A. D. 1613.

The great men and nobles of the empire, wearied with the confusions that prevailed, assembled for the purpose of deciding who should govern Russia. They passed three days in fasting and prayer; and so rigorously was this ordinance observed, that even mothers refused their milk to sucking babes. At length the nobles and the deputies of the states united. their votes in favour of a boy of fifteen. Michaila Romanoff, a son of the archbishop Philaretus, and grandson, by the mother's side, of the czar Ivan Vasilievitsch, was raised to the throne; and it was resolved that the czars should thenceforward be nominated from the family of Romanoff, and invested with the sole power of the administration.

Michaila ascended the throne of an humiliated empire: all the institutions of Ivan, and all the useful regulations that Boris attempted to introduce, had vanished; the exhaustion was universal, and the influence of Poland and Sweden predominant. The young czar conducted his measures for the restoration of the power of his kingdom, chiefly in a peaceable and imperceptible manner.

About this time the Cossacks began to attach themselves to the Russians: a multitude of young men who wished only to lead an independent life, had formed these hordes on the shores of the Jaik and of the Caspian sea, where they lived under the government of an ataman, in a rẹpublic without women. The czar afforded them protection, and many of their number at length married their captives.

The Saporogian cossacks had collected in the region about the falls of the Dnepr. Lyanskoronsky, a Polish nobleman, whom they had chosen for their ataman, had conducted them into the Ukraine, and the prudent king Stephen Bathori had taken them into his pay: but Sigismund Vasa, and Vladislaf in compliance with the urgent entreaties of his counsellors, endeavouring to convert them by force to the Roman Catholic faith, the Saporogians appealed to arms. Vladislaf gained one victory by arti

fice, but in vain: their avenger, Chmielnitzki, queror of the Polish generals, made an irruption kingdom, at the head of 100,000 savage warr obliged the king, John Casimir Vasa, to make t of Szborow.

The latter had the weakness to allow this trea broken; in consequence of which these free and hordes transferred themselves to Alexei Micha czar of Russia. 4041

Under this Alexei, who was the

A. D. 1645. Peter the Great, Russia prepared h that splendid light which was soon to blaze forth rapidity in her realm. As yet, indeed, her p V formidable only to the Asiatics and to subjects. Richelieu had an indistin ledge, that an emperor and great duke of all Russi Astrachan, and Siberia, reigned in the North, Talleyrand into his dominions as an ambassado yet no ambassador remained in Moscow longer his commission was completed; and Alexei could prehend for what reason Frederick von Gabel v reside at his capital, on the part of Denmark. ledge of Europe was derived from the answers th ceived to his numerous questions from foreign m until he at length caused a political gazette to be into the language of his court."

He was the first czar who sent an embassy to th of China; and he rendered Tobolsk the staple n Chinese silk, precious stones, and other manufact endeavoured to divert the commerce of the Pers

track, by way of Bassora and Haleb, and them to adopt the way across the Caspian, up t and through Russia.

This plan was interrupted by the rebellion Raszyn, a cossack of the Don, the Pugatscheff of Raszyn corrupted the army, chiefly by promising

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the ancient liturgy, and to abolish that which had been reformed by the patriarch Nikon: but his designs were betrayed by the ataman, and he was put to death by being quartered.

SECTION XIV.

THE TURKS.

WHILE the czar was combating the hereditary barbarism of his people, the empire of the Turks was falling to decay. Under Achmed the First, Egyptian rebels, for the first time, carried the head of the pacha about on a spear. Distinguished qualities, no longer the means of advancement, now only served to expose their possessors to destruction; and the welfare of the provinces was sacrificed to avaricious courtiers.

The Turkish nation, or soldiery, for that people never coalesced with the inhabitants of the country, remained inaccessible to all improvements in the art of war, and to all the progress of European civilization. Their language, which is intermixed with a great number of Arabic, Persic, and Zagay words, has different characters for the use of the common people, the merchant, the man of learning, and the statesman: there are no characters for the vowels, and the thirty-three consonants have only seventeen characters to express them. Every district has its peculiar dialect. The books of the Europeans thus remained sealed to the Turks; and the literature of the latter equally unintelligible to the former. The Turks fell into a state of decline, not so much from degeneracy, as because they remained stationary.

The effeminate Achmed died in his twentyseventh year, from the consequencess of excess. His brother Mustafa was excluded from the throne on account of his imbecility; and Osman, the son of Achmed, put to death, be- . cause he attempted to govern with vigour,

and to enforce strict military discipline. At last, h Morad the Fourth, the conqueror of Bagdad, redu janissaries to order: he was the last great padish Ottoman family, but died at an early exhausted by intemperance. His Ibrahim was put to death in the same year in the Christian powers concluded their thirty year from which the Sublime Porte reaped vantage.

SUCH was the situation of Europe at the perio the family of Habsburg, exhausted by its own effor obliged to submit to the vexatious conditions which with the assistance of Sweden and of the protesta in Germany, was enabled to impose: and from th Lewis the Fourteenth assumed the ascendancy.

Remote states had also undergone violent comm but Portugal was content under the sovereignty of king; and the Porte was occupied in consuming tural resources of her beautiful provinces, in slo effeminacy. On the other hand, it was impossible culate what might be the future power of Englan none but Frederick William foresaw the formidable ness to which Russia would attain.

During the one hundred and fifty years of th riority of the house of Habsburg, a number of grea called into existence by Providence exactly at the ti place in which their powers would be most effectiv decided the direction of human affairs: these illu individuals had shown themselves at the head of simp leeble nations; and had proved that virtue, which our command, is more effective than power, which tributed by the hand of blind fortune.de

BOOK XXII.

THAT PERIOD DURING WHICH THE KINGS OF FRANCE

POSSESSED A PREDOMINANT INFLUENCE IN THE
AFFAIRS OF EUROPE.

-A. D. 1648—1740.

“་་

SECTION I.

LEWIS THE GREAT.

en

A. D. 1659.

4

Ar the period when the peace of the Pyrenees put an end to the contest between France and Spain, which was a kind of appendage to the thirty years' war, Lewis the Fourteenth was in the twenty-first year of his age. Cardinal Mazarin was still at the head of government, and now administered it in peace: the last civil war, if the commotions of the Frondeurs are to be called by that name, having been extinguished, he was neither employed in pursuing any immediate schemes, nor in looking forward to any far-sighted plans of policy; but ' was performing the farce to the great tragedy which was going on in England.⠀ *****

A. D. 1661-1715.

Lewis the Fourteenth was incited by ambition to the pursuit of a particular species of greatness, which he displayed in the course of fifty-four years, the period during which he reigned without a prime minister. This passion was the source of all the benefits that he conferred on the arts and sciences, as well as of his ruinous conquests; of the wars by which Europe was convulsed during so many years, and in the course of which the most solemn treaties were violated, and the most splendid exploits and the basest of crimes performed by his command. It was a great misfortune that this king was igno