Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/696

* TYRCONNEL. 60-2 TYRE. deavored to obtain the favor of the royal family by blackening the reputation of Anne Hyde, so as to iianish the Uiike of York with a pretext for breaking liis promise of marriage to lier. Though unable to injure her reputation, he succeeded in gaining the favor of the Duke, and contrived to make himself welcome at the palace both as a votary of its pleasures and as a counselor in aft'airs of State. Immediately on the accession of James II. he was made Earl of Tyrconnel. and put in command of the troops in Ireland. He now aimed, by means of the Irish army, to make the King independent of Parlia- ment. To this end lie discharged Protestant sol- diers, and favored Itoman Catholics in every possible way, admitting them not only to the army, but to olhces and corporations. This ser- vice he performed so well that in 1087 the King made him Lord Deputy of Ireland. His arrival in that country spread terror and dismay through the English Protestant population, who had al- ready sufl'ered imder his military rule. Finding themselves without protection and their property a prey to marauders, many of them left the country, commerce declined, and economic con- ditions became wretched. But this state of af- fairs did not last long. On the arrival of James II. in Ireland in 1089, after his flight from Eng- land, he created the Earl Duke of Tyrconnel. After the fatal battle of the Boyne ( 1090), in which the Duke held high command, he retired to France. In 1691 he returned to Ireland, to further the cause of James. Notwithstanding the defeat of Aughrim (July 12, 1091), ami the capitu- lation of Galway, Tyrconnel made prejiara- tions for the defense of Limerick, binding him- self and his countrymen by oath not to surrender until they received permission from James, then at Saint Germain. At the same time., however, he dispatched a letter in which he stated his conviction that all was lost. On August 11th, be- fore an answer could arrive, he was stricken with apoj)lexy, and died on the 14th. TYRE, tir (Lat. Tyrus, from Gk. Tupos, from Ph(Pnician Sur, rock). The most im- portant city of ancient Phoenicia, situated on the Mediterranean coast about 50 miles south of Beirut (Map: Turkey in Asia, F 6). It de- rived its. name from the double rock lying just off the coast, which was the site of the earliest settlement. At present this portion of the city is connected with the mainland by a causeway which goes back to the days of Alex- ander the Great; before the Greek period, how- ever, the older Tyre was an island divided by a natural canal into two parts. It has now been definitely ascertained that the old sanctuary to Melkart. the Baal or chief deity of Tyre, stood on the southwestern part of the little island, and with this determination the priority of the settlement of the island over the adjoining coast is also determined. From the island settlement the city grew until it included as a suburb the adjoining coast land, and after the union of island and coast the entire settlement was known as the city of Tyre. From a strate,2ic point of view, the situation of Tyre was most favorable, while its admirable ports predestined it for the commercial rrde it was to play. Those ports were chiefly two, the 'Sidonian port" and the 'Egyptian harbor.' Whether Tyre or Sidon is the oldest settlement of Phoenicia is a question not easily answered. On the whole, the evidence is in favor of the latter, though the view formerly held, which made Tj^re an offshoot of Sidon, nuist be abandoned in the light of recent researches. Herodotus records a tradition which tr.aced the settlement of Tyre back to the twenty-eighth century B.C. The date may be somewhat too early, though when Egypt began her campaigns for the possession of Western Asia under Thoth- mes I. (c.1510 B.C.) Tyre was already a flour- ishing and imjiortant centre. A new |)erit)d of pro.sperity began for Tyre with the decline of Kgyptian control (c.1400 B.C.), and though we know little of the history of the i)lace lor the next three centuries the important position which it occupied when Tiglathpileser 1. of Assyria (c. 1130 B.C.) opened his successful series of cam- paigns to the West justifies the conclusion that in the interval Tyre more than maintained her supremacy over Sidon and surrounding dis- tricts. It W'as a period of commercial exten- sion, followed by a decline due to internal dis- turbances. It was not until c. 870 B.C., that, so far as present knowledge goes, an Assyrian king, Asshurnasirpal, included Tyre and Sidon in his campaigns and obtained tribute from these two cities as well as from Byblos and Arvad. Among the kings of this period known to us from a list of Menander jjreserved by Josephus is Hiram (B.C. 969-930), from whom Solomon, apparently as a vassal of Tyre, obtained material and work- men for his building operations. ( See Hiram ; Solomon.) After the days of Asshurnasirpal, the compact between Tyre and Assyria remained uninterrupted, with the exception of short in- tervals. To save her commerce and her position of supremacy. Tyre preferred to pay tribute rather than risk an encounter at arms with As- syria. In the days of Sennacherib (B.C. 705- (iSl), however. Tyre paid for a manifestation of independence by an encoimter with the Assyrian monarch, which ended in a momentary defeat for the Assyrians. Tyre, however, was cut off from communication with the coast, and after enduring a siege of five years, according to Menander's annals, was obliged to submit (c. 700 B.C.) Tyre recovered from this blow and entered into a combination with Egypt to resist the ad- vance of Esarhaddon, the successor of Senna- cherib, who had to content himself with receiving the homage of King Baal of Tyre without actu- ally capturing the city; but Asshurbanipal, his successor, finally succeeded toward the end of his reign (B.C. 068-6-20) in forcing the city to surrender. Tyre became an Assyrian vassal, but her commercial position was unaffected, and the fall of Assyria (c. 607 B.C.) enabled her once more to assert her independence. A fatal blow was dealt her by Nebuchadnezzar II. The city with- stood a dire siege for thirteen years. At the end of that time (B.C. 572) her stren.gth was exhaust- ed, she yielded, and her old rival Sidon profited by the loss of trade which followed, to take up the superior position in the commercial world. The last native ruler of Tyre was Ittobaal. He was followed by governoi-s appointed at the dictation of Babylonian rulers until the Persian conquest of Habvlonia. From that time on till the days of Alexander the Great the history of Tyre is that of a steady decline. It was taken by Alexander in B.C. 332