Philip on the other hand assembled the states of his realm at the Louvre, and presented to them a new act of accusation against Boniface, in which he was charged with the most detestable and unnatural crimes. It was voted that an appeal should be made to a new pope and a general council, and so general was the disapprobation of the pontiff's ambitious schemes, that the greater part of the French ecclesiastical dignitaries, including nine cardinals, sent in their adhesion to the appeal.

Boniface met the storm with firmness; he replied to the charges urged against him with more temper than could have been anticipated, but he secretly prepared a bull of excommunication, depriving Philip of his throne, and anathematizing his posterity to the fourth generation.

This final burst of hostility was delayed until the 8th of September (A. D. 1303), when the Romish church celebrates the nativity of the blessed Virgin, and Boniface awaited the day in the city of Anagni.

On the eve of the Virgin's nativity the pope had retired to rest, having arranged his plans of vengeance for the following day; he was suddenly roused by cries of "Long live Philip! Death to Boniface!" Nogaret, at the command of the king of France, had entered Anagni with three hundred cavaliers, and being joined by some of the townsmen, was forcing his way into the palace. Sciarra Colonna and Nogaret rushed together into the chamber of Boniface; they found the old man clothed in his pontifical robes, seated on his throne, waiting their approach with unshaken dignity. They made him their prisoner, and prepared for his removal to France until a general council. But Nogaret having unwisely delayed three days at Anagni, the citizens and the neighboring peasants united to liberate the pontiff; Colonna and his French allies were forced to abandon their prey, and could only save their lives by a rapid flight. Boniface hastened to Rome; but fatigue, anxiety, and vexation, brought on a violent fever, which soon put an end to his troubled life.

The reign of Boniface was fatal to the papal power; he exaggerated its pretensions at the moment when the world had begun to discover the weakness of its claims; in the attempt to extend his influence further than any of his predecessors, he exhausted the sources of his strength, and none of his successors, however ardent, ventured to revive pretensions which had excited so many wars, shed so much blood, and dethroned so many kings. The priesthood and the empire, fatigued by so long and disastrous a struggle, desired tranquillity, but tranquillity was for the court of Rome a political death. The illusion of its own omnipotence vanished with the agitations by which it had been produced, and new principles of action began to be recognised in its policy.

The death of Boniface marks an important era in the history of Popery; from this time we shall see it concentrating its strength, and husbanding its resources; fighting only on the defensive, it no longer provokes the hostility of kings, or seeks cause of quarrel with the emperors. The bulls that terrified Christendom must repose as literary curiosities in the archives of St. Angelo, and though the claims to universal supremacy will not be renounced, there will be no effort made to enforce them. A few pontiffs will be found now and then reviving

the claims of Gregory, of Innocent, and of Boniface; but their attempts will be found desultory and of brief duration, like the last flashes, fierce but few, that break out from the ashes of a conflagration.

Benedict XI., the successor of Boniface, hasted to exhibit proofs of the moderation which results from defeat. Without waiting for any solicitation, he absolved Philip the Fair from the anathemas fulminated against him by Boniface; recalled the Colonnas from exile, and encouraged the Roman people to restore the ancient inheritance of that illustrious family; finally, he exerted himself to reconcile the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Tuscany, but unfortunately without effect. His early death prepared the way for a new crisis, in which the political system of the papacy was destined to suffer greater shocks than any to which it had been yet exposed, and to give fresh proofs that it could not be improved, even by the stern lessons of adversity.

SECTION XIV.-State of England and the Northern Kingdoms at the Commencement of the Fourteenth Century.

WILLIAM the Conqueror reduced the Saxon population of England to the most degrading state of vassalage, but he could not destroy the love and memory of their ancient laws and liberties retained by the nation. His sons, William Rufus, and Henry I., were successively enabled to seize the throne in prejudice of the rights of their elder brother Robert, by promising to restore the ancient laws of the kingdom. Henry, to conciliate the English more effectually, married a princess of Saxon descent; on his death he bequeathed the crown to the surviving child by this marriage, Matilda, the wife of Geoffry Plantagenet, earl of Anjou. This arrangement was defeated by the usurpation of Stephen: England was convulsed by a civil war, which was terminated by Stephen's adopting Henry, Matilda's son, as his successor.

Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet dynasty, on ascending the throne, united to England the dutchy of Normandy, the county of Anjou, and the fairest provinces of northwestern France (A. D. 1154). To these he added the more important acquisition of Ireland, partly by a papal donation, and partly by right of conquest.

Ireland was at this period divided into five petty sovereignties, whose monarchs harassed each other by mutual wars, and could rarely be induced to combine for their common interest. The island had been frequently devastated, and once completely subdued, by the Danes; several septs of these foreigners retained possession of the chief commercial cities, and even the king of Man was formidable to a country distracted by intestine wars. When their Norman brethren conquered England, the Danes in Ireland entered into a close correspondence with William and his successors, a circumstance which probably first suggested to Henry the notion of conquering the island. He applied to the pope for a sanction of his enterprise. Adrian, the only Englishman that ever filled the papal throne, was at that time the reigning pontiff; his desire to gratify his native sovereign was stimulated by his anxiety to extend the papal authority. The Irish church had been long independent of Rome; and the connexion between its prelates and the papacy was as yet insecure; it was therefore on the condition of

subjecting Ireland to the jurisdiction of the Romish church that a bull was issued, granting Henry permission to invade the country. The bitter feuds in the Plantagenet family, and the state of his continental dominions, long prevented the English monarch from availing himself of this permission. At length Dermod, king of Leinster, driven from his dominions by a rival sovereign, sought English aid, and was permitted to engage the services of Strongbow, and some other military adventurers, on condition of doing homage for his kingdom to Henry. The rapid successes of Strongbow awakened Henry's jealousy; he went to Ireland in person, and received the submission of its principal Sovereigns (A. D. 1172). He returned without completing the conquest of the country, a circumstance productive of much misery and bloodshed through several successive centuries.

The reign of Richard I. was a period of little importance in English history; but that of his brother and successor, the profligate John, led to the most important results. The barons, provoked by his tyranny and his vices, took up arms, and compelled him to sign the Great Charter, which laid the first permanent foundation of British freedom; the pope forced him to resign his crown, and to receive it back again, only on condition of vassalage to the holy see, while Philip Augustus took advantage of these circumstances to deprive the English monarchs of most of their continental possessions. John's death saved England from becoming a province of France: absolved by Pope Innocent III. from his oath, he ventured to abrogate the Great Charter, upon which the English barons proffered the crown to Louis, the eldest son of Philip Augustus, who invaded England with the fairest prospects of success. John was completely defeated (A. D. 1216); he fled toward Scotland, but died upon the road. The English, already disgusted, with their French allies, embraced this opportunity of rallying round Prince Henry, and Louis was glad to conclude a treaty for abandoning the island.

Henry III. was a monarch wholly void of energy; it was his misfor tune to fill the throne at one of the most turbulent periods of English history, without talents to command respect, or resolution to enforce obedience. During his long reign, England was engaged in few foreign wars, but these were generally unfortunate. On the other hand, the country was agitated by internal commotions during the greater part of the fifty years that he swayed the sceptre. The discontent of the prelates and barons at the favor that the king showed to foreigners induced them to form an association, by which the king was virtually deposed, and the supreme authority vested in a committee of peers, with the earl of Leicester at its head. Leicester introduced an important change into the constitution, by summoning representatives of counties, cities, and boroughs, to unite with the barons in the great council of the nation (A. D. 1265). This innovation laid the basis for the house of commons, which henceforth had an increasing share in English legislation. The tyranny of the barons being found less endurable than that of the king, Henry was restored to his former power; and his authority seemed fixed so permanently, that Prince Edward led an armament to the Holy Land, in aid of the last crusade of St. Louis. Henry died during his son's absence (A. D. 1272); but though two

years elapsed before Edward's return home, the tranquillity of the country continued undisturbed.

The chief object of Edward's ambition was to unite the whole of Great Britain under one sovereignty. Under the pretext of the Welsh prince, Llewelyn, having refused homage, he invaded the country, and completely subdued it, but not without encountering a desperate resistance. The English monarch stayed more than a year in Wales to complete its pacification, and during that time his queen, Eleanor, gave birth to a son in the castle of Carnarvon (A. D. 1284). The Welsh claimed the child as their countryman, and he was declared Prince of Wales, a title which has ever since been borne by the eldest sons of the English kings.

The failure of the direct heirs to the crown of Scotland gave Edward a pretence for interfering in the affairs of that kingdom. Three competitors, Baliol, Bruce, and Hastings, laid claim to the crown; to avert the horrors of civil war, they agreed to leave the decision to Edward; and he pronounced in favor of the first, on condition of Baliol's becoming a vassal to the king of England. Baliol soon grew weary of the authority exercised over him by Edward, and made an effort to recover his independence; but being defeated and taken prisoner, he abdicated the throne (A. D. 1296), and was confined in the Tower of London. The Scottish nation, though vanquished, was not subdued; several insurrections were raised against the English yoke; but after the defeat and capture of the Scottish hero, Sir William Wallace, all hope of independence seemed to have vanished. At length, Robert Bruce raised the standard of revolt, and was crowned king at Scone (A. D. 1306). Edward once more sent an army into Scotland, and soon followed in person to subdue that obstinate nation. His death on the border (A. D. 1307) freed Bruce from his most dangerous foe; and in the following reign the independence of Scotland was established by the decisive battle of Bannockburn (A. D. 1314).

The northren kingdoms of Europe, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, offer little to our notice but scenes of horror and carnage. The natural ferocity and warlike spirit of the Northmen, the want of fixed rules of succession, and the difficulty of finding employment for turbulent spirits in piratical expeditions when the increase of civili zation had given consistency to the governments of the south, and enabled them to provide for the protection of their subjects, multiplied factions, and produced innumerable civil wars. Crusades, however, were undertaken against the Sclavonian and other pagan nations, by which the kings of Denmark and Sweden added considerably to their dominions, and gave them a high rank among the states of Europe. Prussia and Livonia were subdued by the knights of the Teutonic order; and Hungary, after having been almost ruined by the Mongolian hordes, began gradually to recover its importance after the retreat of these barbarians (A. D. 1244).

SECTION XV.-Revolutions in the East in consequence of the Mongolian Invasion.

THERE is no phenomenon more remarkable in history than the rise, progress, and extent of the Mongolian empire. Jenghiz Khan, in a

single reign, issuing from a petty principality in the wilds of Tartary, acquired an empire stretching about six thousand miles from east to west, and at least half that space from north to south, including within its limits the most powerful and wealthy kingdoms of Asia.

The Mongols were first raised into eminence by Jenghiz Khan; his original name was Temujín, and he was the chief of a small horde which his father's valor had elevated above the surrounding tribes. At an early age he was invited to the court of Vang Khan, the nominal head of the tribes of the Tartarian deserts, and received the hand of that potentate's daughter in marriage. Mutual jealousy soon led to a war between Temujín and his father-in-law; the latter was slain in battle, and Temujín succeeded to his authority. On the day of his installation, a pretended prophet named Kokza, addressing the new sovereign, declared that he was inspired by God to name him Jenghiz Khan, that is, supreme monarch, and to promise him the empire of the

universe.

Inspired by this prophecy, which, however, he is suspected of having suggested, Jenghiz zealously labored to establish military discipline among the vast hordes that flocked to his standard; and when he had organized an army, he invaded those provinces of northern China called Khatai by the oriental writers, and Cathay by our old English authors. In five years this extensive country was subdued, and Jenghiz directed his arms westward, provoked by an outrage of the sultan of Kharasın. This kingdom of Kharasm was among the most flourishing in central Asia; the literary eminence of Bokhara, and the commercial prosperity of Samarcand, were celebrated throughout the East. The sultans Mohammed and his son and successor, Jalaloddín, were monarchs of dauntless bravery, but nothing could withstand the fury of the Mongols, and not only Kharasm, but the greater part of northern and eastern Persia, full under the sway of Jenghiz. Astrachan was taken by a Mongolian detachment, and some of the hordes pushed their incursions as far as the confines of Russia. Jenghiz died in his seventy-sixth year (A. D. 1227), continuing his career of conquest almost to the last hour of his life. Few conquerors have displayed greater military abilities, none more savage ferocity. He delighted in slaughter and devastation; his maxim was to slaughter without mercy, all that offered him the least resistance.

The successors of the Mongolian conqueror followed the course he had traced. They completed the subjugation of China, they overthrew the khaliphate of Bagdad (A. D. 1258), and rendered the sultans of Iconium tributary. Oktaï Khan, the immediate successor of Jenghiz, sent two armies from the centre of China, one against the peninsula of Corea, the other to subdue the countries north and east of the Caspian. This latter army, under the guidance of Batú Khan, penetrated and subdued the Russian empire (A. D. 1237); thence the Mongols spread into Hungary, Poland, and Silesia, and even reached the coasts of the Adriatic sea. The dutchy of Wladimir was the only native Russian dynasty that preserved its existence; it owed its good fortune to Alexander Newski, whose prudent measures conciliated the favor of the conquerors, and secured him a tranquil reign. After the death of Kublaï Khan, the grandson of Jenghiz, the Mongolian empire