Word: conquests
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...anxious to know its real and pretended causes. But the difficulties in the way to this knowledge are great: some of the causes - perhaps all - have their origin in the history of the Ottoman Empire and of Russian interference, while at least one cause dates back to the Latin Conquest of Constantinople in 1204. Since the subject is so faintly understood, if one of our professors of history would kindly give a lecture, open to the University, on the causes of the present war, tracing the history of both countries only so far as necessary, he would confer a favor...
...greatness of the old Moorish kings; the quaint gardens of the Generaliffe; the grand views of the snowy Sierra on the one hand and of the olive-clad plains of Andalusia on the other; the great shapeless cathedral, where the Catholic kings sleep beneath the tattered standards of the Conquest; the quaint, dirty buildings; the quainter, dirtier peasantry; and, quaintest and dirtiest of all, the dark-eyed gypsies of sleepy old Spain; it is the home of day-dreams, the land of romance...
...declared that the real conqueror of England was Hildebrand. England stood in the way of his cherished plan of bringing the German Empire into subjection to the Church. Her Archbishop of Canterbury even accepted his pall from the anti-pope favored by the Emperor. Therefore Hildebrand deliberately planned the conquest of the island. At the proper time he both protected his Norman tools in front, by excommunicating Harold, and guarded their rear by satisfactory assurances that the French should not aggress upon their native territory. His gain was to be twofold; the favor conferred would bind the powerful Normans more...
...thus see that the conquest of England was but one of a series of great preparations then being made throughout Europe for the accomplishment of a single purpose. William is reduced to the stature of ordinary men. He now appears to have been little more than a greedy dare-devil, who was capable of performing his master's bidding with alacrity and thoroughness. But Hildebrand becomes incomparably great. The conception of his character startles us by its novelty. Napoleon believed himself to be the creature of destiny, and claimed only the merit of struggling heroically to take each step...
Finally, did not William's treatment of the Church after the conquest show an independence of priestly influence from which it can fairly be inferred that Hildebrand no more made use of the ambition of the Norman to promote the interest of the Papacy than William made use of the ambition of the priest to promote his own interest...