§ 6. THE EAST.

Eastern Empire.

527-565. Justinian I., emperor of the East. Belisarius. Narses (p. 175).

Codification of the law in the form known as the corpus juris civilis (Tribonianus), comprising: 1. Institutiones. 2. Pandecta or Digesta. 3. Codex. 4. Novella, later additions.

Parties of the circus: Greens, Blues, Reds, and Whites. Bloody contests ("Nika," 532). The church of St. Sophia, built by Constantine (Hagia Sophia), burnt and rebuilt with great splendor.

Decline of the empire under Justinian's successors (cruelty, mutilations). A part of the Asiatic and African provinces conquered by the Persians and afterwards by the Arabs.

726-842. Contest over images. Image-breakers (eikovokλáσtaι, iconoclasts) and image worshippers (eikovodoûλol).

717-741. Leo the Isaurian. Image worship prohibited. 780-802. Irene, who out of love of power had her own son blinded, restored image worship. The accession of a woman to the imperial throne served as a pretext to legalize the transfer of the imperial crown from the East to the West. 842. Theodora fully restored image worship.

867-1057. Eastern emperors of the Macedonian line.

The empire, hard pressed by Arabs, Bulgarians, and Magyars. The emperors Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, whom Theophano, widow of Romanus II. (died 962), placed on the throne, partially reconquered the provinces which the Arabs and Bulgarians had torn from the empire.

Caliphate of Bagdad under the Abbasides (750-1258). Immediately after the reigns of Haroun-al-Raschid and Mamun (p. 186), the power of the caliphs began to decline.

935. The Emir al Omra (i. e. prince of princes) received all the secular power; the caliph remained only spiritual head of the faithful.

1058. Seljuk Turks (Togrul Bey, Alp Arslan, Malek Shah) attained the dignity of Emir al Omra. Seljuk supremacy. 1092. The empire of the Seljuks separated into a number of small sultanates (Iran, Kerman, Aleppo, Damascus, Iconium or Roum).

India.

The early history is exceedingly uncertain, and the most important events are assigned dates differing from one another by over four centuries. The Guptas, who succeeded in power the Sahs of Suráshha (60 B. C.-235 A. D.), occupied Kanauj from 319 to about 470, when they were overthrown by Tatar invaders (Huns ?), and the Valabhis, who dwelt in Cutch and the northern part of Bombay, were the principal power in India, 480–722.

Actual authentic history begins with the Arabic invasions. Sind was the first province to feel the Mohammedan attack. It was conquered in 711, but in 750 a general uprising expelled the victors. About 1000–1186. Supremacy of the Sultans of Ghazni.

The next great attack was made by a Turk, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, (in Kabul), who invaded India seventeen times, and conquered the country to the Ganges. The decisive struggle took place at Peshawar, where Mahmud was victorious. In 1024 famous expedition to Guzerat. Destruction of the idol pillar filled with jewels. (?) Mahmud was succeeded by fourteen rulers of his house, the last of whom, Bahram, was conquered by Allah-ud-din of Ghor. Bahram's son, Khusru, founded at Lahore the first Mohammedan dynasty in India proper.

1186-1206. Supremacy of the Afghans of Ghor.

In 1186, Khusru's son was made captive by Muhammed Ghori, after which the predominance exercised by the Turks of Ghazni passed into the hands of the Afghans of Ghor. Muhammed Ghori was killed in 1206.

China.

590-618. Dynasty of Suy, under whose energetic sway China was partially rescued from the confusion of the Three Kingdoms (p. 32).

618-907. Dynasty of Tang,

The

founded by the usurper, Le Yuen, who, as emperor, took the name of Kau-tsu. The first part of this period down to 718 was a brilliant time for China, and the Golden Age of literature. earlier rulers (Tai-tsung, 627–650; Kaou-tsung, 650-683; Woo How, 683-705, the wife of Kaou-tsung, who usurped the throne on her husband's death) were valiant warriors and wise rulers, who held the Tatars in check, recovered much of the former possessions of China in Central Asia, and raised the empire to a commanding position among other nations; 643, embassies from Persia and Constantinople

in China.

From 718 the attacks of the Tatars increased in vehemence. From 763 to 780 their inroads were incessant.

Under Woo-tsung (841-847) temples were destroyed, monasteries and nunneries closed, and all foreign priests (Christian, Persian, Buddhist) banished. The reaction was, however, short-lived. Invention of printing.

907-960. Five dynasties (Later Leang, Later Tang, Later Tsin, Later Han, Later Chow) occupied the throne within this period, but the power of each was very limited. In Ho-nan, Sze-chuen, and other provinces independent states arose.

960-976. Chaou-kwang-yin, as emperor, Tai-tsoo, the founder

of the dynasty of the Later Sung, fought with success against the Khitan Tatars, who had occupied the whole of Manchuria, establishing there the empire of Hia. Succeeding emperors were less fortunate, and paid tribute to the Tatars (976–1101).

Japan.1

From the reign of Ojin (270-310, p. 33) to the close of the sixth century, the history of Japan is a record of quiet progress in civilization, under the influence of continental intercourse and of increasing wealth. Throughout this period, as before, the Mikados were actual sovereigns and personal commanders. The close of this epoch saw the introduction of Buddhism into Japan and its rapid spread (p. 33). The seventh century is of surpassing interest in the history of Japan, for then it was that causes long working in silence and unseen resulted in changes subversive of the entire social and political life of the Japanese, changes which led to the withdrawal of the Mikado from personal intercourse with his subjects behind a veil of formal etiquette and heightened reverence, and to the predominance of the military over the civil power, until the actual government of the country passed from its legal sovereign, the Mikado, into the hands of an usurping military chieftain, thus creating a long-enduring, much misunderstood system of dual government, changes whose final outcome was a feudal system corresponding to that known to mediæval Europe, which, with its legitimate offspring, oppression, weakness, anarchy, lasted until 1868.

These changes were the following: I. The growth of a numerous court nobility of imperial, and hence of divine, descent. II. The creation of numerous offices of state which became the property of the court nobility. III. The division of the male population into an agricultural and a military class. IV. The separation of state offices into two sections, the civil and the military, and the continuance of each in the hands of one group of noble families.

I. The kugé, or court nobility, owed their numbers to the practice of polygamy, which the necessity of providing against the extinction of a divine dynastic line imposed on the Mikados. They comprise at present one hundred and fifty-five families, which form among themselves larger groups, or clans. Such clans are: the Fujiwara, the most famous of all the kuge; the Sugawara; the Taira (Heike in Chinese characters); the Minamoto (Genji in Chinese characters).

II. In 603 the requirements of a more extensive empire caused the establishment of eight great administrative departments, and of a host of smaller offices, which were filled by members of the kugé, and gradually became vested in certain families.

III. The demand of the growing empire for increased military efficiency led to the division of the whole male population into two classes: 1. the class of agricultural laborers, comprising all who were unfit for military service; they were relegated to a life of unbroken toil, and were burdened with the annual payment of a quantity of rice sufficient for the support of the 2. military class, the Samurai, which included all the bravest and most intellectual men in Japan. Relieved from the necessity of working by the tax received from the first class, and not overburdened with military duties, these 1 Grillis, The Mikado's Empire. Reed, Japan. Adams, History of Japan.

men were free to devote themselves to the pursuit of literature and learning, forming the best element in the nation.

IV. The Fujiwara, increasing in power, gradually absorbed all civil offices, while the military offices were filled from the two families of Taira and Minamoto, better known as Hei and Gen. Thus did the Fujiwara become enervated by the luxury of palace life; thus did the Mikado, while his office gained in respect and reverence by its environment of titled officials, lose all real power, and sink to a mere puppet in the hands of intriguing nobles, to be installed and deposed at will; thus did both emperor and court constantly lose ground before the growing influence of those energetic families to whom were given the active duties of military command. The generals, or Shoguns, became the "Mayors of the Palace" of Japan. So originated the dual government, which was not, as foreigners long thought, a constitutional institution, whereby the civil and military functions of ernment were vested in the Shōgun or temporal emperor (Tycoon), and the religious functions in the Mikado or spiritual emperor, but an unconstitutional innovation, wherein a subordinate officer had usurped that authority which belonged of right to the only emperor, the Mikado, and whose position that emperor had never recognized.

gov

The natural result of this state of affairs was the evolution of military feudalism, whose rise is considered in the next period.

794. The capital of the empire, the home of the Mikado and the kugé, permanently fixed at Kioto, near Lake Biwa.

1156.

Outbreak of war between the families of Gen and Hei (Minamoto and Taira), which had previously shared the military offices in peace.

THIRD PERIOD.

EPOCH OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1270).

§ 1. CRUSADES.

Cause: The pilgrimages of the Christians to the Holy Sepulchre, where St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, had built a vault for the Sepulchre and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were interrupted after the Fatimites, and yet more after the Seljuks came to power; ill-treatment of the pilgrims.

The hermit Peter of Amiens demanded of the Pope Urban II. (1088-1099) assistance in freeing the holy places, and preached the Crusade in Italy (?) and France.1 Councils of the church at Piacenza and Clermont in Auvergne (1095). Address by the Pope; universal enthusiasm. (It is the will of God!)

The undisciplined bands led by Peter, by the French knight Walter of Pacy, and his nephew Walter Senzaveir (the Penniless), and others, were for the most part, annihilated in Hungary and Bulgaria.

1 V. Bybel Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzugs, 1841, has shown on conclusive grounds that the idea of the Crusades originated principally with Pope Urban II. It has recently been made doubtful whether Peter of Amiens had been in the Holy Land at all before the first Crusade.

1096-1099. First Crusade. Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Leaders of the first Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of lower Lotharingia; his brothers, Baldwin and Eustach; Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror; Robert of Flanders; Stephen of Blois; Raymond IV., count of Toulouse; Hugo of Vermandois, brother of Philip I., king of France; Bohemond of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard; his nephew Tancred. They led 200,000 or 300,000 warriors to the East. Bishop Adhemar of Puy, who was the first to take the Cross at Clermont, went with the expedition as papal legate (died 1098). No king took part personally in this Crusade.

The princes went to Constantinople, where all except Raymond did feudal homage to the emperor, Alexius Comnenus. Attack upon the territory of Kilij Arslan, Sultan of Iconium (or Roum).

1097. Nicaa surrendered to the Grecian emperor after a siege of June. several weeks' duration. Victory of the Crusaders at DoryJuly 1. læum over the Sultan Kilij Arslan. Baldwin, separated from the main army, crossed the Euphrates, and conquered a principality for himself in Edessa.

1097-1098. The main army besieged Antiochia on the Orontes for nine months in vain, but finally the city was betrayed to Bohemund of Tarentum by the Armenian renegade, Firuz 1098. (Pyrrhus). Kerboga, the powerful Emir of Mossul, besieged the Crusaders, exhausted through sickness and want, in Antioch, with an immense army. Victorious sally of the Christians (the holy lance!); the Seljuk army defeated and scattered. Long rest of the Crusaders in Antioch and quarrels among them.

1099. Expedition along the coast toward Jerusalem. Unsuccessful siege of the fortress of Arcas. In May they advanced beyond Cæsarea. On the 7th of June the Crusaders, now numbering but 21,500 effective men, beheld the Holy City, which the Fatimites had reconquered from the Seljuks in 1098. After a five weeks' siege, 1099. Storm of Jerusalem.

July 15. Terrible massacre; pilgrimage to the Church of the Resurrection.

Establishment of a feudal kingdom of Jerusalem, chiefly French, with vassal counties: Edessa, Antiochia, and afterwards Tripolis (Assises du royaume de Jérusalem). Three chief officers: Senechal, Connétable, Marshall. Two patriarchs, at Jerusalem and at Antiochia. Godfrey of Bouillon, Protector of the Holy Sepulchre, defeated the Sultan of Egypt at Ascalon or Gaza. Godfrey died 1100. His brother, Baldwin I., king of Jerusalem. Acre, Trioplis, Berytus (Beirut), Sidon, conquered with the aid of Pisa and Genoa. Baldwin I. (died 1118) was succeeded by Baldwin II. (died 1131), Fulco of Anjou (died 1143), under whom the kingdom of Jerusalem reached its greatest extent, Baldwin III. (died 1162), Amalric (died 1173), Baldwin IV. (died 1184), Baldwin V. (not of age, died 1186), Veit (Guy) of Lusignan.