The World War and What was Behind It Part 3

As they were of the defeated people, their rights to the land were not once considered. In many countries, the victors thought of them as part and parcel of the conquered territory. They "went with" the land and were considered by the lord of the county as merely his servants.

When one lord turned over a farm to another, the farmers were part of the bargain. If any of them tried to run away, they were brought back and whipped. They tilled the land and raised live stock, giving a certain share of their yearly crop and a certain number of beeves, hogs, sheep, etc., to the lord, as rent for the land, much as the free farmers in other countries paid tribute to the robber chieftains. Thus the one cla.s.s of people who really earned their right to live, by producing wealth, were oppressed and robbed by all the others. Note this point, for there are wrongs existing today that are due to the fact that the feudal system is not wholly stamped out in some countries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Va.s.sal doing Homage to his Lord]

In the second place, it must be noted that the king was not the direct master of all the people. Only the great lords had sworn homage to him. He was lord of the dukes, earls, and barons. The less important barons swore homage to the great barons, and the knights, squires, retainers, and yeomen swore homage to the lesser barons. If a lesser baron had subdivided his fief among certain knights and squires, the peasants owed allegiance, not to him, but to the squire to whom they had been a.s.signed. Thus, if a "man" rebelled against his lord, all of his knights, retainers, etc., must rebel also. If, for instance, a great duke refused to obey his king and broke his oath of allegiance, all his little barons and knights must turn disloyal too, or rather, must remain loyal, for their oaths had been taken to support the duke, and not the king. History is full of such cases. In many instances, dukes became so powerful that they were able to make war on even terms with kings. The great Dukes of Burgundy for a time kept the kings of France in awe of their power; the Duke of Northumberland in 1403 raised an army that almost overthrew King Henry Fourth of England; the Duke of York, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from the throne of England and became king in his place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: William the Conqueror]

A strange case arose when, in 1066, William, who as duke of Normandy had sworn homage to the king of France, became, through conquest, king of England. His sons, great-grandsons, and great-great-grandsons continued for one hundred and fifty years to be obliged to swear allegiance to the French kings in order to keep the duchy of Normandy.

It was as if the Governor of Texas had led an army into Mexico, conquered it, and become Emperor of that country, without resigning his governorship or giving up his American citizenship.

Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring more power to the common people were, first, the invention of gunpowder, and, second, the rise of towns. A man with a musket could bring down a knight in armor as easily as he could the most poorly armored peasant.

Kings, in fighting to control their great lords, gave more freedom to citizens of towns in return for their help. The king's armies came to be recruited largely from townspeople, who were made correspondingly free from the feudal lords.

The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain amount of military service to his ruler has lasted to the present day and is responsible for much of the misery that now exists. Kings went to war with each other simply to increase their territories. The more land a king had under his control, the more people who owed him taxes, and the greater number he could get into his army, the greater became his ambition to spread his kingdom still farther.

Questions for Review

1. How was it that the king of a tribe could claim to own all the land in the country which he had invaded?

2. Did the kings, lords, and fighting men contribute anything to the welfare of the working cla.s.ses?

3. Would the peasants have been better off if all the fighting men, lords, dukes, kings, etc., had suddenly been killed?

4. Can you see why in some countries in Europe a man who earns his living is looked down upon by the n.o.bles?

5. What is meant by saying that the feudal system turns society upside down?

6. Why did the farmers continue to feed the fighting men?

7. Explain how the use of gunpowder in warfare helped to break up the feudal system.

8. How did the rise of cities also help to do away with the feudal system?

CHAPTER V

A Babel of Tongues

The great family of languages.--Few languages in Europe not belonging to the family.--The dying Celtic languages.--The three branches of the Germanic family.--The influence of the Latin tongue on the south of Europe.--The many Slavic peoples.--The map as divided by kings without regard to peoples and languages.--The strange mixture in Austria-Hungary.--The southeast of Europe.--The Greeks and Dacians.--The Roman colonists.--The Slavs.--The Volgars.--The Skipetars.--A hopeless mixture.

In Chapter II it was pointed out that almost all the peoples of Europe were related, in one big family of tribes. It is likely that the forefathers of the Celts, the Latins, the Germans, the Greeks, and the Slavs belonged to one big tribe which had its home back in the highlands of Central Asia. As a general rule, the relationship of peoples to each other can be told by the languages which they speak.

If two tribes are related because their forefathers once belonged to the same tribe, it is almost certain that they will show this relationship in their languages.

The language of England a thousand years ago was very much like the language of the Germans, for the English were originally German tribes. Even today, it is easy to see that English is a Germanic language. Take the English words house, father, mother, brother, water, here, is, etc. The German words which mean the same are haus, vater, mutter, bruder, wa.s.ser, hier, ist. It is very plain that the two languages must have come from the same source.

There are professors in European colleges who have spent their whole lives studying this relationship of languages. These men have proved not only that almost all the languages of Europe are related, but that the language of the Persians, and that of some of the old tribes in Hindustan also belong to one great family of tongues. Let us take the word for mother. In one of the ancient languages of Hindustan it was matr; in the Greek, it was matar; in the Latin mater (matar); in the Bohemian matka; in the German mu̠tter; in the Spanish madre; in the Norwegian moder, etc. This great family of languages is called "the Indo-European group," because the tribes which spoke them, originally inhabitants of Asia, have scattered all over India and Europe. The only peoples in Europe whose languages do not belong to it are the Finns and Laplanders of the north, the Basques (Ba?sks) of the Pyrenees Mountains, the Hungarians, the Gypsies, and the Turks.

The descendants of the old Celtic peoples have not kept up the Celtic languages to any great extent. The reason for this is that first the Romans and then the Germanic tribes conquered most of the lands where the Celts lived. In this way, Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium now talk languages that have grown from the Latin, the language of Rome.

The Celts in the British Isles now all talk English, because the English, who were a Germanic people, conquered them and forced them to use their language. Patriotic Irishmen and Welshmen (who are descendants of the Celtic tribes) are trying to keep alive the Irish and Welsh languages, but all of the young people in the British Isles learn English, and they are generally content to talk only one language. The other Celtic languages which have existed within the last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, the Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the southwestern corner of England.

The Germanic languages (sometimes called Teutonic) are found in three parts of Europe today. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, belong to this family. Western Austria and Germany form, with Holland and Western Belgium, a second group of German-speaking nations. (The people of eastern Belgium are Celts and talk a kind of French.) The third part of Europe which uses a Germanic language is England.

In an earlier chapter we learned how the Celts in France, Spain, and Portugal gave up their own languages and used the Latin. Latin languages today are found also in the southern and western parts of Switzerland, all over Italy, and in Roumania.

We learned also about the Slavs who lived to the eastward of the Germanic tribes. When the Germans moved west, these Slavs followed them and occupied the lands which had just been left vacant. In this way, we find Slavic peoples talking Slavic (sometimes called Slavonic) languages in the parts of Europe to the east and south of the Germans.

More than half of the inhabitants of Austria-Hungary are Slavs, although the Austrians proper are a Germanic people, and the Hungarians do not belong to the Indo-European family at all. The Serbians and Montenegrins are Slavs. The Poles and Russians are Slavs.

The Bulgarians speak a Slavic language and have some Slavic blood in them, although, as will be pointed out later, originally they did not belong to the Slavic family.

[Map: Distribution Of Peoples According to Relationship]

The Greeks and Albanians belong to the great Indo-European family of tribes, but their languages are not closely related to any of the four great branches.

[Map: Distribution Of Languages]

The two maps on pages 65 and 66 are very much alike and yet in some respects very different. The first shows how Europe is largely inhabited by peoples of the great Indo-European family. Those who are descended from the Celts are marked Celtic even though today they have given up their Celtic language, as have the Cornish in England and the inhabitants of Spain, France, eastern Belgium, and the greater part of Ireland. The Bulgarians are marked as not belonging to the great family, although they speak a Slavic language.

In the second map, the distribution of languages is shown. You will notice that the Celtic languages are found only in small parts of the British Isles, and in the westernmost point of France. The Bulgarians are here marked Slavic because their language belongs to that branch. One of the most curious things about the two maps is the presence of little spots like islands, particularly made up of German-speaking peoples. There are several of these little islands in Russia. They have been there for nearly two hundred years. A traveler crossing the southern part of Russia is astonished to find districts as large as an American county where not a word of Russian is spoken.

The people are all of Germanic blood, although they live under the government of Russia. In the same way, there is a large German island in the midst of the Roumanians in Transylvania and another between the Slovaks and Poles at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. There is a large Hungarian island in Transylvania also, entirely surrounded by Germans and Roumanians. The table on the opposite page shows the main branches of the Indo-European family that are found in Europe.

THE INDO-EURPOEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES

(a) Hindu branch

(b) Persian branch

(c) Celtic branch Gae'lic (northern Scotland) Welsh Cornish (dead) Erse (Irish) Bre'ton (western France)

(d) Latin branch Portuguese Spanish French Romansh (southeastern Switzerland) Italian Roumanian

(e) Germanic branch Norwegian Danish Swedish Dutch Flemish (Belgium) Low German High German English

(f) Slavonic branch Russian Polish } Lettish } Baltic states of Russia Lithuanian } Old Prussian (dead) Czech (Bohemian [p.r.o.nounced Check]) Slo vak' (northern Hungary) Serbian Bulgarian Slove'nian (southwestern Austria) Croa'tian (southern Austria) Ruthe'nian (northeastern Austria-Hungary, and southwestern Russia)

(g) Greek

(h) Alba'nian

The main source of the present trouble in Europe is that kings and their ministers and generals, like their ancestors, the feudal lords, never considered the wishes of the people when they changed the boundaries of kingdoms. Austria-Hungary is a good example. The Austrians and Hungarians were two very different peoples. They had nothing in common and did not wish to be joined under one ruler, but a king of Hungary, dying, left no son to succeed him, and his only daughter was married to the archduke of Austria. This archduke of Austria (a descendant of the counts of Hapsburg) was also emperor of Germany and king of Bohemia, although the Bohemian people had not chosen him as their ruler. The Hungarians, before their union with Austria, had conquered certain Slavic tribes and part of the Roumanians. Later Austria annexed part of Poland. In this way, the empire became a jumble of languages and nationalities. When its congress is called together, the official announcement is read in eleven different languages. Forty-one different dialects are talked in an area not as large as that of the state of Texas.

We must remember that besides the literary or written languages of each country there are several spoken dialects. A man from Devonshire, England, meeting a man from Yorkshire in the north of the same country, has difficulty in understanding many words in his speech. The language of the south of Scotland also is English, although it is very different from the English that we in America are taught. A Frenchman from the Pyrenees Mountains was taught in school to speak and read the French language as we find it in books. Yet besides this, he knows a dialect that is talked by the country people around him, that can not be understood by the peasants from the north of France near the Flemish border. The man who lives in the east of France can understand the dialect of the Italians from the west of Italy much better than he can that of the Frenchman from the Atlantic coast.

In America, with people moving around from place to place by means of stage coach, steamboat, and railroad, there has been no great chance to develop dialects, although we can instantly tell the New Englander, the southerner, or the westerner by his speech. It should be remembered that in Europe, for centuries, the people were kept on their own farms or in their own towns. The result of this was that each little village or city has its own peculiar language. It is said that persons who have studied such language matters carefully, after conversing with a man from Europe, can tell within thirty miles where his home used to be in the old country. There are no sharply marked boundaries of languages. The dialects of France shade off into those of Spain on the one hand and into those of the Flemish and the Italian on the other.

[Map: Southeastern Europe, 600 B.C.]

The British Isles furnish us with four or five different nationalities. The people of the north of Ireland are really lowland Scotch of Germanic descent, while the other three-fourths of Ireland is inhabited by Celts. To make the difference all the greater, the Celts are almost universally Catholics, while the Scotch-Irish are Protestants. The people of the north of Scotland are Gaels, a Celtic race having no connection in language or blood with the people of the southern half of that country. The Welsh are a Celtic people, having no relationship with the English, who are a Germanic people. The Welsh and the Cornish of Cornwall and the people of highland Scotland are the descendants of the ancient Britons and Gaels who inhabited the island when Julius Caesar and the Romans first landed there. Then five hundred years afterwards, as has already been told, came great swarms of Germans (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), who drove the Britons to the west and north, and settled the country now known as England. After these, you will recall, came a number of Danes, another Germanic people, who settled the east coast of England. Two hundred years later, the Normans came from France. These Normans had been living in France for a century or two, but had come originally from Norway.

Normans, Danes, Angles, and Saxons all mixed to make the modern English. Together, they fought the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish, and having conquered them, oppressed them harshly for many centuries.

[Map: Southeastern Europe, 975 A.D.]

But it is in the southeastern corner of Europe that one finds the worst jumble of nationalities. Six hundred years before Christ, the Greeks and their rougher cousins, the Thracians, Macedonians, and Dacians inhabited this district. When one of the Roman Emperors conquered the Dacians about 100 A.D., he planted a large Roman colony north of the Danube River. Then came the West Goths, who swept into this country, but soon left it for the west of Europe. Next came the Slavic tribes who are the ancestors of the modern Serbs. Following these, came a large tribe which did not belong to the Indo-European family, but was distantly related to the Finns and the Turks. These people were called the Volgars, for they came from the country around the River Volga. Before long, we find them called the Bulgars. (The letters B and V are often interchanged in the languages of south-eastern Europe. The people of western Europe used to call the country of the Serbs Servia, but the Serbs objected, saying that the word servio, in Latin, means "to be a slave," and that as they were not slaves, they wanted their country to be called by its true name, Serbia. The Greeks, on the other hand, p.r.o.nounce the letter B as though it were V.)