The story of the map of Europe, its making and its changing . ng. History is full of such cases. Dukes* -^ against In many instances, dukes became so powerful kings 58 The Story of that they were able to make war on even termswith kings. The great Dukes of Burgundyfor a time kept the kings of France in awe oftheir power; the Duke of Northumberland in1403 raised an army that almost overthrewKing Henry Fourth of England; the Duke ofYork, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from thethrone of Eng-land and becameking in his strange casearose when, in1066, William,who as duke ofNormandy hadsworn homa
The story of the map of Europe, its making and its changing . ng. History is full of such cases. Dukes* -^ against In many instances, dukes became so powerful kings 58 The Story of that they were able to make war on even termswith kings. The great Dukes of Burgundyfor a time kept the kings of France in awe oftheir power; the Duke of Northumberland in1403 raised an army that almost overthrewKing Henry Fourth of England; the Duke ofYork, in 1461, drove Henry Sixth from thethrone of Eng-land and becameking in his strange casearose when, in1066, William,who as duke ofNormandy hadsworn homageto the king ofFrance, became, tnrougn con- william the conqueror quest, king of England. His sons, great-grandsons, andgreat-great-grandsons continued for one hun-dred and fifty years to be obliged to swearallegiance to the French kings in order to keepthe duchy of Normandy. It was as if theGovernor of Texas had led an army into Mexico,conquered it, and become Emperor of thatcountry, without resigning his governorship orgiving up his American The Map of Europe 59 Two things which tended to break down the feudal system and bring more power to the ^j^^^ common people were, first, the invention of J^^^^^, *^^ feudal gunpowder, and, second, the rise of towns. A system man with a musket could bring down a knight in armor as easily as he could the most poorly armored peasant. Kings, in fighting to control their great lords, gave more freedom to citizens of towns in return for their help. The kings armies came to be recruited largely from townspeople, who were made correspondingly free from the feudal lords. The rule of the feudal system, that each man owed a certain amount of military service to his ^ feudal rule aliveruler has lasted to the present day and is today responsible for much of the misery that now exists. Kings went to war with each other simply to increase their territories. The more land a king had under his control, the more people who owed him taxes, a
Size: 1567px × 1594px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
