]

The feudal barons frequently combined to share among themselves those children of their villains who appeared to be the most healthy and serviceable, or remarkable for their talent; and not unfrequently sold them in their markets.

The feudal servitude is not, even in the present enlightened times, abolished in Poland, in Germany, and in Russia. In those countries, the bondmen are still entirely dependent on the caprice of their masters.

The peasants of Hungary or Bohemia frequently revolt, and attempt to shake off the pressure of feudal tyranny.

An anecdote of comparatively recent date displays their unfeeling caprice. A lord or prince of the northern countries pa.s.sing through one of his villages, observed a small a.s.sembly of peasants and their families amusing themselves with dancing. He commands his domestics to part the men from the women, and confine them in the houses. He orders the coats of the women to be drawn up above their heads, and tied with their garters. The men were then liberated, and those who did not recognise their wives in that state received a severe castigation.