href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@27562@[email protected]#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">21 A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had now come to take their pleasure in the French carnival of crime, and so the plundering and burning went on until the fair land was wellnigh a wilderness, and the English troops caught disease from their victims and perished in the desolation they had helped to make. By simply refusing to fight battles with them and letting them starve, the next French king, Charles V, won back almost all his father had lost; and before his death, in 1380, the English power in France had fallen again almost to where it stood at the beginning of the war.

Edward III had died, brooding over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion—though with them this meant no more than that they felt themselves over-taxed.22

The latter part of the fourteenth century must, therefore, be regarded as a period of depression in European civilization, of retrograde movement during which the wheels of progress had turned back. It even seemed as though Asia would once more and perhaps with final success reassert her dominion over helpless Europe. The Seljuk Turks who, in 1291, had conquered Acre, the last European stronghold in the Holy Land, had lost their power; but a new family of the Turkish race, the one that dwells in Europe to-day, the Osmanlis, had built up an empire by conquest over their fellows, and had begun to wrest province after province from the feeble Empire of the East. In 1354 their advance brought them across the Bosporus and they seized their first European territory.23 Soon they had spread over most of modern Turkey. Only the strong-walled Constantinople held out, while its people cried frantically to the West for help. The invaders ravaged Hungary. A crusade was preached against them; but in 1396 the entire crusading army, united with all the forces of Hungary, was overthrown, almost exterminated in the battle of Nicopolis.

Perhaps it was only a direct providence that saved Europe. Another Tartar conqueror, Timur the Lame, or Tamburlaine, had risen in the Far East.24 Like Attila and Genghis Khan he swept westward asserting sovereignty. The Sultan of the Turks recalled all his armies from Europe to meet this mightier and more insistent foe. A gigantic battle, which vague rumor has measured in quite unthinkable numbers of combatants and slain, was fought at Angora in 1402. The Turks were defeated and subjugated by the Tartars. Timur's empire, being founded on no real unity, dissolved with his death, and the various subject nations reasserted their independence. Yet Europe was granted a considerable breathing space before the Turks once more felt able to push their aggressions westward.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE

Toward the close of this unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the Church. In Germany Nicholas of Basel established the "Friends of God." In England Wycliffe wrote the earliest translation of the Bible into any of our modern tongues.25 The Avignon popes shook off their long submission to France and returned to Italy, to a Rome so desolate that they tell us not ten thousand people remained to dwell amid its stupendous ruins. Unfortunately this return only led the papacy into still deeper troubles. Several of the cardinals refused to recognize the Roman Pope and elected another, who returned to Avignon. This was the beginning of the "Great Schism" in the Church.26 For forty years there were two, sometimes three, claimants to the papal chair. The effect of their struggles was naturally to lessen still further that solemn veneration with which men had once looked up to the accepted vicegerent of God on earth. Hitherto the revolt against the popes had only assailed their political supremacy; but now heresies that included complete denial of the religious authority of the Church began everywhere to arise. In England Wycliffe's preachings and pamphlets grew more and more opposed to Roman doctrine. In Bohemia John Huss not only said, as all men did, that the Church needed reform, but, going further, he refused obedience to papal commands.27 In short, the reformers, finding themselves unable to purify the Roman Church according to their views, began to deny its sacredness and defy its power.

At length an unusually energetic though not oversuccessful emperor, Sigismund, the same whom the Turks had defeated at Nicopolis, persuaded the leaders of the Church to unite with him in calling a grand council at Constance.28 This council ended the great schism and restored order to the Church by securing the rule of a single pope. It also burned John Huss as a heretic, and thereby left on Sigismund's hands a fierce rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were repeatedly defeated by the fanatic Hussites.29

Another interesting performance of the Emperor Sigismund was that, being deep in debt, he sold his "electorate" of Brandenburg to a friend, a Hohenzollern, and thus established as one of the four chief families of the empire those Hohenzollerns who rose to be kings of Prussia and have in our own day supplanted the Hapsburgs as emperors of Germany.30 Also worth noting of Sigismund is the fact that during the sitting of his Council of Constance he made a tour of Europe to persuade all the princes and various potentates to join it. When he reached England he was met by a band of Englishmen who waded into the sea to demand whether by his imperial visit he meant to assert any supremacy over England. Sigismund assured them he did not, and was allowed to land. We may look