THE MUSKET AS A SOCIAL FORCE. 489 



— ^became a prince, duke, count, or margrave. The same process 

 welded several of these principalities, counties, dukedoms, or marquis- 

 ates into a kingdom. The advantage to the people of this was, that 

 they had fewer masters to feed and clothe, and the exactions upon 

 them had somewhat more system. Spain and France became the lead- 

 ing nations of Europe because this pi'ocess of aggregation went on more 

 rapidly there than in Germany, Italy, Austria, and elsewhere. 



Progressive people everywhere saw clearly what an improvement 

 a king was upon the Man on Horseback, and became his advocates and 

 supporters. 



If, however, there had been no brighter hope for mankind than 

 was contained in the evolution from a swarm of petty tyrants to a 

 monarch, the outlook would have been dark indeed. A millennium of 

 that kind of progress would scarcely have brought mankind up to the 

 plane occupied by the Russian serf to-day. Fortunately, another force 

 was born into the world. Whether "black Barthel," the German 

 monk, discovered gunpowder, or whether Friar Bacon preceded him, is 

 of little consequence. The fourteenth century was yet quite young 

 when somebody found out that a mixture of sulphur, niter, and char- 

 coal would deliver a very heavy blow, and, as it was a day when heavy 

 blows commanded the highest price of anything in the market, the 

 attention of all progressive men was quickly turned to it. If we 

 except the rhythmic beat of the vibrating battering-ram, the sturdiest 

 blow then known was that which the momentum of a galloping horse 

 delivered at the point of a lance. But even with the first rude tubes 

 of wood and leather, or hooped iron boxes, the new force struck a blow 

 that dismounted the doughtiest cavalier, and breached the thickest 

 walls. 



It began its work for mankind as the slave of kingcraft. Only 

 kings covild afford the costly "mortars," "vases," "culverins," "per- 

 riers," " falcons," etc. — only monarchs could employ the skilled arti- 

 sans who manipulated these 



"... mortal engines whose rude throats 

 Th' immortal Jove's dread thunders counterfeit." 



It had to serve an apprenticeship to autocracy before it became 

 democracy's mighty minister. It prepared the way for its future mis- 

 sion, even then, for kings used it to dismount cavaliers, and beat down 

 their castle-walls. The despotism of the Man on Horseback began to 

 crack around the edges, and in the rifts and fissures of the iron tyr- 

 anny fell the mustard-seed that was to grow up into the world-shadow- 

 ing tree of liberty. Its development was dishearteningly slow, how- 

 ever. It was a day when all intellectual processes were as slow as the 

 pace of the overladen battle-horses, and invention crawled languidly, 

 instead of running and leaping, as to-day. 



So it was fully a century and a half after Ferdinand IV used the 

 first cannon to aid in capturing Gibraltar, before we find a Man on 



