A Book of Golden Deeds

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> A Book of Golden Deeds

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Nor must we leave Robert the Bruce without mentioning that other Golden
Deed, more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting
his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English
host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be
given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well
may his old Scotch rhyming chronicler remark:--

'This was a full great courtesy
That swilk a king and so mighty,
Gert his men dwell on this manner,
But for a poor lavender.'

We have seen how the sturdy Roman fought for his city, the fierce
Northman died to guard his comrades' rush to their ships after the lost
battle, and how the mail-clad knightly Bruce periled himself to secure
the retreat of his friends. Here is one more instance, from far more
modern times, of a soldier, whose willing sacrifice of his own life was
the safety of a whole army. It was in the course of the long dismal
conflict between Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of
Austria, which was called the Seven Years' War. Louis XV. of France had
taken the part of Austria, and had sent an army into Germany in the
autumn of 1760. From this the Marquis de Castries had been dispatched,
with 25,000 men, towards Rheinberg, and had taken up a strong position
at Klostercamp. On the night of the 15th of October, a young officer,
called the Chevalier d'Assas, of the Auvergne regiment, was sent out to
reconnoitre, and advanced alone into a wood, at some little distance
from his men. Suddenly he found himself surrounded by a number of
soldiers, whose bayonets pricked his breast, and a voice whispered in
his ear, 'Make the slightest noise, and you are a dead man!' In one
moment he understood it all. The enemy were advancing, to surprise the
French army, and would be upon them when night was further advanced.
That moment decided his fate. He shouted, as loud as his voice would
carry the words, 'Here, Auvergne! Here are the enemy!' By the time the
cry reached the ears of his men, their captain was a senseless corpse;
but his death had saved the army; the surprise had failed, and the enemy
retreated.

Louis XV was too mean-spirited and selfish to feel the beauty of this
brave action; but when, fourteen years later, Louis XVI came to the
throne, he decreed that a pension should be given to the family as long
as a male representative remained to bear the name of D'Assas. Poor
Louis XVI had not long the control of the treasure of France; but a
century of changes, wars, and revolutions has not blotted out the memory
of the self-devotion of the chevalier; for, among the new war-steamers
of the French fleet, there is one that bears the ever-honored name of
D'Assas.

THE PASS OF THERMOPYLAE

B.C. 430

There was trembling in Greece. 'The Great King', as the Greeks called
the chief potentate of the East, whose domains stretched from the Indian
Caucasus to the Aegaeus, from the Caspian to the Red Sea, was
marshalling his forces against the little free states that nestled amid
the rocks and gulfs of the Eastern Mediterranean. Already had his might
devoured the cherished colonies of the Greeks on the eastern shore of
the Archipelago, and every traitor to home institutions found a ready
asylum at that despotic court, and tried to revenge his own wrongs by
whispering incitements to invasion. 'All people, nations, and
languages,' was the commencement of the decrees of that monarch's court;
and it was scarcely a vain boast, for his satraps ruled over subject
kingdoms, and among his tributary nations he counted the Chaldean, with
his learning and old civilization, the wise and steadfast Jew, the
skilful Phoenician, the learned Egyptian, the wild, free-booting Arab of
the desert, the dark-skinned Ethiopian, and over all these ruled the
keen-witted, active native Persian race, the conquerors of all the rest,
and led by a chosen band proudly called the Immortal. His many capitals--
Babylon the great, Susa, Persepolis, and the like--were names of dreamy
splendor to the Greeks, described now and then by Ionians from Asia
Minor who had carried their tribute to the king's own feet, or by
courtier slaves who had escaped with difficulty from being all too
serviceable at the tyrannic court. And the lord of this enormous empire
was about to launch his countless host against the little cluster of
states, the whole of which together would hardly equal one province of
the huge Asiatic realm! Moreover, it was a war not only on the men but
on their gods. The Persians were zealous adorers of the sun and of fire,
they abhorred the idol worship of the Greeks, and defiled and plundered
every temple that fell in their way. Death and desolation were almost
the best that could be looked for at such hands--slavery and torture
from cruelly barbarous masters would only too surely be the lot of
numbers, should their land fall a prey to the conquerors.

True it was that ten years back the former Great King had sent his best
troops to be signally defeated upon the coast of Attica; but the losses
at Marathon had but stimulated the Persian lust of conquest, and the new
King Xerxes was gathering together such myriads of men as should crush
down the Greeks and overrun their country by mere force of numbers.

The muster place was at Sardis, and there Greek spies had seen the
multitudes assembling and the state and magnificence of the king's
attendants. Envoys had come from him to demand earth and water from each
state in Greece, as emblems that land and sea were his, but each state
was resolved to be free, and only Thessaly, that which lay first in his
path, consented to yield the token of subjugation. A council was held at
the Isthmus of Corinth, and attended by deputies from all the states of
Greece to consider of the best means of defense. The ships of the enemy
would coast round the shores of the Aegean sea, the land army would
cross the Hellespont on a bridge of boats lashed together, and march
southwards into Greece. The only hope of averting the danger lay in
defending such passages as, from the nature of the ground, were so
narrow that only a few persons could fight hand to hand at once, so that
courage would be of more avail than numbers.

The first of all these passes was called Tempe, and a body of troops was
sent to guard it; but they found that this was useless and impossible,
and came back again. The next was at Thermopylae. Look in your map of
the Archipelago, or Aegean Sea, as it was then called, for the great
island of Negropont, or by its old name, Euboea. It looks like a piece
broken off from the coast, and to the north is shaped like the head of a
bird, with the beak running into a gulf, that would fit over it, upon
the main land, and between the island and the coast is an exceedingly
narrow strait. The Persian army would have to march round the edge of
the gulf. They could not cut straight across the country, because the
ridge of mountains called Ceta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the
woods, rocks, and precipices came down so near the seashore, that in two
places there was only room for one single wheel track between the steeps
and the impassable morass that formed the border of the gulf on its
south side. These two very narrow places were called the gates of the
pass, and were about a mile apart. There was a little more width left in
the intervening space; but in this there were a number of springs of
warm mineral water, salt and sulphurous, which were used for the sick to
bathe in, and thus the place was called Thermopylae, or the Hot Gates. A
wall had once been built across the western-most of these narrow places,
when the Thessalians and Phocians, who lived on either side of it, had
been at war with one another; but it had been allowed to go to decay,
since the Phocians had found out that there was a very steep narrow
mountain path along the bed of a torrent, by which it was possible to
cross from one territory to the other without going round this marshy
coast road.

This was, therefore, an excellent place to defend. The Greek ships were
all drawn up on the farther side of Euboea to prevent the Persian
vessels from getting into the strait and landing men beyond the pass,
and a division of the army was sent off to guard the Hot Gates. The
council at the Isthmus did not know of the mountain pathway, and thought
that all would be safe as long as the Persians were kept out of the
coast path.

The troops sent for this purpose were from different cities, and
amounted to about 4,000, who were to keep the pass against two millions.
The leader of them was Leonidas, who had newly become one of the two
kings of Sparta, the city that above all in Greece trained its sons to
be hardy soldiers, dreading death infinitely less than shame. Leonidas
had already made up his mind that the expedition would probably be his
death, perhaps because a prophecy had been given at the Temple of Delphi
that Sparta should be saved by the death of one of her kings of the race
of Hercules. He was allowed by law to take with him 300 men, and these
he chose most carefully, not merely for their strength and courage, but
selecting those who had sons, so that no family might be altogether
destroyed. These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own
share of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship. It is
even said that the 300 celebrated their own funeral rites before they
set out, lest they should be deprived of them by the enemy, since, as we
have already seen, it was the Greek belief that the spirits of the dead
found no rest till their obsequies had been performed. Such preparations
did not daunt the spirits of Leonidas and his men, and his wife, Gorgo,
who was not a woman to be faint-hearted or hold him back. Long before,
when she was a very little girl, a word of hers had saved her father
from listening to a traitorous message from the King of Persia; and
every Spartan lady was bred up to be able to say to those she best loved
that they must come home from battle 'with the shield or on it'--either
carrying it victoriously or borne upon it as a corpse.

When Leonidas came to Thermopylae, the Phocians told him of the mountain
path through the chestnut woods of Mount Ceta, and begged to have the
privilege of guarding it on a spot high up on the mountain side,
assuring him that it was very hard to find at the other end, and that
there was every probability that the enemy would never discover it. He
consented, and encamping around the warm springs, caused the broken wall
to be repaired, and made ready to meet the foe.

The Persian army were seen covering the whole country like locusts, and
the hearts of some of the southern Greeks in the pass began to sink.
Their homes in the Peloponnesus were comparatively secure--had they not
better fall back and reserve themselves to defend the Isthmus of
Corinth? But Leonidas, though Sparta was safe below the Isthmus, had no
intention of abandoning his northern allies, and kept the other
Peloponnesians to their posts, only sending messengers for further help.

Presently a Persian on horseback rode up to reconnoitre the pass. He
could not see over the wall, but in front of it, and on the ramparts, he
saw the Spartans, some of them engaged in active sports, and others in
combing their long hair. He rode back to the king, and told him what he
had seen. Now, Xerxes had in his camp an exiled Spartan Prince, named
Demaratus, who had become a traitor to his country, and was serving as
counsellor to the enemy. Xerxes sent for him, and asked whether his
countrymen were mad to be thus employed instead of fleeing away; but
Demaratus made answer that a hard fight was no doubt in preparation, and
that it was the custom of the Spartans to array their hair with special
care when they were about to enter upon any great peril. Xerxes would,
however, not believe that so petty a force could intend to resist him,
and waited four days, probably expecting his fleet to assist him, but as
it did not appear, the attack was made.

The Greeks, stronger men and more heavily armed, were far better able to
fight to advantage than the Persians, with their short spears and wicker
shields, and beat them off with great ease. It is said that Xerxes three
times leapt off his throne in despair at the sight of his troops being
driven backwards; and thus for two days it seemed as easy to force a way
through the Spartans as through the rocks themselves. Nay, how could
slavish troops, dragged from home to spread the victories of an
ambitious king, fight like freemen who felt that their strokes were to
defend their homes and children!

But on that evening a wretched man, named Ephialtes, crept into the
Persian camp, and offered, for a great sum of money, to show the
mountain path that would enable the enemy to take the brave defenders in
the rear! A Persian general, named Hydarnes, was sent off at nightfall
with a detachment to secure this passage, and was guided through the
thick forests that clothed the hillside. In the stillness of the air, at
daybreak, the Phocian guards of the path were startled by the crackling
of the chestnut leaves under the tread of many feet. They started up,
but a shower of arrows was discharged on them, and forgetting all save
the present alarm, they fled to a higher part of the mountain, and the
enemy, without waiting to pursue them, began to descend.

As day dawned, morning light showed the watchers of the Grecian camp
below a glittering and shimmering in the torrent bed where the shaggy
forests opened; but it was not the sparkle of water, but the shine of
gilded helmets and the gleaming of silvered spears! Moreover, a
Cimmerian crept over to the wall from the Persian camp with tidings that
the path had been betrayed, that the enemy were climbing it, and would
come down beyond the Eastern Gate. Still, the way was rugged and
circuitous, the Persians would hardly descend before midday, and there
was ample time for the Greeks to escape before they could be shut in by
the enemy.

There was a short council held over the morning sacrifice. Megistias,
the seer, on inspecting the entrails of the slain victim, declared, as
well he might, that their appearance boded disaster. Him Leonidas
ordered to retire, but he refused, though he sent home his only son.
There was no disgrace to an ordinary tone of mind in leaving a post that
could not be held, and Leonidas recommended all the allied troops under
his command to march away while yet the way was open. As to himself and
his Spartans, they had made up their minds to die at their post, and
there could be no doubt that the example of such a resolution would do
more to save Greece than their best efforts could ever do if they were
careful to reserve themselves for another occasion.

All the allies consented to retreat, except the eighty men who came from
Mycenae and the 700 Thespians, who declared that they would not desert
Leonidas. There were also 400 Thebans who remained; and thus the whole
number that stayed with Leonidas to confront two million of enemies were
fourteen hundred warriors, besides the helots or attendants on the 300
Spartans, whose number is not known, but there was probably at least one
to each. Leonidas had two kinsmen in the camp, like himself, claiming
the blood of Hercules, and he tried to save them by giving them letters
and messages to Sparta; but one answered that 'he had come to fight, not
to carry letters'; and the other, that 'his deeds would tell all that
Sparta wished to know'. Another Spartan, named Dienices, when told that
the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows darkened the sun,
replied, 'So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.' Two of the
300 had been sent to a neighboring village, suffering severely from a
complaint in the eyes. One of them, called Eurytus, put on his armor,
and commanded his helot to lead him to his place in the ranks; the
other, called Aristodemus, was so overpowered with illness that he
allowed himself to be carried away with the retreating allies. It was
still early in the day when all were gone, and Leonidas gave the word to
his men to take their last meal. 'To-night,' he said, 'we shall sup with
Pluto.'

Hitherto, he had stood on the defensive, and had husbanded the lives of
his men; but he now desired to make as great a slaughter as possible, so
as to inspire the enemy with dread of the Grecian name. He therefore
marched out beyond the wall, without waiting to be attacked, and the
battle began. The Persian captains went behind their wretched troops and
scourged them on to the fight with whips! Poor wretches, they were
driven on to be slaughtered, pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into
the sea, or trampled into the mud of the morass; but their inexhaustible
numbers told at length. The spears of the Greeks broke under hard
service, and their swords alone remained; they began to fall, and
Leonidas himself was among the first of the slain. Hotter than ever was
the fight over his corpse, and two Persian princes, brothers of Xerxes,
were there killed; but at length word was brought that Hydarnes was over
the pass, and that the few remaining men were thus enclosed on all
sides. The Spartans and Thespians made their way to a little hillock
within the wall, resolved to let this be the place of their last stand;
but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they came towards the
Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for mercy. Quarter was
given to them, but they were all branded with the king's mark as
untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably at this time escaped into
the mountains; while the small desperate band stood side by side on the
hill still fighting to the last, some with swords, others with daggers,
others even with their hands and teeth, till not one living man remained
amongst them when the sun went down. There was only a mound of slain,
bristled over with arrows.

Twenty thousand Persians had died before that handful of men! Xerxes
asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like these, and was
told there were 8,000. It must have been with a somewhat failing heart
that he invited his courtiers from the fleet to see what he had done to
the men who dared to oppose him! and showed them the head and arm of
Leonidas set up upon a cross; but he took care that all his own slain,
except 1,000, should first be put out of sight. The body of the brave
king was buried where he fell, as were those of the other dead. Much
envied were they by the unhappy Aristodemus, who found himself called by
no name but the 'Coward', and was shunned by all his fellow-citizens. No
one would give him fire or water, and after a year of misery, he
redeemed his honor by perishing in the forefront of the battle of
Plataea, which was the last blow that drove the Persians ingloriously
from Greece.

The Greeks then united in doing honor to the brave warriors who, had
they been better supported, might have saved the whole country from
invasion. The poet Simonides wrote the inscriptions that were engraved
upon the pillars that were set up in the pass to commemorate this great
action. One was outside the wall, where most of the fighting had been.
It seems to have been in honor of the whole number who had for two days
resisted--

'Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads bravely stand'.

In honor of the Spartans was another column--

'Go, traveler, to Sparta tell
That here, obeying her, we fell'.

On the little hillock of the last resistance was placed the figure of a
stone lion, in memory of Leonidas, so fitly named the lion-like, and
Simonides, at his own expense, erected a pillar to his friend, the seer
Megistias--

'The great Megistias' tomb you here may view,
Who slew the Medes, fresh from Spercheius fords;
Well the wise seer the coming death foreknew,
Yet scorn'd he to forsake his Spartan lords'.

The names of the 300 were likewise engraven on a pillar at Sparta.

Lions, pillars, and inscriptions have all long since passed away, even
the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there
are miles of solid ground between Mount Ceta and the gulf, so that the
Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass--nay,
than the very battlefield itself--has been the name of Leonidas. Two
thousand three hundred years have sped since he braced himself to perish
for his country's sake in that narrow, marshy coast road, under the brow
of the wooded crags, with the sea by his side. Since that time how many
hearts have glowed, how many arms have been nerved at the remembrance of
the Pass of Thermopylae, and the defeat that was worth so much more than
a victory!

THE ROCK OF THE CAPITOL

B.C. 389

The city of Rome was gradually rising on the banks of the Tiber, and
every year was adding to its temples and public buildings.

Every citizen loved his city and her greatness above all else. There was
as yet little wealth among them; the richest owned little more than a
few acres, which they cultivated themselves by the help of their
families, and sometimes of a few slaves, and the beautiful Campagna di
Roma, girt in by hills looking like amethysts in the distance, had not
then become almost uninhabitable from pestilential air, but was rich and
fertile, full of highly cultivated small farms, where corn was raised in
furrows made by a small hand plough, and herds of sheep, goats, and oxen
browsed in the pasture lands. The owners of these lands would on public
days take off their rude working dress and broad-brimmed straw hat, and
putting on the white toga with a purple hem, would enter the city, and
go to the valley called the Forum or Marketplace to give their votes for
the officers of state who were elected every year; especially the two
consuls, who were like kings all but the crown, wore purple togas richly
embroidered, sat on ivory chairs, and were followed by lictors carrying
an axe in a bundle of rods for the execution of justice. In their own
chamber sat the Senate, the great council composed of the patricians, or
citizens of highest birth, and of those who had formerly been consuls.
They decided on peace or war, and made the laws, and were the real
governors of the State, and their grave dignity made a great impression
on all who came near them. Above the buildings of the city rose steep
and high the Capitoline Hill, with the Temple of Jupiter on its summit,
and the strong wall in which was the chief stronghold and citadel of
Rome, the Capitol, the very centre of her strength and resolution. When
a war was decided on, every citizen capable of bearing arms was called
into the Forum, bringing his helmet, breast plate, short sword, and
heavy spear, and the officers called tribunes, chose out a sufficient
number, who were formed into bodies called legions, and marched to
battle under the command of one of the consuls. Many little States or
Italian tribes, who had nearly the same customs as Rome, surrounded the
Campagna, and so many disputes arose that every year, as soon as the
crops were saved, the armies marched out, the flocks were driven to
folds on the hills, the women and children were placed in the walled
cities, and a battle was fought, sometimes followed up by the siege of
the city of the defeated. The Romans did not always obtain the victory,
but there was a staunchness about them that was sure to prevail in the
long run; if beaten one year, they came back to the charge the next, and
thus they gradually mastered one of their neighbors after another, and
spread their dominion over the central part of Italy.

They were well used to Italian and Etruscan ways of making war, but
after nearly 400 years of this kind of fighting, a stranger and wilder
enemy came upon them. These were the Gauls, a tall strong, brave people,
long limbed and red-haired, of the same race as the highlanders of
Scotland. They had gradually spread themselves over the middle of
Europe, and had for some generations past lived among the Alpine
mountains, whence they used to come down upon the rich plans of northern
Italy for forays, in which they slew and burnt, and drove off cattle,
and now and then, when a country was quite depopulated, would settle
themselves in it. And thus, the Gauls conquering from the north and the
Romans from the south, these two fierce nations at length came against
one another.

The old Roman story is that it happened thus: The Gauls had an unusually
able leader, whom Latin historians call Brennus, but whose real name was
most likely Bran, and who is said to have come out of Britain. He had
brought a great host of Gauls to attack Clusium, a Tuscan city, and the
inhabitants sent to Rome to entreat succor. Three ambassadors, brothers
of the noble old family of Fabius, were sent from Rome to intercede for
the Clusians. They asked Brennus what harm the men of Clusium had done
the Gauls, that they thus made war on them, and, according to Plutarch's
account, Brennus made answer that the injury was that the Clusians
possessed land that the Gauls wanted, remarking that it was exactly the
way in which the Romans themselves treated their neighbors, adding,
however, that this was neither cruel nor unjust, but according--

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