# The New International Encyclopædia/Europe

Edition of 1905. See also Europe on Wikipedia; and the disclaimer.
EUROPE. The name is derived, according to the researches of Kiepert, Egli, and other scholars from the old Assyrian Irib or Ereb = sunset or west, which was applied to Greece to distinguish that region from Asia Minor, which was designated as Assu = sunrise or east. These names, in their later forms, were finally extended, the one from Greece over all Europe, and the other from Asia Minor over all Asia.
Europe is the smallest of the continents excepting Australia. Its area is about 3,850,000 square miles, or approximately one-fourth greater than that of the United States exclusive of Alaska. It includes, with its polar and other islands, only 7.8 per cent. of the land surface of the world. It is surrounded on three sides by the sea, but its eastern frontier for about 2000 miles joins that of Asia. The political boundary in the east does not entirely conform with the natural boundary. The line is carried to the east of the central and southern Ural Mountains, the natural boundary, in order to include the rich mining districts, east of the mountains, in Russia; to the south of the Ural Mountains the Ural River is the boundary. Between the Black and Caspian seas, the main ridge of the Caucasus is generally taken to be the boundary between Europe and Asia. The natural boundary in the southeast is, however, now considered by some geographers to be through the depressions of the Sea of Azov and the East and West Manitch rivers to the Caspian Sea, the entire Russian possessions south of the Manitch rivers (Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia) being in this way included in Asia. The continent extends west and east through nearly 75 degrees of longitude from Cape Roca, near Lisbon, to the Tobol River. Penetrating the polar ice zone (North Cape, 71° 11' N.), its most southerly point is Cape Tarifa, Spain, which is crossed by the thirty-sixth parallel. In proportion to area it has a much longer coast-line than any other continent, over 20,000 miles, including the more important indentations, but double that length if the entire shore line is closely followed. While Europe is merely a peninsula of the great landmass of Asia, there are many natural and historical reasons which make it imperative to treat it as a distinct subdivision of the earth's surface.
The situation of Europe gives it a central position in the land hemisphere. It is separated from America by the comparatively narrow Atlantic Ocean. Africa is plainly in view across the Strait
of Gibraltar, nine miles wide; Europe also closely approaches Africa at the strait between Sicily and Tunis.
Topography. Three phases of the topographic aspects of Europe are particularly noteworthy. (1) The dissected, pointed, broken character of a large part of the coast line, giving it relatively a greater coastal development than any other continent possesses; (2) the predominance of low plains and the small area of high table lands inclosed by mountains, a characteristic feature of Inner Asia; (3) the absence of deserts, Europe being the only continent without desert areas.
On the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sides is a rich island world and a number of very large peninsulas, the islands and peninsulas embracing about half as large an area as that of the continental mass. Most of the Atlantic islands rise from the continental shelf, were once a part of the continent, and are now the ruins of its former edge. The ocean far and wide around them does not exceed 700 feet in depth. Iceland is included in Europe because it stands on the wide, high submarine plateau extending from Norway to Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland, separating the Atlantic from the polar ice basins. These fragments torn from the continent are particularly numerous north of the fiftieth parallel. Very conspicuous islands among many hundreds are Nova Zembla, Vaigatch, and Kolguyev (on the Arctic side); Zealand and other Danish islands, Gothland, Ösel, Dagö, and Åland (in the Baltic); and most important of all, the British Isles, Shetlands, and Orkneys, composing the British group; to these may be added the distinctive polar islands, Spitzbergen, Bear Island, Jan Mayen, and Franz-Josef Land. The islands in the ocean, including the Baltic, have an area about six times as large as those of the Mediterranean, which include the Balearic group, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, and the numerous islands of the Grecian Archipelago in the Ægean Sea. The Scandinavian Peninsula, the largest in Europe, and the Jutland Peninsula admit the deep sea into the continental mass. Here is the Mediterranean of the north, the Baltic Sea with its three extensions, the Gulfs of Bothnia, Finland, and Riga. Only one-fourth as salt, as the ocean, and therefore freezing more easily, most of this inland sea is unavailable for navigation during the ice months. The many large rivers emptying into the Baltic and its narrow connection with the ocean account for its small salinity. On the other hand, the North Sea, between Great Britain and the continent, is, in fact, a part of the Atlantic and has the full effect of its tides. Brittany is a peninsular projection, which bounds the deep recess of the Bay of Biscay on the north.
In the extreme south the continent is dissolved into three great peninsulas — the Iberian, the Italian, and the Balkan. The northern part of the Mediterranean is divided by these peninsulas into several sections: the Ægean Sea, between the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, connected with the inclosed basins of the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea by the narrow strait of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus; the Ionian and the Adriatic seas between the Balkan Peninsula and Italy; and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the triangular space between Italy and the three large islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica; the great bight north of Corsica is the Gulf of Genoa.
All the prominent forms of flat and steep coasts are represented on the shores of Europe. The fiord coasts of Norway and western Scotland, the deep and comparatively wide indentations of the West coasts of England and Ireland, Brittany, and northwest Spain provide a great number of excellent natural harbors, which promoted the sea trade of the Middle Ages, and has stimulated the immense development of ocean commerce in modern times. The most unfavorable harbor conditions are found along the flat, sandy coasts of the lowlands of the Netherlands and Belgium, northwest Germany, the west side of Jutland, and the French coast on the Bay of Biscay. Here, as also for the most part on the east side of Great Britain, only river-mouths offer good harbors. The importance of the sea trade here depends upon flood tides and favorable conditions at the river-mouths, the largest vessels being able to navigate the rivers only at high tide. A large number of the Atlantic cities are river ports, Hull and London, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, Hamburg and Bremen. Havre and Bordeaux, Oporto and Lisbon. River ports are also must numerous on the Baltic, though shipping there does not have tidal advantages. A peculiarity of the German Baltic coast is the sand-dunes parallel with the shore which afford complete protection from waves.
The conditions are very different on the Mediterranean shores, where high, steep coasts are the prevalent feature, flat coasts and delta formations being exceptional. The flow and ebb of the tide are insignificant, the little rivers are unimportant for commerce, and there are no noteworthy river ports, which reappear only on the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Many important ports on the Mediterranean have developed without the advantages afforded by navigable rivers.
Europe owes its commercial supremacy to the remarkable development of its coast-line, lengthened as it is by many islands, channels, and the deep penetration of the sea into the land.
The three most conspicuous topographic forms of the continental mass are the highland belt in the south, the secondary mountains north of it, and the lowlands. The highland belt is the western member of the great mountain zone that extends through the Old World from the upper courses of the Yang-tse and Hoang rivers to the Atlantic. This high zone is extended into Europe by the Caucasus Mountains (Elbruz, about 18,500 feet), and the mountains of the Crimea. It is then interrupted by the depressions of the Black and Ægean seas, beyond which lies the Alpine system. The Alpine system consists of a series of long and connected mountain chains of which the Alps are the heart, the highest and most prominent features. The Apennines, the Balkan Mountains, and the Carpathians, sweeping around the basin of the Danube to the Balkans, are directly connected with the Alps. The high mountains of the Pyrenees have no superficial connection with the Alps; neither (except as the return chain of the Apennine system) has the Sierra Nevada of southern Spain, which is regarded as the frontal range of the Atlas Mountains of Africa. The highland belt west of the Black Sea reaches its culmination in the Alps (Mont Blanc, 15,780 feet), which are at once the highest and most passable of all these mountains. No other high
mountains of equal extent, except the Rocky mountains in the United States, have so many passes that are easy to cross; the Alps, therefore, despite their vast snow-fields and numerous glaciers, offer little or no impediment to commerce, while the Pyrenees are practically impassable except around their extreme ends.
The mountains to the north of the highland belt are of a very different character. While they include mountain ranges, they are much shorter than in the highland belt. Mountain chains, groups of mountains, isolated mountains, and plateaus are intermingled in great variety. With the exception of the Scandinavian Mountains, they are all comparatively low, and the Germans have, therefore, designated them as the Mittelgebirge, intermediate or secondary mountains. The groups of the northern mountains are the mountains of southern Poland, the mountains of southern and central Germany and France (Jura, Vosges, Bohemian Forest, Erzegebirge, Riesengebirge, Thuringian Forest, Harz, Black Forest, etc.), the British mountains, and the Scandinavian-Finnish mountains. The highest are the mountains of Scandinavia, which cover most of Norway, and slope steeply to the sea, but gradually into Sweden. Far to the east and isolated from all other mountains of Europe are the Urals, the longest mountain chain of the continent, rising steeply from Asia, but sloping very gradually to the plain on the European side.
The continent of Europe has but a single active volcano within its borders — Vesuvius. Etna is on the island of Sicily. Other insular volcanoes are Stromboli, the active parts of Santorin, and Skaptar-Jökull in Iceland. Among the ancient volcanic regions may be mentioned the Alban Mountains of Italy, the Tokay District of northern Hungary, Auvergne in France, the Eifel region of Germany, and the northwest of the British Isles (with the Giant's Causeway, Fingal's Cave, etc.).
Two-thirds of the continental mass is lowland. The vast low plain of North Asia, interrupted only by the Urals, is continued through Russia, the northern half of Germany, and through France to the Pyrenees. Smaller plains, both high and low, are also found within the mountain lands. The most important of these high plains are those of Switzerland (between the Jura the Alps), where most of the people live, the plain being as densely populated as Germany or France; the plains of South Germany along the northern edge of the Alps; and the two high plains of Castile in Spain. The most important of the mountain-inclosed lowlands are those of the Alpine streams; the great, rich plain of the Po Basin; the plains of the Upper Rhine; and the four great lowlands of the Danube Basin, including a large region around Vienna, the upper and lower plains of Hungary, a region of wheat and grazing, and the Wallachian Plain, one of the granaries of Europe.
Generalizing these facts as to the topographic forms of the continent, it may he said that Europe is divided into two parts, the eastern part Russia, and the western part the remainder of the continent. The eastern part is an unbroken lowland, mountains rising only on its eastern and southern edges. The western part has with its plains also the two forms of mountain lands above mentioned. The eastern part is broad, massive, little articulated; or, in other words, it
is not made up of connected segments. It suggests North Asia, from which it is projected. The western part is narrow, richly articulated, open everywhere to the influences of the sea. The character of the eastern part is uniformity; that of the western part, diversity.
* COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.
Hydrography. The chief water parting of the continent may be shown by a line drawn from the central Urals, southwest across the Carpathians, through the secondary mountains of Germany and France to the Iberian Peninsula. All the rivers northwest of this line flow to the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic and North seas, the English Channel, or the Atlantic; all rivers southeast of the line How to the Mediterranean, the Black, and the Caspian seas. The largest rivers are on this southeastern slope. The arrangement of the rivers of the eastern part of Europe (Russia) is simple. The Petchora, Dvina, Düna, and Niemen flow to the northwest, and the Ural, Volga, Don, Dnieper, and Dniester to the south. The distribution of rivers in the western part is more complicated. Each of the five chief outlying members of the continent (the three southern peninsulas, Scandinavia, and the British isles) has its own river system. In the continental mass the slopes from the mountains to the low plains north and south of them give direction to the river courses. The Vistula, the Oder, the Elbe, the Weser, the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire, and the Gironde follow the slope to the north and west; only the Rhine, of all these rivers, comes out of the Alps. Three rivers are exceptions to this rule; for the Danube, rising in the German Mittelgebirge, the Po, and the Rhône, rising in the Alps, do not flow directly away from the mountains, like the northern riverr but along their edges or near them, the Danube and Po to the east and the Rhône to the west and south.
The rivers of Europe offer extraordinary advantages for commerce, although the two largest of them, the Volga and the Danube, empty into inland seas, the Volga into the Caspian, which has no outlet, and the Danube into the Black Sea; none of the great rivers is impeded by cataracts as in Africa, and their upper courses are not situated on table-lands of enormous height, unfavorable for development, as in Asia. But the rivers are so grouped that it has been possible, with the aid of comparatively short and easily dug canals connecting them, to make continuous waterways in various directions across the continental mass. Thus freight-boats ply through the land from Bordeaux to Cette; from Havre and Rotterdam to the mouth of the Rhône; from Amsterdam to the mouth of the Danube; from Danzig and Riga to Kherson on the Dnieper and thence to the Black Sea; from Saint Petersburg and Archangel to Astrakhan on the Caspian. The longest river and canal routes of Russia are those connecting the Caspian Sea and the Arctic Ocean, the Caspian and the Baltic, and the Black Sea and the Baltic. Boats loaded on the Vistula in Russia may be sent direct, by inland routes, to all the ports cf North Germany, and the Netherlands, Antwerp, and Havre. The importance of the Volga and the Danube, while very great locally, is diminished by the fact that they flow toward Asia and away from the great centres of commerce. Most of the Mediterranean rivers are small, and of little commercial importance: even the large Rhône is too shallow for the highest usefulness. The rivers of the Atlantic watershed,
including its tributary northern seas, are those that have had a profound and far-reaching influence upon the development of the world's ocean trade.
Fresh-water lakes are particularly numerous in three regions: on the Swiss plain between the Alps and the Jura; in the British Isles; and in a wide territory bordering on the Baltic in Scandinavia and northwestern Russia. The largest are on the east and south of the Scandinavian mountains, the Ladoga and Omega of Russia being the greatest of Europe's sweet-water lakes. The largest number are in Finland. These northern lakes were formed by the ancient glaciers, which left the marks of their passage deeply graven in the surface of the land, forming many lake basins. As the Swiss plain is a centre of radiation for rivers, it is one of the important lake regions. Nearly all the larger lakes are important in the inland systems of transportation. There are salt lakes in that part of Europe farthest from the sea, where the evaporation is greater than the precipitation or the river basins have no outlet to the sea. On the borders of European Russia and Asia is the Caspian Sea, the largest salt water lake in the world.
Geology. Broadly speaking, Europe may be divided into three principal regions: (1) To the northeast of the Carpathians, the chief characteristic of the geological structure of Russia is the almost horizontal position of the sedimentary beds. In other words, the plications and dislocations of the rocks that mark the geology of the south and west are for the most part lacking in eastern Europe. (2) The south of Europe, including the Alpine system, is a region of great plications, relatively recent (the Tertiary period), with elevated mountains. (3) The rest of Europe, from Bohemia to Spain and Scandinavia, shows ancient massifs plicated in the Archaean epoch, whose inequalities of relief have been largely modified by erosion. These primary massifs are separated by large areas of Mesozoic and Tertiary beds (the low plains), that in general are not plicated.
The geological structure of the mountain systems is varied and complicated. The Alps are composed of a granite nucleus with stratified beds, greatly faulted and folded, upon their flanks. The Jura is composed mainly of limestones, greatly folded, with subsequent erosion. The Pyrenees, on the north boundary of Spain, are also of folded stratified rocks, as are many of the ranges traversing the plateau of the Iberian peninsula. The Apennines, one of the most recently formed ranges of Europe, is composed largely of Tertiary beds, much folded, the folds being arranged en échelon. In the south, the Carpathians and Balkans are composed of a central nucleus of metamorphic schists, with stratified limestones upon their flanks. The Ural Mountains are of crystalline rocks. The mountains of the Scandinavian peninsula are of great age, being in large part Archaean with granites and schists, while down the slope toward the Baltic more recent formations successively appear, and in the southeast Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous rocks are found. The great plain of Europe is floored by Cretaceous and Tertiary beds, except in Finland, where Archaean rocks, stretching across from the Scandinavian Peninsula, cover the land. The mountainous portions of the British Isles are chiefly composed of
granites and schists, while the lowlands are floored in great part with Jurassic beds. The northern half of Europe was in recent geologic time covered by a great ice sheet, which in its retreat has covered the land with glacial deposits, besides having by its erosion greatly modified the surface, changing the courses of the streams and scouring out lake basins. The soils of this portion of Europe are in great part composed of glacial silt and detritus, transported by this great sheet of ice.
Carboniferous coal deposits have been found in many parts of Europe between the parallels 40° and 60° N.: in eastern, southern, and west central Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Scotland, England, and Wales. Those of England and Wales are of special value and importance; the proximity of the English coal-mines to the sea and the leading coal-buying countries make England the greatest coal-exporter. The rich distribution of iron ores, together with the abundant occurrence of coal, gave Europe its manufacturing supremacy. Great Britain, mining coal and iron in the same or adjoining fields, produces about one-half of all the pig iron of Europe, drawing also, like Germany, upon the superior steel-making ores of Spain and Sweden. Nearly two-thirds of the iron of Germany comes from the west, where iron is closely associated with the coal-fields of the Saar. Belgium, mining iron on the coal-fields around Namur and Liège, has been called Little England, because coal and iron occur together. The best iron ores of Austria are not found near her coal, and this is true also in France except around Le Creusot and Saint-Etienne. Nine-tenths of the iron mined in France comes from the great field on which the city of Nancy stands. Iron is widely distributed in Russia, but many of the mines are not yet connected by rail with the main sources of coal. Germany is the world's largest source of zinc, and the Belgian mines are among the richest in Europe. The tin-mines of England are the largest European sources of this metal. Russia supplies nearly all the platinum of the world. Most of the sulphur used in the industries comes from Sicily and South Italy. Russia is the fourth largest producer of gold in the world, Germany the fourth and Spain the sixth largest producer of silver; Spain and Portugal are, next to the United States, the largest producers of copper, and Spain provides the largest supply of quicksilver, and is surpassed only by the United States in lead. Nearly every country produces its own salt, either from rock beds or by evaporating sea-water in saline marshes. The Netherlands and Switzerland are lacking in useful minerals, and Italy has no coal to smelt her iron ores.
Climate. Europe is the only continent that lies entirely outside of the tropical zone, and only a small part of it is included in the frigid zone. The ameliorating influences of the North Atlantic and the westerly winds that blow over it are felt far east along the shores of the Arctic Ocean, so that at Katharine Haven, on the Murman Coast, the harbor is practically ice-free the year around. Thus, though the continent extends several degrees of latitude north of the Arctic Circle, very little of it is under polar influences. The continent lies in the temperate zone; and of all the land masses in the same latitude it has the mildest and most genial climate. The warm winds
from the Atlantic, the prevailing winds, have almost everywhere free access into the interior, sweeping up the arms of the sea and across the low coasts and plains, not only mitigating high and low temperatures, but also giving wide distribution to the rainfall. The fact, also, that the mean elevation of the continent above the sea is very much lower than that of any other continent excepting Australia (only about 950 feet, according to the results obtained by Supan and Be Lapparent), emphasizes the prevailing temperate influences. In all parts of the continent there is sufficient warmth and rainfall for agriculture except where farm operations are prevented by cold in the extreme north and in the highest mountain regions, and by dryness on the salt steppes of the Caspian Sea.
The eastern part of Europe, however, is remote from the influence of the sea, and has the continental rather than the sea climate. The mean annual temperature, therefore, declines not only from south to north, but also, except along the Mediterranean, from west to east, e.g.: Greenwich, 49.7° F.; Berlin, 48.4°; Warsaw, 44.9°; Saratov (East Russia), 41.7° — these four places being in nearly the same latitude. But while the yearly mean of temperature is lower in the east than in the west of Europe, the summer temperature is higher in the east than in the west, because the interior land-mass becomes more heated than the regions bordering the sea with their more equable climate. In the south the influence of the Mediterranean is to impart to the countries along its shores a very uniform climate, the Alpine system also contributing to this advantage by warding off the cold northeast winds.
The precipitation decreases with distance from the Atlantic, the eastern part of the continent being much drier than the western, and driest along the north coasts of the Black and Caspian seas, where forest gives place to steppe. In no region, however, is the country so dry as to become a desert. In the northern half of Europe the precipitation is quite well distributed throughout the year, while winter rains predominate in all the Mediterranean countries. In a large part of Spain, for example, irrigation is the basis of agriculture because most of the rain falls after the growing season. Many local conditions modify both temperature and quantity of precipitation. The Scandinavian mountains, for example, are the cause of the larger precipitation on the west than on the east side of the peninsula; they also exclude the icy northeast winds of winter from the west harbors of Norway, which are ice-free.
Flora. If temperature be taken as the determinant — perhaps the simplest method in classifying the flora of Europe — three general regions are observed which more or less overlap one another. In general, the limits of these regions vary with the isotherms and with the coast-lines, but are modified by mountain ranges and rivers; the summits of the former affording homes to boreal species, the valleys of the latter allowing less hardy plants to extend inland into colder localities than they could otherwise reach.
The Arctic region, mainly tundra, which in northwestern Europe finds its southern boundary on the poleward side of the Arctic Circle, and in the northeastern part of the continent extends considerably to the south of this line, is
characterized on its extreme northern border by lichens and mosses, which gradually give place southward to perennials of wonderful hardiness and longevity, but of small stature, slow growth, and inferior powers of reproduction by seed. The mountains throughout the continent present similar gradations, the vegetation at the highest altitude corresponding more or less closely to that in the highest latitudes and disappearing at lower elevations among species of more temperate regions, which gradually supplant it as the altitude is reduced and the temperature consequently increased. By far the most common species of this Arctic flora are the saxifrage, potentilla, poppy, scurvy-grass, crowfoot, all of which bear showy flowers; and stunted, trailing junipers, willows, and birches, which are buried under the snow during the long winters. The species of this region, about seventeen hundred, are of insignificant economic importance when compared with those of the other two regions. See Arctic Region, section Arctic Plants.
The intermediate temperate region, which extends from the southern fringe of the Arctic region to the northern limit of the Mediterranean-Caucasian, is characterized first by more varied and numerous perennials, which, as the northern limit recedes, become taller and among which are both shrubs and trees also increasing in size and height; and second, by annual species which also increase in number and variety southward. These species, of which many appear to have migrated westward from Asia, and which are very prolific of seed, quickly take possession of abandoned land, and, being of fairly rapid growth, readily adapt themselves to wide differences of climate, withstanding on the one side the rigors of high latitudes and elevations, and on the other, the droughts of arid sections. In the western part, forests are the dominant feature; in the eastern, steppes. Throughout the whole forest sections of this region, cone-bearing trees predominate. In the far north they exclude all other species of trees, but as the latitude of central Norway is approached, ash, birch, and alder appear. The forest of southern Norway, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, and especially of Denmark, though still largely coniferous, are liberally sprinkled with oak and beech and the three deciduous species mentioned. Throughout Germany and adjoining Russia, France, and Austria, the leading trees are still the conifers (pine, larch, fir), among which the others mentioned are found, mingling with which are elm, maple, acacia, and poplar.
The steppes, not unlike the great western prairies of North America, are treeless plains that extend across the continent from the eastern borders of Holland to and beyond the Ural Mountains. In Russia, where only the name is properly used, these steppes blend with the tundras of the Arctic region, and on the south with the more northerly forests of the Black and the Caspian Sea districts. Since their climate — long severe winter, short vernal season, and protracted parching summer — largely precludes the growth of perennials except along the river-basins, which are often wooded, their flora consists of annuals — grasses on the arable soils, especially north of the Black Sea forests, salt-loving plants in the saline sections north of the Caspian Sea. In the northern part of both forest and steppe districts Arctic species mingle
with the hardier temperate plants, in addition to which mustards, parsleys, buttercups, thistles, legumes, crowberries, brambles, bilberries, and their allies are met with in increasing frequency southward. In the southern part, these last-mentioned blend with gorse, shrubby legumes, heaths, lobelias, dianthus, etc., which are most numerous toward the west, while mints, angelica, currants, rhubarb, and their congeners are more abundant toward the east. This region embraces the great agricultural sections of Europe — the vast grain, flax, and grazing areas of Russia; the cereal, root, and hay fields of Germany, Norway, and Sweden; and the general farming sections of Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, the British Isles, and northern France. Except on the remote northern border, grasses and legumes, the bases of successful husbandry, thrive remarkably and materially influence the prosperity of the residents.
The Mediterranean-Caucasian — the fruit, flower, and vegetable — region, which extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caspian Sea, thus including all countries on the warm southern border of the continent, is noted for the great diversity and wide economic importance of its flora, which, it is estimated, comprises 85 per cent. of all European species. Annuals and biennials appear in large numbers, the long season of growth favoring their perfect development. The forests are far more mixed than in the other two regions, and contain in addition to the above mentioned species, which appear at greater or less altitudes, evergreen and cork oak, chestnut, sycamore, mountain-ash, plane, and cypress. Of the plants valued for their flowers may be found numerous relatives of the rose, carnation, hibiscus, lilac, tuberose, crocus, lily, colchicum, iris, and many others. In this region more than in either of the others the flora is augmented by exotic species, especially such as have been introduced by man. With the migration of the human race and the extension of commerce westward, useful plants have been purposely carried and useless ones undesignedly transported to regions far distant from their homes. Of such antiquity are many of the Asiatic and African contributions to this flora that many species have become so settled in their new residences as to be considered indigenous. Of these, perhaps the best known are the fig, peach, apricot, walnut, orange, olive, pomegranate, grape, quince, cherry, mulberry, pistachio, melon, leek, onion, sugar-cane, cumin, and cotton. But southern Europe has been not merely a greedy absorber of introduced species; it is a lavish distributer as well. Its trees, fruits, vegetables, and flowers have been carried to every quarter of the globe that European commerce has reached. Save only the plants of Norway's western coast, few in number, but of great adaptability to foreign climates, the species of no other region compare with those of southern Europe as wanderers. So general has been their distribution that no traveler in any country visited by civilized man can go far without meeting plant acquaintances; if not among the useful species, then among the weeds of this Mediterranean-Caucasian region. See paragraphs on flora of the various countries; also Distribution of Plants.
Fauna. The whole of Europe belongs to the Palearctic region of Wallace, but is divided into two subregions, that of northern Europe
north of the Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkans, and that of the Mediterranean south of these mountains. The richness of the fauna of central and northern Europe is due to the favorable climatic influences in the west and centre, the physiographic contour of the land, and the rich vegetation, especially that of the forests. On the other hand, the great density of population has much reduced the numbers of the larger animals and has even rendered some species extinct. The characteristic mammals are the bear, lynx, badger, wolf, fox, otter, marten, ermine, polecat, squirrel, marmot, mole, hedgehog, vole, shrew, dormouse, hare, and rabbit; the wild cattle have been almost wholly exterminated by man. (See Cattle.) Among the species peculiar to this region are the desman and the chamois. The Mediterranean subregion possesses the richest fauna of the European Palearctic region, among the distinctive mammals being the fallow deer, ibex, Alpine marmot, and civet. This fauna extends also along the south shore of the Mediterranean as far as the Atlas Mountains; and this northwest corner of Africa and the Ægean Islands contain a few species, like the wild sheep, not now known in Europe, but properly a part of its fauna.
The apes are not found in Europe save for a species of macaque in the neighborhood of Gibraltar, which is more nearly allied to the Asiatic simians than to the African. The bats, cats, dogs, martens, deer, hares, and mice are found throughout Europe. The hedgehogs are not found mirth of latitude 60° except in Scandinavia, where they range a few degrees higher. The moles are found between latitudes 44° and 60° N., and also range a little higher in Scandinavia. The otters and badger-like animals are found little above the Arctic Circle. The bears are not found in the extreme west, though formerly inhabiting nearly the whole of France and the British Isles. The dormice are found in western Europe as far north as the 60th parallel, but in eastern Europe not above latitude 50°. The squirrels are found throughout Europe except at the extreme north, and the beavers south of latitude 65°, but not in the extreme west and not below the Alpine region. Swine are found south of 60°.
Of the birds, the most characteristic are the thrushes, sylvine warblers, tits, pipits, wagtails, finches, snow-buntings, house-sparrows, crossbills, linnets, magpies, choughs, kingfishers, goat-suckers, wood-pigeons, grouse, and ptarmigans. Of the larger birds may be mentioned the eagles, falcons, owls, and ravens. Many of the numerous birds found in this region are annual migrants from the south.
Reptiles are comparatively scarce, there being found but 11 species of snakes and 12 of lizards. Only one North European serpent is venomous. Of the amphibians, several forms are peculiar to this region, among which are the eel-like proteus, the curious toad (Alytes), the male of which carries the eggs until they are hatched, and the Pelodytes, a frog peculiar to France. Frogs, toads, tree toads, and newts are common.
The characteristic fresh water fish are the sticklebacks, perch, sheatfish, pike, carp, gudgeon, roach, chub, dace, tench, bream, bleak, loach; and among sea-fish several species not known on the American shores of the Atlantic,
of which the tunny and sole are most conspicuous.
Insects are numerous, butterflies especially being very abundant, and the species widely spread, but no genera are peculiar to the region. This region is also rich in beetles and other insect forms.
HISTORY.
Earliest Population. Of the peoples that have inhabited Europe since the dawn of history, some — and these the most important, Greeks, Italians, Celts, Germans, and Slavs — exhibit striking resemblances in language and in their early religion and customs. Other peoples, like the Iberians, who inhabited what is now Spain, the Etruscans, who inhabited northern Italy, and the Lapps and Finns, who still occupy the extreme north of the continent, apparently had from the outset dissimilar speech and customs. The resemblances noted between the peoples of the first group exist also between them and the Indo-Iranian peoples of Asia. From these data philologists have inferred that all these peoples are members of a single race, which they term the Aryan race; and since, in historical times, the Celts, Germans, and Slavs have been pressing westward, it is assumed that the original home of the Aryan race was in Asia. Modern ethnological researches, however, are tending to modify the Aryan hypothesis. On the basis of a comparison of physical characteristics, especially of skull-forms, it is asserted that the original population of Europe consisted of two races, which are termed Eurafrican and Eurasian, and that the former race was originally located in the basin of the Mediterranean, the latter in the valley of the Danube or even farther east. Of the Eurafrican race two branches are found, one of which continued to live on the Mediterranean, while the other went or was driven into northern Europe (the so-called Baltic branch). It is further asserted that the so-called Aryan peoples of Europe exhibit, for the most part, such a mixture of these two racial types that the resemblances which have heretofore been taken as proofs of common origin seem rather ascribable to the diffusion of the speech, religion, and customs of some superior people, partly by expansion and conquest, partly by imitation. See Aryan; Indo-Europeans; Europe, Peoples of.
Earliest Civilization. In the earliest times of which we have historic knowledge, only those parts of Europe which border upon the Mediterranean were in any sense civilized, and the points at which a Mediterranean civilization first appeared were Egypt and Phœnicia. There is increasing evidence that the civilization of these countries was of Asiatic origin. It probably came along the routes of trade from Assyria (perhaps ultimately from China), and its diffusion through the Mediterranean Basin was accomplished chiefly by the earliest traders in that sea, the Phœnicians. It was in Crete, where the Phœnicians had some of their earliest trading posts, that a Greek civilization seems first to have developed. See Egypt; Phœnicia.
Greek Civilization. Before the conquest of Greece by the Romans (B.C. 146), the Greeks had developed every form of government which Europe has since known. Their little city States passed from patriarchal kingship to aristocracy and from aristocracy through tyranny to
democracy. In the struggle of their leading States for predominance, as on the larger theatre of Europe 2000 years later, a refined diplomacy, so licitous to maintain the balance of power, knit and dissolved alliances; and when, weakened by these internal conflicts, Greece was subjected to the military monarchy of Macedon, an era of imperialistic expansion began. In art and in letters this precocious people similarly anticipated every form of expression which European civilization has since employed; and Greek builders, sculptors, poets, and orators produced masterpieces that have not been surpassed. In philosophy also the Greeks have foreshadowed, if they did not anticipate, all the chief tendencies of modern thought. By colonization the Greek civilization was extended to Asia Minor, Sicily, southern Italy (Magna Græcia), and many other points in the Mediterranean. By the conquests of Alexander the Great, it became dominant in Egypt and southwestern Asia. As far as Europe was concerned, the only lands which the Greeks brought into closer touch with Mediterranean civilization were those bordering on the Black Sea. In that sea the Phœnicians had had trading posts, but the Greeks founded colonies and built cities. A trade route was gradually established between the Black Sea and the Baltic, and the direct influence of the Greek civilization upon eastern Europe did not cease until Constantinople was captured by the Turks (A.D. 1453). See Greece; Greek Art; Greek Literature; Greek Philosophy.
Roman Civilization. Inferior to the Greeks in alertness of mind and in versatility, but superior in poise and in judgment, the Romans slowly developed a civilization of a higher type in matters of government and law. They first devised a working combination of power and freedom. In the third century B.C. Rome had made herself mistress of Italy; and when, in the struggle with Carthage (q.v.), she added sea-power to her land-power, she was able to extend her authority over the entire basin of the Mediterranean. After the conquest of Greece (A.D. 140) the Greek culture became dominant at Rome in art, letters, and philosophy; and the civilization which the Roman Empire carried into lands heretofore barbarous was a Græco-Roman civilization. In the eastern portion of the Empire, the direct influence of Greece was naturally greater; in the western portion, that of Rome. In western and central Europe the Greek culture was introduced and perpetuated, until the fourteenth century, mainly through the Latin imitations of Greek forms and Latin popularizations of Greek thought. The third great force that has shaped the modern world, Christianity, was sensibly affected by Greek thought and Roman institutions. Paul and the early Fathers, trained in the learning of the Greeks, put the doctrines of the new religion into the form best adapted to appeal to the Græco-Roman world; the formulation of its dogmas was sensibly influenced by Roman legal ideas; and the hierarchic organization with which the Christian Church came into mediæval Europe was modeled on the administrative system of the Roman Empire. If it is broadly true, as Maine has said, that the modern civilized nations are those that derive their law from Rome, their art from Greece, and their religion from Judea, it is also true, as Freeman has said, that “of all European history Rome is the centre;”
for the Roman Empire summed up the chief results of the ancient civilization and transmitted them to the modern world. See Rome; Christianity; Civil Law.
Europe Under the Roman Empire. Under Augustus the Roman Empire attained the boundaries which it successfully defended for four centuries. (See Map of the Roman Empire, under Rome.) In Europe these were the Rhine and the Danube, and the territory between the upper courses of these rivers. In only two directions was there subsequent expansion. During the first century the greater part of Britain was subdued; and at the beginning of the second century the territory beyond the Lower Danube. Dacia (modern Rumania), was organized as a province and held for 170 years. Military roads and fortified camps not only facilitated the defense of the Empire, but stimulated trade and the growth of cities. Except in the most mountainous regions, the barbarians whom Rome had subjugated gradually accepted the Græco-Roman civilization. In Spain and Gaul and in the British cities Latin supplanted the native languages. From the close of the first century the provinces supplied the Empire with the majority of its civil and military officers and with nearly all its emperors. Through this increasingly homogeneous empire the Christian religion made rapid progress; and when, in the fourth century, Christianity became the State religion, the provincials accepted that creed which had finally obtained the recognition of the Imperial Court — the creed formulated by Athanasius (q.v.). Of the barbarians beyond the Roman borders, the nearest and most dangerous were the Germans. The almost incessant conflicts which were necessary to hold the line of the Rhine and the Danube forced Rome steadily further into military monarchy, until, under Diocletian, the Empire was reorganized on lines which contemporaries regarded as ‘Persian.’ The burden of a great standing army, bad management of the Imperial finances, and an elaborate system of State socialism impoverished the Empire, and its native population diminished. In order that the soil might be tilled and the legions kept at full strength, barbarians, especially Germans, were imported in increasing numbers. At the time of Augustus the population along the west bank of the Rhine was substantially German. In the following centuries German captives were settled in Britain, in Gaul, in Italy, and in the Danubian Provinces, at first as serfs, after the close of the third century as tributary communities. From these and from tribes across the frontier in alliance with Rome, an increasing proportion of recruits was drawn, until, in the fourth century, the legions settled on the frontier were largely composed of Germans. After Constantine, Germans rose to the highest positions in the army and the central administration, and “the last century of Roman history may boldly be characterized as the century of German rule” (Brunner). Upon the Germans beyond the frontier the most important effect of these centuries of conflict was the gradual formation of those larger tribal unions which, in the fifth century, overthrew the West Roman Empire and divided among them its provinces. The tribes in closest contact with Rome were converted to Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. The missionaries who accomplished this work were followers of Arius (q.v.),
and the Germans retained the Arian creed after the Emperors and the Church councils had accepted that of Athanasius.
The Barbarian Kingdoms. It was the beginning of the end of the old order when, at the close of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, whole German tribes were settled within the frontier as allies of Rome, on the condition that they should hold back the tribes behind them. The incursions of the Huns (q.v.). which threw eastern and central Europe into confusion, hastened the destruction of the Empire. In the fifth century the frontier was lost: the Germans and the Huns broke through all along the line. (See Migration.) At the close of the fifth century, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes had established kingdoms in eastern and southern Britain; Gaul was divided between Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths; Spain between Visigoths and Suevi; northern Africa and the islands of the western Mediterranean were occupied by Vandals; and Italy, where a German leader of mercenaries (see Odoacer) had deposed the last West Roman Emperor, had passed, with all the territory between the Middle Danube and the Adriatic, under the rule of the Ostrogoths. (See Burgundy; Goths; Suevi; Vandals; etc.) To the Roman provincials (except in Britain) the change of conditions must have seemed slight. They had often been ruled by German officials, and the German kings who now ruled them held official titles conferred by the Emperor at Rome or the Emperor at Constantinople. The Romans remained free, and in their disputes with each other they were still governed by Roman law. The Burgundian and Visigothic kings caused manuals of Roman law to be compiled for the benefit of their Roman subjects. Theodoric (q.v.), King of the Ostrogoths, issued a similar compilation, by which Goths as well as Romans were to be governed. Each provincial landholder was, indeed, compelled to surrender to a German a part of his estate and slaves; but under the Empire German soldiers had been quartered on the provincials, and contributions had been exacted for the support of the soldiers. From such contributions the Romans were now freed. The chief cause of friction between the German kings and their followers on the one hand and the Roman provincials on the other lay in the fact that the former were generally Arian heretics. The resultant disaffection was a serious element of weakness in the kingdoms of the Goths, Burgundians, and Vandals. Early in the sixth century the newly converted and orthodox Franks defeated the Visigoths and the Burgundians, and brought under their control all Gaul except the Mediterranean coast. (See Clovis; Franks.) Later in the same century the armies and fleets of the orthodox Justinian overthrew the kingdoms of the Arian Vandals and Ostrogoths and wrested southeastern Spain from the Visigoths, so that for a few years the Mediterranean was again Roman. (See Justinian; Belisarius; Narses.) Before the close of the century the Visigoths and the Suevi, whose realm the Visigoths had annexed, abjured their heresies, and in Visigothic Spain the clergy became all powerful. In 568 the Arian Longobards, or Lombards (q.v.), conquered northern and central Italy, but this tribe also accepted the orthodox faith in the middle of the seventh century. The scattered settlement of the German conquerors among
their Roman subjects favored a fusion of races, and the chief obstacle to fusion disappeared when the Germans became orthodox Christians. Of all the kingdoms founded by the Germans on Roman soil, that of the Franks became the most powerful and proved the most durable, because the Franks retained, as the central point of their power, their old home on the Lower Rhine, and because the expansion of their rule over Gaul and later over Italy was accompanied by expansion over purely German territory. At the close of the fifth century the Franks conquered the Alemanni, and in the sixth the Thuringians and Bavarians.
The Arabs. In the seventh century Christendom was forced into a struggle for existence against the hordes of Arabia and of Africa, fused into a fighting unit by a new religion — Mohammedanism. Within a generation after the Hejira (A.D. 622) the Arabs had destroyed the kingdom of the Sassanides in Persia, had wrested from the Greek Empire Syria and Egypt, and were overrunning North Africa. Before the close of the century they were besieging Constantinople. The Greeks, though hard pressed by Asiatic hordes north of the Balkans, nevertheless beat off the Mohammedan attack and maintained their hold on Asia Minor. Early in the eighth century the Arabs, now in complete control of northern Africa, defeated the Visigothic forces (A.D. 711), and conquered all Spain except the mountainous northern regions. Pressing into Gaul, they were beaten hack by the Franks in 732.
The Frankish Empire and the Papacy. The great German-Gallic kingdom which the Franks had built up in the fifth and sixth centuries was threatened, in the seventh century, with dissolution. The royal power was hereditary, but all the sons of the King had equal rights of inheritance. The resulting partitions were indeed temporary; by wars and by murders the realm was repeatedly reunited; but in these struggles the territorial magnates gained increasing independence, while the degeneracy of the reigning house diminished its authority. (See Merovingians.) The power that was slipping from the hands of the Merovingians was, however, grasped by new rulers. Arnultings or Carolingians (q.v.), who, first as mayors of the palace, later as kings, reëstablished the royal power, and in the eighth century widened the Frankish kingdom into a European empire. As in the earlier stages of Frankish expansion, the acquisition of new Romanic territory (Italy and northeastern Spain) was balanced by conquests of other German tribes (Frisians and Saxons). Even more than the Merovingians, the Carolingians identified their dynastic interests with those of the orthodox Christian Church. They carried the Gospel among the heathen Germans with the sword, converting as they conquered. They drove the Arabs back across the Pyrenees (see Charles Martel and Pepin the Short under Pepin), and extended the boundary of Christendom to the river Ebro. Throughout their realms, they supported with ready assistance the supreme authority of the popes in ecclesiastical discipline; and when they interfered to protect him against the Lombards they recognized him as ruler over a strip of central Italy, reaching from Ravenna to Rome, and thus laid the basis of the temporal power which the popes held until 1870. (See Donation of Pepin; Papal States.)
The sovereignty of the Emperor at Constantinople, which the Roman Pontiffs had theretofore recognized, was from this time denied. (See Papacy.) In return for their services to the Church, the Carolingians received aid from the popes in political matters. The Papacy helped to transform Pepin from mayor of the palace into king (A.D. 752), and Charles the Great from King of the Franks and the Lombards into Emperor of the Romans (A.D. 800). The tradition of the Roman Empire, the idea that all Christians should be subject to one secular lord, the Emperor, was still a force; and when Charlemagne had made himself supreme in the Western Christian world, and the Imperial dignity had passed at Constantinople to a woman (Irene), it seemed to Western Christendom a natural thing that its ruler should be recognized as the successor of the Roman Cæsars. Through the harmonious coöperation of Church and State, in the empire of Charlemagne, the political, religious, and literary influences that had come down from the ancient world were for the last time focused; and from the Frankish Empire these influences were transmitted, with certain permanent modifications, to the new and separate nations which took its place. Of the new institutions that took shape in the Frankish Empire the most important was feudalism. Feudalism had many roots, some of them Roman; but the feudal system obtained its definite legal basis when Charles Martel, in order to meet the Arab horse with Christian cavalry, began to give benefices on the tenure of knight-service. The knight-fees which he created were, to a large extent, carved out of Church lands; and thus the Church was drawn into the feudal system. See Charles the Great; Feudalism.
* COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.
Europe at the Time of Charlemagne. (See Map, Europe at the Time of Charlemagne.) The empire of Charles the Great included all Christian Europe except the British Islands, where the German invaders had been converted in the seventh century; northwestern Spain, where Christian chieftains of Gothic or Suevic blood were holding out against the Arabs; and the Greek Empire. The Danes and Scandinavians on the north, the Slavs and Avars on the east were still heathens. The Frankish Empire included all the German tribes of central Europe; but it did not include all the territory of modern Germany, since its northeastern frontier ran between the Elbe and the Oder. The only other European powers were the Greek Empire and the Emirate of Cordova. The territory north of the Balkans had fallen into the hands of Slavic and Asiatic hordes (Servians and Bulgarians); but the Emperor at Constantinople still ruled the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, together with southern Italy, the principal islands of the Mediterranean, and the greater part of Asia Minor. The Greeks still had sea-power, and the trade between Europe and the Orient was mainly in their hands. Until after the crusades their coin, the ‘besant,’ was the standard of Mediterranean values. South of Christendom, from Spain through North Africa to Syria, curved the crescent of Islam. In the West, where the emirs of Cordova had made themselves independent of the caliphs at Bagdad, Mohammedanism had reached the limit of its forward movement; but in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, and in southeastern Europe it was still to win ground
from the Greeks. Placed in touch with the Greek civilization in Syria and in Egypt, Islam was developing, in letters and in science, a culture which, until nearly the close of the Middle Ages, was superior to that of western Europe. See Saracens.
Dissolution of the Frankish Empire. Beginnings of the Modern European Nations. The power of Charles the Great's successors was undermined by the growing independence of the local magnates, particularly of those who held the offices of count or of margrave. These offices, as well as the domains that went with them, were coming to be regarded as fiefs, and, like other fiefs, were becoming hereditary. Some magnates whose feudal authority extended over many countries were coming to he called dukes. In the German territories some of these dukes ruled whole tribes, like the Bavarians and the Saxons and were in a sense successors of the tribal kings whom the Franks had suppressed. The great prelates, too, were becoming independent, and in many cases bishops and abbots received the secular powers of counts. The Empire was weakened also by the attacks of Slavs and other barbarians on its eastern frontier, of Arabs in Italy, and of Scandinavian pirates on all its coasts. The immediate cause, however, of the disruption of the Empire was the right of all the sons of the Frankish King to succeed to the royal authority. In order to maintain as far as possible the unity of the Empire, a compromise was proposed: Arrangements were made by which each son should receive as King a part of the Empire, but a larger part with a superior authority should go to the eldest son as Emperor. Wars followed, and in these the old Frankish principle triumphed. In 843 the Empire was divided into three approximately equal shares. (See Verdun, Treaty of.) Although this division lasted but twenty-seven years, the name of the middle kingdom, Lotharingia, still survives in the modern Lorraine. Some forty years after the partition of Verdun, all the Carolingian territories were for a short time reunited under Charles the Fat; but after 887, when Charles the Fat was deposed, France and Germany were permanently separated; there were two independent Burgundian kingdoms and there was a separate but not a united Italy. In the north of Italy there were kings, some of whom were crowned emperors; in the middle were the possessions of the Papacy; in the south Lombards, Greeks, and Arabs were fighting for supremacy. In France and in Germany descendants of Charles the Great reigned for a time; but in the tenth century other kings, not of the Carolingian stock, were set up by the territorial magnates. Of these new kingdoms Germany was by far the strongest. The Norse pirates were beaten off from its coasts, and the Danes were pushed back into Jutland. The Hungarians, who had kept central Europe in turmoil during the first half of the tenth century, were defeated and confined to the territory which they still occupy. The Slavic kingdom of Poland recognized German suzerainty; the Slavic peoples of Bohemia and Carinthia were incorporated into Germany. The debatable land to the west of the Rhine (Lorraine) and the greater part of Italy were brought under the overlordship of the German kings in the tenth century; Burgundy was annexed in the eleventh. With the reëstablishment of German authority in Italy (962) the German kings
assumed the Imperial title. See Holy Roman Empire.
Second only to Germany's influence during these centuries was that of the Scandinavians. In the latter half of the ninth century the Swede Rurik established among the eastern Slavs the kingdom which became Russia, and the Danes conquered nearly half of England. In the tenth century the Norsemen obtained possession of a part of northern France, founding there the Duchy of Normandy. In the first half of the eleventh century the Danish King Cnut reigned for a few years over a northern empire which included all England and the greater part of Scandinavia; and England escaped from the rule of the Danes only to fall, within a score of years, under that of the Normans. In the same century wandering Norman knights gained control of southern Italy and Sicily. (See Normans; Varangians; Guiscard.) Of all the national States that were in process of formation at the close of the eleventh century, England alone had a strong central government, and this only after the Norman Conquest. France and Germany each had a king, but the king was only the first among his peers; the real power was in the hands of the great nobles and prelates. The same was true in Italy, and in the Christian States that were taking form in northern Spain; and in neither of these countries was there even the nominal unity of a single national kingship. In Spain and in Italy, however, as in France, separate and fairly homogeneous nationalities were developing. Goths and Franks, Burgundians and Lombards had intermarried with the Roman provincials and had adopted their speech; and on the basis of the vulgar Latin of each province, new national languages had already been formed. The Scandinavian conquerors also, who came five centuries later, lost their racial identity and became French in France, Italians in Italy, Slavs in Russia. In all the larger countries of western and southern Europe, however, there were marked local differences in dialect and in customs, and broader differences between the northern and southern districts. In general, throughout the Middle Ages, national feeling was weak. The strongest ties were those of locality and of class, and the classes were not national, but European. At the close of the eleventh century the peoples of northern and eastern Europe were coming under the influence of Christian civilization. The only important regions not already reclaimed from heathenism at the end of the century were those south and east of the Baltic, inhabited by Pomeranians, Prussians, Lithuanians, Livonians, etc. The Scandinavians, the Western Slavs (Poles and Bohemians), and the Hungarians received Christianity from the Roman Church, and were thus drawn into the West-European body of nations. The Servians, Bulgarians, and Russians, on the other hand, were converted by Greek missionaries, and constitute to this day, with the Greeks, a distinct East-European group.
Increasing Power of the Church. After the disruption of the Frankish Empire the unity of Western Christendom was visibly represented only in the Roman Church. The Church had loyally supported the Empire, and had striven to avert its destruction. When this became inevitable, the Church naturally secured as much as possible of the Imperial inheritance. The unity for which it stood was in no wise confined to
matters of faith and worship. The Church represented the learning of the age, and had complete control of education. It was the exclusive recipient and administrator of charitable trusts; it alone cared for the sick and infirm and relieved the poor. It interpreted and enforced by penalties the rules of morality, and by reason of the intimate connection between morals and law, and between its sacraments and the whole social life, it exercised a somewhat indefinite but very wide jurisdiction over matters which are to-day regarded as legal. (See Canon Law.) To this jurisdiction every Christian was subject, from the peasant to the King. The Church thus discharged many governmental functions which the mediæval State was too crude and too feeble to undertake. It was in reality an ecclesiastical State, and it possessed a governmental organization and a governmental personnel far superior to that of any contemporary secular State. For the efficient discharge of its duties the Church deemed it necessary that its agents, from Pope to parish priest, should be independent of the secular powers. It had succeeded in exempting its clergy from secular jurisdiction, but it had not obtained full freedom in the selection of its officials. The Pope, as Bishop of Rome, was chosen by the clergy and people of Rome. In the tenth century the Roman nobles controlled the Papal elections, and the character of the popes whom they selected was such as to deprive the office of much of its dignity and authority. In the eleventh century the German emperors brought about a reform; they secured the deposition of unworthy popes and the election of worthy German successors; but this Imperial interference was a fresh menace to the independence of the Church. The local authorities of the Church, the bishops and the abbots, were likewise elected by the clergy of the cathedral chapters and of the monasteries; but the lands of the Church were fiefs and the prelates feudal vassals, and the secular overlord naturally endeavored, and usually with success, to control the election of these authorities. The attempt of the greatest of the German popes (Gregory VII.) to deprive the feudal superior of all influence upon the choice of bishops and abbots brought the Papacy into conflict with the German emperors. In this conflict the emperors were supported by the German prelates whom they had practically appointed, while the popes were supported by the secular princes of Germany, who desired to weaken the Imperial power at home. (See Investiture; Gregory VII.; Henry IV.; Saxony; Papacy.) The terms on which the conflict was ended (Concordat of Worms, 1122) did not fully realize the Papal aims. In the eleventh century, however, the basis was laid for the greatly increased power which the Church exercised in the thirteenth century. The selection of the head of the Church was intrusted to a body created by the head of the Church, the College of Cardinals. The interest of the feudal superior in the control of Church elections was diminished by renewed prohibition of the sale of ecclesiastical preferments (simony), and by making it more difficult for those prelates who bought preferment to keep it. Finally, the renewal and enforcement of the rules prohibiting the marriage of the clergy secured for the Church a body of servants removed as far as possible from all influences except her own. (See Celibacy.) From the eighth century, when the Roman Pontiffs denied the
temporal sovereignty of the Emperor at Constantinople, the Eastern Church, under the influence of the Emperors and already tending to separation on account of disciplinary distinctions, drifted rapidly from Latin unity. The separation became definite and final, in the eleventh century, in consequence of a doctrinal difference concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost. The Eastern Church never became independent of the secular authority, and its dependence facilitated the development of national churches. See Byzantine Empire; Greek Church.
Age of the Crusades. Except in Spain, where the Kings of Leon had gradually reconquered a fourth part of the peninsula, Christian Europe had remained for nearly three centuries on the defensive against Islam. In the eleventh century a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, became dominant in Mohammedan Asia, maltreated Christian pilgrims, and conquered Asia Minor (1071). At the appeal of the Greek Emperor, Pope Urban II. called Christian Europe to arms (1095); and before the close of the century a great host of crusaders had marched through Asia Minor and occupied Syria, establishing there a kingdom of Jerusalem and other principalities. (See Crusades.) The struggle thus opened continued for two centuries. The retainers of the Christian princes in Syria and the military monks (see Hospitalers; Templars, Knights; Teutonic Knights) constituted the standing army of the Christians; repeated crusades from all parts of Europe brought volunteer assistance. The struggle ended at the close of the thirteenth century with the evacuation of Syria by the Christians. An episode of the Crusades was the temporary overthrow of the Greek Empire (1204) by French crusaders in alliance with Venice. A Flemish count (see Baldwin I.) was made Emperor at Constantinople, and the European territories of the Empire were assigned to French kings and dukes or to the Doge and Commune of Venice. The Greek emperors, meanwhile, continued to reign in Asia Minor; and in the latter half of the century, with the aid of the Genoese, they recovered Constantinople (1201) and the greater part of their former possessions. The Venetians, however, kept much of the territory they had acquired, and became the leading commercial power in the eastern Levant; although the Genoese, on better terms with the Greeks, had control of trade in the Black Sea. The only permanent gains made by Christendom during these centuries were in Spain and on the Baltic. War against the heathen in these places also was regarded as a crusade. By the middle of the thirteenth century the Christians had conquered all of Spain except Granada; the Teutonic Knights had subdued and converted the Prussians; and another body of military monks, the Brethren of the Sword, were doing the same work in Livonia and Esthonia. In this same century, however, Christendom lost ground in eastern Europe through the conquest of Russia by the Mongols. See Mongolian Race.
The Papacy and the Western Empire. During these centuries the Papacy, on which naturally devolved the leadership of Christendom in the warfare for the Cross, attained its greatest power. The popes made and deposed emperors and kings, accepted whole kingdoms as fiefs of the Church, and exercised jurisdiction in international controversies. The German emperors of the House
of Hohenstaufen (1138-1254) seemed indeed almost as powerful as their predecessors of the eleventh century, who had made and unmade popes; and when by marriage the emperors gained control of the Norman kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the independence of the Papacy appeared to be seriously menaced. Among the German princes, however, and in the Lombard cities the popes found trustworthy, because interested, allies; and a century of intermittent conflict ended in the destruction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. See Guelphs and Ghibellines; Hohenstaufen.
Europe at the End of the Crusades. At the close of the thirteenth century Germany and Italy had become aggregations of practically independent principalities, secular or ecclesiastical, and of free cities. Kings were elected in Germany, and these kings called themselves Roman emperors; but they had almost no power in Italy and little in Germany. Poland and Hungary were no longer even nominally subject to the empire, and Burgundy was drifting to France. In the northeast, however, Germany had expanded by Saxon conquests and colonization, and the gains thus effected proved more durable than those made by the military monks. The kings of England had retained Normandy through the twelfth century, and had acquired by marriage so many other French fiefs that they ruled half of that kingdom; but all these possessions except Guienne had been lost by the unlucky John early in the thirteenth century. In France, as in England, the crown had become hereditary, and at the close of the thirteenth century the power of the French kings was increasing. In Spain the united kingdom of Leon-Castile, (in which also the royal power was increasing) covered the greater part of the peninsula; but Portugal, independent since 1139, had attained its present boundaries, and all eastern Spain was ruled by the King of Aragon. During these centuries there was a sensible increase of commerce in western Europe. The control of European trade with the East passed out of the hands of the Greeks into those of the Italians, and a much more active traffic was developed on the trade routes between the Mediterranean and northern Europe, especially on those that ran through Germany. The result was a great increase in the wealth and power of the cities, first in Italy, later in Germany, France, and Spain. Everywhere the citizens bought or fought themselves free from their ecclesiastical or secular lords; in many parts of Europe the cities formed alliances for mutual protection. The league of the Lombard cities played an important part in the struggle between the popes and the emperors; the great league of the Hansa, which soon controlled the trade in the northern seas, was formed at the close of the thirteenth century. (See Hanseatic League.) It was a natural result of the increasing importance of the cities that their representatives were summoned to meet with the other estates of the realm in diets or parliaments. This occurred in the Spanish kingdoms in the twelfth century, in England and in Germany in the thirteenth century, and in France in the fourteenth century. In the intellectual life of Europe the universities played an increasingly important part. The age of the Crusades was also the age in which scholasticism reached its highest development. It was also the age in which the study of the
law-books of Justinian was revived, and in the legists a new learned class appeared from which the kings and princes, heretofore dependent upon the clergy for their administrative officials, were able to draw servants wholly devoted to their interests. The cities furnished the wealth and power which in the following centuries made monarchy independent of the feudal nobility; the formulated the theories and furnished the trained service which was to make the modern State independent of Pope and Church.
Changes During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. The consolidation of France was interrupted by a series of wars, in which the English kings strove to make themselves kings of France also. (See Hundred Years' War.) In the fifteenth century, in alliance with Burgundy, Henry V. of England came near accomplishing this end. The French dukes of Burgundy had obtained control of the Netherlands, and aimed to establish an independent middle kingdom. (See Burgundy.) In 1435, however, Burgundy made peace with France, and within a score of years England had lost all its conquests except Calais. Alter the death of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, in conflict with the Swiss (1477), the greater pari of the Netherlands passed, by marriage, to the Austrian House of Hapsburg, but Burgundy was annexed to France. By the union of Castile and Aragon (1479), and the conquest of Granada (1492) and of Spanish Navarre (1512). Ferdinand the Catholic became ruler of the entire Spanish Peninsula, except Portugal. Thus France and Spain came out of the Middle Ages as well-rounded national States. In each the crown was hereditary and the royal authority was becoming supreme. In central Europe the conditions were very different. In Germany the emperors were chosen first from one house and then from another, that no precedents for hereditary succession might be created; and each emperor used his position to increase the territorial power of his own house. After 1438, indeed, emperors were regularly taken from the Hapsburg family, but this change of policy indicated only that the other territorial princes had become too strong to apprehend any revival of the Imperial power. Thus weakened, the Empire began to lose territory on every side. In the fourteenth century the Swiss became practically independent of the Empire; in the fifteenth they became a factor in European politics. In the latter century Burgundy passed definitively to France; Sehleswig and Holstein were brought into personal union with Denmark; and the Prussian possessions of the Teutonic Order were partly annexed by Poland and partly held as fiefs from the Polish Crown; Italy remained divided, for it was the policy of the popes to prevent any single State from obtaining a predominance which would threaten the independence of the Papal States. The wealth and weakness of Italy naturally attracted the stronger Western States. Since the overthrow of the Hohenstaufen, Aragonian princes had ruled in Sicily, and French princes at Naples. In the first half of the fifteenth century Aragon obtained control of both regions. Before the close of the century Charles VIII. had invaded Italy to enforce the French claims to Naples, and the struggle for the control of the peninsula was opened. In the north and east of Europe, as in the west, larger political unions were forming. At the close of the
fourteenth century all the Scandinavian countries were brought by the Kalmar Union under a single ruler, and Norway remained united with Denmark until 1814; but Sweden was largely independent during the fifteenth century, and became wholly independent in the sixteenth. In the latter part of the fourteenth century Poland was united with the recently Christianized Lithuania, and became, in territorial extent at least, an important State, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea; but the elective Polish monarchy never developed sufficient power to make this Slavic State permanent. At the close of the fifteenth century Russia freed itself from subjection to the Mongols. The most important event of this period, however, was the overthrow of the Greek Empire. In the middle of the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks, having subdued Asia Minor, attacked the European territories of the Empire; before the end of the century they had conquered nearly all of the Balkan Peninsula, and in 1453 they took Constantinople by storm. Long decadent, the East Roman Empire had, nevertheless, outlived the West Roman for nearly a thousand years; and it had held against Islam the southeastern gate to Europe for more than seven centuries. (See Map: Europe About the Year 1500.)
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Close of the Middle Ages. Intellectually and spiritually, the closing centuries of the Middle Ages represented ferment and growth. Renewed acquaintance with the literature of the ancient world (see Humanism) widened the narrow horizon of mediæval thought. The invention of printing immensely accelerated the diffusion of new ideas. The basis of political power also was shifted. The invention of gunpowder completed the change begun by English bows and Swiss pikes; it destroyed the military superiority of the armored horseman and the power of the feudal nobility. The opening by the Portuguese of the sea route to India, and the discovery, under the auspices of Spain, of a new world in the West, signified primarily for modern Europe the opening of new sources of wealth, and an increase of the power of the burgess class and of the Crown. Later it was to signify the expansion of European civilization over the world; and, last of all, the subordination of European politics to world politics. At the close of the thirteenth century the power of the Papacy had begun to decrease. England and France were already asserting, as other countries were later to assert, the right of the State to limit ecclesiastical jurisdiction and taxation and the taking of land into the ‘dead hand.’ (See Mortmain, Statutes of.) Early in the fourteenth century the French kings brought the Papacy under their control, and for seventy years the popes were in exile at Avignon. Other popes were set up at Rome. The schism was ended by Church councils in the fifteenth century, but reforms proposed by the councils were not carried into operation. Reformation through revolt found its leaders in Wiclif and Huss, and the attempt to crush the Hussite revolt led in the fifteenth century to a long and bloody war. See Wiclif; Huss; Hussites.
The Period of the Reformation and the Religious Wars. The struggle between France and Spain for supremacy in Italy may be regarded as the beginning of the modern period of international politics. The Reformation (q.v.), by completing the disintegration of the Holy Roman
Empire and dismembering Germany, made this country, too, a plaything for the ambition of other powers; it shifted the centre of European intrigue and conflict from southern to northern Europe. The expansion of firmly governed nations at the expense of nations lacking a strongly centred authority is perhaps the most marked feature of the succeeding period. Thus France and Sweden grew at the expense of Germany, and later Prussia, Austria, and Russia grew at the expense of Poland. The election of Charles I. of Spain as Emperor in 1519 led to a protracted war with Francis I. of France. In view of the overwhelming power of Charles, who, in addition to the Imperial title, united in himself the sovereignty of Spain with Naples and Sicily, the Austrian possessions of the Hapsburgs, and the enormous wealth of America and the Low Countries, the war assumed for Francis the character of a struggle for self-preservation. (See Charles V.; Francis I.) The odds against the French King, however, were not so great as they seemed. He could depend upon the united strength of a firmly jointed nation; whereas Charles's multifarious interests and the very extent of his domains exposed him to attack from many sides. The Turks, the Protestants, the Pope at different times prevented Charles from bringing all his resources to bear against France, and that country, though defeated in four wars, suffered little loss in the end. The nature of the Reformation Charles in the beginning entirely failed to understand, and he neither made himself the leader of it nor did he consistently attempt to repress it. Protestantism, unmolested before 1530, spread rapidly over northern Germany — originating, no doubt, in the prevalent abuses and laxness of discipline in ecclesiastical affairs, but finding favor, too, with the princes and knightly classes, whose anarchic ambitions it tended to confirm. After 1530 all efforts on Charles's part to stamp out the progress of the Reformation were vain; and though the victory of Mühlberg (1547) seemed for a moment to make him master of the Empire and of western Europe, he was compelled during the last years of his reign to make his peace with the Protestants (Passau and Augsburg) and to see the French King actually the master of German soil (Metz, Toul, Verdun, 1552). With his abdication his huge empire fell apart. The Imperial dignity was assumed by his brother Ferdinand, and the throne of Spain with its possesions in Italy and the Netherlands went to Philip II. With the overweening power of the Hapsburgs reduced and the fabric of the Holy Roman Empire crumbling under the progress of the Reformation, France's opportunity seemed to have come. But France itself fell a victim to religious strife and exhausted its energies in civil warfare (see Huguenots); and it was not until the genius of Henry IV. (q.v.) had reunited all factions that France was able to revive the anti-Hapsburg policy of Francis I. and Henry II. The wide-reaching plans of Henry IV. were interrupted by his death, but they were taken up and put into execution by Richelieu (q.v.). Nor did France find its opportunity gone after the lapse of sixty years, for on the part of its rivals this had been a period of steady degeneration. The bigotry of Philip II. brought on the revolt of the Netherlands (Briel, 1572) and the loss of the northern provinces; and the strength of the Spanish monarchy was exhausted in the struggle
with the Dutch and in the crusade against England. (See Armada. In the Empire a succession of rulers, acting in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Rudolph II., Matthias, Ferdinand II.), drove the line of cleavage between Protestants and Catholics deeper than ever, and finally, by their aggressions on the reformed religion, brought on the Thirty Years' War (q.v.). This was Richelieu's opportunity. Originally a conflict for religion between members of the Empire, the war, with the incursion of Gustavus Adolphus (q.v.), developed into a war for booty on the part of Sweden and France.
Europe in 1648. The Treaty of Westphalia confirmed the dismemberment of Germany by reducing the power of the Emperor to a shadow, by making the members oi the Diet virtually independent, by erecting in Germany 266 secular States and 65 ecclesiastical principalities. Sweden gained extensive territories on the southern shore of the Baltic, and France was confirmed in its possession of the three bishoprics, received territory in Alsace, and gained a foothold on the right bank of the Rhine. Westphalia left France the strongest power in Europe, and for a time France possessed in Sweden a powerful ally. Spain was forced to acknowledge the independence of the Netherlands, and, though still retaining its Italian possessions, was moribund. The Emperor recognized the independence of Switzerland, and, with the increased power of the Diet, his authority became restricted practically to his personal dominions, whose safety was threatened by the Turks. These had become and were still the masters of the greater part of Hungary, with its capital, Buda. Southern Italy, the Italian islands, Milan and Mantua, were ruled by foreign masters. Poland was weltering in anarchy and fast slipping to its doom. Russia had not yet found a great ruler to bring it on the stage of European history.
The Period of Dynastic Wars (1648-1763). From Westphalia to Utrecht international relations in Europe were dominated by the aggressions of France, which, after passing through a period of civil disorder (see Fronde), attained under Louis XIV. (q.v.) such power as to threaten for a time the other States of Europe with the same fate that France had feared from the power of Charles V. The European States were forced to unite against him: Holland, England, and Sweden in 1667; Holland, Spain, Brandenburg, and the Empire in 1672; Holland, England, Spain, Sweden, the Empire, Bavaria, and Saxony in 1689. In the course of these wars the theory of the balance of power was worked out in great detail, and the War of the Spanish Succession, in which the French armies were repeatedly worsted, demonstrated the superiority of the State system of Europe to the power of any single State, no matter how strong. The defeat of Louis XIV. carried with it the overthrow of the Swedish power in Germany. Brandenburg, strengthened by its union with Prussia (1618), and under the astute guidance of the Great Elector (1640-88), had made common cause with the enemies of Louis XIV., and by its victory over the Swedes at Fehrbellin (1675) had entered upon its destiny as the successor of Sweden on the southern shores of the Baltic. While Louis XIV. was battling against the Grand Alliance, Sweden was assailed by Denmark, Poland, and Prussia, and, in spite of its heroic King (see Charles XII.),
lost all of its possessions on the southern shore of the Baltic with the exception of a small part of Pomerania; Prussia and Russia entering into its inheritance. The treaties of Utrecht (1713), Rastadt (1714), and Nystadt (1721) signalize momentous changes in the political balance of Europe, and things begin to assume an aspect that is familiar. The power of France is checked by the aggrandizement of Austria, which now obtains possession of the Spanish Netherlands and becomes the dominant power in Italy. France loses the control of the sea to England, which enters upon a successful career of commerce and colonization. Prussia is raised to the rank of a kingdom, and stands forward as the leading State of northern Germany. Russia under Peter the Great has gained a foothold on the Baltic. Savoy is made a kingdom, and, by the acquisition of Sardinia, becomes a prominent factor in Italian affairs. The period that follows to the French Revolution is in general one of development on these lines. France, exhausted by the wars of Louis XIV. and the excesses of his profligate successor, declines in power steadily in spite of a temporary success over Austria in the War of the Polish Succession. Prussia, under the able and unscrupulous Frederick the Great (q.v.), assumes the leadership in Germany and holds it in the great Seven Years' War (q.v.) against the united forces of Austria, France, and Russia. In this struggle Prussia receives some aid from England; but England is more actively interested in world politics than in the Continental politics, and to England fall the immense possessions of France in the New World and the ultimate control of India. Russia increases its territory at the expense of the Turks, who, since their great defeat at Vienna (1683), have rapidly been swept back, Carlowitz (1699), Passarowitz (1718), Kutschuk Kainardji (1774), marking the steady decline of their power. The greed for territory, since 1648 the moving spirit of European politics, reaches its climax in the despoliation of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, acting under the inspiration of Catharine II.
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Reform and Revolution (1763-1815). In the three decades of peace which followed the Seven Years' War, the attention of European sovereigns was directed chiefly toward the internal problems of State. This was the age of benevolent despotism, when monarchs sought to reconcile the theory of absolute government with the new ideas concerning the rights of man emanating from France. Joseph II. of Austria, Catharine II. of Russia, Frederick the Great, Leopold of Tuscany, and Pombal in Portugal carried out far-reaching reforms in Church and State without conceding any increased share in the government to the people. The States of Europe were thus mere governing machines, rather than true nations, and they showed little stability when the outbreak of the French Revolution assailed the old form of things. In France (q.v.) the Revolution swept away all hereditary privileges and disabilities, destroyed monarchy, and for a time transformed the State into a confederacy of independent communes. The zeal of liberated France to extend to its neighbors the blessings of freedom, and the apprehensive hostility of the rulers of the monarchic States, brought on a series of European wars. The reaction in France against anarchy, and the stress of foreign
conflict, made Napoleon (q.v.) absolute ruler of France, with governmental power more completely centralized than under the Bourbons. Napoleon's ambition converted the Revolutionary wars into Napoleonic wars, and his military and political genius made him master of half of Europe. He took the title of Emperor of the French, and regarded himself as the successor of the Frankish emperors. (See Map: Europe at the Time of Napoleon's Greatest Power.) The Emperor in Vienna, who claimed the same position, surrendered his title in 1806, henceforth calling himself Emperor of Austria only; and thus ended the Holy Roman Empire, the most venerable and the emptiest of surviving mediæval institutions. To at least one of the principles of the Revolution Napoleon remained faithful. As far as his authority or influence reached, class distinctions were swept away and all men became equal before the law. By independent legislation Prussia and other States took long steps in the same direction. (See Stein.) This was the one great direct result of the Revolutionary propaganda. For political liberty and popular government in Europe, Napoleon of his own will did nothing; nor was it his purpose to contribute in any way to the establishment of national States in central Europe. These things were not compatible with his European empire. The seeds of democracy, however, had been sown in the early years of the Revolution; and national feeling was fostered among the peoples of Europe by the struggle against foreign rule which Napoleon forced upon them. To make head against him, the monarchs were forced to make common cause with their subjects. The Constitution of 1812 in Spain, the organization of local self-government and of a popular army in Prussia, were results of French aggression; and it was the national forces of Spain that prepared Napoleon's downfall, as it was the national levies of Prussia that helped to consummate it. By establishing legal equality and by awakening the desire for national self-government the Revolution gave a unity to subsequent developments in Europe, which had not been seen since the Reformation broke up the uniformity of the mediæval civilization. Yet Europe, after the fall of Napoleon, entered on a period of sharp recoil from the ideals of the Revolution. At the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) the Powers, under the leadership of Austria, made a deliberate attempt to return to the conditions that had prevailed before 1789. The map of Europe, with which Napoleon had played havoc, was reconstructed in the interest of ‘legitimacy,’ and of the balance of power, that great ideal of eighteenth-century statecraft. France was restricted to her ancient boundaries. Belgium and Holland were united into a kingdom to keep watch on the northern boundary of France. Norway was taken from Denmark and given to Sweden, to make up for the annexation of Finland by Russia. Russia received also the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was organized as a separate Kingdom of Poland. For the unity of Germany and of Italy nothing was done. Prussia and Austria were both strengthened. Prussia gained territory chiefly in northern and western Germany, Austria in Italy. The smaller German States and free cities, greatly reduced in number, were united with Prussia and Austria in a German confederacy, in which Austria held the presidency. In
Italy, Sardinia was strengthened; but Austria held a dominant position in the north. The Papal States were reëstablished, and Naples and Sicily were restored to their Bourbon ruler. (See Map: Europe After the Congress of Vienna.)
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Reaction and Revolution (1815-52). The purpose of the Congress of Vienna was to reëstablish legitimate monarchic authority. To maintain this authority and to resist all revolutionary movements, an alliance was formed by the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia. (See Holy Alliance.) Of this alliance and of the reactionary policy followed by the majority of the European governments till 1848 Metternich (q.v.), the Austrian Minister, was the directing spirit. Among the peoples of Europe, however, there was a natural desire for some share in government; and in Germany and Italy there was a strong desire for national unity. The attitude of the princes made it appear impossible that unity could be attained except through popular sovereignty. For this reason the nationalists in Germany and Italy became revolutionists and, to a large extent, republicans. Revolutionary agitation was maintained by secret associations. (See Burschenschaft; Mazzini; Young Italy.) The first popular outbreaks occurred in 1820 in Spain and in Naples. In each of these kingdoms the monarch was forced to grant a liberal constitution. Acting under the authorization of European congresses, Austria forcibly intervened in Naples and France in Spain; the objectionable constitutions were withdrawn, and absolute royal government was reëstablished. The next purely political outbreak occurred in 1830 in France. Louis XVIII. had granted his people a constitution, and had reigned in peace. Charles X. attempted to subvert the constitution, and was deposed. (See July Revolution.) Louis Philippe, of the House of Orleans, was made King, and a more liberal constitution was adopted. The French example stirred the Liberals to action in other parts of Europe. In Germany a few of the smaller kingdoms and principalities had already received representative constitutions; in 1830, in consequence of popular demonstrations, nearly all the other minor States were constitutionalized. The governments of Prussia and of Austria, however, made no such concessions. In Belgium and in Poland insurrections occurred, which were national rather than political. The Belgians revolted against the Dutch rule and elected Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as their King; and France and England forced Holland to recognize Belgian independence (1831). Poland rebelled against its King, the Russian Czar; but this rebellion was crushed and Poland became a Russian province. In 1848 France was again in revolution. (See February Revolution.) Louis Philippe had resisted the demand for a wider suffrage and was deposed. A republic was established; a struggle followed between the socialistic and conservative elements; a socialistic rising in Paris was put down with much slaughter; Louis Napoleon was elected President. Three years later the President overthrew the Constitution, and in 1852 he assumed the title of Emperor. (See Napoleon III.) Both of these changes were approved by vote of the French people. In 1848, as in 1830, the disturbances at Paris were followed by disturbances throughout central Europe. Popular uprisings at Berlin and Vienna forced the Prussian and
Austrian rulers to grant constitutions. Here and everywhere else in Germany the revolutionary leaders also demanded national unity. All the German kings and princes bowed to the storm, and a parliament was assembled at Frankfort to draw up a constitution for a united Germany. Simultaneously the people of Schleswig-Holstein took arms against Denmark and demanded that these duchies should be incorporated in the new Germany; while the Bohemian, Hungarian, and Italian subjects of Austria rose against German rule. The Austrians were driven out of Lombardy and Venice, and throughout the rest of Italy the people either expelled their princes or forced them to send troops to the aid of the insurgent Venetians and Lombards. The united Italian forces were placed under the command of the King of Sardinia. All these movements came to nothing. The Austrian Army restored order in Bohemia and at Vienna, and defeated the Italians. With the aid of Russia, the Hungarian insurrection also was crushed. All the Italian princes recovered their thrones; the Pope, who had been expelled from Rome, was reinstated by Napoleon. The Frankfort Parliament, after long deliberation, determined to organize all Germany except Austria as a federal empire, and offered the King of Prussia the Imperial crown. He declined the offer and the German Parliament dispersed. A belated attempt of the King of Prussia to organize the ‘narrower Germany’ on more conservative lines than those proposed at Frankfort also failed. The old confederation was reëstablished, and the people of Schleswig-Holstein were again made subject to the King of Denmark.
Eastern Affairs (1815-56). In 1821 a rising against the Turks in Wallachia gave the signal for insurrection in Greece. After several years of conflict, Russia, England, and France intervened. The allies destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet at Navarino (1827), and Russia declared war on Turkey (1828). The peace of Adrianople (1829) guaranteed to Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia the management of their own affairs under Christian governors, and made Greece independent. Greece was organized as a kingdom under Otto of Bavaria (1832-62). In 1831 war broke out between the Viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, and his suzerain, the Sultan, and the Turkish forces were worsted. Russia intervened and brought about peace, taking pay for its services in a treaty of alliance (Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833) which practically gave it a protectorate over the Turkish Empire. In 1853, after attempting to arrange with England a partition of the Turkish Empire, Russia occupied the Danubian Principalities. Austria and Prussia assumed an attitude of unfriendly neutrality; England and France came to the aid of Turkey, and carried the war into Russian territory. (See Crimean War.) The Peace of Paris, 1856, pushed Russia back from the mouth of the Danube (Bessarabia, previously Russian, being ceded to Moldavia), neutralized the Black Sea, and placed Turkey under the protection of Europe. In return Turkey promised reforms.
National Organization of Italy and Germany (1850-71). The unification of Italy and Germany, which the popular revolutions of 1848 had failed to achieve, was accomplished by revolution from above. In Italy the movement was initiated and directed by the Sardinian Premier,
Cavour (q.v.); in Germany it was carried through by the Prussian Premier, Bismarck (q.v.). Austria was the great obstacle to both movements, and it took two great wars to expel the Austrians from Italy and from Germany. It was not in the interest either of Russia or of France that strong States should be established in central Europe; but Russia remained neutral, because, remembering the aid given to Austria in 1849, the Czar bitterly resented the ‘ungrateful’ attitude assumed by Austria during the Crimean War; and Napoleon III. (q.v.) assisted Sardinia and encouraged Prussia, partly in expectation of petty advantages, partly by reason of an unpractical zeal for the ‘principle of nationality.’ In 1859 France and Sardinia defeated Austria, and Sardinia obtained Lombardy. France was paid for her services by the cession of Savoy and Nice. Simultaneously all the small States of North Italy and the northern provinces of the States of the Church established revolutionary governments and demanded union with Sardinia. In 1860 Garibaldi (q.v.) overthrew the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and placed all Italy south of Rome in the hands of the King of Sardinia. In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was established, including all of the peninsula except Venice and Rome. During these movements Prussia stood inactive. In 1863 Denmark, in violation of its treaty engagements, endeavored to incorporate Schleswig. Prussia, of which Bismarck was now Premier, acting in concert with Austria, made war on Denmark, and the allies obtained joint sovereignty over Schleswig-Holstein (q.v.). In 1866, in alliance with Italy, Prussia made war on Austria. Austria was supported by all the South German States and by the more important part of North Germany, but victory rested with Prussia. (See Seven Weeks' War.) Italy obtained Venice; Prussia annexed a considerable part of North Germany, and organized with the remaining principalities and cities a North German federal State, of which the King of Prussia was hereditary President. Failing to obtain any compensation for his benevolent neutrality, Napoleon III. was forced by French popular feeling to quarrel with Prussia and to endeavor to arrest the unification of Germany. In the ensuing war (1870-71) the South German states acted with Prussia; and during the German of Paris, King William of Prussia was pro- claimed Emperor of a united Germany. To this new empire France was forced to cede Alsace and a part of Lorraine. (See Franco-German War. During the war, Italy annexed Rome.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Modern States. Just before the occupation of Rome by the Italians, an Ecumenical Council (1869-70) had defined the dogma of Papal infallibility. Viewed politically, this dogma signifies the complete subjection of the bishops to Papal authority and the centralized guidance of the Church militant in its struggle against what it regards as the usurpations of the modern States. Simultaneously Catholic or ‘Ultramontane’ parties were organized (or reorganized) in many of the European States; and while these parties deny the right of the Church to direct their political activity, they are supported by Church influence and work in accordance with the general policy of the Church. In Prussia and other States these movements have led to legislation intended to check the political activity of the
clergy and to diminish the control of the Church over education. (See Kulturkampf.) The furthest step was taken by the French Republic in 1902 in the effort to resist and supervise education by the clergy.
Eastern Affairs (1856-98). The integrity of the Turkish Empire, guaranteed by all the Powers in 1856, has since been seriously impaired. In 1859 Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same ‘hospedar’ or governor; in 1866 they were united under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern into a practically independent State. In 1871, taking advantage of the disturbed state of Europe, Russia, with the support of Germany, obtained from the Powers the abrogation of those provisions of the Treaty of Paris which limited its naval forces in the Black Sea. In 1875 insurrections broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and shortly afterwards in Bulgaria. The latter revolt was crushed with such cruelty that European sentiment was outraged, and the Powers, after fruitless negotiations, left Russia free to deal with Turkey. The fourth Russo-Turkish war of the century, 1877-78, ended with the Russians at the gates of Constantinople. (See Russo-Turkish War.) A preliminary peace (see Turkey) went so far in the dismemberment of Turkey that the Powers insisted on its revision. (See Berlin, Congress of.) The settlement effected at Berlin has since been modified. Of the three principalities recognized as independent — Rumania, Servia, and Montenegro — the first two have become kingdoms. Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which the administration was intrusted to Austria, have become in fact Austrian provinces, although the fiction of Turkish suzerainty is retained. Bulgaria and East Rumelia were united, by the revolution of 1885, into a single tributary principality. In order to preserve ‘the balance of power’ in the Balkan Peninsula, Servia attacked Bulgaria, but was badly beaten. In one direction only have the limits of Turkey been widened. In 1897 Greece interposed to protect, its fellow-countrymen in Crete, and in the ensuing war with Turkey the Greek armies were so decisively defeated that the Powers felt constrained to grant to the victor a ‘rectification’ of his Thessalian frontier. They took from the Sultan, however, the administration of Crete, and in 1898 they selected Prince George of Greece as their ‘high commissioner’; so that Crete is now practically an independent principality, under Greek rule. About 15,000 Turks emigrated from Crete to Constantinople or to Asia Minor. In Asia and in Africa Turkey and Islam have suffered other losses in the course of the nineteenth century; the most noteworthy events being the gradual advance of Russia into central Asia and into the northeastern corner of Asia Minor, and the establishment of French supremacy in Algiers and Tunis, and of English supremacy in Egypt.
European Politics and World Politics. After 1871 Austria sacrificed its resentment to its interests, and entered into friendly relations with Germany and Russia. Until 1878 the dominant feature of European politics was the coöperation of these three empires. Republican France was isolated. In 1878 Russian dissatisfaction with the results of the Congress of Berlin, and with the part played by Germany, led to strained relations between these two Powers, and Germany entered into a formal alliance with Austria. Early in the eighties Italy was admitted as a third partner.
The Triple Alliance thus established has several times been renewed, and still exists. In the nineties Russia and France drew together, and in 1897 it was announced that an alliance existed between these Powers. From these Continental alliances Great Britain has held aloof; but arrangements for common action in the Mediterranean have long existed between Great Britain and Italy. Both the Triple Alliance and the Franco-Russian alliance grew out of, and are concerned chiefly with, European politics. In world politics, Germany, which embarked in 1884 upon colonial enterprises, has from time to time acted in harmony with France and with Russia. The partition of Africa between European States, the seizure of portions of China (see Chinese Empire), and the division of the rest of that empire into ‘spheres of influence,’ are the most recent steps in that extension of European power over other continents which began with Alexander the Great, was continued by the Romans, was suspended for eleven centuries by counter-attacks from Asia, and began again in the sixteenth century. Since the unification of Italy and of Germany, Europe has attained something like a stable equilibrium; the Turkish question is partly solved and partly postponed; the Austrian question has not yet arisen. The aggressive energy of the great European nations must find its field outside of Europe; and world questions have begun to dominate European polities. Since the Congo Conference at Berlin (1884-85), there has been an increasing tendency to joint European action in this wider field.
Europe in 1900. The population of Europe at the close of the nineteenth century was about 390,000,000, and during the later decades of the century the average annual increase, in spite of emigration, was about 3,000,000. The peoples of modern Europe are for the most part of mixed origin; but taking language as the test, and grouping cognate languages, nearly 29 per cent. of the inhabitants of Europe are Slavs, more than 30 per cent. are Latins, and more than 32 per cent. are Teutons — the third group including the English, the Scandinavians, the Germans, the Dutch, and the Flemings. Outside of these three groups are the Finns, the Hungarians, and the Turks (all these are Mongols), the Greeks, the Jews, and scattered representatives of other races — all these together constituting less than 9 per cent. of the total population. Roughly speaking, Europe is Slavic in the east, Teutonic in the northwest and north centre, Latin in the southwest and south. More than 96 per cent. of the inhabitants of Europe are Christians, nearly 25 per cent. belonging to the Eastern churches, about 24 per cent. to the various Protestant churches, and more than 47 per cent. to the Catholic Church. This triple division of the Christian population of Europe corresponds, in the main, to the triple division of language groups; the Latins are nearly all Roman Catholics, the Slavs are mainly Greek Christians, and three-fourths of the Teutons are Protestants. Politically, Europe consists of 23 independent States, varying in population from 115,000,000 (European Russia) to 5200 (Andorra). There are four empires, viz., Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey; 11 kingdoms, viz., Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden-Norway, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Rumania, and Servia; 4 independent principalities, viz.,
Monaco, Lichtenstein, Montenegro, and the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg; and four republics, viz., France, Switzerland, Andorra, and San Marino. Four of these States are organized on federal lines, viz., Germany, which includes 4 kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Saxony); 18 grand duchies, duchies, and principalities, and 3 city republics; Switzerland, which consists of 25 canton republics; and Austria-Hungary and Sweden-Norway, each of which is divided into two largely autonomous portions. In the Turkish Empire there are States or provinces which are under Turkish suzerainty, but not under Turkish government; but their connection with the Empire is nominal. All the other States of Europe are single or unitary States. Most of the European States either have a substantially homogeneous population or contain only a small proportion of heterogeneous elements, as in the ease of Great Britain, Germany, and European Russia. In Austria-Hungary, European Turkey, and Switzerland, however, the population is so heterogeneous that no one nationality is preponderant; and in Belgium the French and Flemish elements are of nearly equal strength. In four European States monarchic absolutism still prevails. These are Russia, Turkey, Monaco, and Montenegro; but in Montenegro the rule of the Prince should perhaps be termed patriarchal rather than absolute. In all the other monarchic States the government is limited by constitutions granting more or less power to the representatives of the people. In the group of constitutional monarchies, princely authority is least limited in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Denmark. In the other constitutional monarchies, and in the French Republic, parliamentary government obtains; but on the Continent, the working of this system is greatly embarrassed by the multiplicity of parties (see Political Parties), and in some States which nominally have parliamentary government the system actually in operation is quite unlike the English model. In few of the larger States of Europe is administration so centralized as was the ease at the beginning of the century; local self-government has been established not only in most of the Teutonic States, but also in France and in Italy. The Great Powers by whose concerted action, when the concert can be established, the political development of Europe is controlled, are Great Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. In estimating the relative strength of these States, the chief elements to be considered are: Size and character of population, economic resources, and efficiency of organization. Taking all these things into consideration, Germany and Great Britain seem to be at present the leading Powers. With the fuller development of its resources and with a more efficient organization, Russia should become stronger than either; but at present Russia is probably less strong than France, although stronger than Austria-Hungary. Italy is the least of the Powers, and owes her recognition as a Power mainly to her alliances.
Bibliography. General Works. — Ritter. Europa: Vorlesungen, edited by Daniel (Berlin, 1863); Réelus, Nouvelle géographie universelle, vols. i.-v. (Paris, 1875—); Klöden, Handbuch der Erdkunde (Berlin, 1882-84); Bougier, Geographie physique, politique et économique de l'Europe (Paris, 1885); Kirchhoff, Länderkunde von Europa (Leipzig, 1887-93); Lanier, L'Europe
(Paris, 1888); Daniel, Handbuch der Geographie (Leipzig, 1894-95); Philippson and Neumann, Europa: Eine aUgemeine Landeskunde (ib., 1894); Christensen and Lassen, Europa (Copenhagen, 1895 et seq.); Ricchieri, “L'Europa nordica,” etc., in Martinelli, La terra (Milan, 1896); Chisholm, “Europe,” vol. i. in Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel (London, 1899); Kerp, Die Landschaften Europas (Trier, 1900); Gehauer, Handbuch der Länder- und Völkerkunde, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1901).
Flora. — Rouy, Sur la géographie botanique de l'Europe (Paris, 1886); id., Illustrationes Plantarum Europæ (ib., 1895-99); Drude, “Atlas der Pflanzenverbreitung” in Berghaus, Physikalischer Atlas (Gotha, 1886); Engler, Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der extra-tropischen Florengebiete der nordlichen Hemisphäre (Leipzig, 1879); Caruel, Epitome Floræ Europæ (Florence, 1892-94); Köhler, Die Pflanzenwelt und das Klima Europas seit der geschichtlichen Zeit (Berlin, 1892); Richter, Plantæ Europæ (Leipzig, 1890, vol. ii. by Gürke, 1897-98); Thonner, Excursionsflora von Europa (Berlin, 1901).
Fauna. — Scharff, History of the European Fauna (London, 1899); Hamann, Europäische Höhlenfauna (Jena, 1896); Dresser, The Birds of Europe (London, 1871-81, Supplement 1895-96); Seely, Freshwater Fishes of Europe (London, 1886); Schreiber, Herpetologia Europæa (Brunswick, 1875).
Physical Features. — Berghaus, Physikalischer Atlas (Gotha, 1886); Kümmel, “Die Vertheilung der Regen in Europa,” in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde (Berlin, 1878); also the volumes of the Meteorologische Zeitschrift (Berlin and Vienna, 1886 et seq.); Hann, Handbuch der Klimatologie (Stuttgart, 1897); Bartholomew, Physical and Political Atlas (New York, 1901).
Geology. — Geikie, Prehistoric Europe: A Geological Sketch (London, 1880); Topley, “National Geological Surveys of Europe,” Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (ib., 1884); Strelbitsky, Superficie de l'Europe (Saint Petersburg, 1882); Beyrich and Hanchecorne, Carte géologique Internationale de l'Europe (Berlin, 1894 et seq.). For the geology of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, consult the reports issued by the geological surveys of the respective countries.
Anthropology and Ethnology. — Kohl, Die Völker Europas (Hamburg, 1872); Virchow, Die Urbevölkerung Europas (Berlin, 1874); Behm and Wagner, Die Bevölkerung der Erde (Gotha, 1873-91); Ratzel, Völkerkunde (Leipzig, 1895); Peschel, Völkerkunde, 7th ed. by Kirehhoff (Leipzig, 1897); Ripley, The Races of Europe (New York, 1899); id., A Selected Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology of Europe (Boston, 1899); Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900); Johannes Ranke, “The Palæontology of Neolithic Man in Europe,” in Helmolt, History of the World, vol. i. English trans. (New York, 1902).
History. — I. Adams, Manual of Historical Literature (New York, 1899); II. General Histories. Of brief manuals, consult: Adams, European History (1899); Duruy, General History (1898); Hassall, Handbook of European History (1897); Ploetz, Epitome of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern History (1883); Robinson, History of Western Europe (1902); Thatcher and Schwill, History of Europe, Andrews,
Brief Institutes of General History (1887), and Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe (1891), discuss principles and tendencies, but give little narrative of events. Of larger works, the best is Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire générale du 4 siècle à nos jours (12 vols., Paris, 1893-1901); the last volume reaches 1900. See also Oncken, Allgemeine Geschichte; the last volume treats of the time of Emperor William, and was published in 1893. Helmolt, History of the World, is in course of publication; volumes four to eight will treat of Europe. Other series are the Periods of European History, edited by Dyer and Hassall (10 vols., 1453-1900); Epochs of Modern History, published by Scribner (18 vols.); The Cambridge Modern History, planned by Lord Acton, in preparation (12 vols. in all; Vol. I., The Renaissance, 1902). III. The Middle Ages. Adams, Civilization During the Middle Ages (New York, 1897); Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (London, 1877); Bury, The Later Roman Empire, 395-800 A.D. (2 vols., New York, 1889); Duruy, History of the Middle Ages (New York, 1891); Emerton, Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Boston, 1888); ib., Mediæval Europe (Boston, 1894); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published 1776-81, best edition by Bury (7 vols., 1900-02); Munro, History of the Middle Ages (1902); Stillé, Studies in Mediæval History (Philadelphia, 1882); Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (New York, 1901). IV. The Renaissance. Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London, 1878); Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (7 vols., new edition 1897-98). V. Modern History. Duruy, History of Modern Times from the Fall of Constantinople to the French Revolution (New York, 1894): Dyer, History of Modern Europe, 1453-1857, edited by Hassall (London, 1901 et seq.); Lodge, History of Modern Europe, 1453-1878 (New York, 1885); Schwill, History of Modern Europe (1902); Schlosser, History of the Eighteenth Century (8 vols., London, 1843-52); Lacroix, The Eighteenth Century (London, 1876); Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution française (Paris, 1892); Alison, History of Europe, 1789-1852 (Edinburgh, 1853); Cayley, The European Revolution of 1848 (London, 1856); Rose, A Century of Continental History, 1780-1880 (London, 1899); Fyffe, History of Modern Europe from 1792 to 1878 (New York, 1890); Seignobos, Histoire politique de l'Europe contemporaine, 1814-96 (Paris, 1897); Stern, Geschichte Europas seit den Vertragen von 1815 (Berlin, 1894-1901); Andrews, Historical Development of Modern Europe, 1815-97 (New York, 1900); Müller, Political History of Recent Times, 1816-75 (New York, 1882); McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to 1880 (4 vols., London, 1880); May, Democracy in Europe (New York, 1877); Freeman, The Historical Geography of Europe (London, 1881).