The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the
north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and
intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities
has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative
still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of
electors and princes. ^149

[Footnote 149: In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of
Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had
rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a
multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the
author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know
of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire et du
Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His
learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts;
his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His
chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and
an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads.
To this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was
gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even
the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae
Germanicae of Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more
usefully, as that huge compilation is fortified in every page
with the original texts.

Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League,
consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des
Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802. New and improved
edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The original Hanseatic
League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the
Netherlands and on the Rhine. - M.]

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the
strongest light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of
Germany, which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine
and Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their
unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of
Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh
procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson
Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous
in the estimation of the Germans themselves. ^150 After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or
promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the
exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the
earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral
college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans,
and future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was
prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German
emperor was no more than the elective and impotent magistrate of
an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village that he
might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was
convened at his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less
opulent than the adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat
of his power and the richest source of his revenue. The army
with which he passed the Alps consisted of three hundred horse.
In the cathedral of St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the
iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but
he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city
were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by
the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of
Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown
of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman
emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, ^151 whose
fancy revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and
upbraids the ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his
contemporaries could observe, that the sole exercise of his
authority was in the lucrative sale of privileges and titles.
The gold of Italy secured the election of his son; but such was
the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was
arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained
in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his
expenses.

[Footnote 150: Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be
considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he
recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the
emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,
Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always
represents him as a polite and learned prince.]

[Footnote 151: Besides the German and Italian historians, the
expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original
colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii.
p. 376 - 430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been
blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent
majesty of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The
golden bull, which fixes the Germanic constitution, is
promulgated in the style of a sovereign and legislator. A
hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted their own
dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their chief
or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings,
performed their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The
seals of the triple kingdom were borne in state by the
archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, the perpetual
arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles. The great
marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately
dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward,
the count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table.
The great chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented,
after the repast, the golden ewer and basin, to wash. The king
of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's
brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession
was closed by the great huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a
stag, with a loud chorus of horns and hounds. ^152 Nor was the
supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany alone: the
hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the preeminence of his
rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the
temporal head of the great republic of the West: ^153 to his
person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he
disputed with the pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings
and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned
Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles the Fourth; and his school
resounded with the doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the
rightful sovereign of the earth, from the rising to the setting
sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as
a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, "And there went
forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be
taxed." ^154

[Footnote 152: See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]

[Footnote 153: The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor
at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the
council of Constance. See Lenfant's History of that assembly.]

[Footnote 154: Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between
Augustus and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast
between the two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness
under the mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his
strength under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his
victorious legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the
Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed
himself the servant of the state and the equal of his
fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed
a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune.
His will was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his
laws he borrowed the voice of the senate and people; and from
their decrees their master accepted and renewed his temporary
commission to administer the republic. In his dress, his
domestics, ^155 his titles, in all the offices of social life,
Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman; and his
most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
perpetual monarchy.

[Footnote 155: Six thousand urns have been discovered of the
slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the
division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the
wool which was spun by the empress's maids, another for the care
of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract
of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His
Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were
of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of
Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the
city.]

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.

Part I.

Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. - Birth,
Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet. - He Preaches At Mecca. -
Flies To Medina. - Propagates His Religion By The Sword. -
Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs. - His Death And
Successors. - The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars
of Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of
Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While
the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was
distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with
the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his
throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of
the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of
his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the
Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the
most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and
lasting character on the nations of the globe. ^1

[Footnote 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display
much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the
Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters,
who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and
English languages. Their collections, versions, and histories, I
shall occasionally notice.]

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and
Aethiopia, the Arabian peninsula ^2 may be conceived as a
triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern
point of Beles ^3 on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred
miles is terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of
frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the
middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the
Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. ^4 The sides of the triangle are
gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a
thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the
peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or
France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with
the epithets of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of
Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and
luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of
comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in
the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is
intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and
intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes,
the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious
and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they
alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows of the
ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and
buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an
object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood,
that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element
of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent
regions: the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the
thirsty earth: the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the
acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are
nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is
collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are
the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca, ^5
after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of
the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such
is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The
experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh
water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to
the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to
themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry
in the cultivation of the palmtree and the vine. The high lands
that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their
superior plenty of wood and water; the air is more temperate, the
fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more
numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil
of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense ^6 and
coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the
world. If it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this
sequestered region may truly deserve the appellation of the
happy; and the splendid coloring of fancy and fiction has been
suggested by contrast, and countenanced by distance. It was for
this earthly paradise that Nature had reserved her choicest
favors and her most curious workmanship: the incompatible
blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives:
the soil was impregnated with gold ^7 and gems, and both the land
and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This
division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to
the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and
it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and
inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a
vestige of its ancient geography. The maritime districts of
Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia. The
kingdom of Yemen displays the limits, or at least the situation,
of Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over the inland
space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of
Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. ^8

[Footnote 2: The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three
classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge
may be traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson,
Geograph. Minor. tom. i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p.
159 - 167, l. iii. p. 211 - 216, edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l.
xvi. p. 1112 - 1114, from Eratosthenes, p. 1122 - 1132, from
Artemidorus,) Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927 - 969,) Pliny, (Hist.
Natur. v. 12, vi. 32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium,
in Hudson, tom. iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the
subject with the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of
Pocock (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125 - 128) from the Geography
of the Sherif al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with
the version or abridgment (p. 24 - 27, 44 - 56, 108, &c., 119,
&c.) which the Maronites have published under the absurd title of
Geographia Nubiensis, (Paris, 1619;) but the Latin and French
translators, Greaves (in Hudson, tom. iii.) and Galland, (Voyage
de la Palestine par La Roque, p. 265 - 346,) have opened to us
the Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of
the peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the
Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim.
3. The European travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438 - 455) and
Niebuhr (Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an
honorable distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom.
viii. p. 416 - 510) has compiled with judgment, and D'Anville's
Maps (Orbis Veteribus Notus, and 1re Partie de l'Asie) should lie
before the reader, with his Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208
- 231.

Note: Of modern travellers may be mentioned the adventurer
who called himself Ali Bey; but above all, the intelligent, the
enterprising the accurate Burckhardt. - M.]

[Footnote 3: Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1. D'Anville,
l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place, the
paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks
first passed the Euphrates, (Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit.
Wells.)]

[Footnote 4: Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,

1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a
part of the Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite
space of the Indian Ocean.

2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the
blacks or negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59 - 117.)]

[Footnote 5: In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and
Mecca, there are fifteen destitute of good water. See the route
of the Hadjees, in Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]

[Footnote 6: The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense,
of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet
(Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors
that are blown by the north- east wind from the Sabaean coast: -

- Many a league,
Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles.
(Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]

[Footnote 7: Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were
found, from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was
twice, and silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro,
p. 60.) These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no
gold mines are at present known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description,
p. 124.)

Note: A brilliant passage in the geographical poem of
Dionysius Periegetes embodies the notions of the ancients on the
wealth and fertility of Yemen. Greek mythology, and the
traditions of the "gorgeous east," of India as well as Arabia,
are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on the
southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut. Wellsted -
M.]

[Footnote 8: Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae
Arabum of Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text
and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory
Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663,
in 4to.;) the three hundred and fifty- eight notes form a classic
and original work on the Arabian antiquities.]

The measure of population is regulated by the means of
subsistence; and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be
outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industrious
province. Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and
even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi, ^9 or fish eaters,
continued to wander in quest of their precarious food. In this
primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of
society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without
sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the
animal creation. Generations and ages might roll away in silent
oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying
his race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence
to the narrow margin of the seacoast. But in an early period of
antiquity the great body of the Arabs had emerged from this scene
of misery; and as the naked wilderness could not maintain a
people of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and
plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life is
uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of
their ancestors, ^10 who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt
under similar tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and
sheep, to the same springs and the same pastures. Our toil is
lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the
useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the
absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave.
^11 Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and
original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not
indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that
generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the
English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: ^12
the Bedoweens preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and
the memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high
price, but the females are seldom alienated; and the birth of a
noble foal was esteemed among the tribes, as a subject of joy and
mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents,
among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which
trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are
accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not
blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their
powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no
sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their
friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop
till he has recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and
Arabia, the camel is a sacred and precious gift. That strong and
patient beast of burden can perform, without eating or drinking,
a journey of several days; and a reservoir of fresh water is
preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of the animal, whose
body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the larger breed
is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the
dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part
of the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and
nutritious: the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: ^13
a valuable salt is extracted from the urine: the dung supplies
the deficiency of fuel; and the long hair, which falls each year
and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the
furniture, and the tents of the Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons,
they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert:
during the heats of summer and the scarcity of winter, they
remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or
the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the
villages of Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is
a life of danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or
exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of industry, a private
citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and pleasing
luxury than the proudest emir, who marches in the field at the
head of ten thousand horse.

[Footnote 9: Arrian remarks the Icthyophagi of the coast of
Hejez, (Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 12,) and beyond Aden, (p.
15.) It seems probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the
largest sense) were occupied by these savages in the time,
perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can hardly believe that any cannibals
were left among the savages in the reign of Justinian. (Procop.
de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19.)]

[Footnote 10: See the Specimen Historiae Arabum of Pocock, p. 2,
5, 86, &c. The journey of M. d'Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of
the emir of Mount Carmel, (Voyage de la Palestine, Amsterdam,
1718,) exhibits a pleasing and original picture of the life of
the Bedoweens, which may be illustrated from Niebuhr (Description
de l'Arabie, p. 327 - 344) and Volney, (tom. i. p. 343 - 385,)
the last and most judicious of our Syrian travellers.]

[Footnote 11: Read (it is no unpleasing task) the incomparable
articles of the Horse and the Camel, in the Natural History of M.
de Buffon.]

[Footnote 12: For the Arabian horses, see D'Arvieux (p. 159 -
173) and Niebuhr, (p. 142 - 144.) At the end of the xiiith
century, the horses of Neged were esteemed sure-footed, those of
Yemen strong and serviceable, those of Hejaz most noble. The
horses of Europe, the tenth and last class, were generally
despised as having too much body and too little spirit,
(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 339: ) their strength was
requisite to bear the weight of the knight and his armor]

[Footnote 13: Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces
sunt, was the opinion of an Arabian physician, (Pocock, Specimen,
p. 88.) Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow,
and does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and
Medina was already more luxurious, (Gagnier Vie de Mahomet, tom.
iii. p. 404.)]