981 



BRUTUS, LUCIUS JUNIUS. 



BRUTUS, DECIMUS JUNIUS. 



932 



his decease, in 1666, he left behind him three eons, the youngest of 

 whom having had the sovereignty of Severn assigned to him founded 

 the line of that name ; his elder brothers became joint rulers of the 

 remaining territories of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel, and having in 1671 

 put an end to the extensive privileges enjoyed by the town of Bruns- 

 wick, compelled the citizens to recognise them as their masters. Upon 

 the death of the elder of the two brothers, Anthony Ulrich, who built 

 the town of Salzdahlen, became sole ruler. On his death in 1714, he 

 left two sons behind him, Augustus William, who fixed his seat of 

 government at Wolfenbuttel, and Lewis Rudolphus, who made Blan- 

 kenburg his capital, but afterwards removed to Wolfenbuttel, the 

 decease of Augustus having reunited the disjointed principalities in 

 1731. As Lewis had no male heirs, Ferdinand Albert, of the line of 

 Bevern, succeeded to the dukedom of Brunswick in 1736. Lewis 

 Ernest, the third son of this prince, held the rank of field-marshal in 

 the sert ice of the Dutch states from 1759 to 1766, during which 

 period he was captain-general of the United Provinces, and acting 

 guardian of the hereditary stadtholder ; the jealousy however of the 

 patriotic party exiled him to Bois-le-Duc, and he died there in 1788. 

 His next brother, Ferdinand, who entered the Prussian service, distin- 

 guished himself greatly in the Seven Years' War, decided the battle 

 of Prague, and in 1757, at the head of the Prussian army in West- 

 phalia, gained the victories of Corfeld and Minden, and drove the 

 French out of Westphalia, Lower Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel. The 

 father of these two princes, Ferdinand Albert, after a reign of a few 

 months, was succeeded in 1735 by hig son Charles, who transferred 

 the seat of government to Brunswick in 1754, and there founded the 

 celebrated Collegium Carolinum. He was the steady and active ally 

 of England during the Seven Years' war. 



On hii decease, in 1780, his son, Charles William Ferdinand, suc- 

 ceeded Kim. This prince, who had been educated aa a soldier, at the 

 head of the Brunswick auxiliaries in the Seven Years' war, was 

 mainly instrumental in gaining the victory of Krefeld in 1758, and 

 was acknowledged by Frederick the Great to be one of the first 

 captains of his day. He married Augusta, princess of Wales, in 1764. 

 At the close of tht. Seven Years' war, the domestic interests of his 

 exhausted possessions afforded him a new sphere of action, in which, 

 by the extinction of its debts and the wisdom of his general govern- 

 ment, he showed himself as well fitted to govern a country as to 

 command an army. Previously to his accession to the ducal crown, 

 he bad accepted a commission in the Prussian service as general of 

 infantry: in tl.is capacity, in 1787, he took the command of the 

 Prussian forces, marched Into Holland, and reinstated the atadtholder 

 in his dignity. In 1792 he was called upon to lead the Austrian and 

 Prussian armies in the campaign against revolutionary France, and, 

 after issuing the violent manifesto of the 15th of July in that year, 

 entered Lorraine and Champagne, where, destitute of resources and 

 baffled by the caution of Dumouriez, his fruitless attempts to force 

 the position of Valmy compelled him to conclude au armistice and 

 abandon the French territory. In the campaign of the following 

 year, which he carried on in conjunction with Wurmser, the Austrian 

 general, on both banks of the Rhine, from Strasbourg to beyond 

 Landau and Mayence, he was so ably opposed by Moreau, Hoche, and 

 I'ichegru, and so indifferently supported by his Austrian allies, that he 

 determined to resign his command. He accordingly withdrew to 

 Brunswick, and continued to employ himself with the cares of 

 domestic government until Prussia called upon him to lead her troops 

 against Napoleon I. in the year 1806. The duke, weighed down by 

 years, unacquainted with the improved science of modern warfare, 

 and at the head of an inexperienced army, physically inferior to the 

 enemy, closed his distinguished career by the loss of the battles of 

 Jena and Auerstedt in October, and retired, broken-hearted and 

 mortally wounded, to Ottensen, near Hamburg, where he died on the 

 10th of November following. His duchy fell a prey to Napoleon, and 

 was incorporated with the new kingdom of Westphalia. His son, 

 William Frederick, who had distinguished himself in the campaigns 

 of 1792 and 1793, as well as in 1806, and had succeeded to the col- 

 lateral inheritance of Brunswick-Oels hi Prussian Silesia, remained an 

 exile from his native dominions until the Russian campaign shook 

 Napoleon's power. The retreat of the French armies from the north 

 of Germany in 1813 enabled the duke to recover possession of his 

 Brunswick sovereignty in December of that year ; but little time was 

 afforded him to set it iu order, for the renewal of hostilities with 

 France in 1815 calling him into the field, he put himself at the head 

 of his fellow-countrymen, joined the Prussian and other allied forces 

 in Belgium, and bravely fell in the conflict at Ligny on the 16th of 

 June. From that day until his son Charles came of age (October 30, 

 1823) George IV. of England (who had married Caroline of Brunswick, 

 the sister of William Frederick), then prince-regent, administered the 

 affairs of Brunswick as his appointed guardian. Charles, after a 

 transient misrule of about seven years, was forced, in September 1830, 

 by an insurrection in the city of Brunswick, to seek safety by a pre- 

 cipitate flight from his capital ; and, under a resolution of the Diet of 

 the German Confederation on the 2nd of December following, he was 

 Hiicceeded by his brother William, prince of Oels, who assumed the 

 government on the '25th of April 1831. 



BRUTUS, LUCIUS JUNIUS, son of Marcus Junius and of Tar- 

 quinia, lister of Tarquinius Superbus, having early lost his father 



and elder brother by the cruelty of Tarquin, feigned imbecility of 

 intellect, in order to secure personal safety. A prodigy which had 

 occurred at Rome, the appearance of a snake in a wooden pillar of 

 the palace, occasioned great anxiety among the Tarquinii, and Titus 

 and Aruns, sons of the tyrant, were deputed to obtain some explanation 

 from the oracle of Delphi. The journey at that time was considered 

 eminently hazardous, through unknown lands, and seas yet more 

 unknown, and Brutus, a name which Lucius Junius had received out 

 of contempt, accompanied the young princes, more as a buffoon to 

 assist in their amusement, than as a companion to share the perils of 

 their journey. On his entrance iuto the temple the offering which he 

 made to the god was a bar of gold inclosed iu a staff of cornel-wood 

 hollowed for its reception, and intended to be emblematic of the votary's 

 own situation. When the princes had finished their commission they 

 inquired in the gaiety of youth which of them should reign at Rome 

 hereafter. A voice from the adytum replied, " That one of you shall 

 obtain sovereignty at Rome who shall first kiss his mother." 



Titus and Aruns, in order to deprive their brother Sextus of parti- 

 cipation in the chance, agreed to mutual secrecy and to the decision 

 by lot of their own precedence. Brutus with more sagacity affixing 

 a different interpretation to the response of the oracle, pretended to 

 stumble, and kissed the earth, when he had fallen, as the common 

 mother of all mankind. 



After the atrocious violence offered by Sextus Tarquinius to Lucretia, 

 Brutus was one of her kinsfolk whom the injured matron summoned 

 to hear her complaint, and to witness her suicide. He plucked the 

 reeking dagger from her bosom, and to the astonishment of all present, 

 throwing aside the semblance of fatuity which he had hitherto 

 assumed, he solemnly devoted himself to the pursuit and punishment 

 of the whole race of Tarquin, and the abolition of the regal name and 

 power at Rome. The populace was easily excited to -insurrection. 

 Brutus carefully avoided any personal interview with Tarquinius 

 Superbus, who was dethroned and exiled, and on the change of 

 government which followed, himself and Tarquinius Collatinua, 

 widower of Lucretia, were made the chief magistrates under the title 

 of consuls. This revolution occurred 245 years after the foundation 

 of Rome, and B.O. 507. 



Collatinus was speedily removed from his new office on the ground 

 that he bore the name of Tarquinius, and was connected with the 

 expelled family. The latter of these objections applied also to Brutus, 

 who was descended from the Tarquiuii by the maternal side ; but it 

 does not appear that any difficulty was raised against him, ami indeed 

 it was chiefly through his agency, perhaps altogether at his suggestion, 

 that the abdication of his colleague was procured. The place of 

 Collatinus was supplied by P. Valerius. On the discovery of a plot 

 for the restoration of the Tarquiuii, their property was confiscated ; 

 their moveables were given up to plunder; their landed estate lying 

 between the city and the Tiber was consecrated to the god of war, 

 and became the celebrated 'Campus Martins." The conspiracy involved 

 many of the noblest Roman youths, and among them Titus and Tiberius, 

 sons of Brutus by a sister of the Vitelli, who were its principal leaders. 

 The culprits were tried and condemned by their own father, who also 

 witnessed their punishment. They were scourged and beheaded in his 

 presence, not without his betraying marks of paternal emotion during 

 the execution of public duty. Livy seems unequivocally to applaud 

 this unnatural act, but Plutarch more justly describes it by saying 

 that "he shut up his heart to his children with obdurate severity." 



Several Etruscan cities took arms under Porsena in behalf of the 

 Tarquinii, and Brutus headed the cavalry by which they were opposed. 

 He was recognised by Aruns, who denouncing him with the bitterest, 

 animosity as the chief instrument which had occasioned the expulsion 

 of his family, and as now braving it under borrowed ensigns of dignity 

 which he had transferred to the consulate, clapped spurs to his horoa 

 and selected him as an opponent in single combat. Brutus eagerly 

 met the defiance, and so great was the fury of the encounter, that each 

 regardless of his own safety sought only the destruction of his adver- 

 sary. Their shields were mutually pierced, and each fell dead from 

 his horse transfixed by the lance of his enemy. 



Such is the story of Lucius Junius Brutus given by Livy (i. 56, &c. 

 ii. 1-6). A public funeral was decreed to him ; the matrons of Rome, 

 in honour of the champion and avenger of Lucretia, wore mourning 

 for him during a year ; and, according to Plutarch, a brazen statue 

 with a drawn sword in his hand was erected to his memory, and 

 placed together with those of the kings. Niebuhr, 'Roman History,' 

 vol. i., ' Commentary on the Story of the last Tarquius,' has pointed 

 out the inconsistencies and chronological difficulties involved in this 

 story, in which there can be little doubt that a large measure of fiction 

 is mingled with what is unquestionably authentic. 



BRUTUS, DE'CIMUS JU'NIUS, is believed to be the son of a 

 consul of the same name, who held office A.U.C. 676, B.c. 78. On his 

 adoption by Aulua Postumius Albinus he took the name of the family 

 into which he was received, so that he sometimes appears on medals 

 as ' Albinus Bruti filius.' Shakspere has called him Decius, and both 

 that poet and Voltaire in many particulars have confounded hiui with 

 Marcus Junius. Of Itis early history little is known, but he appears 

 to havo been entrusted by Cicsar with some, important commands, and 

 to have been highly esteemed by him. It is plain indeed from the. 

 share which he took in the murder of the Dictator how deeply he 



