conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins two-thirds of the metropolis,-consuming more than thirteen thousand dwellings, and leaving destitute two hundred thousand people. 4 28. After the war with Holland had continued two years, Charles was forced, by the voice of parliament and the bad success of his arms. to conclude the treaty of Breda,' (July 1667,) by which the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands,' in America, were confirmed to England, while the latter surrendered to France Acadia and Nova Scotia. In 1672, however, Charles was induced by the French monarch, Louis XIV., to join him in another war against the Dutch. The combined armies of the two kingdoms soon reduced the republic to the brink of destruction; but the prince of Orange, being promoted to the chief command of the Dutch forces, soon roused the courage of his dismayed countrymen: the dykes were opened, laying the whole country, except the cities, under water; and the invaders were forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate retreat. At length, in 1674, Charles was compelled, by the discontents of his people and parliament, who were opposed to the war, to conclude a separate treaty of peace with Holland. France continued the war, but Holland was now aided by Spain and Sweden, while in 1676 the marriage of the prince of Orange with the Lady Mary, daughter of the duke of York, the brother of Charles, induced England to espouse the cause of the republic, and led to the treaty of Nimeguen 1. Breda is a strongly-fortified town of Holland-province of North Brabant, on the river Merk, thirty miles north-east from Antwerp. Breda is a well-built town, entirely surrounded by a marsh that may be laid under water. It was taken from the Spaniards by prince Maurice in 1590, by means of a stratagem suggested by the master of a boat who sometimes supplied the garrison with fuel. With singular address he contrived to introduce into the town, under a cargo of turf, seventy chosen soldiers, who, having attacked the garrison in the night, opened the gates to their comrades. It was retaken by the Spaniards under the marquis Spin la in 1625, but was finally ceded to Holland by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. (Map Nc. XV.) 2. New Netherlands, the present New York, had been conquered by the English in 1664, while England and Holland were at peace; and the treaty of Breda confirmed England in the possession of the country. 3. The French possessions in America, embracing New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the adjacent islands, were at first called Acadia. A fleet sent out by Cromwell in 1654 soon reduced Acadia, but it was restored by the treaty of Breda in 1667. 4. The family of Orange derive their title from the little principality of Orange, twelve miles in length and nine in breadth, of which the city of Orange, a town of south-eastern France, was the capital. Orange, known to the Romans by the name of Arausio, is situated on the small river Meyne, five miles east of the Rhone, and twelve miles north of Avignon. From the eleventh to the sixteenth century Orange had its own princes. In 1531 it passed, by marriage, to the count of Nassau. It continued in this family till the death, in 1702, William Henry of Nassau-Orange (William III. of England), when the succession became the subject of a long contest; and it was not the peace of Utrecht in 1715 that this little territory was finally reded to France. (Map No. XIII.) 3. Nimeguen, or Nymegen, is a town of Holland, province of Guelderland on the south side in 1678, by which the Dutch provinces obtained honorable and ad vantageois terins. 29. Although Charles professed adherence to the principles of the Reformation, yet his great and secret designs were the establishment of papacy, and arbitrary power, in England. To enable him to ac complish these objects, he actually received, from the king of France, a secret pension of two hundred thousand pounds per annum, for which he stipulated, in return, to employ the whole strength of Eng land, by land and sea, in support of the claims of Louis to the vast monarchy of Spain. But the popularity with which Charles had commenced his reign had long been expended; there was a prevail ing discontent among the people,-an anxiety for public liberty, which was thought to be endangered, and a general hatred of the Roman Catholic Religion, which was increased by the circumstance that the king's brother, and heir presumptive, was known to be a bigoted Roman Catholic. Parliament became intractable, and successfully opposed many of the favorite measures of the king; and at length in 1678 a pretended Popish Plot for the massacre of the Protestants threw the whole nation into a blaze. One Titus Oates, an infamous impostor, was the discoverer of this pretended plot; and n the midst of the ferment which it occasioned, many innocent Catholics lost their lives. At a later period, however, a regular project for raising the nation in arms against the government was de tected; and the leaders, among whom were Lord Russell and Alger. non Sidney, being unjustly accused of participation in the Rye House plot for the assassination of the king, were beheaded, in defiance of law and justice. (1683.) From this time until his death Charles ruled with almost absolute power, without the aid of a parliament. He died suddenly in 1685. His brother, the duke of York, imme diately succeeded to the throne, with the title of James II. XIV. 30. The reign of James was short and inglorious, distinguished by nothing but a series of absurd efforts to render him. JAMES IL self independent of parliament, and to establish the Roman Catholic religion in England, although he at first made the strongest professions of a resolution to maintain the established gov ernment, both in church and state. It soon became evident that a crisis was approaching, and that the great conflict between the pre of the Waal, fifty-three miles south east from Amsterdam. It is known in history from the treaty concluded there August 10th, 1678, and from its capture by the French on the 8th of Sept. 1794, after a severe action n which the allies were defeated. (Map No. XV. rogatives of the crown and the privileges of parliament was about to be brought to a final issue. 31. In the first exercise of his authority James showed the insincerity of his professions by levying taxes without the authority of parliament in violation of the laws, and in contempt of the national feeling, he went openly to mass: he established a court of ecclesias tical commission with unlimited power over the Episcopal church he suspended the penal laws, by which a conformity had been re quired to the established church; and although any communication with the pope had been declared treason, he sent an embassy to Rome, and in return received a nuncio from his Holiness, and with much ceremony gave him a public and solemn reception at Windsor.' In this open manner the king attacked the principles and prejudices of his Protestant subjects, foolishly confident of his ability to reës tablish the Roman Catholic religion, although the Roman Catholics in England did not comprise, at this time, the one-hundredth part of the nation. 32. An important event of this reign was the rebellion of the duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II., who hoped, through the growing discontents of the people at the tyranny of James, to gain possession of the throne; but after some partial successes he was defeated, made prisoner, and beheaded. After the rebellion had been suppressed, many of the unfortunate prisoners were hung by the king's officers, without any form of trial; and when, after some in terval, the inhuman Jeffries was sent to preside in the courts before which the prisoners were arraigned, the rigors of law were made to equal, if not to exceed, the ravages of military tyranny. The juries were so awed by the menaces of the judge that they gave their verdict as he dictated, with precipitation: neither age, sex, nor station, was spared; the innocent were often involved with the guilty; and the king himself applauded the conduct of Jeffries, whom he after wards rewarded for his services with a peerage, and invested with the dignity of chancellor. 1. Windsor is a small town on the south side of the Thames, twenty miles south-west from London. It is celebrated for Windsor castle, the principal country seat of the sovereigns of England, and one of the most magnificent royal residences ir Europe. The castle, placed on the summit of a lofty eminence rising abruptly from the river, appears to have been founded. by William the Conqueror, and it has been enlarged or embellished by most of his successors. On the north and east sides of the castle is the Little Park, a fine expanse of lawn, comprising nearly five hundred acres on the south side is the Great Park, comprising three thousand Eight hundred acres; while near by is Windsor forest, a tract fifty-six miles in circumference, laid cut by William the Conqueror for the purpose of hunting (Map No. XVI. of 33 As the king evinced, in all his measures, a settled purpose invading every branch of the constitution, many of the nobility and great men of the kingdom, foreseeing no peaceable redress of their grievances, finally sent an invitation to William, prince of Orange, the stadtholder of the United Dutch Provinces, who had married the king's eldest daughter, and requested him to come over and aid them by his arms, in the recovery of their laws and liberties. About the middle of November, 1688, William landed 1688. in England at the head of an army of fourteen thousand men, and was everywhere received with the highest favor. James was abandoned by the army and the people, and even by his own children; and in a moment of despair he formed the resolution of leaving the kingdom, and soon after found means to escape privately to France. These events are usually denominated "the Revolution XV. REVOLU- of 1688." 34. In a convention-parliament which met soon after the flight of James, it was declared that the king's withdrawal was an abdication of the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant; and after a variety of propositions, a bill was passed, settling the crown on William and Mary, the prince and princess of Orange; the succession to the princess Anne, the next eldest daughter of the late king, and to her posterity after that of the princess of Orange. To this settlement of the crown a declaration of rights was annexed, by which the subjects of controversy that had existed for many years. and particularly during the last four reigns, between the king and the people, were finally determined; and the royal prerogative was more narrowly circumscribed, and more exactly defined, than in any former period of English history. 35. While the accession of William and Mary was peaceably ac quiesced in by the English people, some of the Highland clans of Scotland, and the Catholics of Ireland, testified their adherence to the late king by taking up arms in his favor. The former gained the attle of Killiecrankie' in the summer of 1689; but the death of heir leader, the viscount Dundee, who fell in the moment of victory, ended all the hopes of James in Scotland. In the meantime Louis XIV. of France openly espoused the cause of the fallen monarch, and 1. Killiecrankie is a celebrated pass, half a mile in length, through the Grampian hills in Scotland, in the county of Perth, sixty miles northwest from Edinburgh. In the battle of 1689 fought at the northern extremity of this pass, Mackay coinmanded the revolutionary forces and the famous Graham of Claverhouse, V зcount Dundee, the troops of James I. 6. Mas No. XVI.) furnished him with a fleet, with which, in the spring of 1689, James landed in Ireland, where a bloody war raged until the autumn of 1691, when the whole country was again subjected to the power of England. The course taken by the French monarch led to a decla ration of war against France in May 1689. The war thus commenced involved, in its progress, most of the continental powers, nearly all of which were united in a confederacy with William for the purpose of putting a stop to the encroachments of Louis. An count of this war wil be more properly given in connection with the history of France, which country, under the influence of the genius and ambition of Louis XIV., acquires, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a commanding importance in the history of Europe. King William died in the spring of 1702, having retained, until his death, the chief direction of the affairs of Holland, under the title of stadtholder; thus presenting the singular spectacle of a mon archy and a republic at the same time governed by the same individual. I. ADMINIS TRATION OF RICHELIEU. III. FRENCH HISTORY:-WARS OF LOUIS XIV -1. During the administration of Cardinal Richelieu, (1624 42,) the able minister of the feeble Louis XIII., France was ruled with a rod of iron. "He made," says Montesqueu, "his sovereign play the second part in the monarchy, and the first in Europe; he degraded the king, but he rendered the reign illustrious." He humbled the nobility, the Huguenots, and the house of Austria; but he also encouraged literature and the arts, and promoted commerce, which had been ruined by two centuries of domestic war. He freed France from a state of anarchy, but he es tablished in its place a pure despotism. No minister was ever more successful in carrying out his plans than Richelieu; but his successes were bought at the expense of every virtue; and as a man he merits execration. He died in December 1642, and Louis survived him but a few months, leaving, as his successor, his son Louis, then a child of only six years of age. II. MAZARIN'S ADMINIS 2. During the minority of Louis XIV., Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian, ruled the kingdom as prime minister, under the regency of the queen mother, Anne of Austria. Under Mazarin was concluded the treaty of Westphalia, which terminated the thirty years' war; and during the early part of his administration occurred the civil war of the Fronde,' in which the TRATION War of the Fronde"-so called because the first outbreak in Paris was commencel by |