From the days of Clovis to the days of Charles Martel and Charlemagne the history of the Frankish realm, so far as its kingship is concerned, is almost a blank. It was an era of se...
The ideas of law and order in mediaeval Germany were by no means what we now understand by those terms. The injustice of the strong and the suffering of the weak were the rule; and...
Peter the Great, grandson of the first emperor of the Romanof line, was a man of such extraordinary power of body and mind, such a remarkable combination of common sense, mental ac...
Long years of misgovernment in China produced their natural result. Evils stalked abroad while worthless emperors spent their days in luxury at home. The land ceased to be governed...
The Chinese are a peculiar people, and have odd ideas of the power and duty of their monarchs and of their own rights and duties. In their country no son has the right to resist hi...
We have told how King Haakon succeeded his brother, Erik Blood-Axe, on the throne, and how, from his kindly and gentle nature, people called him Haakon the Good. There were other s...
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century ideas of revolution were widely in the air. The people were rising against the tyranny of the kings. First in this struggle for libert...
When the great dynasty of the Hans, which had held supreme rule in China for more than four hundred years, came to an end, it left that country divided up into three independent ki...
In seeking examples of the excesses to which absolute power may lead, we usually name the wicked emperors of Rome, among whom Nero stands most notorious as a monster of cruelty. Mo...
Muley Abul Hassan, the warlike king of Granada, weary of having his lands raided and his towns taken, resolved to repay the Christians in kind. The Duke of Medina Sidonia had drive...
At the foot of Mount Cithaeron, one of the most beautiful of the mountains of Greece, winds the small river Asopus, and between, on a slope of the mountain, may to-day be seen the...
During the days of the decline of Athens, the centre of thought to Greece, there roamed about the streets of that city a delicate, sickly lad, so feeble in frame that, at his mothe...
On the banks of the river Zaan, about five miles from Amsterdam, lies the picturesque little town of Zaandam, with its cottages of blue, green, and pink, half hidden among the tree...
On the 5th day of July, in the year 1742, unwonted signs of activity might have been seen in the usually deserted St. Simon's harbor, on the coast of Georgia. Into that sequestered...
History presents us with four instances of an imperial soldiery who took the power into their own hands and for a time ruled as the tyrants of a nation. These were the Pretorian Gu...
At midnight of the 22d of June, 1791, a heavy and lumbering carriage rolled slowly into the town of Varennes, situated in the department of Meuse, in northeastern France. It had se...
In 1568 died Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, the son of Philip II. of Spain; and in the same year died Isabella of Valois, the young and beautiful queen of the Spanish monarch. Leg...
Christ had not long passed away from the earth when the reign of peace and brotherly love which He had so warmly inculcated ceased to exist on the soil of Judaea. Forty years after...
Of the several nations that made up the Europe of the eighteenth century, one, the kingdom of Poland, vanished before the nineteenth century began. Destitute of a strong central go...
In these latter days the world seems overturned. Events of startling interest are every year taking place, new discoveries are made, new inventions produced, new explorations compl...
Nearly eight hundred years had passed away after the landing of Tarik, the Arab, in Spain and the defeat and death of Don Roderic, the last king of the Goths. During those centurie...
To Edward the Second, lying in luxurious idleness in his palace of pleasure at London, came the startling word that he must strike a blow or lose a kingdom. Scotland was slipping f...
We have written much of war and bloodshed; a chapter devoted to the lighter themes of courtship and marriage may here be of interest, especially as it has to do with the love affai...
During three years--363 to 361 B.C.--Rome was ravaged by the plague, which was so violent and fatal as to carry off the citizens by hundreds. In its first year it found a noble vic...
From the days of Rurik down, a single desire--a single passion, we may say--has had a strong hold upon the Russian heart, the desire to possess Constantinople, that grand gate-city...
In 1714 certain events took place in Spain of sufficient interest to be worth the telling. Philip V., a feeble monarch, like all those for the century preceding him, was on the thr...
The far-famed Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And from her beauty and faithlessness came the most celebrated of ancient wars, wit...
The banished King Tarquin did not lightly yield his realm. He roused the neighboring cities against Rome and fought fiercely for his throne. Soon after he was exiled from Rome he s...
Though Rome had extended its conquests over numerous tribes and nations of barbarians, and reduced them to subjection, much of the old love of liberty remained, and many of the lat...
From west to east across Europe had marched the army of the great conqueror, no nation daring to draw a hostile sword, none venturing to place an obstacle in its path. Across Russi...