of the long and bloody wars between the houses of York and Lan caster it effected a change in descents: it marks the decline of the feudal system, the waning power of the baronial aristocracy, and a corresponding increase of royal prerogatives: it was cotemporary with that greatest of events in Modern History, the discovery of America,—with the advance in knowledge and civilization that dawned upon the closing period of the Middle Ages; with the consolidation of the great European monarchies into nearly the shape and extent which they retain at the present day; and with the growth of the "balance of power" system, which neutralized the efforts of princes at universal dominion. A general survey of the condition of the prin cipal States of Europe at this period will better enable us to com prehend the relations of their subsequent history.

I. PENMARK,

II. OTHER NATIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— 1. Of the States of Northern Europe-Denmark,' Sweden, and Nor way, constituting the ancient Scandinavia, merit our SWEDEN, AND first attention. After these kingdoms had long been NORWAY. agitated by internal dissensions, they were finally, by the treaty of Calmar, (1397,) united into a single monarchy, near

1. Denmark embraces the whole of the peninsula north of Germany, early known as the Cimbric Chersonese, and afterwards as Jutland. Its earliest known inhabitants were the Cimbri. (See p. 171.) The famous but mysterious Odin, the Mars as well as the Mohammed of Scandinavian history, is said to have emigrated, with a band of followers, from the banks of the Tan' ais to Scandinavia about the middle of the first century before the Christian era, and to have established his authority, and the Scythian religion, over Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Skiold, son of Odin, is said to have ruled over Denmark; but his history, and that of his pos terity for many generations, are involved in fable. Hengist and Horsa, the two Saxon chiefs who conquered England in the fifth century, reckoned Odin, (or Wodin in their dialect,) as their ancestor. Gorm the Old, son of Hardicanute I., (Horda-knut,) united all the Danish States under his sceptre in the year 863. His grandson Sweyn, subdued a part of Norway in the year 1000, and a part of England in 1014. His son Canute completed the conquest of England in 1016, and also subdued a part of Scotland. Canute embraced the Christian religion, and introduced it into Denmark; upon which a great change took place in the character of the people. At his death, in 1036, he left the crowns of Denmark and England to his son Hard! canute II. In 1385, Margaret, daughter of the Danish prince Waldemar, and wife of Haquin king of Norway, styled the Semir' amis of the North, ascended the throne of Norway and Denmark. In 1389 she was chosen by the Swedes as their sovereign; and in 1397 the treat Calmar united the three crowns-it was supposed forever. In 1448, the pices of th family of Skiold having become extinct, the Danes promoted Christian I., count of Cldenburg, to the throne. He was the founder of the royal Danish family which has ever since kept possession of the throne. In 1523 the Swedes emancipated themselves from the cruel and tyrannical yoke of Christian II., king of Denmark. In their struggle for independence they were led by the famous Gustavus Vasa, who was raised to the throne of Sweden by the unani mous suffrages of his fellow citizens. Norway remained connected with Denmark till 1814 when the allied powers gave it to Sweden, as indemnity for Finland. (Map No. XIV.)

2. Calmar, rendered famous by the treaty of 1397, is a seaport town on the small island of Quarnholm, which is in the narrow strait that separates the island of Oland from the south eastern coast of Sv eden. (Map No. XIV.)

But

the close of the fourteenth century, through the influence of Marga ret of Denmark, whose extraordinary talents and address have ren dered her name illustrious as the "Semir' amis of the North." the union of Calmar, although forming an important epoch in Scandinavian history, was never firmly consolidated; and after having been renewed several times, was at length irreparably broken by Sweden, which, in the early part of the sixteenth century, (1521,) under the conduct of the heroic Gustavus Vasa, recovered its ancient independence.

EMPIRE.

2. East and south-east of the Scandinavian kingdoms vere the numerous Sclavonic tribes, which were gradually gathered into the empire of Russia. The original cradle of that mighty empire which dates back to the time of Rurick, a chief. II RUSSIAN tain cotemporary with Alfred the Great, was a narrow territory extending from Kiev, along the banks of the Dnieper,' north to Novogorod. Darkness for a long time rested upon early Russian history, but it has been in great part dispelled by the genius and research of Karamsin, and it is now known that as early as the tenth century the Russian empire had attained an extent and importance, as great, comparatively, among the powers of Europe, as it boasts at the present day. About the middle of the eleventh century the system of dividing the kingdom among the children of successive monarchs began to prevail, and the result was ruinous in the extreme, occasioning innumerable intestine wars, and a gradual decline of the strength and consideration of the empire.

3. Toward the middle of the thirteenth century the Tartar hordes of Northern Asia, falling upon the feeble and disunited Russian States, found them an easy prey; and during a period of two hundred and fifty years, Russia, under the Tartar yoke, suffered the direst atrocities of savage cruelty and despotism. At length, about the year 1482, John III., duke of Moscow, the true restorer of his

1. Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the ancients, still frequently called by its ancient name, is a large river of European Russia. It rises near Smolensko, runs south, and falls into the Black Bea, north-east of the mouths of the Danube. (Mip No. XVII.)

2. Novogorod, or Novgorod, called also Veliki, or "the Great," formerly the most importan city in the Russian empire, is situated on the river Volkhof, near its exit from Lake Ilmen, one hundred miles south-east from St. Petersburgh, and three hundred and five north-west from Moscow. The Volkhof runs north to Lake Ladoga. So inpregnable was Ngoroa once deemed as to give rise to the proverb,

"Who can resist the Gods and Great Novgorod}" From Novgorod to Kiev is a distance of nearly six hundre. miles.

country's glory, succeeded in abolishing the ruinous system by which the regal power had been frittered away, while at the same time hs threw off the yoke of the Moguls, and repulsed their last invasion of his country. Under the reign of this wise and powerful prince, the many petty principalities which had long divided the sovereignty were consolidated, and, at the end of the century, Russia, although scarcely emerged from its primitive barbarian darkness, was one of the great powers of Europe.

EMPIRE.

4. South of the country inhabited by the Russians, we look in vain, at the close of the fifteenth century, for the once III. OTTOMAN famed Greek empire of Justinian, or, as sometimes called, the Eastern empire of the Romans. The account which we have given of the crusades represents the Turks, a race of Tartar origin, as spread over the greater part of Asia Minor. About the beginning of the fourteenth century, a Turkish emir,a called Ottoman, succeeded in uniting several of the petty Turkish States of the peninsula, and thus laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire. About the year 1358 the Ottoman Turks first obtained a foothold in Europe; and at the close of the fourteenth century their empire extended from the Euphrates to the Danube, and embraced, or held as tributary, ancient Greece, Thes' saly, Macedónia, and Thrace, while the Roman world was contracted to the city of Constantinople, and even that was besieged by the Turks, and closely pressed by the calamities of war and famine. The city would have yiɩlded ɔ the efforts of Bajazet, the Turkish sultan; but almost in the moment of victory the latter was overthrown by the famous Timour, or Tamer lane, the new Tartar conqueror of Asia.

5 About the year 1370, Tamerlane, a remote descendant of the Great Gengis Khan, (p. 286,) had fixed the capital of his new dominions at Samarcand,' from which central point of his power he

1. Samarcand, anciently called Marakanda, now a city of Independent Tartary, in Foxhara, was the capital of the Persian satrapy of Sogdiana. (See Map No. IV.) Alexander is thought to have pillaged it. It was taken from the sultan Mahomet, by Gengis Khan, in 1220; and under Tino. or Tamerlane, it became the capital of one of the largest empires in the world and the cen. of Asiatic learning and civilization, at the same time that it rose to high dis unction on account of its extensive commerce with all parts cf Asia. Samarcaud is now in a a. Emir, an Arabic word, meaning a leder, or commander, was a title first given to the caliphs; but when they assumed the tif' of sultan, that of em r was applied to their children. At length it was bestowed upon al who were thought to be descendants of Mahomet in the line of his daughter Fatimah.

TAMERLANE,

made thirty-five victorio is campaigns,-conquering all Persia, North ern Asia, and Hindostan,—and before his death he had IV. TARTAR placed the crowns of twenty-seven kingdoms on his EMPIRE F head. In the year 1402 he fought a bloody and decisive battle with the Turkish sultan Bajazet, on the plains of Angora,' in Asia Minor, in which the Turk sustained a total defeat, and fell into the hands of the conqueror. Tamerlane would have carried his con quests into Europe; but the lord of myriads of Tartar horsemen was not master of a single galley; and the two passages of the Bos porus and the Hellespont were guarded, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks, who on this occasion forgot their animosities to act with union and firmness in the common cause. Two years later Tamerlane died, at the age of sixty-nine, while on his march for the invasion of China

6. The Ottoman empire not only soon recovered from the blow which Tamerlane had inflicted upon it, but in the year 1453, during the reign of Mahomet II., effected the final conquest of Constanti nople. On the 29th of May of that year the city was carried by assault, and given up to the unrestrained pillage of the Turkish soldiers the last of the Greek emperors fell in the first onset: the inhabitants were carried into slavery; and Constantinople was left without a prince or a people, until the sultan established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. The few remnants of the Greek or Roman power were soon merged in the Ottoman dominion; and at the close of the fifteenth century the Turkish empire was firmly established in Europe.

V. POLAND.

7. While at the close of the fifteenth century the three Scandina vian kingdoms of the North, and Russia, formed, as it were, separate worlds, having no connection with the rest of Europe, Poland,' the ancient Sarmatia, supplying the connect

decayed condition: gardens, fields, and plantations, occupy the place of its numerous streets and mosques; and we search in vain for its ancient palaces, whose beauty is so highly culo gized by Arab historians.

1. Angora, a town of Natolia in Asia Minor, (see Note, Roam, p. 281,) is the same as the ancient Ancyra, which, in the time of Nero, was the capital of Galatia. Here St. Paul preached to the Galatians.

2. The Poles were a Sclavonic tribe (a branch of the Sarmatians), who, in the seventh con 'ury, passed up the Dnieper, and thence to the Niemen and the Vistula. About the middle of the tenth century they embraced Christianity, and toward the end of the same century wera first called Poles, that is, Sclavonians of the plain The numerous principalities, into which

ing link between the Sclavonian and German tribes, had risen to a considerable degree of eminence and power. The history of Poland commences with the tenth century; but the prosperity of the kingdom began with the reign of Casimir the Great. (1333-1370.) In the year 1386 Lithuania' was added to Poland; and about the middle of the following century the Polish sovereign, Wladislas, wag presented with the crown of Hungary, which he had nobly defended against the Turks. But Hungary soon reverted again to the German empire. After long wars with the Teutonic knights, who, since the crusades, had firmly established their order in the Prussian part of the Germanic empire, the knights were everywhere defeated during the reign of Casimir IV., (1444–1492,) who added a large part of Prussia to the Polish territories. The Turkish province of Moldavia3 also became tributary to Poland; and at the close of the fif teenth century this kingdom had extended its power from the Baltic to the Euxine, along the whole frontier of European civilization, thus forming an effectual barrier to the Western States of Europe against barbarian invasion.

8. The German empire, at the close of the fifteenth century, comprised a great number of States lying between France and Poland, extending even west of the Rhine, and embracing the whole of cen

the Poles were divided were first united into one kingdom in 1025, under king Boleslaus I.; but Poland was afterwards subdivided among the family of the Piasts until 1305, when Wladis las, king of Cracow, united with hiss overeignty the two principal remaining divisions, Great and Little Poland. From 1370 to 1382 Hungary was united with Poland. The union with Lithuania in 1386, occasioned by the marriage of the grand duke of Lithuania with the queen of Poland, was more permanent. After the Lithuania nobility, in 1569, united with Great and Little Poland, in one diet, Poland became the most powerful State in the North. Although Po land has ceased to constitute an independent and single State-Its detached fragments having become Austrian, Prussian, or Russian provinces - still the country is distinctly separated from those which surround it, by national character, language, and manners. The present Poland possessing the name without the privileges of a kingdom, and reduced to a territory extending o hundred miles north and south, and two hundred east and west, is, substantially, a part of toe Russian empire. (Map No. XVII.)

1. The greater part of Lithuania, once forming the north-eastern d vision of Poland, has teen united to Russia. It is comprised in the present govements of Mohilew, Witepsk, Minsk, Wilna, and. Grodno. (Map No. XVII.)

2. The Teutonic Knights composed a religious order founded in 1190 by Frederic, duke of Faabia, during a crusade in the Holy Land, and intended to be confined to Germans of nobie rank. The original object of the association was to defend the Christian religion against the Infidels, and to take care of the sick in the Holy Land. By degrees the order made several conquests, and acquired great riches; and at the beginning of the fifteenth century it possesso a large extent of territory extending from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland. The war with the Poles greatly abridged its power, and finally the order was abolished by Napoleon, i war with Austria, April 24th, 1809.

3. Moldavia, nominally a Turkish proviuce, but in reality under the protection of Russia, braces the north-eastern part of the ancient Dacia. (Maps Nos. IX. and XVIL)