for Italy, he appealed to Pepin, the first monarch of the Carlovingian dynasty in France. Pepin immediately crossed the Alps with a powerful army, besieged Astulphus in Pavia, and forced him to purchase peace by the cession not only of the places he had seized in the Roman dukedom, but also of the exarchate and the marches of Ancona, to the Holy See. The Franks had to return a second time to compel the fulfilment of these engagements; Astulphus once more submitted, but secretly resolved to renew the war on a favorable opportunity; before his preparations were completed, however, he was killed by a fall from his horse, and the Lombard kingdom distracted by a disputed succession.

By the aid of the pope, Desiderius prevailed in the contest; but subsequently being exposed to the jealousy of the pontifical power, he tried to secure himself by giving his daughters in marriage to Charles and Carloman, the two sons of Pepin. This alliance was of no long duration; Charles divorced his wife under pretence of her barrenness; and Desiderius, in revenge, endeavored to persuade the pope to anoint Carloman's children monarchs of the Franks. Adrian I., who then filled the pontifical chair, steadily refused; Desiderius invaded his dominions, and the pope unable to make effective resistance, placed himself under the protection of Charles, or, as he is more generally called, Charlemagne. The king of the Franks crossed the Alps, and, after a brief war, put an end to the kingdom of the Lombards by the capture of Pavia (A. D. 774). Desiderius and his family were sent into France, where they died in obscurity; Charlemagne, as conqueror, received the iron crown of Lombardy.

SECTION VII.-The Anglo-Saxons.

WHEN Britain was deserted by the Romans, the country remained exposed to the savage incursions of the Picts and Scots; the inhabitants, unable to protect themselves, and refused aid by the emperors, who were oppressed by other barbarians, deserted their habitations, abandoned their fields, and sought shelter in the hills and woods, where they suffered equally from famine and the enemy. When the retreat of the barbarians afforded them a temporary respite, they wasted their energies in theological controversies arising out of the Pelagian heresy; and when the invasions were renewed, domestic rancor prevented their combining for their common defence. Vortigern, prince of Dumnonium, advised his countryinen to seek foreign aid; and they, forgetting prudence in the extremity of their fears, invited the Saxons to their aid from Germany.

The Saxons and Angles, from small beginnings, had gradually extended their sway from the mouth of the Rhine to the coast of Jutland; their piratical vessels scoured the seas of western Europe; and the maritime cities of Gaul, Spain and Britain, were frequently plundered by their corsairs, or forced to purchase safety by the payment of a large tribute. Among the chiefs of their warlike tribes, none enjoyed greater authority than the two brothers Hengist and Horsa, who claimed to be descended from Woden, the tutelary god of the nation. To these leaders the application of Vortigern was made; they readily accepted his invitation, and, accompanied by about sixteen hundred of their

countrymen, landed in the isle of Thanet. The Picts and Scots were subdued with so much facility, that the adventurers began to reflect how easily they might conquer a nation unable to resist such feeble in vaders; instead of returning home, they invited over fresh hordes of their countrymen, and received from Germany a reinforcement of fiv thousand men. A long and cruel series of wars ensued, in which the Saxons and another barbarous tribe, the Angles, continually supporte by crowds of volunteers from Germany, triumphed over the Britons ir almost every encounter, and finally drove the miserable remnant of the nation to seek refuge in the mountains of Wales and Cornwall. The struggle lasted nearly one hundred and fifty years, and ended in the di vision of southern Britain into seven Saxon kingdoms, commonly called the Heptarchy.

The Christian religion was first established in the kingdom of Kent, the earliest and long the most powerful of the Saxon monarchies. Ethelbert, its sovereign, though a pagan, had married a Christian prin cess, Bertha, the daughter of Caribert, one of the successors of Clovis, and had promised to allow her the free exercise of her religion. Bertha, by the exercise of her conduct, acquired considerable influence over the mind both of her husband and his courtiers; her popularity was probably one of the principal motives that induced Pope Gregory the Great to send missionaries into England.* Augustine, the chief of the mission, was honorably received at the court of Ethelbert (A. d. 597), and began to preach the gospel to the people of Kent. The rigid austerity of his manners, and the severe penances to which he subjected himself, wrought powerfully upon the minds of a barbarous people, and induced them readily to believe the pretended miracles he wrought for their conversion. Ethelbert and the great majority of his subjects were soon received into the church, and Augustine was consecrated the first archbishop of Canterbury.

The petty wars between the princes of the Heptarchy are totally devoid of interest, and the history of the separate kingdoms is little more than a list of obscure names. An exception may be made in favor of Offa, king of Mercia, who zealously labored to extend the power of the Romish see in England, and founded the magnificent monastery of St. Albans. So considerable were his power and fame, that the emperor Charlemagne sought his friendship and alliance; Offa, at his desire, sent the celebrated Alcuin to the court of Charlemagne, and this learned Saxon became the emperor's preceptor in the sciences. To Alcuin, France was indebted for all the polite learning it boasted

It is said that this prelate, while yet in a private station, beheld some Saxon youths exposed for sale in the slave-market at Rome. Struck with their beauty, he inquired to what country they belonged, and being told that they were Angli, exclaimed "They would not be Angli, but Angeli (angels), if they were Christians." Continuing his questions, he asked the name of their province; he was told Deiri (a district of Northumberland). "Deiri!" he exclaimed, "De ira (from the wrath of God), they are summoned to his mercy." He further asked the name of their king, and hearing that it was Ella, or Alla, he joyously cried out, "Allelujah! we must endeavor that the praises c God be sung in that country." Moved by these punning allusions, he designed to visit Britain himself as a missionary, but being detained by the Roman people, he embraced the earliest opportunity of intrusting the task to qualified legates.

of in that and the following ages; the universities of Paris, Tours, Fulden, Soissons, and many others, owe to him their origin and increase; those of which he was not the superior and founder, being at least enlightened by his doctrine and example, and enriched by the benefits he procured them from Charlemagne.

The kingdom of Mercia had nearly obtained the sovereignty of the heptarchy when Egbert ascended the throne of Wessex (A. D. 799), as the kingdom of the West Saxons was called. He broke down the Mercian power, aided not a little by the hatred with which the tyrannical conduct of the Mercians had inspired the subject nations. His policy was as conspicuous as his valor, and both enabled him to unite the realm of England into an orderly monarchy, possessing tranquillity within itself, and secure from foreign invasion. This great event oc curred (A. D. 827) nearly four hundred years after the first arrival of he Anglo-Saxons in Britain.

CHAPTER II.

THE RISE AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
SARACENIC POWER.

SECTION I.-Politica, and Social Condition of the East at the coming of Mohammed.

THE reign of Justin II., the nephew and successor of Justinian, at Constantinople, was remarkable only for disgrace abroad and misery at home. At his death (A. D. 578), he bequeathed the empire to Tiberius, whose virtues amply justified his choice; but the reign of Tiberius lasted only four years; he was succeeded by Maurice, who inherited many of his predecessor's virtues as well as his crown. Soon after his accession, the attention of the emperor was directed to the unsettled state of Persia, which had been distracted by sanguinary civil wars since the death of the great Nushirván. Hormúz, the son and successor of that monarch, was deposed and slain; Bahram, a brave general but a feeble statesman, usurped the throne, and Khosrú or Chosroes, the legitimate heir, sought shelter in the Byzantine empire. Maurice levied a powerful army to restore the royal exile, and intrusted its command to Narses, a valiant general, who was himself of Persian descent. The expedition was crowned with success; Bahram, driven beyond the Oxus, died by poison, and Khosrú, grateful for his recovered throne, entered into close alliance with the emperor.

Freed from all danger on the side of Persia, Maurice resolved to turn his arms against the Avars; but the incapacity of his generals, and his own avarice, provoked the resentment of the soldiers; they mutinied, and marched to Constantinople under the command of one of their centurions, named Phocas. Had the metropolis continued faithful, this sedition might have been easily quelled; but the licentious populace, disgusted by the parsimony of their sovereign, assaulted him as he walked in a religious procession, and compelled him to seek safety in his palace. The unfortunate emperor was compelled to abdicate; Phocas was tumultuously invested with the purple, and welcomed into Constantinople by the acclamations of a thoughtless people. The tyrant commenced his reign by dragging Maurice from the sanctuary where he had sought refuge, murdering his five sons successively before his eyes, and then putting the deposed monarch to death by torture (A. D. 602). One of the royal nurses attempted to save the prince intrusted to her charge, by presenting her own child to the executioners in his stead; but Maurice refused to sanction the deceit, and as each blow of the axe fell on the

necks of his children, he exclaimed, with pious resignation, " Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments!"

The usurpation of Phocas was basely sanctioned by Pope Gregory who received in return for his adulation the title of Universal Bishop. But the pontiff's flatteries could not save the tyrant from the resentment of his subjects, who soon discovered their error in preferring such a miscreant to the virtuous Maurice. Heraclius, exarch of Africa, invited by the unanimous voice of the empire, sailed to Constantinople: scarcely had his fleet appeared in the Hellespont, when the citizens and imperial guards entered the palace, bound Phocas in chains, and sent him a helpless captive to his rival (A. D. 610) Heraclius reproached him with his manifold vices, to which the deposed tyrant simply replied, "Wilt thou govern better?" These were the last words of Phocas: after suffering much variety of insult and torture, he was beheaded, and his mangled body thrown into the sea.

But the death of Phocas did not deliver the empire from the calamities his crimes had produced; Khosrú Parvíz had no sooner learned the sad fate of his benefactor Maurice, than he assembled the entire strength of Persia to avenge his murder. The unwise system of persecution which had been gradually established both by the Byzantine prelates and emperors, supplied the invader with allies in every province: the Jews, the Nestorians, and the Jacobites, believed, with reason, that they would find the worshippers of fire more tolerant than the orthodox Christians; and scarcely. had the Persians crossed the Euphrates, when insurrections were raised in their favor throughout Syria. Khosrú, victorious in two decisive battles, was encouraged to undertake the hereditary enterprise of the Sassanid dynasty-the restoration of the Persian empire, as it existed in the age of Cyrus the Great. Heraclius had scarcely ascended the throne, when he received intelligence of the fall of Antioch; and this was soon followed by the account of the storming of Jerusalem, where the Jews, encouraged by the Persians, wreaked dreadful vengeance on the heads of their Christian persecutors (A. D. 614). The fugitives from Palestine sought refuge in Egypt, where they were hospitably entertained by the archbishop of Alexandria. But Egypt itself, where the din of arms had not been heard since the reign of Dioclesian, was invaded, conquered, and for a time annexed to the Persian empire (A. D. 616). Asia Minor was subdued with equal facility; in a single campaign, the armies of the Persians advanced from the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the Thracian Bosphorus, and during ten years their hostile camp was in sight of the towers of Constantinople.

While Khosrú was indulging in the pride that such brilliant conquests inspired, and dazzling his subjects by the display of his magnificent plunder, he received an epistle from the almost unknown city of Mecca, written by an obscure individual, who yet claimed the king's obedience, and demanded to be recognised as the prophet of God. The grandson of Nushirván was indignant at such a claim; he tore the letter to pieces, and flung the fragments to the winds. When this was reported to the writer, Mohammed, then beginning for the first time to taste the sweets of gratified ambition, and to find his prospects enlarging as he ascended the height of power, he exclaimed, "It is thus that God wil