INFLUENCE OF WOMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 253, 4 March 1911, Page 9

INFLUENCE OF WOMEN.

DRAMATIC EPISODES OF HISTORY. The newspapers, especially the French newspapers, have done their best to make the fall of the Braganza dynasty in Portugal show some relation to young King Manuel's alleged devotion to the French dancer, Mile. Gaby Deslys. It is very French to rush at such a conclusion; but already countless piquant stories have woven themselves about this dramatic episode of history. Of course, it may be that the twenty-one-year-old King was no wiser than many older men have been; yet it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the people whom he ruled expelled him because they disapproved of his infatuation for an actress. Why did they slay his father and his brother f It was surely not because of any question of their personal morality. The revolution in Portugal means that a people devoted cluelly, as Kipling would say, "to eloquence and fruit syrups," have been for thirty years assimilating republicanism. But though we cannot actually believe that Mile. Deslys was even partially responsible for the overthrow of Portugal as a kingdom, history, from the very earliest times, yields innumerable examples of the wrecks of thrones and em-' pires by the influence of women, either j directly or indirectly brought to bear. It is hardly worth while to go back to i the days of myth, yet if we did so we should see the most ancient of the historians and the noblest of the poets finding their theme in the havoc which a woman committed among the nations of ancient Greece. Helen of Troy, beautiful beyond the dreams of men, fled from her husband, the Argive prince, to Troy, with her fascinating lover, Paris. There all the chivalry of Greece proceeded by sea in the "black ships," and for ten long years endeavored to capture Troy and to recover Helen. i

The story has been so interwoven witli myth and fable that to-day one regards it as simply a picturesque legend of the past; but Herodotus, who was a great traveller, and who really tried to get at the truth of what he told—writing !n the fifth century B.C.—speaks of tlie°Tro)an war as having actually happened. Modern archaeologists, too, are fairlv well convinced that the war took place* from the remains which they have discovered J on the site of ancient Troy; while many of them, as in Professor' Seymour's recent book, re-construct for us the life of that remote period. Mr. Gladstone went even so far as to , write whole chapters upon the characters who took part in the Trojan war; and he convinced himself, if not his readers, that Helen was not only a type of womanly loveliness, but also of Christian penitence as well. Her history has had a splendid setting from the poets of every century since her own, and she is perhaps the most famous woman of antiquity. Whether she overturned an empire or not may be doubted; but we should be too sceptical if we altogether denied her existence and her influence. THE LEGEND OF QUEEN NYISSA. Even those who do not study ancient history are familiar with the "name of Croesus, because of his astonishing wealth. He was King of Lydia, and his line descended from an adventurer who owed his throne to the hands of a woman. The adventurer was called Gyes, and the woman's name was Nyissa' though she is not named in Herodotus! She was the wife and queen of a Lydian monarch of an older dynasty, and was remarkable for her beauty. Her husband, Candaules, admired her immensely, but not with that reticent delicacy which most appeals to a woman's heart. lie treated her as an amorous toy, or some beautiful plaything, and not as a highspirited, noble lady to whom all that belonged to her intimacy ought to be sacred. The roving Gyges stopped at the royal palace and was entertained at the royal table. There was feasting and music, and King Candaules drank deep As she .saw him do so, his wife left the room. At once Candaules began discoursing to the stranger about the physical beauty of Nyissa; and in his drunken hiccoughs he stammered out: "Don' take my word for it. Come with me and I'll let you see!" Leading Gyges unsteadily, he proceeded along the corridor, where, through a (lit in the tapestry, Gyges looked in and eaw the Queen of Lydia divested of her garments, and with her long hair floating down her shoulders. Then the two men reeled away, and the king thought nothing more about it. But Nyissa had perceived the disgrace which her husband had put upon her, and her anger flamed up into a lire of hatred.

The next day she sent for Gyges; and when he had come, and the tapestries were drawn, she placed a sword at his throat and cried out:

lhat dog has led you to disgrace me' Choose; Either slay him, take his kingdom from him, and make me your wife or else this moment I shall' run you' through the body and declare that I was defending myself against an insult upon my honor!" '

Gyges hesitated but a moment. He formed a plot among the palace guards ihe king was striken down and slashed to piece; Gyges and Nyissa were married; and thus began a new rei<m of which the head was not a Lydian but a foreigner.

It is odd that the same story, almost to the last detail, is a tradif'on of the Lombards. It is told by Gibbon the historian, of Queen Rosamond, oik- of the Lombard heroines. HOW ANTONY FLUNG AWAY AN EMPIRE. Next to Helen, perhaps, is Cleopatra among the famous women of antiquity, who both made and unmade kings' When, as a girl, her brother deposed her, she invoked the aid of Julius Caesar, upon whoie imagination her eharms and flatteries wrought like wine. He rcnlaced her in her royal state, setting'thi* marvellous woman to rule over the "lit", tering kingdom which Alexander °the Great had reared.

he glorious career of Alexander himself had been cut short by the wild rxeesses of two nights spent in feverish revelry with Greek and Persian women. Rightly the veteran soldiers of the yoing Macedonian taunted him with the cry: "Would you conquer the world with women?"

Yet Cleopatra showed that women might be conquerors of the world. When Caesar died she flung herself with passionate caresses upon the breast of Antony, and he came forward as her ehampion. All the world knows the tale too well for its repetition—how he sought to grasp both Egypt and all European Home; how legions of veteran troops marched to his standard; how sturdy sailors flocked the sea with their lon* ships of war; and how, at Actium, he met her feebler enemy, Augustus, with an overwhelming force. There, as before and afterward, the game was played and the die was surely staked for the possession of both East and West. Antony, no longer a single-hearted soldier but the devotee of his Egyptian queen, followed her from the mighty battlescene, and, mad with love, "flung away the mastery of the world." If we puss along the ages to our mo- , dern days, we find many similar cases of the sinister influence of women. So long, however, as there has been no question ■ save one of morality, ttie result has seldom been anything more than scandalous

comment. It is only when the "woman behind the throne" has gone beyond the limits of private life and has sought to meddle in the affairs of state, that the populace has rebelled and the war-drums have been sounded.

,In the case of Charles 11., for instance, Nell Gwyn was extremely popular, because she never interfered with politics, and because she loved her own people and was an Englishwoman of good heart. Even the other women of that shockingly lax court, though they plundered and pillaged from the public treasury, were not particularly detested; for if they took money freely, they spent it still more freely, and they sought no share in matters of government. But the foreign favorite, Louise de Keroualle, the Frenchwoman who spied upon her royal lover and told his secrets to the Grand Monarque at Versailles, was loathed all over England. Breaches of matrimony caused little gossip in the England of the Restoration, or in the small kingdoms and principalities of the Continent. For instance, a generation later, there was a curious case in Wurtumberg, where the reigning Duke Eberhard, growing tired of his wife, openly married another lady and set up another court. Things such as these must have been running in the mind of Thackeray when he drew for us in Vanity Fair that delightfully comic picture of Pumpernickel with his courts, its highnesses, its transparencies, and the gossip of its infinitesimally little groups of diplomats. Even in the last century Lola Montez would not have been expelled from Bavaria by a revolution had she confined herself to exploiting the King, and had let alone the squabbles of the clerical and radical factions. HOW QUEEN ISABELLA LOST HER THRONE. Through the history of modern Spain there runs the same thread of illustrative truth. Isabella 11., the "randmother oi the present King, brought on a revolution such as Alfonsn has thus far succeeded in averting. The parallel is inexact in this respect, that Queen Isabella was personally popular, though she was extremely vicious, while her grandson, who is no less popular with most of his subjects, is a young man of strong domestic instincts. The story of Isabelal is a curious one, so that we may summarise it here. At the ngc of three she became Queen of Spain. The old Salic law had barred women from the throne, but her father had secured a decree which annulled this statute, and gave to royal women the same rights as men possessed. Therefore hsabdla was proclaimed Queen, though the direct heir in the male line, Don Carlos, incited a revolt which lasted for a long time. The Carlists were driven back into the mountains, and the young Queen grew up into girlhood, loved and petted by her people, very much after the fashion of Wilhelmina of Holland of to-dav.

But there came the question of her marriage. The French King, Louis Philippe, and his crafty minister, M. Thiers, framed a scheme which was creditable neither to their morality nor to their knowledge of human nature. They planned to have her marry a Royal Spaniard, Don Francisco d'Assisi. It was known that this man was a weakling, who would never be the father of children. The French argued to themselves that if he were to marry Queen Isabella, she would die childless, and then the throne would go to a Bourbon, who would in sympathy be French.

■ This odious plot was carried out, against the protests of all Europe—carried out; that is, so far as the marriage itself was concerned. The innocent and high-spirited girl was given to a creature whom Mr. John Bigelow has described as resembling an ape rather than a man. The result was that, in her utter disgust the young Queen found lovers among the statesmen and soldiers of her court. This was the undoing of the schemes of France; for after a time the Queen had several children, among them the father of the present King. They were not the children of her husband, yet they had to be accepted as such; and so the kingly inheritance passed down through one whose father no one knew. Hut if tie Spanish people condoned Isabella's love affairs, they criticised her extravagance. She spent money, pourin« it out like water, at a time when the Treasury was nearly bankrupt, and when the proverb, "Poor as a Spaniard," wag far too true. All her best advisers urged her to practice economy. Very few of them succeeded, and these only for a short time.

A certain chamberlain of hers once hit upon a plan to make her realise how enormous were the sums she was spending. Passing through the hall of the palace, she was surprised to we a vast heap of silver pieces, resembling the contents of a great bin of wheat, but piled up in the middle of the floor. The Queen summoned her chamberlain. •'What is the meaning of all this money?" siie demanded of him.

'Oh/' he replied, with a low bow. "this is merely the monev which I have brought out to pay "the bill of your Majesty's glovemaker."

The Queen colored and laughed, and for several months she was less extravagant m her expenditure for clothes. _ But she could not long remain so There were two great parties in Spain at that time, as there are now—the Liberals and the Conservatives. The Liberals sought reform and wanted to cut down the expenses of the State, even those of the Queen herself. The Conservatives believed that the Sovereign could do not wrong. Naturally enougli, Jsabela sided more and more with the conservatives. One after another the great towns and cities broke out in revolt, until all Spain was ablaze. Poor Isabella, now middle-aged and very stout, was obliged to cross the frontier into Prance, and take up her home in Pans where she reared her son Alphonso the father of the present Spanish King. She did not suffer very imich by her expulsion, except in rank and prestige; for she brought away with her a fortune, which, up to the time of her death, about six years aj?o , she, spent with almost the same recklessness as before.

A ROYAL TRAGEDY IN SERVIA. A dreadful and dramatic dynastic downfall wajs that of the historic house of Abretiovitch, in 1003. This line, which sprang long ago from a swine-herd, so that its chiefs were called the "swineherd kings, _ ruled over Servia both in past centuries and after 1882. when it became a kingdom instead of a. principality. The house was most unfortunate'in its ruler*. Its first King (1882) was Milan aman of gm SS excesses and infamous ire. His face was familiar in cverv haunt of dissipation throughout Europe "" was a blackleg, a drunkard, and even a coward in battle, as he showed in the war against Bulgaria in 1885. He so strongly preferred vicious amusements to honorable pursuits that finally he divorced his beautiful Russian wife, Queen Jsatalie, and voluntarily abdicated his throne, so that he might pursue his evil courses in Paris and Vienna. Hi, son, Alexander, was potentially a degenerate. He had a strange, abnormal face, and a tendency towards questionable habits. At first he showed a good deal of energy, if not wisdom; but in 1900. against the advice of everyone, he married a woman much older than himself, named Dra<r a Mashin. Queen Draga was the widow of a physician, and her reputation before her marriage to Alexander was such that many foreign sovereigns, among them Queen Victoria, refused to recognise hw.

She wrought the downfall of Alexander, and of the swineherd dynasty. Her

strange and sensuaj spell gave her a complete ascendancy over the King, and so evil was her influence that he seemed

to lose sight of all judgment and principle. On the night of June 11, 1903, a plot which bad been arranged by some of the chief officers of the Servian army came to a climax. The regiment stationed to guard the palace suddenly mutinied. The great portal of the building was . blown up. Men clutched knives and pistols and ran up an down the darkened corridors, seeking most of all for the Queen, whom they reviled with fearful epithets. King Alexander showed a flash of courage. Armed with a revolver, he sought to face his enemies, but he was at once shot down. The conspirators thejj fell upon the wretched Draga, whom they hacked to pieces, throwing her mutilated body out of the window, where it was caught upon the bayonets of those who stood below in the glare of torches. This woman had wrought the ruin of an ancient house, and she met a bloody and hideous death. The French Revolution was perhaps the greatest event of modern times. It bore in its train the Napoleonic era, the downfall of despotism in France, the destruction of feudalism throughout Europe, and the dawn of a new era, in which the rights of men were recognised. We say that the causes of the French Revolution are plain enough—the tyranny of the Bourbon kings, the excessive taxation, and the misery of the people; but if we look behind the historian's mantle, and disregard the rise and fall of ministers and favorites, we shall see, as in a sort of mist, the faces of many women, who sapped the vitality of Royal France, just as other women made Imperial France so helpless. We see the loveliness of Jeanne du Barry, and her masses of golden hair with a .strange silvery tint, surrounded by glittering diamonds and foamy laces. "And there are Henrictte d'Orleans, and Francoise de Montespan, and Louise de la Valhere, and Francoise de Maintenon, and Jeanee de Pompadour, and that great and still more baneful being, Marie Antoinette, who destroyed her dynasty just as Eugenie de Montijo, one hundred years later, destroyed hers.

It is a strange mirage, a frightful con'vast, that comes before us—lovely faces, rosy wines, millions upon millions poured out like water by a sensuous court for every form of luxury, and beneath it all the starving, shrivelled limbs, the gaunt and sunken faces, of those from whose very souls this luxury was wrung; until there came at last the red days of the Terror, when the heads of lovely ladies were borne on spikes, dripping blood along the streets of Paris, to the yelling of a 'million human wolves. °>

Women so often say that they have no influence. Their influence is the greatest and most profound of any in the world. Wo need not look for it merely in the small affairs of life; but when "we gaze upon the wrecks of empires and red ruins of states and principalities and kingdoms, we shall often be able to discover that the cause was ultimately not the unwisdom or the folly of men, but rather the wilfulness and witchery of women.—Munsey's Magazine.