The Story Of Mankind - Part 12

The Story of Mankind was written and illustrated by Dutch-American journalist, professor, and author Hendrik Willem van Loon and published in 1921. In 1922, it was the first book to be awarded the Newbery Medal for its outstanding contribution to children's literature.

Transcript

This is part 12 of the story of mankind by Hendrik van Loon.

The Norsemen.

Why the people of the 10th century prayed the Lord to protect them from the fury of the Norsemen.

In the 3rd and 4th centuries,

The Germanic tribes of central Europe had broken through the defenses of the empire that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the land.

In the 8th century,

It became the turn of the Germans to be the plundered ones.

They did not like this at all,

Even if their enemies were their first cousins,

The Norsemen,

Who lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway.

What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not know,

But once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures of a buccaneering career,

There was no one who could stop them.

They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful Frankish or Frisian village,

Situated on the mouth of a river.

They would kill all the men and steal all the women.

Then they would sail away in their fast sailing ships,

And when the soldiers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene,

The robbers were gone and nothing remained but a few smoldering ruins.

During the days of disorder which followed the death of Charlemagne,

The Norsemen developed great activity.

Their fleets made raids upon every country,

And their sailors established small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland and France and England and Germany,

And they even found their way into Italy.

The Norsemen were very intelligent.

They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and gave up the uncivilized ways of the early Vikings,

Or Sea Kings,

Who had been very peteresque,

But also very unwashed and terribly cruel.

Early in the 10th century,

A Viking by the name of Rollo had repeatedly attacked the coast of France.

The King of France,

Too weak to resist these northern robbers,

Tried to bribe them into being good.

He offered them the province of Normandy,

If they would promise to stop bothering the rest of his domains.

Rollo accepted this bargain and became Duke of Normandy.

But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his children.

Across the Channel,

Only a few hours away from the European mainland,

They could see the white cliffs and the green fields of England.

Poor England had passed through difficult days.

For two hundred years it had been a Roman colony.

After the Romans left,

It had been conquered by the Angles and the Saxons,

Two German tribes from Schleswig.

Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country and had established the Kingdom of Knut.

The Danes had been driven away and now,

It was early in the 11th century,

Another Saxon king,

Edward the Confessor,

Was on the throne.

But Edward was not expected to live long and he had no children.

The circumstances favored the ambitious Duke of Normandy.

In 1066 Edward died.

Immediately William of Normandy crossed the Channel,

Defeated the King Harold of Wessex,

Who had taken the crown,

At the Battle of Hastings,

And proclaimed himself King of England.

In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800,

A German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor.

Now in the year 1066,

The grandson of a Norse pirate was recognized as King of England.

Why should we ever read fairy tales,

When the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

Feudalism How central Europe,

Attacked from three sides,

Became an armed camp and why Europe would have perished without those professional soldiers and administrators who were part of the feudal system.

The following then is the state of Europe in the year 1000,

When most people were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy foretelling the approaching the end of the world and rushed to the monasteries,

That the Day of Judgment might find them engaged upon devout duties.

At an unknown date,

The Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe.

By sheer pressure of numbers,

They had forced their way into the Roman Empire.

They had destroyed the great Western Empire,

But the Eastern part,

Being off the main route of the great migrations,

Had managed to survive and feebly continue the traditions of Rome's ancient glory.

During the days of disorder which had followed,

The true dark ages of history,

The sixth and seventh centuries of our era,

The German tribes had been persuaded to accept the Christian religion and had recognized the Bishop of Rome as the Pope or spiritual head of the world.

In the ninth century,

The organizing genius of Charlemagne had revived the Roman Empire and had united the greater part of Western Europe into a single state.

During the tenth century this empire had gone to pieces.

The Western part had become a separate kingdom,

France.

The Eastern half was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation,

And the rulers of this federation of states then pretended that they were the direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus.

Unfortunately,

The power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence,

While the Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit.

To increase the misery of the masses of the people,

The triangle of Western Europe was forever exposed to attacks from three sides.

On the south lived the ever-dangerous Mohammedans.

The Western coast was ravaged by the Northmen.

The Eastern frontier,

Defenseless except for the short stretch of the Carpathian Mountains,

Was at the mercy of hordes of Huns,

Hungarians,

Slavs,

And Tartars.

The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past,

A dream of the good old days that were gone forever.

It was a question of fight or die,

And quite naturally people preferred to fight.

Forced by circumstances,

Europe became an armed camp and there was a demand for strong leadership.

Both king and emperor were far away.

The frontiersmen,

And most of Europe in the year 1000 was frontier,

Must help themselves.

They willingly submitted to the representatives of the king,

Who were sent to administer the outlying districts,

Provided they could protect them against their enemies.

Soon Central Europe was dotted with small principalities,

Each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop,

As the case might be,

And organized as a fighting unit.

These dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their feudum,

Hence our word feudal,

In return for their loyal services and certain amount of taxes.

But travel in those days was slow,

And the means of communications were exceedingly poor.

The royal or imperial administrators,

Therefore,

Enjoyed great independence,

And within the boundaries of their own province,

They assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king.

But you would make a mistake if you suppose that the people of the 11th century objected to this former government.

They supported feudalism,

Because it was a very practical and necessary institution.

Their lord and master usually lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep rock or built between deep moats,

But within sight of his subjects.

In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind the walls of the baronial stronghold.

That is why they tried to live as near the castle as possible,

And it accounts for the many European cities which began their career around a feudal fortress.

But the knights of the early middle ages was much more than a professional soldier.

He was the civil servant of the day.

He was the judge of this community,

And he was the chief of police.

He caught the highwaymen and protected the wandering peddlers who were the merchants of the 11th century.

He looked after the dykes so that the countryside should not be flooded,

Just as the first nobleman had done in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before.

He encouraged the troubadours,

Who wandered from place to place,

Telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the great wars and the migrations.

Besides he protected the churches and monasteries within his territory.

And although he could never read or write,

It was considered unmanly to know such things.

He employed a number of priests who kept his accounts,

And who registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal domains.

In the 15th century the kings once more became strong enough to exercise those powers,

Which belonged to them,

Because they were anointed of God.

Then the feudal knights lost their former independence,

Reduced the rank of country squires.

They no longer filled a need and soon they became a nuisance.

But Europe would have perished without the feudal system of the Dark Ages.

There were many bad knights,

As there are many bad people today.

But generally speaking,

The rough-fisted barons of the 12th and 13th century were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful service to the cause of progress.

During that era,

The noble torch of learning and art,

Which had illuminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans,

Was burning very low.

Without the knights and their good friends,

The monks' civilization would have been extinguished entirely,

And the human race would have been forced to begin once more where the cavemen had left off.

Reviews

Great as always :)

I slept. But I'm going to see if I can stay awake for it in the morning. It's interesting. Thank you

Fascinating