move more, and he moves not again. That
position of things in chess is called checkmate;
in war, capitulation.

And what a capitulation that of
MacMahon's army at Sedan, on the 2nd of
September last! On that day, so fatal to
France, after that defeat, worse than ten
Pavias and six Waterloos, there were
surrendered to the Prussian invaders eighty-
three thousand French rank and file, five
hundred and fifty cannon, and ten
thousand horses. It was a defeat worse than
Cannae, and as overwhelming as that of
Granicus. Since Pavia no French monarch
had ever been taken in siege or battle. No
modern European nation has ever received
so crushing a blow.

It is only by analysis and historical
comparison that it is possible fully to
appreciate the immense importance of this
event.

The great capitulations recorded in
history have generally preceded the breakup
and humiliation of some once great,
but then effete or exhausted nation; but
occasionally, as in the case of the Caudine
Forks, they have aroused all the energy of
the defeated nation, and have been followed
by swift and complete revenge. The disaster
of the Caudine Forks was one of those
early misfortunes (321 B.C.) which turned
the Romans to steel, and made them the
invincible conquerors they soon after
became. Their foes, the Samnites, were a war-
like people, the Kabyles of Italy, who, living
in natural fortresses on the higher
Appenines to the north of Naples, hoarded their
corn and wine among their beech woods
and ravines, despising the feebler folk of
Latium and Campania, who had bent before
the eagles of the children of Romulus.
The second Samnite war, according to
Niebuhr and Arnold, broke out almost
immediately before the death of Alexander
the Great, who, in subduing the great
decayed empire of Persia, was but acting as
pioneer to the obscure nation of whom he
had probably hardly heard even the name.
In their fifth campaign the Romans,
determined to subdue all neighbouring nations,
invaded Samnium from the Campanian or
south side of the Appenines. To draw the
Romans into the dangerous defiles that
lead from the plain of Naples to Benevento
and the high valleys of the Appenines,
Caius Pontius of Telesia, the Samnite
general, spread a report that his army had
marched into Apulia. The Romans at once
drove straight at the mountain passes. At
Caudium, a gorge (according to Niebuhr)
between Ariezzo and Arpaia, through
which runs the present road from Naples
to Benevento, the consuls' four legions and
a force of auxiliaries (probably), at least
seventeen thousand men, when all told,
found themselves hemmed in. The Samnites
had surrounded them, they were in a trap
from which there was no escape. Every
path on the hill was blocked and guarded;
the Samnites repelled the desperate
maddened rushes of the first despair, then waited
for famine to do its work. The Romans, after
many hopeless fights and great butchery,
laid down their swords, gave up six
hundred young Roman knights as hostages,
and agreed to surrender every foot of
Samnite territory. The captive Romans
said:

"Put us to the sword at once, sell us as
slaves, or keep us as prisoners till we are
ransomed, but save our bodies, whether
living or dead, from all unworthy
insults."

The Samnite general, a man not without
Greek culture, having, indeed, it is
said, known Plato, was generous. He
required only that the Roman army should,
according to the usual Roman custom, pass
under the yoke. Through a gateway of
spears the downcast Romans had to walk,
each man naked all but his kilt. Even the
consuls were stripped of their paludamenta,
or war cloaks. In all else Pontius the
Samnite proved chivalrous and generous; he
ordered waggons for the sick and wounded,
and gave the dejected soldiers bread enough
to last them till they came within sight of
Rome.

The released men stole into the discomfited
city at nightfall, and would neither
speak nor be comforted. The great-hearted,
proud people were deeply wounded at their
disgrace; all citizens put on mourning, the
knights and senators took off their golden
rings, stripped their togas of the purple
borders which marked their rank, and
all festivals and ceremonies were
suspended till they could be held in a year of
better omen. But the proud, pugnacious
Romans lost no time in trying to win back
their tarnished honour. They sent back
the released men stripped and bound, and
marched an army into Apulia. In the
third Samnite war the stubborn enemy
of fiery Rome was for ever subdued, and
in 464 B.C. (after nine campaigns) the
rugged Samnites became at last dependent
allies of that growing power,
fortressed on the Seven Proud Hills above
the Tiber.