Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1882-11-09
SOME ACCIDENTS OF HISTORY
A Chapter of Trifies Which Have De-
termined Great Events. NV

M. FOurnier wrote book on events
which never took place, and Lord Ba
consfield's father was the author of q
learned essay on history which might
have been enacted. An equally curious
volume might be penned on trihes which
have determined great events. 1t was
but trifle which gave Spain for SC
many generations the lordship of the
new world, and enabled her by the
wealth which she derived from that
source to become the most pow erful ma
tion in Europe. 1t is well known that
Columbus, dispirited by the refusals
which he met at so many courts, dis
patched his brother Bartolomeo to ask
aid from Henry VII. of England. But
on the way the messenger fell into the
hands of pirates, and by the time he
reached London he was so destitute he
had to try and earn money to clorhe him.
self in proper style before he could be
presented at court. By this time it was
too late. Even the fact that Ferdinand
and Isabella supplied the funds to equip
the expedition was mainly due to the
accident that Juan Perez de Marchena,
the queens confesser, happened to be
passing at the very moment when the
weary mariner was knocking at the
door of the La Racida monastery to beg
little bread and water for his boy Die
go, and was struck with the noble face
of the dusty pedestrian. Had Bartolo-
meo Colon reached London in time, had
Christoyal been by any chance little
later or little earlier at the monastery
door, the fate of Europe might have
been changed and the destiny of the An
glo-Saxon race altered. Three centuries
later it was again nearly revolutionized,
for in 1906 the English held Buenos
Ayres, and it is no secret that Napole-
on was almost persuaded to abandon
Europe as field for his ambition, and
try what he could accomplish in the way
of carving out an empire among the dis
satisfied provinces of South America
When Citizen Bonaparle seemed little
likely to sit on the throne of Louis Ca
pet be was on the point of offering his
sword to the Sultan. as at later period
Won Moltke actually did. 1t is curious
now to speculate what would now have
been the present state of the Eastern
question had Napoleon carried his in
tention into effect; or supposing that
Moltke had remained in the Turkish
service whether the Danish war would
have been fought, or Prussia's suprema-
cy established at Sadowa or Sedan.
The cropping of Louis Wis chin
brought on three centuries of blOOdshed,
and sarcastic remark of Frederick the
Great on Elizabeth Petrovna, of Russia,
reused that yirtuous Empress to take
such vigorous part in the seven years
war that at one time Prussia seemed
well nigh stricken unto death. Even
Catharine II.-prOfoundly suspicious of
Potsdam after the scandal about Queen
examined her hus-
bands correspondence before she con-
cluded an alliance with the royal letter
writer. 1t is hardly forty years since
Louis Philippe threatened war against
the Texan republic because an irate cit
iZen bad shot the trespassing pigs of the
lcnCil dnDdoStuOls ao IL Who ITO pre-
vented the Lone Star sovereignty from
floating their European loan, and thus
the King and the pigs combined hasten
ed the annexation of Texas to the Uni
ted States. The Dutch are said to have
"jockeyed" us oat of Malacca in ex-
change for Java, by representing on the
map, when our simple minded envoys
took for granted, the one territory as
large and the other as small, and among
the most firmly rooted traditions
of American diplomacy, is one which |
the English commissioners
as agreeing to the surrender Of Oregon,
because country in which salmon
does not rise to the fly cannot be worth |
much" Laws have been altered through |
accidents before the Queens printer boy
forgot to deliver Lord Beaconsfield's |
to a bill. fishery. -fl
But if trihes have determined the fate
of laws and nations, accidents equally
small have caused men to follow pur-
suits the results of which have been not |
much less momentous to culture and
Father Malebranche devo-
ted himself to philosophy after reading |
Descartes' "L'Homme;" Cowley became
a poet owing to his perusal of Sponsors |
Fairy Queen" and Sir Joshua Reynolds |
had never thought of painting until
Richardson's Treatise" fell into his |
hands,. Shakespeare might have ended
his life as prosperous wool-eomber had
he been IA prudent young tradesman;
Corneille showed no liking for any it'll