LEOPOLD VON RANKE. 545 



invaders past the doors of his school. He heard the distant cannon of 

 the French at Jena and Auerstiidt. His lessons in reading and writ- 

 ing were Napoleon's bulletins from the Spanish peninsula. The word 

 "insurgents" first came into his vocabulary from the published ac- 

 counts of the Spanish uprising, prelude to the larger movement of 

 Russia and Prussia for the liberation of Europe. When the news of 

 the retreat of the grand army from Moscow began to penetrate Ger- 

 many, young Ranke was reading the Agricola of Tacitus. The speech 

 of the British Queen Boadicea, animating her subjects to repel the 

 Roman invader, acquired a new meaning to Ranke as the thought of 

 casting off the French yoke began to penetrate the patriotic German 

 mind. " There," says Ranke himself, " within cloister walls and in 

 the midst of classical studies, the modern world first came into my 

 head." 



The Napoleonic wars were, then, the historical influence which led 

 Ranke, the favorite classical pupil at Schulpforte, through the gates of 

 modern history. He was early drawn to historical studies by the fact 

 that one of his classical instructors gave him subjects for Latin verse 

 drawn from the local history of Saxon Thuringia. " Besonders war 

 es sachsische und thiiringische Geschichte die dann durch die nahen 

 historischen Pliitze einen besonderen Reiz fixr die Jugend bekam." 

 Although at the University of Leipzig Ranke continued with great 

 zest his classical studies, he remained an essentially modern spirit. 

 He was a great admirer of Goethe, who was at that time introducing 

 "eine moderne Classicitat " into German life and studies. Luther, 

 however, was his favorite character. His earliest historical ambition 

 appears to have been to prepare a literary memorial of the great Ger- 

 man Reformer, to be published in 1817, on the occasion of the three 

 hundredth anniversary of the nailing of the ninety-five theses upon 

 the church door at Wittenberg. That same year, 1817, Ranke took 

 his doctor's degree. From that date his student purpose began to 

 widen. From the idea of a new biography of Luther sprang the 

 larger thought of the reconstruction of modern European history, from 

 the time of the German Reformation. 



Of all the men who influenced Ranke's development, Luther un- 

 doubtedly stood first. Next to him were Thucydides and Niebuhr. 

 From the one Ranke took his pregnant artistic style ; from the other, 

 his critical method. The lessons derived from a careful study of 

 ancient history were applied to modern history. Ranke himself says 

 that Niebuhr's History of Rome exercised the greatest influence upon 

 his own historical studies. "It was the first German historical book 



VOL. XXII. (n. 8, XIV.) 35 



