Captains of adventure E-Book

Roger Pocock

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wishing himself at home, not an adventurer. In dictionaries the adventurer is “one who seeks his fortune in new and hazardous or perilous enterprises.” But outside the pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a gamble with Death.

Leseprobe

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

Napoleon Bonaparte

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

ByROGER POCOCK

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385745097

ADVENTURERS

What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wishing himself at home, not an adventurer. In dictionaries the adventurer is “one who seeks his fortune in new and hazardous or perilous enterprises.” But outside the pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a gamble with Death. Did the patron saint of adventurers, Saint Paul, or did Saint Louis, or Francis Drake, or Livingstone, or Gordon seek their own fortune, think you? In real life the adventurer is one who seeks, not his fortune, but the new and hazardous or perilous enterprises. There are holy saints and scoundrels among adventurers, but all the thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and vivid feeling, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane.

All nations have bred great adventurers, but the living nation remembers them sending the boys out into the world enriched with memories of valor, a heritage of national honor, an inspiration to ennoble their manhood. That is the only real wealth of men and of peoples. For such purposes this book is written, but so vast is the theme that this volume would outgrow all reasonable size unless we set some limit. A man in the regular standing forces of his native state is not dubbed adventurer. When, for example, the immortal heroes Tromp and De Ruyter fought the British generals at sea, Blake and Monk, they were no more adventurers than are the police constables who guard our homes at night. Were Clive and Warren Hastings adventurers? They would turn in their graves if one brought such a charge. The true type of adventurer is the lone-hand pioneer.

It is not from any bias of mine that the worthies of Switzerland, the Teutonic empires and Russia, are shut out of this poor little record; but because it seems that the lone-hand oversea and overland pioneers come mainly from nations directly fronting upon the open sea. As far as I am prejudiced, it is in favor of old Norway, whose heroes have entranced me with the sheer glory of their perfect manhood. For the rest, our own English-speaking folk are easier for us to understand than any foreigners.

As to the manner of record, we must follow the stream of history if we would shoot the rapids of adventure.

Now as to the point of view: My literary pretensions are small and humble, but I claim the right of an adventurer, trained in thirty-three trades of the Lost Region, to absolute freedom of speech concerning frontiersmen. Let history bow down before Columbus, but as a foremast seaman, I hold he was not fit to command a ship. Let history ignore Captain John Smith, but as an ex-trooper, I worship him for a leader, the paladin of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, and very father of the United States. Literature admires the well advertised Stanley, but we frontiersmen prefer Commander Cameron, who walked across Africa without blaming others for his own defects, or losing his temper, or shedding needless blood. All the celebrities may go hang, but when we take the field, send us leaders like Patrick Forbes, who conquered Rhodesia without journalists in attendance to write puffs, or any actual deluge of public gratitude.

The historic and literary points of view are widely different from that of our dusty rankers.

When the Dutchmen were fighting Spain, they invented and built the first iron-clad war-ship—all honor to their seamanship for that! But when the winter came, a Spanish cavalry charge across the ice captured the ship—and there was fine adventure. Both sides had practical men.

In the same wars, a Spanish man-at-arms in the plundering of a city, took more gold than he could carry, so he had the metal beaten into a suit of armor, and painted black to hide its worth from thieves. From a literary standpoint, that was all very fine, but from our adventurer point of view, the man was a fool for wearing armor useless for defense, and so heavy he could not run. He was killed, and a good riddance.

We value most the man who knows his business, and the more practical the adventurer, the fewer his misadventures.

From that point of view, the book is attempted with all earnestness; and if the results appear bizarre, let the shocked reader turn to better written works, mention of which is made in notes.

As to the truthfulness of adventurers, perhaps we are all more or less truthful when we try to be good. But there are two kinds of adventurers who need sharply watching. The worst is F. C. Selous. Once he lectured to amuse the children at the Foundling Hospital, and when he came to single combats with a wounded lion, or a mad elephant he was forced to mention himself as one of the persons present. He blushed. Then he would race through a hair-lifting story of the fight, and in an apologetic manner, give all the praise to the elephant, or the lion lately deceased. Surely nobody could suspect him of any merit, yet all the children saw through him for a transparent fraud, and even we grown-ups felt the better for meeting so grand a gentleman.

The other sort of liar, who does not understate his own merits, is Jim Beckwourth. He told his story, quite truthfully at first, to a journalist who took it down in shorthand. But when the man gaped with admiration at the merest trifles, Jim was on his mettle, testing this person’s powers of belief, which were absolutely boundless. After that, of course he hit the high places, striking the facts about once in twenty-four hours, and as one reads the book, one can catch the thud whenever he hit the truth.

Let no man dream that adventure is a thing of the past or that adventurers are growing scarce. The only difficulty of this book was to squeeze the past in order to make-space for living men worthy as their forerunners. The list is enormous, and I only dared to estimate such men of our own time as I have known by correspondence, acquaintance, friendship, enmity, or by serving under their leadership. Here again, I could only speak safely in cases where there were records, as with Lord Strathcona, Colonel S. B. Steele, Colonel Cody, Major Forbes, Captain Grogan, Captain Amundsen, Captain Hansen, Mr. John Boyes. Left out, among Americans, are M. H. de Hora who, in a Chilian campaign, with only a boat’s crew, cut out the battle-ship Huascar, plundered a British tramp of her bunker coal, and fought H. M. S. Shah on the high seas. Another American, Doctor Bodkin, was for some years prime minister of Makualand, an Arab sultanate. Among British adventurers, Caid Belton, is one of four successive British commanders-in-chief to the Moorish sultans. Colonel Tompkins was commander-in-chief to Johore. C. W. Mason was captured with a shipload of arms in an attempt to make himself emperor of China. Charles Rose rode from Mazatlan in Mexico to Corrientes in Paraguay. A. W. V. Crawley, a chief of scouts to Lord Roberts in South Africa, rode out of action after being seven times shot, and he rides now a little askew in consequence.

To sum up, if one circle of acquaintances includes such a group to-day, the adventurer is not quite an extinct species, and indeed, we seem not at the end, but at the beginning of the greatest of all adventurous eras, that of the adventurers of the air.

CONTENTS

Chapter

Page

I

The Vikings in America

1

II

The Crusaders

7

III

The Middle Ages in Asia

18

IV

The Marvelous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville

25

V

Columbus

32

VI

The Conquest of Mexico

37

VII

The Conquest of Peru

44

VIII

The Corsairs

50

IX

Portugal in the Indies

55

X

Rajah Brooke

62

XI

The Spies

69

XII

A Year’s Adventures

81

XIII

Kit Carson

88

XIV

The Man Who Was a God

100

XV

The Great Filibuster

106

XVI

Buffalo Bill

112

XVII

The Australian Desert

123

XVIII

The Hero-Statesman

131

XIX

The Special Correspondent

138

XX

Lord Strathcona

142

XXI

The Sea Hunters

148

XXII

The Bushrangers

156

XXIII

The Passing of the Bison

162

XXIV

Gordon

173

XXV

The Outlaw

179

XXVI

A King at Twenty-Five

186

XXVII

Journey of Ewart Grogan

194

XXVIII

The Cowboy President

202

XXIX

The Northwest Passage

208

XXX

John Hawkins

215

XXXI

Francis Drake

219

XXXII

The Four Armadas

223

XXXIII

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

231

XXXIV

Sir Walter Raleigh

234

XXXV

Captain John Smith

237

XXXVI

The Buccaneers

246

XXXVII

The Voyageurs

252

XXXVIII

The Explorers

260

XXXIX

The Pirates

266

XL

Daniel Boone

272

XLI

Andrew Jackson

280

XLII

Sam Houston

282

XLIII

Davy Crockett

285

XLIV

Alexander Mackenzie

292

XLV

The White Man’s Coming

298

XLVI

The Beaver

302

XLVII

The Conquest of the Poles

307

XLVIII

Women

315

XLIX

The Conquerors of India

321

L

The Man Who Shot Lord Nelson

327

LI

The Fall of Napoleon

333

LII

Rising Wolf

340

LIII

Simon Bolivar

350

LIV

The Almirante Cochrane

357

LV

The South Sea Cannibals

363

LVI

A Tale of Vengeance

371

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

I

A. D. 984

THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA

A

reverent

study of heroes in novels, also in operas and melodramas, where one may see them for half-a-crown, has convinced me that they must be very trying to live with. They get on people’s nerves. Hence the villains.

Now Harold of the Fair Hair was a hero, and he fell in love with a lady, but she would not marry him unless he made himself king of Norway. So he made himself the first king of all Norway, and she had to marry him, which served her right.

But then there were the gentlemen of his majesty’s opposition who did not want him to be king, who felt that there was altogether too much Harold in Norway. They left, and went to Iceland to get away from the hero.

Iceland had been shown on the map since the year A. D. 115, and when the vikings arrived they found a colony of Irish monks who said they had come there “because they desired for the love of God to be in a state of pilgrimage, they recked not where.”

Perhaps the vikings sent them to Heaven. Later on it seems they found a little Irish settlement on the New England coast, and heard of great Ireland, a colony farther south. That is the first rumor we have about America.

The Norsemen settled down, pagans in Christian Iceland. They earned a living with fish and cattle, and made an honest penny raiding the Mediterranean. They had internecine sports of their own, and on the whole were reasonably happy. Then in course of trade Captain Gunbjorn sighted an unknown land two hundred fifty miles to the westward. That made the Icelanders restless, for there is always something which calls to Northern blood from beyond the sea line.

Most restless of all was Red Eric, hysterical because he hated a humdrum respectable life; indeed, he committed so many murders that he had to be deported as a public nuisance. He set off exultant to find Gunbjorn’s unknown land. So any natural born adventurer commits little errors of taste unless he can find an outlet. It is too much dog-chain that makes biting dogs.

When he found the new land it was all green, with swaths of wild flowers. I know that land and its bright lowlands, backed by sheer walled mountains, with splintered pinnacles robed in the splendors of the inland ice. The trees were knee high, no crops could possibly ripen, but Eric was so pleased that after two winters he went back to Iceland advertising for settlers to fill his colony. Greenland he called the place, because “Many will go there if the place has a fair name.” They did, and when the sea had wiped out most of the twenty-five ships, the surviving colonists found Greenland commodious and residential as the heart could wish.

They were not long gone from the port of Skalholt when young Captain Bjarni came in from the sea and asked for his father. But father Heljulf had sailed for Greenland, so the youngster set off in pursuit although nobody knew the way. Bjarni always spent alternate yuletides at his father’s hearth, so if the hearth-stone moved he had to find it somehow. These vikings are so human and natural that one can follow their thought quite easily. When, for instance, Bjarni, instead of coming to Greenland, found a low, well timbered country, he knew he had made a mistake, so it was no use landing. Rediscovering the American mainland was a habit which persisted until the time of Columbus, and not a feat to make a fuss about. A northerly course and a pure stroke of luck carried Bjarni to Greenland and his father’s house.

Because they had no timber, and driftwood was scarce, the colonists were much excited when they heard of forests, and cursed Bjarni for not having landed. Anyway, here was a fine excuse for an expedition in search of fire-wood, so Leif, the son of Red Eric, bought Bjarni’s ship. Being tall and of commanding presence he rallied thirty-five of a crew, and, being young, expected that his father would take command. Eric indeed rode a distance of four hundred feet from his house against the rock, which was called Brattelid, to the shore of the inlet, but his pony fell and threw him, such a bad omen that he rode home again. Leif Ericsen, therefore, with winged helmet and glittering breastplate, mounted the steerboard, laid hands on the steer-oar and bade his men shove off. The colonists on rugged dun ponies lined the shore to cheer the adventurers, and the ladies waved their kerchiefs from the rock behind the house while the dragon ship, shield-lines ablaze in the sun, oars thrashing blue water, and painted square-sail set, took the fair wind on that famous voyage. She discovered Stoneland, which is the Newfoundland-Labrador coast, and Woodland, which is Nova Scotia. Then came the Further Strand, the long and wonderful beaches of Massachusetts, and beyond was Narragansett Bay, where they built winter houses, pastured their cattle, and found wild grapes. It was here that Tyrkir, the little old German man slave who was Leif’s nurse, made wine and got most gorgeously drunk. On the homeward passage Leif brought timber and raisins to Greenland.

Leif went away to Norway, where as a guest of King Olaf he became a Christian, and in his absence his brother Thorwald made the second voyage to what is now New England. After wintering at Leif’s house in Wineland the Good he went southward and, somewhere near the site of New York, met with savages. Nine of them lay under three upturned canoes on the beach, so the vikings killed eight just for fun, but were fools, letting the ninth escape to raise the tribes for war. So there was a battle, and Thorwald the Helpless was shot in the eye, which served him right. One of his brothers came afterward in search of the body, which may have been that same seated skeleton in bronze armor that nine hundred years later was dug up at Cross Point.

Two or three years after Thorwald’s death his widow married a visitor from Norway, Eric’s guest at Brattelid, the rich Thorfin Karlsefne. He also set out for Vinland, taking Mrs. Karlsefne and four other women, also a Scottish lad and lass (very savage) and an Irishman, besides a crew of sixty and some cattle. They built a fort where the natives came trading skins for strips of red cloth, or to fight a battle, or to be chased, shrieking with fright, by Thorfin’s big red bull. There Mrs. Karlsefne gave birth to Snorri the Firstborn, whose sons Thorlak and Brand became priests and were the first two bishops of Greenland.

After Karlsefne’s return to Greenland the next voyage was made by one of Eric’s daughters; and presently Leif the Fortunate came home from Norway to his father’s house, bringing a priest. Then Mrs. Leif built a church at Brattelid, old Eric the Red being thoroughly disgusted, and Greenland and Vinland became Christian, but Eric never.

As long as Norway traded with her American colonies Vinland exported timber and dried fruit, while Greenland sent sheepskins, ox hides, sealskins, walrus-skin rope and tusks to Iceland and Europe. In return they got iron and settlers. But then began a series of disasters, for when the Black Death swept Europe, the colonies were left to their fate, and some of the colonists in despair renounced their faith to turn Eskimo. In 1349 the last timber ship from Nova Scotia was lately returned to Europe when the plague struck Norway. There is a gap of fifty-two years in the record, and all we know of Greenland is that the western villages were destroyed by Eskimos who killed eighteen Norsemen and carried off the boys. Then the plague destroyed two-thirds of the people in Iceland, a bad winter killed nine tenths of all their cattle, and what remained of the hapless colony was ravaged by English fishermen. No longer could Iceland send any help to Greenland, but still there was intercourse because we know that seven years later the vicar of Garde married a girl in the east villages to a young Icelander.

Meanwhile, in plague-stricken England, Bristol, our biggest seaport, had not enough men living even to bury the dead, and labor was so scarce that the crops rotted for lack of harvesters. That is why an English squadron raided Iceland, Greenland, perhaps even Vinland, for slaves, and the people were carried away into captivity. Afterward England paid compensation to Denmark and returned the folk to their homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop concerning their piteous condition. And there the story ends, for in that year the German merchants at Bergen in Norway squabbled with the forty master mariners of the American trade. The sailors had boycotted their Hanseatic League, so the Germans asked them to dinner, and murdered them. From that time no man knew the way to lost America.

II

A. D. 1248

THE CRUSADERS

I

n

the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers, including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.

Not having been consulted in this matter, the Christians took offense, making war upon Islam in seven warm campaigns, wherein they held and lost by turns the holy sepulcher, so that the country where our Lord taught peace, was always drenched with blood. In the end, our crusades were not a success.

About Saint Louis and the sixth crusade:

At the opening of the story, that holy but delightful king of France lay so near death that his two lady nurses had a squabble, the one pulling a cloth over his face because he was dead, while the other snatched it away because he was still alive. At last he sent the pair of them to fetch the cross, on which he vowed to deliver the Holy Land. Then he had to get well, so he did, sending word to his barons to roll up their men for war.

Among the nobles was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne—a merry little man with eight hundred pounds a year of his own. But then, what with an expensive mother, his wife, and some little worries, he had to pawn his lands before he could take the field with his two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-arms, and the servants. He shared with another lord the hire of a ship from Marseilles, but when they joined his majesty in Cyprus he had only a few pounds left, and the knights would have deserted but that the king gave him a staff appointment at eight hundred pounds a year.

The king was a holy saint, a glorious knight errant, full of fun, but a thoroughly incompetent general. Instead of taking Jerusalem by surprise, he must needs raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the Less (Cairo) plenty of time to arrange a warm reception. The rival armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his commissariat.

On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the Moslems, who abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued by the French. As a precaution, however, they sent round their ships, which collected the French supplies proceeding to the front. The Christians had plenty of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to mention pestilence in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a canal which had to be bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the land in front of the bridge head, so that there was no ground on which the French could arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim and, as they were heavily armored, many were drowned in the mud. Joinville’s party found a dry crossing up-stream, and their troubles began at the enemy’s camp whence the Turks were flying.

“While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a Saracen who was mounting his horse, one of his knights holding the bridle. At the moment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I gave him of my lance under the armpit, and laid him dead. When his knight saw that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his lance as I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so pressed down that I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had, therefore, to draw the sword attached to my horse, and when he saw that he withdrew his lance and left me.”

Here in the camp Joinville’s detachment was rushed by six thousand Turks, “who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse knelt under the weight, and I fell forward over the horse’s ears. I got up as soon as ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword in my hand.

“Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me to the ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from my neck.”

So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they were sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in the face, Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the shoulders, so large that the blood flowed from his body as from the bung hole of a cask, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in the face, so that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly wounded to fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed to the roof were prodding from above with their lances. Then came Anjou to the rescue, and presently the king with his main army. The fight became a general engagement, while slowly the Christian force was driven backward upon the river. The day had become very hot, and the stream was covered with lances and shields, and with horses and men drowning and perishing.

Near by De Joinville’s position, a streamlet entered the river, and across that ran a bridge by which the Turks attempted to cut the king’s retreat. This bridge the little hero, well mounted now, held for hours, covering the flight of French detachments. At the head of one such party rode Count Peter, of Brittany, spitting the blood from his mouth and shouting “Ha! by God’s head, have you ever seen such riffraff?”

“In front of us were two of the king’s sergeants; ... and the Turks ... brought a large number of churls afoot, who pelted them with lumps of earth, but were never able to force them back upon us. At last they brought a churl on foot, who thrice threw Greek fire at them. Once William of Boon received the pot of Greek fire on his target, for if the fire had caught any of his garments he must have been burnt alive. We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the sergeants. Now, it chanced that I found a Saracen’s quilted tunic lined with tow; I turned the open side towards me, and made a shield ... which did me good service, for I was only wounded by their darts in five places, and my horse in fifteen.... The good Count of Soissons, in that point of danger, jested with me and said,

“‘Seneschal, let these curs howl! By God’s bonnet we shall talk of this day yet, you and I, in ladies’ chambers!’”

So came the constable of France, who relieved Joinville and sent him to guard the king.

“So as soon as I came to the king, I made him take off his helmet, and lent him my steel cap so that he might have air.”

Presently a knight brought news that the Count of Artois, the king’s brother, was in paradise.

“Ah, Sire,” said the provost, “be of good comfort herein, for never did king of France gain so much honor as you have gained this day. For in order to fight your enemies you have passed over a river swimming, and you have discomfited them and driven them from the field, and taken their engines, and also their tents wherein you will sleep this night.”

And the king replied: “Let God be worshiped for all He has given me,” and then the big tears fell from his eyes.

That night the captured camp was attacked in force, much to the grief of De Joinville and his knights, who ruefully put on chain mail over their aching wounds. Before they were dressed De Joinville’s chaplain engaged eight Saracens and put them all to flight.

Three days later came a general attack of the whole Saracen army upon the Christian camp, but thanks to the troops of Count William, of Flanders, De Joinville and his wounded knights were not in the thick of the fray.

“Wherein,” he says, “God showed us great courtesy, for neither I nor my knights had our hawberks (chain shirts) and shields, because we had all been wounded.”

You see De Joinville had the sweet faith that his God was a gentleman.

After that the sorrowful army lay nine days in camp till the bodies of the dead floated to the surface of the canal, and eight days more while a hundred hired vagabonds cleared the stream. But the army lived on eels and water from that canal, while all of them sickened of scurvy, and hundreds died. Under the hands of the surgeons the men of that dying army cried like women. Then came an attempt to retreat in ships to the coast, but the way was blocked, the little galleys were captured one by one, the king was taken, and what then remained of the host were prisoners, the sick put to death, the rich held for ransom, the poor sold away into slavery.

Saint Louis appeared to be dying of dysentery and scurvy, he was threatened with torture, but day after day found strength and courage to bargain with the soldan of Babylon for the ransom of his people. Once the negotiations broke down because the soldan was murdered by his own emirs, but the king went on bargaining now with the murderers. For his own ransom he gave the city of Damietta, for that of his knights he paid the royal treasure that was on board a galley in the port, and for the deliverance of the common men, he had to raise money in France.

So came the release, and the emirs would have been ashamed to let their captive knights leave the prison fasting. So De Joinville’s party had “fritters of cheese roasted in the sun so that worms should not come therein, and hard boiled eggs cooked four or five days before, and these, in our honor, had been painted with divers colors.”

After that came the counting of the ransom on board the royal galley, with the dreadful conclusion that they were short of the sum by thirty thousand livres. De Joinville went off to the galley of the marshal of the Knights Templars, where he tried to borrow the money.

“Many were the hard and angry words which passed between him and me.”

For one thing the borrower, newly released from prison, looked like a ragged beggar, and for the rest, the treasure of the Templars was a trust fund not to be lent to any one. They stood in the hold in front of the chest of treasure, De Joinville demanding the key, then threatening with an ax to make of it the king’s key.

“We see right well,” said the treasurer, “that you are using force against us.” And on that excuse yielded the key to the ragged beggar, tottering with weakness, a very specter of disease and famine.

“I threw out the silver I found therein and went, and sat on the prow of our little vessel that had brought me. And I took the marshal of France and left him with the silver in the Templars’ galley and on the galley I put the minister of the Trinity. On the galley the marshal handed the silver to the minister, and the minister gave it over to me on the little vessel where I sat. When we had ended and came towards the king’s galley, I began to shout to the king.

“‘Sire! Sire! see how well I am furnished!’

“And the saintly man received me right willingly and right joyfully.”

So the ransom was completed, the king’s ransom and that of the greatest nobles of France, this group of starving ragged beggars in a dingey.

Years followed of hard campaigning in Palestine. Once Saint Louis was even invited by the soldan of Damascus to visit as a pilgrim that Holy City which he could never enter as a conqueror. But Saint Louis and his knights were reminded of a story about Richard the Lion-Hearted, king of England. For Richard once marched almost within sight of the capital so that a knight cried out to him:

“Sire, come so far hither, and I will show you Jerusalem!”

But the Duke of Burgundy had just deserted with half the crusading army, lest it be said that the English had taken Jerusalem. So when Richard heard the knight calling he threw his coat armor before his eyes, all in tears, and said to our Savior,

“Fair Lord God, I pray Thee suffer me not to see Thy Holy City since I can not deliver it from the hands of thine enemies.”

King Louis the Saint followed the example of King Richard the Hero, and both left Palestine broken-hearted because they had not the strength to take Jerusalem.

Very queer is the tale of the queen’s arrival from France.

“When I heard tell that she was come,” said De Joinville, “I rose from before the king and went to meet her, and led her to the castle, and when I came back to the king, who was in his chapel, he asked me if the queen and his children were well; and I told him yes. And he said, ‘I knew when you rose from before me that you were going to meet the queen, and so I have caused the sermon to wait for you.’ And these things I tell you,” adds De Joinville, “because I had then been five years with the king, and never before had he spoken to me, nor so far as ever I heard, to any one else, of the queen, and of his children; and so it appears to me, it was not seemly to be thus a stranger to one’s wife and children.”

To do the dear knight justice, he was always brutally frank to the king’s face, however much he loved him behind his back.

The return of the king and queen to France was full of adventure, and De Joinville still had an appetite for such little troubles as a wreck and a sea fight. Here is a really nice story of an accident.

“One of the queen’s bedwomen, when she had put the queen to bed, was heedless, and taking the kerchief that had been wound about her head, threw it into the iron stove on which the queen’s candle was burning, and when she had gone into the cabin where the women slept, below the queen’s chamber, the candle burnt on, till the kerchief caught fire, and from the kerchief the fire passed to the cloths with which the queen’s garments were covered. When the queen awoke she saw her cabin all in flames, and jumped up quite naked and took the kerchief and threw it all burning into the sea, and took the cloths and extinguished them. Those who were in the barge behind the ship cried, but not very loud, ‘Fire! fire!’ I lifted up my head and saw that the kerchief still burned with a clear flame on the sea, which was very still.

“I put on my tunic as quickly as I could, and went and sat with the mariners.

“While I sat there my squire, who slept before me, came to me and said that the king was awake, and asked where I was. ‘And I told him,’ said he, ‘that you were in your cabin; and the king said to me, “Thou liest!”’ While we were thus speaking, behold the queen’s clerk appeared, Master Geoffrey, and said to me, ‘Be not afraid, nothing has happened.’ And I said, ‘Master Geoffrey, go and tell the queen that the king is awake, and she should go to him, and set his mind at ease.’

“On the following day the constable of France, and my Lord Peter the chamberlain, and my Lord Gervais, the master of the pantry, said to the king, ‘What happened in the night that we heard mention of fire?’ and I said not a word. Then said the king, ‘What happened was by mischance, and the seneschal (De Joinville) is more reticent than I. Now I will tell you,’ said he, ‘how it came about that we might all have been burned this night,’ and he told them what had befallen, and said to me, ‘I command you henceforth not to go to rest until you have put out all fires, except the great fire that is in the hold of the ship.’ (Cooking fire on the ship’s ballast). ‘And take note that I shall not go to rest till you come back to me.’”

It is pleasant to think of the queen’s pluck, the knight’s silence, the king’s tact, and to see the inner privacies of that ancient ship. After seven hundred years the gossip is fresh and vivid as this morning’s news.

The king brought peace, prosperity and content to all his kingdom, and De Joinville was very angry when in failing health Saint Louis was persuaded to attempt another crusade in Africa.

“So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of the Franciscans.”

So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a saint on a throne, the noblest of all adventurers, the greatest sovereign France has ever known.

Long afterward the king came in a dream to see De Joinville: “Marvelously joyous and glad of heart, and I myself was right glad to see him in my castle. And I said to him, ‘Sire, when you go hence, I will lodge you in a house of mine, that is in a city of mine, called Chevillon.’ And he answered me laughing, and said to me, ‘Lord of Joinville, by the faith I owe you, I have no wish so soon to go hence.’”

It was at the age of eighty-five De Joinville wrote his memoirs, still blithe as a boy because he was not grown up.

Note. From Memoirs of the Crusaders, by Villehardouine and De Joinville. Dent & Co.

III

A. D. 1260

THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA

T

he

year 1260 found Saint Louis of France busy reforming his kingdom, while over the way the English barons were reforming King Henry III on the eve of the founding of parliament, and the Spaniards were inventing the bull fight by way of a national sport. Our own national pastime then was baiting Jews. They got twopence per week in the pound for the use of their money, but next year one of them was caught in the act of cheating, a little error which led to the massacre of seven hundred.

That year the great Khan Kublai came to the throne of the Mongol Empire, a pastoral realm of the grass lands extending from the edge of Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Kublai began to build his capital, the city of Pekin, and in all directions his people extended their conquests. The looting and burning of Bagdad took them seven days and the resistless pressure of their hordes was forcing the Turks upon Europe.

Meanwhile in the dying Christian empire of the East, the Latins held Constantinople with Beldwin on the throne, but next year the Greek army led by Michael Paleologus crept through a tunnel and managed to capture the city.

Among the merchants at Constantinople in 1260 were the two Polo brothers, Nicolo and Matteo, Venetian nobles, who invested the whole of their capital in gems, and set off on a trading voyage to the Crimea. Their business finished, they went on far up the Volga River to the court of a Mongol prince, and to him they gave the whole of their gems as a gift, getting a present in return with twice the money. But now their line of retreat was blocked by a war among the Mongol princes, so they went off to trade at Bokhara in Persia where they spent a year. And so it happened that the Polo brothers met with certain Mongol envoys who were returning to the court of their Emperor Kublai. “Come with us,” said the envoys. “The great khan has never seen a European and will be glad to have you as his guests.” So the Polos traveled under safe conduct with the envoys, a year’s journey, until they reached the court of the great khan at Pekin and were received with honor and liberality.

Now it so happened that Kublai sought for himself and his people the faith of Christ, and wanted the pope to send him a hundred priests, so he despatched these Italian gentlemen as his ambassadors to the court of Rome. He gave them a passport engraved on a slab of gold, commanding his subjects to help the envoys upon their way with food and horses, and thus, traveling in state across Asia, the Polos returned from a journey, the greatest ever made up to that time by any Christian men.

At Venice, Nicolo, the elder of the brothers, found that his wife had died leaving to him a son, then aged sixteen, young Marco Polo, a gallant, courageous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor.

The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space without air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there was a sort of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new appointment made because the electors were squabbling. Two years the envoys waited, and when at last a new pope was elected, he proved to be a friend of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they waited at the Christian fortress of Acre in Palestine.

But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the Mongol empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who proved to be a coward, and deserted.

Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a three and one-half years’ journey to Pekin, taking with them young Marco Polo, a handsome gallant, who at once found favor with old Kublai Khan. Marco “sped wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their language, their manner of writing, and their practise of war ... insomuch that the emperor held him in great esteem. And so when he discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well and beseemingly, he sent him on an embassage of his, to a country which was a good six months’ journey distant. The young gallant executed his commission well and with discretion.” The fact is that Kublai’s ambassadors, returning from different parts of the world, “were able to tell him nothing except the business on which they had gone, and that the prince in consequence held them for no better than dolts and fools.” Mark brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great success, for seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of missions. “And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had knowledge of or had actually visited a greater number of the different countries of the world than any other man.”

In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in 1277 of one Polo nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and his father and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on, and the aged emperor began to fail, they feared as to their fate after his death. Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at them.

“Now it came to pass in those days that the Queen Bolgana, wife of Argon, lord of the Levant (court of Persia), departed this life. And in her will she had desired that no lady should take her place, or succeed her as Argon’s wife except one of her own family (in Cathay). Argon therefore despatched three of his barons ... as ambassadors to the great khan, attended by a very gallant company, in order to bring back as his bride a lady of the family of Queen Bolgana, his late wife.

“When these three barons had reached the court of the great khan, they delivered their message explaining wherefore they were come. The khan received them with all honor and hospitality, and then sent for a lady whose name was Cocachin, who was of the family of the deceased Queen Bolgana. She was a maiden of seventeen, a very beautiful and charming person, and on her arrival at court she was presented to the three barons as the lady chosen in compliance with their demand. They declared that the lady pleased them well.

“Meanwhile Messer Marco chanced to return from India, whither he had gone as the lord’s ambassador, and made his report of all the different things that he had seen in his travels, and of the sundry seas over which he had voyaged. And the three barons, having seen that Messer Nicolo, Messer Matteo and Messer Marco were not only Latins but men of marvelous good sense withal, took thought among themselves to get the three to travel to Persia with them, their intention being to return to their country by sea, on account of the great fatigue of that long land journey for a lady. So they went to the great khan, and begged as a favor that he would send the three Latins with them, as it was their desire to return home by sea.

“The lord, having that great regard that I have mentioned for those three Latins, was very loath to do so. But at last he did give them permission to depart, enjoining them to accompany the three barons and the lady.”

In the fleet that sailed on the two years’ voyage to Persia there were six hundred persons, not counting mariners; but what with sickness and little accidents of travel, storms for instance and sharks, only eight persons arrived, including the lady, one of the Persian barons, and the three Italians. They found the handsome King Argon dead, so the lady had to put up with his insignificant son Casan, who turned out to be a first-rate king. The lady wept sore at parting with the Italians. They set out for Venice, arriving in 1295 after an absence of twenty-seven years.

There is a legend that two aged men, and one of middle age, in ragged clothes, of very strange device, came knocking at the door of the Polo’s town house in Venice, and were denied admission by the family who did not know them. It was only when the travelers had unpacked their luggage, and given a banquet, that the family and their guests began to respect these vagrants. Three times during dinner the travelers retired to change their gorgeous oriental robes for others still more splendid. Was it possible that the long dead Polos had returned alive? Then the tables being cleared, Marco brought forth the dirty ragged clothes in which they had come to Venice, and with sharp knives they ripped open the seams and welts, pouring out vast numbers of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds and emeralds, gems to the value of a million ducats. The family was entirely convinced, the public nicknamed the travelers as the millionaires, the city conferred dignities, and the two elder gentlemen spent their remaining years in peace and splendor surrounded by hosts of friends.

Three years later a sea battle was fought between the fleets of Genoa and Venice, and in the Venetian force one of the galleys was commanded by Marco Polo. There Venice was totally defeated, and Marco was one of the seven thousand prisoners carried home to grace the triumph of the Genoese. It was in prison that he met the young literary person to whom he dictated his book, not of travel, not of adventure, but a geography, a description of all Asia, its countries, peoples and wonders. Sometimes he got excited and would draw the long bow, expanding the numbers of the great khan’s armies. Sometimes his marvels were such as nobody in his senses could be expected to swallow, as for instance, when he spoke of the Tartars as burning black stones to keep them warm in winter. Yet on the whole this book, of the greatest traveler that ever lived, awakened Europe of the Dark Ages to the knowledge of that vast outer world that has mainly become the heritage of the Christian Powers.

See the Book of Sir Marco Polo, translated and edited by Colonel Sir Henry Yule. John Murray.

IV

A. D. 1322

THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE

“I

, John Maundeville

, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was born in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year of our Lord 1322 ... and hitherto have been long time on the sea, and have seen and gone through many diverse lands ... with good company of many lords. God be thankful!”

So wrote a very gentle and pious knight. His book of travels begins with the journey to Constantinople, which in his day was the seat of a Christian emperor. Beyond was the Saracen empire, whose sultans reigned in the name of the Prophet Mahomet over Asia Minor, Syria, the Holy Land and Egypt. For three hundred years Christian and Saracen had fought for the possession of Jerusalem, but now the Moslem power was stronger than ever.

Sir John Maundeville found the sultan of Babylon the Less at his capital city in Egypt, and there entered in his service as a soldier for wars against the Arab tribes of the desert. The sultan grew to love this Englishman, talked with him of affairs in Europe, urged him to turn Moslem, and offered to him the hand of a princess in marriage. But when Maundeville insisted on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his master let him go, and granted him letters with the great seal, before which even generals and governors were obliged to prostrate themselves.

Sir John went all over Palestine, devoutly believing everything he was told. Here is his story of the Field Beflowered. “For a fair maiden was blamed with wrong, and slandered ... for which cause she was condemned to death, and to be burnt in that place, to the which she was led. And as the fire began to burn about her, she made her prayers to our Lord, that as certainly as she was not guilty of that sin, that he would help her, and make it to be known to all men of his merciful grace. And when she had thus said she entered into the fire, and anon was the fire quenched and out; and the brands which were burning became red rose trees, and the brands that were not kindled became white rose trees full of roses. And these were the first rose trees and roses, both white and red, which ever any man saw.”

All this part of his book is very beautiful concerning the holy places, and there are nice bits about incubators for chickens and the use of carrier pigeons. But it is in the regions beyond the Holy Land that Sir John’s wonderful power of believing everything that he had heard makes his chapters more and more exciting.

“In Ethiopia ... there be folk that have but one foot and they go so fast that it is a marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them.”

Beyond that was the isle of Nacumera, where all the people have hounds’ heads, being reasonable and of good understanding save that they worship an ox for their god. And they all go naked save a little clout, and if they take any man in battle anon they eat him. The dog-headed king of that land is most pious, saying three hundred prayers by way of grace before meat.

Next he came to Ceylon. “In that land is full much waste, for it is full of serpents, of dragons and of cockodrills, so that no man may dwell there.

“In one of these isles be folk as of great stature as giants. And they be hideous to look upon. And they have but one eye, and that is in the middle of the forehead. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw fish. And in another isle towards the south dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed nature that have no heads. And their eyes be in their shoulders and their mouths be round shapen, like an horseshoe, amidst their breasts. And in another isle be men without heads, and their eyes and mouths be behind in their shoulders. And in another isle be folk that have the face all flat, all plain, without nose and without mouth. But they have two small holes, all round, instead of their eyes, and their mouth is flat also without lips. And in another isle be folk of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth so great that when they sleep in the sun they cover all the face with that lip.”

If Sir John had been untruthful he might have been here tempted to tell improbable stories, but he merely refers to these isles in passing with a few texts from the Holy Scriptures to express his entire disapproval. His chapters on the Chinese empire are a perfect model of veracity, and he merely cocks on a few noughts to the statistics. In outlying parts of Cathay he feels once more the need of a little self-indulgence. One province is covered with total and everlasting darkness, enlivened by the neighing of unseen horses and the crowing of mysterious cocks. In the next province he found a fruit, which, when ripe, is cut open, disclosing “a little beast in flesh and bone and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit have I eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvelous in all his works. And nevertheless I told them of as great a marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was of the barnacle geese: for I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fall on the water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right good to man’s meat, and thereof had they so great marvel that some of them trowed it were an impossible thing to be.”

This mean doubt as to his veracity must have cut poor Maundeville to the quick. In his earnest way he goes on to describe the people who live entirely on the smell of wild apples, to the Amazon nation consisting solely of women warriors, and so on past many griffins, popinjays, dragons and other wild fowl to the Adamant Rocks of loadstone which draw all the iron nails out of a ship to her great inconvenience. “I myself, have seen afar off in that sea, as though it had been a great isle full of trees and bush, full of thorns and briers great plenty. And the shipmen told us that all that was of ships that were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the iron that was in them.” Beyond that Sir John reports a sea consisting of gravel, ebbing and flowing in great waves, but containing no drop of water, a most awkward place for shipping.

So far is Sir John moderate in his statements, but when he gets to the Vale Perilous at last he turns himself loose. That vale is disturbed by thunders and tempests, murmurs and noises, a great noise of “tabors, drums and trumps.” This vale is all full of devils, and hath been alway. In that vale is great plenty of gold and silver.