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Title: A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year
       Volume Two (of Three)

Author: Edwin Emerson

Release Date: October 12, 2008 [EBook #26901]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NINETEENTH CENTURY ***




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  [Illustration: THE FIRST STEAM RAILWAY
    Painted by Edward L Henry, N.A.
    Copyright by C. Klackner]




  A HISTORY OF
  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
  YEAR BY YEAR

  BY

  EDWIN EMERSON, Jr.

  Member of the American Historical Association, New York
  Historical Society, Franklin Institute of Philadelphia,
  Honorary Member of the Royal Philo-Historical Society
  of Bavaria, etc., etc.

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
  GEORG GOTTFRIED GERVINUS

  ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN COLORED PLATES AND
  THIRTY-TWO FULL-PAGE, HALF-TONE CUTS
  AND TWO MAPS

  _IN THREE VOLUMES--VOLUME TWO_

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK

  P.F. COLLIER AND SON

  MCMII




  COPYRIGHT, 1900

  By EDWIN EMERSON, Jr.

  [Illustration]




  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  VOLUME TWO


  FULL PAGES IN COLOR

  THE FIRST STEAM RAILWAY. Painted by Edward L. Henry      _Frontispiece_

  BALAKLAVA. Painted by Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler)

  SOLFERINO. Painted by E. Meissonier

  LAST MOMENTS OF MAXIMILIAN. Painted by J. Paul Laurens


  FULL PAGES IN BLACK AND WHITE

  AMERICAN INVENTORS. Painted by C. Schussele

  THE KING OF ROME. Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence

  LORD BYRON. Painted by Maurin

  BEETHOVEN AND HIS ADMIRERS. Painted by A. Grafle

  QUEEN VICTORIA TAKING THE OATH. Painted by Sir George Hayter

  LORD TENNYSON. Painted by Frederic Sandys

  WASHINGTON IRVING AND HIS FRIENDS. Painted by Daniel Huntington

  THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN. Painted by Gustave Doré

  WAGNER AND LISZT. Painted by W. Beckmann

  OPENING OF THE OPERA. Painted by Edouard Detaille

  EXECUTION OF SEPOY REBELS. Painted by Verestchagin

  THE EMPEROR OF CHINA RECEIVING THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS.




1816


[Sidenote: Parliamentary rule in France]

[Sidenote: Revival of French letters]

An era of peace and reconstruction had begun. After a generation of war and
turmoil France was started on her new career of parliamentary government.
The brief period of retaliation ended with the so-called amnesty act of
January, which condemned Napoleon and all his relatives to perpetual exile.
The Chambers now entered into a prolonged discussion of the propositions
for a new election law. The Ministry was headed by the Duc de Richelieu,
who had taken the place of Talleyrand and Fouché. The latter was compelled
to leave France forever. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who succeeded Davoust,
reorganized the army on a permanent footing of military equality which
satisfied even Napoleon's veterans. In the Chambers, the Comte d'Artois
represented the ultra-royalist right wing, while the left was brilliantly
led by Lafayette, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Guizot, during the same
year, for the first time ascended the tribune as spokesman of the moderate
party--the so-called Doctrinaires. Chateaubriand so offended the king by
his book "La Monarchie selon la Charte" that his name was crossed from the
list of the Council of State. Yet he remained the foremost man of letters
in France.

[Sidenote: Béranger]

Béranger was the foremost lyric poet. A typical song by him is that
rendered by Thackeray:

  With pensive eyes the little room I view,
    Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
  With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
    And a light heart still breaking into song:
  Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
    Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
  Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
    There was my bed--full hard it was and small;
  My table there--and I decipher still
    Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
  Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
    Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
  For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  And see my little Lizette, first of all;
    She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes;
  Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
    Across the narrow easement, curtain-wise;
  Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
    And when did woman look the worse in none?
  I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  One jolly evening, when my friends and I
    Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
  A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
    And distant cannon opened on our ears:
  We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
    Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won--
  Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  Let us be gone--the place is sad and strange--
    How far, far off, these happy times appear;
  All that I have to live I'd gladly change
    For one such month as I have wasted here--
  To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
    From founts of hope that never will outrun,
  And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
    Give me the days when I was twenty-one!

It was the period of a new revival for French literature.

[Sidenote: Reaction in southern Europe]

In the other Latin countries, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the restoration of
the old monarchies was not attended by like beneficent results. In Spain,
the re-establishment of the Inquisition stifled free thought and free
speech to such a degree that some of the most progressive Spaniards
emigrated to the revolted Spanish dependencies in America. The return of
Bourbon rule in Naples and Sicily was made odious by a general suppression
of Freemasons and kindred secret societies.

[Sidenote: Metternich's influence]

[Sidenote: German Confederation established]

[Sidenote: The Frankfort Diet]

In the German States, similar measures of persecution were invoked against
the student societies at the universities. The University of Erfurt was
suspended. The Duke of Hesse, who had gained early notoriety by renting his
subjects to foreign armies, now revived corporal punishment together with
the stocks and other feudal institutions. In Wurtemberg serfdom was
re-established. Throughout Germany the reactionary suggestions of Prince
Metternich were carried into effect. A good opportunity for Metternich to
assert his ascendency was presented by the first session of the new German
Diet. Late in the year the delegates from all the States of the New
Germanic Confederation met at Frankfort, Austria holding the permanent
presidency. Count Buol von Schauenstein opened the Diet with a solemn
address, which fell flat. First of all, it was settled that Hesse would
have to cede a large part of Westphalia to Prussia. Next, the title of the
Duke of Cambridge to rule as Regent in Hanover was fully recognized. In
all resolutions relating to fundamental laws, the organic regulations of
the Confederation, the _jura singulorum_ and matters of religion, unanimity
was required. All the members of the Confederation bound themselves neither
to enter into war nor into any foreign alliance against the Confederation
or any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the
confederated States will grant a constitution to the people." The sixteenth
placed all Christian sects on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom
of settlement within the Confederation, and promised "uniformity of
regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The fortresses of
Luxemburg, Mainz and Landau were declared common property and occupied in
common by their troops. A fourth fortress was to be raised on the Upper
Rhine with twenty millions of the French contribution money. This was never
done. For future sessions of the Diet the votes were so regulated that the
eleven States of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary States
merely holding a half or a fourth of a vote, as, for instance, all the
Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the two
Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwartzburg, one; the petty
princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, one; all
the free towns, one; forming altogether seventeen votes. In constitutional
questions the six States of the highest rank were to have each four votes;
the next five States each three; Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two;
and all the remaining princes each, one vote. This arrangement, as it
turned out, proved fruitful of endless trouble.

[Sidenote: Unfair representation]

Austria and Prussia at that time contained forty-two million inhabitants;
the rest of Germany merely twelve million. The power of the two predominant
States, therefore, really were in proportion to that of the rest of Germany
as seven to two, whereas their votes in the Diet stood merely as two to
seventeen, and in the plenary assembly as two to fifteen.

[Sidenote: Prussia predominant]

Though Prussia had lost Hanover and East Friesland, she had received
sufficient compensation still--thanks to Hardenberg's diplomacy--to start
her on her future career as the predominant German State. Incorporated with
the Prussian provinces now were half of Saxony, the Grandduchy of Posen, a
portion of Westphalia, nearly all of the Lower Rhine region from Mainz to
Aix-la-Chapelle, and Swedish Pomerania, for which Prussia paid some eight
million thalers by way of indemnity.

[Sidenote: Restoration of the Netherlands]

In Holland, the new Stadtholder, Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau,
having incorporated Belgium as an integral part of the kingdom of the
Netherlands, set himself to nullify the French racial traits of his Belgian
subjects. A suggestion of future strife on this score could already be
found in Van der Palm's memorial on "The Restoration of the Netherlands,"
published during this year.

[Sidenote: England's commanding position]

[Sidenote: Industrial depression]

[Sidenote: Art and Letters]

The final settlement of Napoleon's great upheaval of Europe left England
feverish and exhausted. The prolonged financial strain of twenty years of
war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million
pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of
Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French
colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued
possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of
the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic
Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At
home the pressure of the heavy taxes required to meet the financial
legacies of the war was imbittered by the general distress of the country.
The new tax on the importation of grains resulted in famine prices.
Corresponding tariff restrictions abroad kept British markets overstocked
with goods. Mills and factories had to be shut down, while at the same time
the labor market was glutted with several hundred thousand discharged
sailors and soldiers. The starving working people grew bitter in their
opposition to new labor-saving devices. Thus the appearance of the first
steamship on the Thames and of the earliest ships constructed of iron,
followed shortly by Sir Francis Reynold's invention of an electric
clock-work telegraph and by James Watt's introduction of stereo plates in
book-printing, heightened this feeling. The resentment of laboring men
found expression in riotous meetings at Manchester, Littleport and
Nottingham. The movement spread to London. A great labor meeting was held
there on the Spa fields. The favorite newspaper of the workingmen,
Cobbett's radical "Two Penny Register," rivalled the London "Times" in
power. In Parliament the leaders of the radical opposition grew ever more
importunate. Not until the end of the year did matters mend. The most
comforting sign of better times was a partial resumption of specie payments
by the Bank of England, followed shortly by the opening of the first
Savings Bank in London. Other memorable events of the year were the
acquisition of the famous Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Athens,
celebrated in Keats's sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," and the
publication of Shelley's long poem "Alastor," and Leigh Hunt's "Story of
Rimini." A diplomatic setback pregnant with future trouble was the
dismissal of Lord Amherst, the British Ambassador at Pekin, for refusing to
kow-tow to the Emperor of China.

[Sidenote: Depression in America]

[Sidenote: Financial relief measures]

[Sidenote: Tariff _vs._ Free Trade]

[Sidenote: Changes in New England]

In America the depression of commerce and industry resulting from the war
with England continued unabated. To relieve the situation, the Secretary of
the Treasury, A.J. Dallas, proposed as a measure of relief the chartering
of a new national bank with increased capital and enlarged powers and the
readjustment of the tariff by the imposition of higher duties. The bank was
chartered for twenty-one years with a capital of $35,000,000, a portion of
the stock to be owned by the government and the institution to have in its
management five government directors in a board of twenty-five. The tariff
policy of Madison was sustained by the Southern party and opposed by the
Federalists, especially in New England. Thus it became more a question of
sectional interests than of abstract political economy. The capital of New
England was invested in shipping, so that the exclusion of articles of
foreign production was bound to injure, by a high tariff, New England's
carrying trade. On its part, the South sought to establish a home market
for its cotton--almost the only staple of the Gulf States. Efforts were
made to encourage the domestic manufacture of those coarse fabrics which
were indispensable in a slave-holding region. The question thus grew into a
struggle between slave labor and free trade. The free-trade party was led
by Daniel Webster, and the tariff party by Calhoun. During the first year
of the new tariff the value of foreign imports fell off about thirty-two
per cent. In the adjustment of capital and trade to an enforced industrial
policy, the American people passed through a commercial crisis which
paralyzed the flourishing sea-ports of the New England coast. Newburyport,
Salem, Plymouth, New London, Newport, and intermediate places sank from
lucrative commercial centres into insignificant towns. Manchester, Lowell,
Fall River, Pawtucket, Waterbury and other New England cities on the other
hand became great manufacturing places.

The Fourteenth American Congress, under the leadership of Clay, imposed a
protective tariff of about twenty-five per cent on imported cotton and
woollen goods, with specific duties on coal and iron. The average duties on
imports amounted almost to prohibition. Late in the year Indiana was
admitted as the nineteenth State.

[Sidenote: War with Florida Indians]

The tranquillity of the end of Madison's administration was broken by new
troubles with the southern Indians. General Jackson by his impulsive
manner of dealing with the Indians of Florida nearly forced the United
States into a war with Spain and England. The Indians had reason to
complain of the injustice that had marked their treatment by the whites.
Florida had become a refuge for runaway slaves from Georgia and South
Carolina. The treaty of 1814 was repudiated by many of the Creeks, who
resented the new settlements of the whites. Those who were most
dissatisfied made common cause with the Seminoles. For a year, General
Gaines, in command at the frontier, complained to the authorities at
Washington of the conduct of the Indians and Spaniards. General Jackson, to
whom the matter was referred, wrote to Gaines that the forts standing in
Spanish territory "ought to be blown off the face of the earth, regardless
of the ground they stand on." In July, a detachment of men and gunboats
under Colonel Church advanced upon Fort Negro. A shot from one of the boats
blew up the powder magazine. The fort was laid in ruins. Of the 324 inmates
270 were killed. Most of the survivors were wounded.

[Sidenote: Death of Gouverneur Morris]

During this year, the "Washington," the first American line-of-battle ship
put to sea with seventy-four guns on her decks. The first American rolling
mill and plant for puddling iron-ore were built at Red Stone Bank in
Pennsylvania. Bishop Asbury, the founder of Methodism in the United States,
preached his last sermon at Richmond, Virginia. During the same year he
died at the age of seventy-one. Other noted Americans who died this year
were Gouverneur Morris of New York, and Spaulding, the reputed author of
the book of Mormon.

[Sidenote: Death of Miranda]

[Sidenote: Independence of Argentine]

Miranda, the South American revolutionist, expired on July 14, in a dungeon
at Cadiz. A British officer who saw him shortly before his death, described
him as "tied to a wall with a chain about his neck like a dog." Ever since
his defeat and detention in Venezuela, his last years had been spent in
captivity. He passed from prison to prison--now at San Carlos, now in Porto
Rico, and finally in Spain. Miranda's failure to obtain grants of amnesty
for Bolivar and his fellow rebels, when he came to terms with the Spanish
general Monteverde, left him discredited with the patriots of South
America. In the meanwhile, Miranda's friend, San Martin, was fighting in
Chile and Peru for South American independence, and was aided in his
struggle by Louis Beltran, an unfrocked friar. On July 9, the independence
of Argentine was proclaimed. Pueyrredon was made President of the new
republic. Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia established independent
governments.

[Sidenote: The struggle in Venezuela]

After Miranda's defeat and the fall of Porto Cabello, Bolivar had fled to
Curaçoa. He enlisted a corps of refugees in Cartagena and headed an
expedition into New Granada. There he rallied more revolutionists about
him, and, capturing Madalena from the Spaniards, fought his way through to
Caracas. He was welcomed there with extravagant demonstration as the
"Savior of Venezuela." After one more victory on the field of Araure his
star declined. The Spanish general, Boves, defeated him at La Puerta, and
took a terrible vengeance on the patriots. The wounded and prisoners were
killed on the field; the homes of all reputed rebels were burned to the
ground; and the entire population of Aragua was massacred.

[Sidenote: Spanish vengeance]

[Sidenote: Bolivar's adventures]

Montalvo, the Spanish War Minister, reported officially: "General Boves
does not distinguish between the guilty and innocent--soldiers or
non-combatants. All alike are killed for the crime of being born in
America." Bolivar retired to New Granada and thence to Jamaica. An attempt
to assassinate him there failed; for the negro cut-throat who had
undertaken to murder Bolivar killed the wrong person. Bolivar crossed over
to Hayti. There he raised a new expedition. A negro leader, Petion, then
acting-governor of Hayti, helped him in this enterprise, and strongly
advised him to proclaim the freedom of all slaves as the first step on
landing in his country. "For, how can you free your country," said Petion,
"if you don't free all the people in it?" Bolivar heeded his advice. With
six ships and one hundred and fifty men, he set out to reconquer Venezuela
from Spain. He landed at Margerita, where he had the good fortune to
capture several Spanish ships. With them he returned to Santo Domingo for
more men and ammunition. Petion furnished him with funds. Thus reinforced,
Bolivar made a dash for Barcelona in Venezuela. The end of the struggle was
at hand.




1817


[Sidenote: Return of Bolivar]

[Sidenote: General Piar shot]

[Sidenote: O'Higgins]

[Sidenote: San Martin]

Bolivar landed on the north coast of Venezuela on the first day of the new
year. His landing place, Barcelona, was a small town at the foot of the
Maritime Andes, so unprotected against attack that he resolved to leave it
at once. He marched his force in the direction of Santa Fé in New Granada,
hoping to push through to Peru. Marino and Piar, two insurgent leaders
operating in the south, joined forces with Bolivar, and brought 1,200
additional men. By the time their joint column had penetrated well into
Orinoco, the three leaders were at odds with each other. Piar tried to
incite revolt among his followers. Bolivar caused Piar to be seized, and
after a drum-head trial had him shot. In the meanwhile a Spanish force had
swooped down on Barcelona, and massacred the inhabitants. Things were at
this pass when the standard of revolt was once more raised in Chile by
Bernado O'Higgins. He was a natural son of Ambrosio, and had just returned
from school in England. At the time the supreme command of the
revolutionary forces was given to him this famous South American leader was
still a young man, as was his chief lieutenant, MacKenna. By his clever
handling of the campaigns that followed he won the title of "El Primer
Soldado del Nuevo Mundo"--the first soldier of America. It was still at the
outset of his career, in 1817, that help came to the Chileans from Buenos
Ayres across the Andes. The man who brought this aid was San Martin.

At Mendoza, on January 17, San Martin reviewed his little army of 5,000,
all Gaucho horsemen, as lightly clad and provisioned as the Indians of the
Pampas. The women of Mendoza presented the force with a flag bearing the
emblem of the Sun. San Martin held the banner aloft, declaring it "the
first flag of independence which had been blest in South America." This
same flag was carried through all the wars along the Pacific Coast. And
under its tattered shreds San Martin was finally laid to rest sixty years
later.

[Sidenote: Battle of Chacabuco]

[Sidenote: Acuoncagua]

Marching from Mendoza, San Martin made a feint of crossing the Andes by way
of Planchon, thereby inducing a Spanish column under Captain-General Marco
del Ponte to concentrate at Talca. During the progress of these movements,
San Martin and his followers crossed the mountains by the steep route of
Putaendo and Cuevas. Three hundred miles of the stiffest mountain riding
were covered in less than a fortnight. Early in February, San Martin's
army, now barely 4,000 strong, descended upon Villa Nueva. On February 7,
they fought their first battle on Chilean soil with the Spanish outposts at
Chacabuco. Driving the Spaniards before him, San Martin, advanced into the
plain, and presently joined forces with O'Higgins' infantry. New mounts
were provided for the cavalry. At the strong post of Acuoncagua the
Spaniards made a stand, but they were outnumbered by the insurgents. San
Martin delivered a frontal attack, while O'Higgins outflanked the enemy
with an impetuous charge, with the result that the whole Spanish force was
routed beyond recovery. The officers fled to Valparaiso. By the middle of
February, San Martin entered Santiago de Chile. A new republican junta was
formed and complete independence of Spain was declared. O'Higgins assumed
the position of dictator.

[Sidenote: Battle of Talca]

[Sidenote: Battle of the Maypo]

[Sidenote: Liberation of Chile]

All Chile was free now except in the south. General Ordoñez, commanding the
Spanish forces there, was defeated and fell back to Talcahuano. San Martin
prepared to invade Peru. Anticipating such an attack, Abascal, the Spanish
Viceroy of Peru, despatched Osorio with an expedition of 3,500 veterans,
who had just arrived from Spain, to Talcahuano. As soon as these
reinforcements came, Ordoñez set out from Talcahuano with the vanguard to
march on Santiago de Chile, and met the patriot forces near Talca. The
revolutionists largely outnumbered the Spaniards, but were poorly
disciplined and ill-provisioned. While they lost time the Spanish main
column under Osorio came up. Ordoñez took advantage of the clumsy
manoeuvres of the revolutionists to drive a sharp attack between their
two wings, piercing their centre. The battle was won after the first
fifteen minutes. O'Higgins was wounded and had to be carried out of the
fight. San Martin, with his right wing, fell back on San Fernando. With
great difficulty O'Higgins managed to reach Santiago, where he was
presently joined by San Martin. Steadily the Spanish column advanced on
Santiago. The two revolutionary leaders by almost superhuman efforts
succeeded in rallying and equipping a force of 5,000 defenders. On April 5,
the Spanish army appeared before Santiago de Chile. Near the Maypo, nine
miles from Santiago, the revolutionists took up a strong position. Osorio
opened the battle about noon with artillery. Soon all the troops were
engaged, the fiercest fight raging around a hacienda where San Martin and
O'Higgins had their headquarters. Several times the ranch was lost and
retaken. By sundown the Spaniards advanced all along the line. The battle
seemed lost to the patriots. At this juncture, as the famous regiment of
Burgos on the Spanish right was drawing in its deployed lines for a final
column attack, Colonel O'Brien, at the head of the insurgent cavalry
reserves, charged into the opening and overthrew the Burgos battalions.
O'Higgins immediately charged the rest of the Spanish right wing, and San
Martin simultaneously attacked in the centre. The whole Spanish army gave
away. More than 2,000 Spaniards were killed and wounded. Osorio with his
staff escaped to Peru. The victory of Santiago not only freed Chile, but
left Peru open to the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: Monroe's Presidency]

In the United States of North America, during this interval, a new
President had begun his administration. James Monroe was inaugurated as
President in his fifty-ninth year. He had been a member of the Continental
Congress, and at thirty-six a Minister to France. Under Madison he served
as Secretary of War. Crawford, Calhoun, Meigs, Wirt and Rush were members
of his Cabinet, and were all of the dominant Democratic-Republican party.
Business throughout the country began to revive almost at once when the
re-chartered National Bank went into operation in Philadelphia on the day
of Monroe's inauguration.

[Sidenote: "Era of good feeling"]

In June, President Monroe undertook a three months' personal inspection of
the military posts of the country. Passing through New York, Boston and
Portland, and crossing New Hampshire and Vermont to Ogdensburg, he took a
boat to Sackett's Harbor and Niagara. From there he went to Buffalo and
Detroit, and returned to Washington. Everywhere the people greeted him by
thousands. Monroe on this occasion wore the three-cornered hat,
scarlet-bordered blue coat and buff breeches of the American Revolutionary
army. The "Boston Journal" called the times the "Era of Good Feeling," and
the expression has passed into American history as a characteristic of
Monroe's entire administration.

[Sidenote: Western prairies settled]

It was an era notable for the extraordinary growth of the Western States.
Settlers were encouraged to buy government land on the instalment plan, and
the States refrained from levying taxes on these lands until years after
the settlers had received their title deeds. Endless processions of prairie
wagons passed through New York and Pennsylvania. On one turnpike alone,
16,000 vehicles paid toll during the year. Pittsburg at this time had a
population of 7,000 persons. The log cabin was the house of all, with its
rough chimney, its greased paper in a single window, its door with latch
and string, a plank floor and single room, corn husk brooms and its Dutch
oven. In the newly broken ground corn and wheat were planted, which, when
harvested, were thrashed with the flail and winnowed with a sheet. Little
settlements sprang up here and there on the rolling prairie, with
store-taverns, blacksmith shops and mills. This a thousand times repeated
was seen in western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and
Michigan.

[Sidenote: Steam navigation]

[Sidenote: The Erie Canal]

[Sidenote: "Thanatopsis"]

During the same year the newly organized territory of Mississippi, formed
from a division of Alabama, was admitted as the twentieth State to the
Union. The first line of steam propelled ocean packets was organized to run
between New York and Liverpool. In the western frontier town of St. Louis
the first steamboat made its appearance. On July 4, ground was broken for
the Erie Canal, which was to connect the city of New York with the great
inland waters. On the strength of this progressive achievement De Witt
Clinton became a candidate for the governorship of New York. Among other
notable events of this year were the foundation of the New York State
Library, Gallaudet's foundation of the first school for the deaf and dumb
at Hartford, and the establishment of the earliest theological seminaries
of the Episcopal Church in America, as well as of the first Unitarian
Divinity School at Harvard. William Cullen Bryant, barely come of age,
published his master work, "Thanatopsis," in the "North American Review."

[Sidenote: Stenography]

[Sidenote: German liberalism]

[Sidenote: The Wartburg festival]

[Sidenote: European courts alarmed]

[Sidenote: Advances in scholarship]

[Sidenote: African missionary work]

In other parts of the world, likewise, the return of peace was followed by
a general advance in culture and civilization. Shortly after the
re-establishment of the American National Bank, Canada followed suit with
government banks at Montreal and Quebec. Hanka, in Bohemia, claimed to have
discovered the famous medieval lyrics of Rukopis Kralodvorsky written at
the end of the thirteenth century. Across the border in Poland the new
University of Cracow began its career. In Munich, Franz Gabelsberger
invented the first working system of shorthand, which, in a perfected form,
is still in use in Germany. During this year common school education took
an immense stride in Germany, after the establishment in Prussia of a
distinct Ministry for Public Education. Unfortunately the government soon
came into conflict with the bolder spirits at the universities. By reason
of the more liberal privileges allowed to it by the Duke of Weimar, the
University of Jena took the lead in the national Teutonic agitation
inaugurated by Fichte. On October 18, the students of Jena, aided by
delegates from all the student fraternities of Protestant Germany, held a
festival at Eisenach to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the
Reformation. It was also the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Five
hundred ardent young men, among them scholars who had fought at Leipzig,
Ligny and Waterloo, assembled in the halls of Luther's Wartburg Castle.
They sang and drank, and fraternized with the members of the militia of
Eisenach. In the evening they had a torchlight procession and lighted a
huge bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. In imitation of Martin
Luther's burning of the Pope's Bull they consigned a number of their pet
aversions to the flames. Thus they burned a soldier's straight-jacket and
corporal's cane, as well as a recent pamphlet by one Schmalz written in
defense of the old Prussian bureaucracy. Rash words were uttered about the
broken faith of princes. They were aimed at King Frederick William of
Prussia, who had promised to give his country a constitution, but had
failed to keep his word. The Wartburg festival, childish as it was in many
of its manifestations, created singular alarm throughout Germany and
elsewhere. The King of Prussia sent his Prime Minister, Hardenberg, to
Weimar to make a thorough investigation of the affair. Richelieu, the Prime
Minister of France, wrote from Paris whether another revolution was
breaking out; and Metternich insisted that the Duke of Weimar should
curtail the liberties of his subjects. The heavy hand of reaction fell upon
all German universities. German scholars were compelled to turn their
interests from public affairs to pure science and scholarship, to the
benefit of German learning. The study of history and archeology took an
upward turn with Brentano's publication of old German ballads and
Lachmann's original version of the Nibelungen songs. At this time an
Italian archeologist, Belzoni, was adding new chapters to ancient history
by his original researches in Egypt, which resulted in the removal of the
Colossus of Memnon to Alexandria, and in the opening of the great Cephren
pyramid. In distant South Africa the first English missionaries began their
labors among the blacks. Although the Governor of Natal at first refused to
permit Robert Moffat, the first Wesleyan missionary in those parts, to
disturb the Kaffirs with his preachings, Moffat pressed on undismayed and
soon established a mission beyond the Orange River.

[Sidenote: Green Bag inquiry]

[Sidenote: Manchester Blanketers]

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in England]

In England, industrial depression dragged on. Early in the year riots broke
out in London on the opening of Parliament. While driving to the House of
Lords, the Prince Regent, now grown thoroughly unpopular on account of the
scandals with his wife, was hooted by a crowd in St. James's Park. The
police claimed that an air gun had been discharged at the Prince and made
an attack on the crowd. A number of persons were injured. This was followed
in February by the great Green Bag Inquiry, when Lord Sidmouth laid before
Parliament a green bag full of reports concerning seditions. Bills were
introduced to suspend the habeas corpus act and to provide for the coercion
of public meetings. Seditious publications were likewise to be suppressed.
In March occurred the rising of the so-called Blanketers in
Manchester--dissatisfied workingmen who started in a body for London
carrying blanket rolls and other necessaries. Their march was stopped by
the military. In April, seven members of the so-called society of Luddites
were hanged at Leicester for breaking labor-saving machinery. Shortly
afterward eighteen persons were hanged for forging notes on the Bank of
England. It was found that since the redemption of specie payments no less
than 17,885 forged notes had been presented. Nearly two hundred persons
were apprehended and tried in court for this offence. Shortly afterward
another insurrection which broke out in Derbyshire, and which was led by
Jeremiah Brandrett, was suppressed by soldiers.

[Sidenote: "The Revolt of Islam"]

[Sidenote: "Lalla Rookh"]

[Sidenote: John Keats]

[Sidenote: "Blackwood's"]

While the working classes of England and Ireland were thus struggling
against their miseries, English literature shone forth in new splendor.
Shelley brought out his "Revolt of Islam" and Tom Moore published his
"Lalla Rookh." John Keats at the age of barely twenty-one published his
first poems. The volume attracted little attention. The appearance of
Blackwood's new magazine in Edinburgh, on the other hand, was hailed as an
event in English letters.

[Sidenote: French letters]

[Sidenote: Béranger]

In France, likewise, the return of peace gave a new lease of life to
literature. The French Academy was reorganized to consist of forty members,
who were elected for life, and who were to be regarded as "the highest
authority on questions relating to language, grammar, rhetoric, poetry and
the publication of the French classics." Chateaubriand was the Academy's
foremost member. Béranger on the other hand, albeit his lyrics had reached
the height of their popularity, fell into official disfavor by reason of
his glorification of Napoleonic times, as exemplified in his ballads "La
Vivandière," "La Cocarde Blanche," or "Le Juge de Charenton." The last
poem, with its veiled allusions to the Lavalette episode, was made the
subject of an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies. While this was
still pending further offence was given by the publication of Béranger's
satirical piece on "The Holy Alliance." Béranger had to give up his
position as secretary at the University of France, and was soon afterward
arrested among his boon companions at Madame Saguet's near Le Moulin Vert.
He was placed on trial for the alleged blasphemies committed in his song
"Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," and condemned to spend three months in prison
and to pay a heavy fine.

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Staël]

[Sidenote: Death of Masséna]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Beyle's "Lives of
Mozart and Haydn"; the performance of Scribe's early plays, and the death
of Madame de Staël, which occurred on July 14. This gifted daughter of
Necker had not been allowed to return to France until after the fall of
Napoleon. Her last work was a treatise of the Constitutional Government,
entitled "Considerations sur les Principaux Evénements de la Révolution
Française," and published posthumously by her long time German companion
and adviser, Schlegel. Marshal Masséna died during the same year. His
funeral was attended with imposing military honors rendered him by his old
followers and comrades-in-arms, who recalled the triumphs of Rivoli,
Essling, and a score of other victories in which this famous warrior had
borne the brunt of the fighting.

[Sidenote: Wachabite rebellion]

[Sidenote: Seminole war]

This year would have been one of peace, the first since the outbreak of the
French Revolution, but for another uprising of the Wachabites in Arabia
under the standard of Tourkee and the re-occurrence of North American
Indian troubles. A year had passed after the destruction of Fort Negro in
Florida before the whites found a pretext for another attack. King Natchez
was accused of receiving fugitive negroes, and he replied: "I have no
negroes.... I shall use force to stop any armed American from passing my
lands or my towns." The Seminoles looked with alarm on the new forts of the
United States. At Fowltown, on Flint River, the Indians, in November, put
up a war pole, and the chief warned Colonel Meigs in command at Fort Scott
not to cross the Flint River. Gaines reached the place with some regular
troops and volunteers, and Twiggs, with 250 men, moved upon the town,
killed some of the people and burned the village. The revenge of the
Seminoles was swift and bloody. Settlers were massacred and the property of
the whites within reach of the Indians was destroyed. Over 2,700 Seminoles
took the field. General Jackson assumed command on the day after Christmas.
He declared that so long as the Spaniards held Florida the trouble would
continue.

[Sidenote: Pindaree war]

[Sidenote: Treaty of Toona]

About the same time the British in India were plunged into further wars
with the natives. First the Pindarees sent out plundering bands from Malwa.
To suppress them, Lord Hastings had to collect an army of 120,000, the
largest force yet mustered in India. From Madras, four army divisions under
Sir Thomas Hislop crossed the Nerbudda, and drove the Pindarees toward
Bengal. By the great number of his remaining troops Lord Hastings overawed
the neighboring rulers, Peishwa Sindia of the Mahratta, Ameer Khan, Holkar
and Runjit Singh of the Punjab. Peishwa Baji Rao was compelled to sign a
treaty of neutrality at Toona. In October, thereupon, Lord Hastings left
Cawnpore and crossed the Jumna. The Pindarees were routed in a series of
swift-fought engagements. One of their chieftains, Khurin, gave himself up
with his whole household, while another, Chetu, was killed by a tiger while
hiding in the jungle.

[Sidenote: Mahratta war]

The Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who was biding his time until the British
forces should withdraw from his dominions, grew impatient and threatened
open war. To appease him a newly arrived British regiment was withdrawn
from Toona to Khirki, a village about four miles from the British
Residency. This concession only encouraged the Peishwa to further
resistance.

[Sidenote: Hindu Blondin]

[Sidenote: Outbreak of Poonah]

[Sidenote: Flight of Baji Rao]

The Mahratta war opened with a romantic incident. Trimbukji Dainglia, one
of the favorites of the Peishwa, was held closely confined by the English
at Thanna for his share in the murder of one of Baji Rao's enemies. Before
the outbreak of hostilities the Mahrattas managed to get word to him of
what was coming. A native groom in the service of one of the British
officers passed the window of the prisoner every day leading his master's
horses. As he did so he trolled a native song the purport of which the
British guards neither understood nor suspected. It has thus been
translated by Bishop Heber:

  Behind the bush the bowmen hide
    The horse beneath the tree.
  Where shall I find a chief to ride
    The jungle paths with me?

  There are five-and-fifty horses there,
    And four-and-fifty men;
  When the fifty-fifth shall mount his steed,
    The Dekhan thrives again.

A few days after this Trimbukji Dainglia was missing. He had broken a bar
from its setting, scaled the wall, and joined a party of horsemen lying in
wait. With them he fled to the jungles of Kanderish. Just before the
outbreak of hostilities a British officer thought he recognized him at
Poonah. On November 5, the British Resident, Elphinstone, left Poonah to
inspect the forces at Khirki. On that same day the Mahrattas burned
Elphinstone's house and rich Sanskrit library. Baji Rao attacked the
military post Khirki with 26,000 men, but was repulsed with a loss of five
hundred. The British immediately despatched an army under General Smith for
Poonah. On November 15, they prepared for a general attack on the morrow,
but in the night Baji Rao fled from Poonah. Thus he surrendered his
dominions without a blow.

Appa Sahib, the Rajah of Nagpore, meanwhile had made common cause with Baji
Rao. On the evening of November 24, he brought up his forces and attacked
the British Residency at Nagpore. The resulting battle of Sitaboldi is
famous in Hindu annals. As Wheeler, the historian of British India,
describes it:

[Sidenote: Battle of Sitaboldi]

"The English had no European regiment, as they had at Khirki; they had
scarcely fourteen hundred Sepoys fit for duty, including three troops of
Bengal cavalry, and only four six-pounders. Appa Sahib had an army of
eighteen thousand men, including four thousand Arabs, the best soldiers in
the Dekhan; he had also thirty-six guns. The battle lasted from six o'clock
in the evening of the 26th of November until noon the next day. For many
hours the English were in sore peril; their fate seemed to hang upon a
thread. The Arabs were beginning to close round the Residency, when a happy
stroke of British daring changed the fortunes of the day. Captain
Fitzgerald, who commanded the Bengal cavalry, was posted in the Residency
compound and was anxious to charge the Arabs; but he was forbidden. Again
he implored permission, but was told to charge at his peril. 'On my peril
be it!' cried Fitzgerald. Clearing the inclosures, the Bengal cavalry bore
down upon the enemy's horse, captured two guns, and cut up a body of
infantry. The British Sepoys hailed the exploit with loud huzzahs, and
seeing the explosion of one of the enemy's tumbrels, rushed down the hill,
driving the Arabs before them. The victory was won, but the English had
lost a quarter of their number."

  [Illustration: LAST MOMENTS OF MAXIMILIAN
    Painted by J. Paul Laurens
    From Carbon Print by Braun, Clement & Co., N.Y.]

[Sidenote: Appa Sahib's escape]

[Sidenote: Battle of Nahidpore]

[Sidenote: Defence of Korygaun]

[Sidenote: End of Mahratta rule]

Appa Sahib surrendered himself and was placed under arrest. Presently he
made good his escape and found a refuge with the Rajah of Jodhpur. In
Holkar's State of Indore affairs ran in a similar groove. The Regent Mother
showed herself inclined to come to an agreement with the British marching
northward under Sir Thomas Hislop. But the Mahratta chiefs were bent on
war, and murdered the Regent Mother. A battle, henceforth, was unavoidable.
Already the British supply train had been plundered by the Mahrattas. The
battle was fought on December 21, at Nahidpore. On each occasion Sir John
Malcolm commanded the British troops and won a complete victory. All the
Hindu guns and swords fell into British hands. Then came the heroic defence
of Korygaun, still celebrated in British Indian annals. A detachment of
Bombay Sepoys and native cavalry, under the command of Captain Staunton and
ten English officers, in all 800 men with two guns, were caught unawares by
the Peishwa's army of 30,000 Mahratta Gosains. Captain Staunton's force
intrenched itself in the village of Korygaun and prepared for the worst.
The Mahrattas completely surrounded the place and the defenders were cut
off from all water and supplies. Then came a succession of fierce rushes by
the Mahratta horse and foot, every one of which had to be fought off in
desperate hand-to-hand encounters. Of the ten white officers eight were
killed; besides them Staunton lost one-third of his Sepoys. The Mahrattas
left 600 on the field. To the present day the exploit is celebrated in the
songs and stories of the Dekhan. The Peishwa witnessed the long fight from
a neighboring hill, and was beside himself when his discouraged troops
refused to renew the battle. After this Baji Rao could no longer hold his
army together. By the close of the year his forces were dispersed. It was
the end of Mahratta rule in the Dekhan.




1818


[Sidenote: Battle of Ashti]

[Sidenote: Baji Rao's surrender]

Peace was re-established in India shortly after New Year's day. Lord
Hastings would stop at nothing but the absolute deposition of the Peishwa.
He had long resolved to reduce Baji Rao to the condition of Napoleon at St.
Helena. Accordingly, he delivered the Rajah of Satara from the thraldom of
generations, and assigned to him sufficient territory for support. This
done he set himself to hunt down the deposed Peishwa. For several months
Baji Rao remained at large. He made a feeble stand at Ashti, but fled at
the first shot, leaving his army to be defeated by General Smith. It was on
this occasion that the Rajah of Satara fell into English hands. Later in
the year Baji Rao was surrounded by British troops, under the command of
Sir John Malcolm. No alternative was left him but to die or give up. The
terms offered by Malcolm were so liberal as to excite astonishment in
Europe. While the great Napoleon was condemned to spend his remaining days
on a mere pittance at St. Helena, this most cowardly of Indian princes was
allowed to live in luxury near Cawnpore, on a yearly grant of £80,000. His
friend Trimbukji Dainglia, however, when captured, was condemned to close
confinement in the fortress of Chunar.

[Sidenote: Lord Hastings' Indian policy]

The remains of the Holkar states were permitted to endure, nor would
Hastings sanction the proposed dethronement of the family of Jaswant Rao.
Holkar was merely required to seize certain territories, and to confirm the
grants already made to Ameer Khan. From a sovereign principality the land
was reduced to a subsidiary state under British guarantee. Otherwise the
infant Mulhar, Rao Holkar, was treated as an independent prince and his
administration was left in the hands of a native Durbar, aided by the
British Resident. The policy of Lord Hastings, although severely criticised
in England, must be pronounced a success in the light of later events. From
the suppression of the Pindarees and the extinction of the Peishwa in 1818,
down to the days of the great mutiny, no serious attempt was made to
overthrow British suzerainty by means of an armed confederation of native
states.

In some respects the administration of Lord Hastings marks a new era in the
history of India. Hastings was the first Governor-General who encouraged
the education of the native population. Early in his administration he
denounced the maxim of his predecessors, that native ignorance would insure
the security of British rule, as an utterly unworthy and futile doctrine.
Accordingly, he promoted the establishment of native schools and
publications.

[Sidenote: Death of Warren Hastings]

[Sidenote: Hastings' career]

The affairs of India were kept before the British public by the renewed
discussion that followed the death of Lord Hastings' great namesake, Warren
Hastings. It was due to the scandals of Warren Hastings' career in India,
and his famous impeachment toward the close of the previous century, that
the administrative reforms and modern rule in India were inaugurated during
the nineteenth century. This reform began with the act, known at Pitt's
Bill, by which the British Crown assumed supreme authority over the civil
and military administration of the affairs in India by the British East
India Company. Henceforward, no alliances could be formed with any native
prince without the express sanction of Parliament. This act arose directly
out of Warren Hastings' confession that he had accepted a present of a
hundred thousand pounds from Asof-Ud-Daula. Warren Hastings' record, though
he was ultimately acquitted, was lastingly besmirched by his dubious
monetary transactions, and it was for this reason that William Pitt refused
to recommend him for the peerage, or for honorable employment under the
British Crown. Yet he was the greatest statesman that ever ruled India. His
overthrow of the French in India, of the first Mahratta rising, and of the
formidable rebellion of Hyder Ali, are among the greatest achievements of
British colonial extension. The disgrace of Warren Hastings was a great
event in English history, but it made no impression on the people in India.
They only knew him as one of the greatest of conquerors and their
deliverer. Philip Francis, who brought about Hastings' downfall, so far
from supplanting him, is remembered now only as the probable author of the
anonymous "Letters of Junius."

[Sidenote: Ross' and Franklin's Expeditions]

[Sidenote: "Frankenstein"]

[Sidenote: "Endymion"]

[Sidenote: Macadam roads]

[Sidenote: Invention of Velocipede]

Besides the death of Warren Hastings, several other notable events
preoccupied the attention of Englishmen. During this year Sir John Ross
sailed north to discover a northwest passage. Another relief expedition
under Lieutenant Franklin, which had sailed after him, resulted only in
failure. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published her curious novel
"Frankenstein," and John Keats brought out his long poem "Endymion," for
which he was violently assailed by the critics, notably by Jeffries, of
"Blackwood's Magazine." Shelley, Moore, Hunt, and eventually Byron, warmly
took his part. In the meanwhile a number of industrial reforms were
introduced in England. Infant schools were first thrown open during this
year, and steam was first used for heating purposes. A company in Edinburgh
undertook to light the streets with gas. John Loudon Macadam's new system
of road building was successfully introduced. In France similar strides
were made in industrial progress. Joseph Nicéphore Niepce invented his
velocipede. The kindred invention of the "draisine," or dandy-horse was
patented for Baron Drais of Sauerbron. These inventions contained the germ
of the modern bicycle.

[Sidenote: Congress of Aachen]

[Sidenote: Czar Alexander aroused]

The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, consisting of the sovereigns of Russia,
Austria and Prussia, aided by ministers of Great Britain and France, signed
a convention for the withdrawal of the army of occupation from France, and
for the reception of France into the European concert. For other countries
the deliberations of this Congress were not so beneficent. Since the Polish
Diet in the spring, when Alexander had promised to give all Russia a
constitutional government, a change of spirit had come over the Czar. This
change has been explained by the revelation of a military conspiracy
against his person. At all events, Alexander appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle
with the most reactionary proposals. Up to this time Metternich, the
inveterate foe of liberalism, had found in the Czar his most formidable
opponent. Now the Czar distributed among his fellow sovereigns a pamphlet
written by one Stourdza, which described Germany as on the brink of
revolution, and blamed the universities and public press. Metternich
instantly took his cue from the Czar. Before the end of the conference he
delivered to the King of Prussia and to Hardenberg two papers containing
his recommendations for the management of Prussian affairs. Frederick
William was warned against giving his people a national parliament. After
the example of the Czar, Metternich inveighed against the universities and
the press.

[Sidenote: Metternich's sentiments]

"The revolutionists," he said, "despairing of attaining their end
themselves, have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation
for revolution. The high school establishment is a preparatory school for
university disorders. The university seizes the youth as he leaves boyhood,
and gives him a revolutionary training. This mischief is common to all
Germany, and must be checked by joint action of the governments. Gymnasia
(high schools), on the contrary, were first invented at Berlin. For these,
palliative measures are no longer sufficient; it has become a duty of
State for the King of Prussia to destroy the evil. The whole institution in
every shape must be closed and uprooted."

[Sidenote: Prussian reaction]

The reactionary policy outlined in these papers became the guiding star of
King Frederick William of Prussia. They outline the history of what
actually was carried out in Prussia during the succeeding generation.

[Sidenote: Misgovernment in Spain]

It was not only in Germany that the new spirit of liberalism gave concern
to the members of the Holy Alliance. In Spain it appeared in a more
dangerous form, since it was espoused there by the military class.
Ferdinand's misgovernment of Spain had soon resulted in an empty treasury,
in consequence of which soldiers and sailors received no pay for several
years. Military revolts were instituted by General Mina, and by Porliar and
Lacy at this period; but they failed through the indifference of the
soldiers themselves. The government's attempt to offset the numerous
desertions from the army by seizing and enrolling some 60,000 beggars in
military service, proved a complete failure. Napoleon's prediction to
Rear-Admiral Cockburn that Spain was doomed to lose all her colonies was
reaching fulfilment in America.

[Sidenote: Defection of Spanish colonies]

Amelia Island, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River in Florida, had long
been the resort of lawless men, among whom were European adventurers
attracted by the South American revolution, and many fugitive slaves from
Georgia and South Carolina. A plan was formed to organize a revolution on
that island and to add Florida to the revolting South American republics.
The forces gathered there became too strong for the Spaniards, and
President Monroe decided to interfere. Gaines was sent to Amelia Island;
but before he arrived, Aury, the commander of the malcontents, had
surrendered to Commodore Henley. General Jackson, who was operating in
those parts against the Seminoles, declared that "the cause of the United
States must be carried to any point within the limits of Florida where an
enemy is permitted to be protected." All eastern Florida, he set forth to
the President, should be seized when Amelia Island was taken, and should be
held as an indemnity for the outrages of Spain upon American citizens. This
plan, Jackson said, could be carried out without implicating the United
States. "Let it be signified to me that the province of Florida would be
desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished."

[Sidenote: Andrew Jackson in Florida]

[Sidenote: Summary military measures]

[Sidenote: Pensacola occupied]

When the order to assume command reached Jackson, he raised a volunteer
force in Tennessee from among his old soldiers. With these and the troops
left by Gaines he marched into Florida. On the site of the Negro fort he
built Fort Gadsden. He then advanced to the Bay of St. Marks, defeating the
few Seminoles whom he encountered. On April 7, he raised the American flag
there in place of the standard of Spain. Two Seminole chiefs who had taken
refuge on an American vessel in the bay, and who were supposed to have
participated in the massacre of a party of Americans, were brought on shore
and hanged. Leaving a strong garrison at St. Marks, Jackson marched a
hundred miles to the Indian town of Suwanee, where he hoped to capture
Billy Bowlegs and his band. But the Indians, warned of his approach,
escaped across the river. Suwanee was destroyed. Jackson, when at St.
Marks, had taken prisoner one Arbuthnot, a Scotchman and supposed Indian
sympathizer, whom he ordered to be confined until his return. At Suwanee,
Captain Ambrister, a former English officer, intending to join the Indians,
blundered into Jackson's camp, and was held a prisoner. On his return,
Jackson ordered the two men to be tried by court-martial, on the charge of
warning the Indians of the approach of the American soldiers, and both were
convicted and executed. Jackson, on reaching Fort Gadsden, received from
the Spanish Governor of Pensacola a protest against his invasion. He turned
back, occupied Pensacola, and took the Fort of Carrios De Barrancas, to
which the governor had fled.

[Sidenote: Jackson unrebuked]

[Sidenote: An amicable settlement]

When the news of Jackson's course reached Washington, Congress engaged in a
heated debate over his occupation of the forts of a friendly power. In
defending himself Jackson wrote that the Secretary of War had given him
full power to conduct the campaign in the manner which seemed best. Spain,
he claimed, had failed to fulfil that article of the treaty by which she
was bound to restrain the Florida Indians from hostilities. Popular feeling
proved too strong for Congress to assert its privileges as the sole
war-making power. Jackson was not even rebuked for his course. During all
those months, Onis, the Spanish Minister, and Adams were in negotiation
over a treaty, which was not ratified until two years later. Florida was to
be ceded to the United States on a payment of $5,000,000, to be applied in
satisfying the claims of American citizens against Spain. The Sabine River,
instead of the Rio Grande, was made the dividing line between the United
States and Spanish territory. The line was to run from the mouth of the
Sabine to the 32d parallel, thence north to the Red River and along it to
the 100th meridian, thence north to the Arkansas and along that river to
its source on the 42d parallel, and thence west to the Pacific. War with
Spain was thus averted.

[Sidenote: The slavery issue]

While the Florida question was under consideration, there arose another far
more momentous to America. Free labor in the North and slave labor in the
South were brought squarely face to face. Slave labor was fast rising in
value. The new lands of the lower Mississippi opened a vast field for the
employment of slaves in the production of cotton, sugar and tobacco. It was
believed the extension of slavery into that new territory would save it
from gradual extinction. The interstate traffic in slaves was viewed with
abhorrence by many leading men in the South. John Randolph, while upholding
slavery, denounced the traffic that was carried on in the Southern
plantations. On the other hand it was seen that compromise would be of
little value if the North only was to be permitted to increase its power by
the admission of new States. New slave States as well were demanded by the
Southerners.

[Sidenote: Contention over Missouri]

In March, the citizens of Missouri had asked permission to form a State
constitution and to be admitted into the Union. It was tacitly understood
that slavery might be carried into territory east of the Mississippi
belonging originally to the existing slave States. But Louisiana, west of
the Mississippi, belonged to the whole of the United States rather than to
any one of the several States. The question now arose whether Congress
should establish slavery anew in territory of the United States. The
alternative was presented to the people of the North whether to submit to
the demands of the South or to consent to a dissolution of the Union.
Though represented by a majority in Congress, the Northern States were
defeated after a long struggle. John Quincy Adams doubted if Congress,
under the American Constitution, had the right to prohibit slavery in a
territory where it already existed. "If a dissolution of the Union should
result from the slave question," he wrote, "it is obvious that it must
shortly afterward be followed by a universal emancipation of the slaves."

[Sidenote: American Pension system inaugurated]

[Sidenote: Oregon in dispute]

During this same year Congress first granted pensions to needy veterans of
the Revolutionary War and soon afterward to the widows and children of dead
soldiers. Thus began the system of American pension legislation for former
American soldiers which was destined to grow to such gigantic proportions
in later years. Up to that time the number of stripes in the American flag
had been eighteen. Now a bill was approved reducing the number of stripes
to thirteen, the number of original States comprising the Union. The
number of stars was to be made equal to that of the States. Soon afterward,
the new flag, with twenty stars in its quartering, was first raised over
the halls of Congress. Shortly after this the Fifteenth Congress adjourned.
On October 20, a convention with Great Britain was signed respecting
fisheries and boundaries, giving to Americans the right to fish in
Newfoundland waters and renewing the agreement of 1815, making the 49th
parallel the boundary between the United States and British North America.
The convention also provided for the joint occupation of Oregon for ten
years longer.

The glossy finish to leather known as "patent" leather was first patented
in this year. Another notable invention of the time was the process of
engraving on soft steel.

[Sidenote: Illinois a State]

The second session of the American Congress was not called until late in
the year. Illinois was then admitted as the twenty-first State of the
Union.




1819


[Sidenote: Florida ceded by Spain]

[Sidenote: Southern Indians dispossessed]

[Sidenote: Alabama a state]

Early in the year Andrew Jackson was called to Washington. He was the hero
of the day. When he visited New York he was received with public honors. On
February 22, a treaty with Spain was adopted by which she surrendered all
claims to Florida and ceded West Florida. The cost of the war to the United
States had been forty million dollars. The year was marked by the enforced
retirement of large bodies of the Cherokees from Georgia to the
Mississippi. The Cherokees as well as the Creeks, the Choctaws and the
Chickasaws were greatly perturbed at the prospect of their final removal
from the land which the United States had guaranteed to them. Partly as a
result of these changes, the Territory of Alabama was admitted to the Union
as the twenty-second State.

[Sidenote: The Missouri problem]

There were now eleven free and eleven slave States; and serious opposition
arose to the admission of Missouri. In February, the first bill was
introduced in the House for the admission of that Territory. James
Tallmadge, Jr., of New York, proposed that there should be no personal
servitude in the State except by those already held as slaves, and that
these should be manumitted within a certain period. This proposition he
modified by moving an amendment providing that the introduction of slavery
should be prohibited, but that those already slaves in Missouri should
remain so, and that the children of such slaves should be liberated upon
reaching the age of twenty-five. The proposition to hold in slavery a
generation yet unborn was fiercely resented. The two Houses did not agree,
and the question went over to another year. The South presented an unbroken
and unyielding front. Caleb of Georgia said that this attempt to interfere
with slavery was "destructive of the peace and harmony of the union"; that
those who proposed it "were kindling a fire which all the waters of the
ocean could not extinguish. It could be extinguished only in blood."

[Sidenote: Antagonism to slavery]

[Sidenote: Maine _vs._ Missouri]

The Missouri question having been left for the next session, the cognate
issue concerning a government for the Arkansas country south of parallel
33° 30' was taken up. In both Houses an amendment to prohibit slavery was
lost. As a compromise a representative from Delaware suggested a division
of the Western Territory between the free and slave States. The contest was
renewed at the December session. Resolutions of Northern Legislatures
condemning the placing of slavery under the national government were
presented, and were treated with contempt by the Southern statesmen.
Senator Mason of North Carolina said: "They may philosophize at town
meetings about it as much as they please, but they know nothing about the
question." In the House the matter was brought up in the same form as in
the previous session. James W. Taylor of New York presented an amendment
prohibiting slavery, but holding in bondage those who were already slaves.
He kept this point clearly in view through the debate that followed.
Finally the bill was passed by a vote of 91 to 82, the prohibitory
amendment being adopted by a majority of eight. The bill for the admission
of Missouri was attached to that for the admission of Maine. The suggestion
of this stratagem was made on the 20th of December by Henry Clay, who
declared that he did "not mean to give his consent to the admission of
Maine, so long as the doctrine was upheld of annexing conditions to the
admission of States beyond the mountains." The analogy was scarcely just.
Under the Constitution the right was absolute; Maine was a part of the
original thirteen States of the Republic. The problem respecting Missouri
was radically different, and resolved itself into the question whether
Congress, under the American Constitution, had the right to create a new
State out of the purchased territory, and to admit it to the Union without
a republican form of government. Clay's threat was improved upon. The
judiciary committee reported the House bill for the admission of Maine,
adding an amendment for the admission of Missouri. Roberts of Pennsylvania
moved to amend the amendment by prohibiting slavery in Missouri, but his
motion was rejected by a majority of eleven (including six Senators from
free States). A motion to make the admission of Maine a separate question
was also defeated. The two Houses now stood directly opposed to each other.
The Representatives would not retreat from their decision to prohibit
slavery in Missouri; the Senate was equally determined that Missouri should
be admitted as a slave State. Had the House maintained its ground, the
United States for the next half century might have had another history.

[Sidenote: The Missouri compromise]

Senator Thomas of Illinois, who had voted thus far with the South, now came
forward with a compromise. He proposed to prohibit slavery in that portion
of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' excepting Missouri. This was
accepted in the Senate by thirty-four votes against ten. But when the bill
came up two days later for its final passage it received only a majority of
four. After much delay the compromise measure was finally passed through
the House by a majority of 134 to 42 votes. The measure was a Northern
victory, having been carried by Northern votes. For the moment peace was
gained; but the fire was only smothered. On the one side there was a gain
of one slave State; on the other side, a mere promise to prohibit slavery
in future States.

[Sidenote: Modern progress]

[Sidenote: Irving's "Sketch Book"]

Notwithstanding the political agitation, general progress in America was
pronounced and rapid during this period. Steam navigation was no longer a
novelty. The Erie Canal was well under way. New towns were springing up
along its course. Blanchard invented his lathe for turning irregular forms.
The famous Danish physicist, Hans Christian Oersted, made his classical
electrical experiments with the magnetic needle and laid the foundation of
our modern theory of electromagnetism. The literary event of the year in
America was the appearance of Washington Irving's "Sketch Book." The work
found favor in England, where Sir Walter Scott befriended Irving.

[Sidenote: Polar expedition]

[Sidenote: Cochrane in Chilean service]

In England, too, it was a period of new industrial and colonial expansion.
Following the unsuccessful polar expeditions of the previous year,
Lieutenant Franklin undertook his second search for the northwest passage,
and a similar expedition, under Perry and Liddon, set out for Arctic
waters. In India, where the Sikhs under Runjeet Singh were engaged in their
great conquest of Cashmere, a British settlement was established in
Singapore. British supremacy at sea received its tribute in an invitation
from the Chileans to Sir Thomas Cochrane to command their new navy. After
their victory on the Maypo, the patriot leaders of Chile had set to work to
create a navy for their country. The British ship "Cumberland" was
purchased in London, and renamed the "San Martin." Within a few months she
captured the "Maria Isabella" from the Spanish. The prize was taken to
Valparaiso, remounted, and renamed the "O'Higgins." To these ships were
added the "Galvarino," "Araucano," "Interpodo," and the "Independencia."
With the "O'Higgins" for a flagship, Cochrane took this squadron up and
down the coast of South America, harrying the Spanish sea-ports everywhere.

[Sidenote: The "Six Acts"]

[Sidenote: Birth of Victoria]

In England, meanwhile, there was renewed agitation for Parliamentary
reforms. Henry Grattan in Parliament moved for a Committee of the Whole
House to consider the laws excluding Catholics from public offices. His
motion was defeated by a narrow vote of 243 against 241. Instead of this
reform the British Government, falling in line with the reactionary
measures of the Continental governments, passed through Parliament the
so-called "Six Acts" for the prevention and punishment of sedition in
England. To latter-day Englishmen this year is principally noted for the
birth of Queen Victoria. The little princess, the daughter of Edward, Duke
of Kent, son of George the Third and Maria Louisa Victoria of Saxe-Coburg,
a sister of Leopold I. of Belgium, was born at Kensington Palace, and was
named Alexandrina Victoria.

[Sidenote: Schopenhauer]

Germans of the present day remember this year for the appearance of
Schopenhauer's great philosophic work "The World, as Will and Idea"--"Die
Welt als Wille und Vorstellung." Schopenhauer, in this book, laid down the
doctrine that the universe, and therefore human life as such, is governed
by the conflicting principles of the ungoverned will and of the
unattainable ideal. The true solution of life, he held, was to be found in
subjecting brute will to the intellectual force of the ideal.

[Sidenote: Assassination of Kotzebue]

Schopenhauer's book at that time passed almost unnoticed. The educated
classes of Germany were in too much of a ferment over the recent police
restrictions inflicted upon the universities and public press. By this time
it had become well known what part Czar Alexander had played at the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. A vehement outcry arose at the universities
against the interference of foreigners in German affairs. The wrath of the
Liberals turned against August von Kotzebue, the prolific playwright, who
held the office of Russian agent in central Germany. Kotzebue conducted a
weekly newspaper at Mannheim in which he inveighed against the German
national movement of the day, and ridiculed the patriotic eccentricities of
the students. Having himself studied at Jena, Kotzebue was denounced by the
students there as a traitor. He was believed to be responsible for the
Czar's conversion from liberal ideas to reactionary principles. This belief
cost Kotzebue his life. One Sand, a theological student at Jena, noted for
piety and patriotic ardor, formed a fanatical resolution to do away with
this enemy of the country. An extract from Sand's diary, written on the eve
of his last New Year's day, reveals the character of the man: "I meet the
last day of this year in an earnest festal spirit, knowing well that the
Christmas which I have celebrated will be my last. If our strivings are to
result in anything, if the cause of mankind is to succeed in our
fatherland, if all is not to be forgotten, all our enthusiasm spent in
vain, the evil doer, the traitor, the corrupter of youth must die. Until I
have executed this, I have no peace; and what can comfort me until I know
that I have with upright will set my life at stake? O God, I pray only for
the right clearness and courage of soul, that in that last supreme hour I
may not be false to myself." On March 23, Sand sought out Baron Kotzebue in
the midst of his family and stabbed him to the heart. Then he turned the
dagger against himself. Unfortunately Sand recovered from his wounds, and
thus lived to die on the scaffold.

[Sidenote: Retaliatory measures]

[Sidenote: German liberals persecuted]

The mad deed was followed by the worst possible results for Germany.
Minister Hardenberg, when he heard of the murder of Kotzebue, declared that
a Prussian Constitution had now been rendered impossible. Metternich, who
was then in Rome, instantly drew up a scheme for further repressive
measures and summoned the ministers of the various German States for a
meeting at Carlsbad. "By the help of God," wrote Metternich, "I hope to
defeat the German revolution, just as I vanquished the conqueror of the
world. The revolutionists thought me far away, because I was five hundred
leagues off. They deceived themselves; I have been in the midst of them,
and now I am striking my blows." A number of innocent persons were arrested
in various parts of Germany under utterly unwarrantable circumstances. The
houses of professors were searched and private papers were seized. Jahn,
the founder of the popular Gymnastic schools, was arrested in Berlin. De
Wette, a professor of theology at the University of Berlin, had to flee to
Switzerland on account of a letter of sympathy addressed by him to Sand's
mother. With him Oken, the great naturalist, and Corres, the pamphleteer,
became exiles in Switzerland. Professor Fries lost his chair at Jena; the
poet Arndt was suspended at Bonn, and his private papers, in garbled form,
were published by the government. Many of the younger professors,
accompanied by their favorite students, emigrated to America.

[Sidenote: Convention of Carlsbad]

[Sidenote: Police censors appointed]

[Sidenote: Binzer's poem]

During August the German ministers met at Carlsbad. Their conferences, in
the memory of the German people, are justly associated with the suppression
of intellectual freedom for a whole generation. It was ordered that in
every State within the German federation a strict censorship should be
established over all publications. Within fifteen days an inquisitorial
commission was called together at Mainz to investigate the students'
societies at the universities. The commission was empowered to arrest any
subject in any German State. Special police commissioners were appointed at
the universities, whose duty it was to keep a strict eye on the drift of
the professor's teachings. Any professor or student expelled from a
university was not to be employed by any other German government. The
students' societies were suppressed, at least to all outward appearance.
The poet Binzer wrote a defiant song ending with the lines:

  The Spirit liveth in us all,
  For God is still our stronghold.

[Sidenote: Resignation of Wilhelm Humboldt]

[Sidenote: South German liberalism]

So far was repression carried in Prussia that out of 203 students arrested
for wearing black-red-yellow ribbons, no less than 94 were condemned to
death. Wilhelm von Humboldt, the best and most liberal of Prussian
Ministers during the first half of the nineteenth century, resigned his
portfolio in disgust. The zeal with which the Prussian Government accepted
these measures made it useless for the minor German States to offer much
opposition. Yet they formed the only remaining bulwark against
Metternich's restrictive policy. In spite of his strenuous opposition, the
rulers of Bavaria and Baden granted to their subjects constitutional forms
of government. Representative assemblies with lower and upper houses, after
the manner of the English Parliament, were established. In Wurtemberg,
serfdom was abolished, and a constitution was published a few days before
the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad.

[Sidenote: Laënnec's stethoscope]

In France, Dr. Laënnec published his epoch-making work "Traité
d'Auscultation Médiate," the result of his recent experiments in listening
to human heart-beats and lung respirations through a hollow cylinder.
Various names were given to the instrument until Laënnec decided to call it
"stethoscope," the name it has ever since retained. Laënnec's contributions
to the study of diseases of the lungs, of the heart and of the abdominal
organs may be said to have laid the foundation of modern clinical medicine.

[Sidenote: Decazes Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: The Gregoire episode]

[Sidenote: Troubles in Spain]

Parliamentary government in France worked none too smoothly. In the
Chambers the rise of the independent party and anti-Bourbon faction caused
the Duc de Richelieu to resign. When the news of Kotzebue's assassination
reached Paris, the Comte d'Artois remarked exultingly to the king: "Well,
brother, you see what they are driving us to." Louis XVIII. intrusted to
his favorite, Decazes, the formation of a new Cabinet. Decazes found it
difficult to select competent men for the various portfolios. His Cabinet,
when finally brought together, lacked internal unity and outward support.
Its career was early imperilled by the untoward election of Bishop Gregoire
of Grenoble, one of the regicides, to the Chamber of Deputies. This popular
manifestation, though sufficiently explained by the sterling public
qualities of the bishop himself, created the utmost apprehension among the
Royalists. Decazes had to bend to the storm, and the election of Gregoire
was declared null and void by the Ministerial majority in the Chambers. The
French Royalists next professed to find cause for apprehension in Spain.
Danger of war with the United States, before the cession of Florida, had
caused King Ferdinand of Spain to assemble an army at Cadiz to embark for
America. It was now proposed to send these troops to South America to quell
the revolutionary movements there. The return of a number of soldiers
stricken with yellow fever in the colonies filled the troops at Cadiz with
consternation. The common soldiers, lying in squalor and inaction at their
barracks, came to regard their expected order of embarkation as a sentence
of death. Their officers plotted with the secret societies in Cadiz and
neighboring towns. Abisbas, the commandant at Cadiz, to safeguard his own
interests pretended to encourage these plots. Then, convinced of their
ultimate failure, he arrested the principal leaders by a stratagem and
hurried to Madrid to reveal all and claim credit for saving the crown. The
ringleaders were imprisoned and the troops were distributed into
cantonments. As it turned out this only served to foment the growing spirit
of dissatisfaction throughout Spain.




1820


[Sidenote: Spanish military revolt]

[Sidenote: Riego's plight]

New Year's Day was fixed for the outbreak of revolt by the revolutionists
of Spain. The chosen leaders were Riego, Cabazes and Quiroga. It was
arranged that Quiroga, who was held in light confinement at Medina, east of
Cadiz, should gather the battalions outside of Cadiz, throw himself into
the city, and there await the co-operation of his fellow conspirators.
Riego with a band of chosen men was to pounce upon the military
headquarters at Arcos, and to arrest the general officers before they could
interfere. Accordingly, Riego, on the first day of January, proclaimed the
Constitution of 1812, and, falling upon headquarters, seized the general
officers and rallied the men to his standard. Quiroga was less successful.
After gaining possession of San Fernando at the eastern point of the
peninsula of Leon, he failed to get into Cadiz. The commandant closed the
gates against him, and the troops within gave no sign of defection. By the
time Riego arrived, there were but 5,000 insurgents wherewith to overcome
the strong garrison and fortifications of Cadiz. Leaving Quiroga before
Cadiz, Riego set himself to raise the people of the surrounding towns. He
was received with kindness, but the obvious weakness of his force
discouraged others from joining him. Strong forces were sent in pursuit,
and the insurgents were compelled to march back and forth through the
country to escape their pursuers. At Cordova, Riego was made to realize
that the game was lost. The soldiers of the government were upon him, and
he had only some two hundred followers left. The little band took to the
mountains and there dispersed.

[Sidenote: Spread of the revolt]

The revolt, despite its miserable end, was followed by widespread results.
The example of a bold stroke had been given, and the weakness of the
government had been exposed. While Riego's followers were still hunted from
place to place, the soldiers and citizens of Corona together declared for
the Constitution. The revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and thence
along the coast towns of Galicia.

[Sidenote: Cochrane's exploit]

[Sidenote: Abisbas' treachery]

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand succumbs]

In South America, Cochrane in a brilliant action took the Spanish
stronghold of Valdivia, held to be a Gibraltar in strength. King Ferdinand
in Madrid was terrified. From all points of Spain the commandants wrote
that they could not answer for their garrisons. Abisbas was ordered to
return to Cadiz with reinforcements. On leaving Madrid he boasted to the
king that he knew how to deal with rebels. By the time he reached Ocaña,
early in March, he himself proclaimed the Constitution. The news of
Abisbas' defection created consternation in Madrid. On the night of March
6, the king convoked his Council of State. On the morrow he issued a
summons for the Cortes. This was not enough. Crowds gathered in the streets
and clamored for the Constitution. A report that the guards were on the
point of going over to the people brought the king around. From the balcony
of the royal palace Ferdinand announced his readiness to take the oath to
the Constitution. The next day was spent in riotous rejoicing. The prison
of the Inquisition was sacked and all political prisoners were liberated.
On the following day the mob broke into the gates and gardens of the royal
palace. The members of the old municipal council entered the royal private
chamber and called for a fulfilment of the king's public promise. Ferdinand
accepted the inevitable under a smiling exterior, and swore an oath of
fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. A provisional Junta took charge of
affairs until the new Cortes should be convened.

[Sidenote: Duc de Berry assassinated]

The news of the Spanish revolution astounded Europe. In France a fanatic by
the name of Louvel deemed the moment come to strike at the reigning house
of France. Louvel had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. After the Hundred
Days he dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princes with a settled project
of murder. The heir-presumptive to the French crown was the Duc de Berry.
If he died without a son the elder Bourbon line was bound to become extinct
as a reigning house. On the night of February 13, Louvel attacked the Duc
de Berry at the entrance of the opera house and plunged a knife into his
heart. The Duchess was covered with her husband's blood. That night Duc de
Berry died beseeching forgiveness for the man who had killed him. King
Louis XVIII. himself closed the eyes of his nephew.

[Sidenote: Fall of Decazes' Ministry]

The assassination of the Duc de Berry involved the ruin of the Ministry of
Decazes. The ultra-royalists in their frenzy of grief and indignation
charged their chief opponent with complicity. Clausel de Coussergues, a
member of the Court of Cassation, moved the impeachment of Minister Decazes
in the Chambers as an accomplice in the assassination. The King himself
felt menaced by the unwarranted accusation. "The Royalists give me the
finishing stroke," said he; "they know that the policy of M. Decazes is
also mine, and they accuse him of assassinating my nephew." Yet he had to
abandon his favorite to the violent entreaties of the Comte d'Artois and
the Duchesse de Angoulême. Decazes was permitted to retire, and set out for
London with his new titles of Duke and Ambassador to the Court of St.
James. Richelieu was recalled to the Ministry. The Duchesse de Berry
retired to Sicily.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Carbonari]

[Sidenote: Neapolitan military revolt]

[Sidenote: Revolution in Naples]

[Sidenote: Bourbon duplicity]

In Naples and Sicily the recent events in Spain and France exerted a
powerful influence over the minds of the people. In southern Italy the
secret society of the Carbonari had become a power in the land. The members
of this society, after the manner of Freemasons, took their name and the
symbolism of their rites from the calling of the charcoal burners. Since
the revolt against Bourbon tyranny in 1799, the Carbonari had played their
part as revolutionary conspirators. By the year 1820 it was believed that
one person out of every twenty-five in Naples belonged to the society. To
offset their hidden power, the government encouraged the foundation of a
rival society, known as the Calderari, or Braziers. This only made matters
worse. After the success of the revolution in Spain, the head lodge of the
Carbonari in Salerno issued orders for a rising in June. Later the date was
postponed. A score of Carbonari serving in the ranks of a cavalry regiment
at Nola, persuaded one of the officers, Lieutenant Morelli, to head a
revolt in favor of a constitutional government. On July 2, Morelli marched
out with a squadron of 150 men, and proclaimed for the Constitution. Only
one trooper refused to follow his standard. The others rode along the road
to Avellino and were received with enthusiasm all along the way. The
country was ripe for revolt. At Avellino the commandant with all his
garrison and the Bishop with the townspeople gave them a magnificent
reception. The news of the revolt spread like wildfire throughout the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Everywhere the Carbonari declared in its
favor. Before the government had taken a single step, the Constitution was
generally proclaimed and joyfully accepted by the populace. From Naples the
King sent General Carrascosa to negotiate with the insurgents. In the
meanwhile General Pepe, himself a Carbonaro of high rank, hastened to
Avellino and placed himself at the head of the revolution. On July 6, the
King published an edict promising a constitution within eight days, and
then, feigning illness, committed the royal authority to his son, the Duke
of Calabria. The Carbonari, recalling the fact that the King, in order to
preserve his contingent rights to the Spanish crown, had but recently
helped to sign the Spanish Constitution of 1812, insisted that this same
Constitution should be proclaimed for Naples. Old King Ferdinand yielded
and signed an edict to that effect. General Pepe and Morelli, at the head
of the garrison of Avellino, and the national guards of Naples,
triumphantly entered the city with public honors, and were received by the
Duke of Calabria, in his capacity as viceroy. On July 13, the King in
person swore to support the Constitution. Standing before the altar in the
royal chapel, he raised his eyes to the crucifix and prayed that the
vengeance of God might fall upon him if ever he broke his oath. Immediately
afterward he wrote to the Emperors of Austria and Russia, declaring that
his conduct on this occasion was a mere farce and that he regarded his
obligations as null and void.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: End of Lisbon regency]

The contagion of Spain and Sicily proved too much for the people of
Portugal. The continued absence of the royal family in Brazil, and the
unwelcome prolongation of the British regency had long caused
dissatisfaction in Portugal. The feeling of discontent was deepened by
industrial and commercial distress which made the manifest prosperity of
Brazil seem all the more galling. Marshal Beresford, the English
commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army, was generally execrated for his
barbarous treatment of military conspirators. After the outbreak of the
Spanish revolution, the aspect of affairs became so threatening in Portugal
that Beresford set out for Rio Janeiro to induce the Princes of Braganza to
return to their Court in Lisbon. Before he could accomplish his purpose,
the government that he had left behind him was overthrown by the people. On
August 24, the city of Oporto rose against the regency. The officers of the
army, the magistrates, the priests and townspeople united in declaring
against the regency. They established a provisional Junta to govern in the
name of the King until the Cortes of Portugal could be convened to frame a
constitution. The authority of the regency in Oporto was lost without a
blow. The Junta immediately seized the reins of government, and began its
career by dismissing all English officers and paying the arrears of the
soldiers. In Lisbon the regency itself tried to stem the storm by giving
its formal approval to the measures of the Junta of Oporto. The troops of
Lisbon, however, would no longer recognize the authority of the government.
Within a fortnight the regency was deposed, and a Junta installed in its
place. Beresford was forbidden to return to Portugal. He went to England,
but found there that the British Ministry did not deem it advisable to
interfere further in the domestic affairs of Portugal. Dom Juan VI., in Rio
Janeiro, promised to return to Portugal and bestow on his subjects a
liberal constitution.

[Sidenote: British liberalism]

[Sidenote: Sale of Russian fleet]

In England, Lord Beresford's attempt to induce the government to suppress
the revolutionists of Portugal only served to strengthen the popular
antipathy that had grown up against the reactionary tendencies of the Holy
Alliance. Prior to this an attempt had been made to persuade England to
act as instrument of the Alliance by suppressing the rebellious colonies of
Spain in South America. At the last session of the Holy Alliance, the
envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper in which they suggested that
Wellington, as "the man of Europe," should go to Madrid to preside over a
negotiation between the Court of Spain and all the Ambassadors, regarding
the terms to be offered to the transatlantic States. If the colonies
continued rebellious, England's fleet was counted upon to reduce them to
submission. But the force of liberalism was too strong in England for any
British Minister to enter into such a scheme. Then it was that the Czar of
Russia sold a large part of the Russian fleet to Spain. To Englishmen, who
had seen these same ships in their harbors at the time they were held as
hostages by England, this action gave but little concern. The scandal that
followed in Spain was anticipated in England. On their arrival at Cadiz,
the Russian ships were found to be useless rotten hulks.

[Sidenote: Death of George III.]

[Sidenote: Queen Caroline's trial]

[Sidenote: Death of the Queen]

Another more trying scandal engrossed public attention in England. On
January 29, old King George III. had at last sunk into his grave. His son,
George IV., became king, and began his rule with the same Ministry under
Lord Liverpool that had served him as Prince Regent. The new king's first
public act was to call for a bill for the divorce of his wife, Caroline of
Brunswick. The Cabinet refused to favor such a bill. On April 23,
Parliament met. The King sent "a green bag" to each House of Parliament,
containing a mass of testimony and accusations concerning the queen's
conduct with her Italian chamberlain, Pergami. On June 6, Queen Caroline
arrived from Italy. Having been refused passage on a royal ship, she
chartered a vessel of her own. This bold step was taken to imply innocence.
She was received with great popular demonstrations in her favor. Before a
secret committee of Parliament, Queen Caroline offset the King's charges
against her by laying stress on his own well-known failings as a husband.
On July 5, Lord Liverpool introduced a bill of "Pains and Penalties" to
dissolve the marriage of Queen Caroline. Her trial was taken up by the
House of Lords, where she was defended by Lord Brougham. To this day the
proceedings of the trial are remembered as one of the most outrageous
scandals in England. The feelings thereby engendered in the people have
been immortalized in the trenchant writings of Thackeray. Before the trial
was concluded, Lord Liverpool's bill was brought up for the third time in
Parliament. It passed by a majority of a few votes. With so slender an
indorsement, the Ministry had cause to tremble for its existence. Lord
Liverpool prevailed upon the King to recede from his extreme position, and,
succeeding in this, moved for the abandonment of the bill. The trial was
quashed. Queen Caroline died shortly afterward.

[Sidenote: The Missouri Compromise]

[Sidenote: Cabinet in a quandary]

In America, public feeling was no less excited. The occasion for this was
the first serious clash of the Northern and Southern factions of the United
States over what was known as the Missouri Compromise. On February 18, the
Missouri Compromise bill passed the Senate, and on March 2 the House. It
admitted Missouri as a slave State, and prohibited slavery north of
parallel 36° 30', the southern line of Missouri. Henry Clay declared that
it settled the slavery question "forever." The bill went to the President.
There was still another compromise, and that was in the Cabinet. The
President asked advice on two points. The first point was whether Congress
had a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory. The Cabinet
agreed that the right existed. Then the question arose whether the section
prohibiting slavery "forever" referred only to the territorial condition,
or whether it also applied when the Territory became a State. The Cabinet,
with the exception of Adams, agreed that "forever" applied only to the
territorial condition; Adams held that "forever" meant literally forever,
in State as well as in Territory. In order to escape this dilemma it was
proposed that the question of "forever," as relating to States, should be
avoided; and that the only question should be, whether the section
prohibiting slavery in the Territories forever was Constitutional. The
order of proceeding was reversed; Mr. Adams was to reply in the affirmative
without giving his reasons, while the others were to explain in writing
that the provision was Constitutional; but "forever" meant only while the
territorial condition existed. With this understanding the bill was signed.
It is plain now that in the unsettled point the whole pith and meaning of
the Missouri Compromise was contained, as the country learned fully and
decisively thirty-five years afterward.

[Sidenote: Monroe elected President]

New issues then came to the front--protection, internal improvements, and
recognition of the South American republics. Presently, in order to
preserve the balance of power between slavery and freedom, it was enacted
that Maine was to be admitted on March 15, making twelve free and twelve
slave holding States. A bill was passed pronouncing the maritime slave
trade piracy. On October 20, Spain ratified the treaty ceding Florida.
Congress reassembled in November. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were
the opposing candidates for the Presidency. Monroe received 231 electoral
votes; Adams received one from a New Hampshire elector who voted in
sympathy with a popular sentiment that Washington should stand alone in the
high honor of a unanimous choice.

[Sidenote: Quinine]

In this year the great fever drug quinine was first clearly separated and
identified by Drs. Pelletier and Caventou, who were spurred on to their
labors by the previous experiments with the drug by Drs. Gomez and Lambert.
In its crude form the bark of the chinchona tree had been used for its
medical properties since times immemorial.

[Sidenote: Homeopathy]

It was about this time that the German physician Hahnemann's theory of
homeopathy caused general discussion among medical practitioners and
laymen. Hahnemann's first thesis was that many diseases could most quickly
be eradicated by similar effects--fever with fever, poison with
anti-poison. This theory of "like with like"--the Greek homoia
homoiois--was accordingly named by him homeopathy. It was most fully
expressed in his "Dogma of Rational Healing" and in the later treatise
"Chronic Ailments and their Homeopathic Cure." These books created such a
widespread sensation that they were at once translated into several
languages and ran through a great number of editions. As a matter of
course, Hahnemann's peculiar theories were violently combated by his fellow
practitioners.

[Sidenote: Hydropathy]

Almost at the same time with the rise of the new science of homeopathy came
Vincenz Priessnitz's innovation of hydropathy or water cure. He established
his first sanitarium at Grafenberg, his birthplace, and in the face of
vehement medical opposition soon won government recognition for his
sanitarium. Similar water-cure establishments were erected by many
imitators and followers in Germany and elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Convention of Troppau]

[Sidenote: Intervention in Naples]

Late in the year Emperor Alexander of Russia and Metternich came together
to settle on the counter strokes to be delivered against the revolutionists
of Spain and southern Italy. When Metternich first heard of the fall of
absolute government in Naples he was dismayed. Gentz, who saw him at that
time, has left this record: "Prince Metternich went to-day to inform the
Emperor of the sad events in Naples. As long as I know him I have never
seen him so upset by any event." Metternich had reason to feel alarmed. A
revolution in Naples was almost sure to be followed by an Italian uprising
in the Austrian possessions of Venice and an insurrection in the Papal
States. Had Metternich felt free to follow his own devices, he would
forthwith have marched an Austrian army into southern Italy to put an end
to the troubles there. With all his exasperation he did not feel free to
cut loose from joint action with the Czar and with the other sovereigns of
Europe. Thus it came that the summer was spent in arranging for another
conference of the allied monarchs. They met on October 20, at Troppau in
Moravia. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia
received one another in state. The envoys of England and France were found
to be in accord against armed intervention in southern Italy. The other
powers determined to proceed on their course without them. Metternich's
diplomatic dealings with the Czar were greatly hampered by the clever
intrigues of Count Capodistrias, Alexander's foreign minister. For once
Metternich found himself matched by a diplomat even more subtle than
himself. In the end, he prevailed over Capodistrias sufficiently to
overcome Alexander's scruples against harsh measures in Naples. It was
determined to invite King Ferdinand to meet the sovereigns at Leibach, in
Austria, and to address a summons to the Neapolitans commanding them to
abandon their constitution, under threat of immediate invasion. Accordingly
a note was issued from Troppau to all the courts of Europe, embodying the
doctrine of federative intervention, as applied to Naples.

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand's duplicity]

As soon as King Ferdinand received the summons he prepared to leave Naples.
The populace became aroused, and angry crowds surrounded the palace.
Ferdinand was not allowed to leave Naples until he had once more sworn on
his honor to maintain the constitution borrowed from Spain. The King took
this oath as readily as he did the other. Then he journeyed northward. Half
way, at Leghorn, he sent letters to each of the five principal sovereigns
of Europe declaring his last declaration just as null and void as his
previous perjuries. His double-dealing was rather too much even for the
Holy Alliance. As Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, expressed himself
in private: "The conduct of this wretched sovereign, since the beginning of
his troubles, has been nothing but a tissue of weaknesses and lies. Happily
they will remain secret. No Cabinet will care to draw them from the
graveyard of its archives. Till then there is not much harm done."

[Sidenote: Benjamin West]

Benjamin West, the celebrated American-English artist, died at London in
his eighty-second year. At the opening of the Eighteenth Century, West was
in the forefront of the agitation that grew out of his contested succession
to Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Wearied with
these quarrels he visited Paris, where he studied the newly pillaged
masterpieces at the Louvre. He resigned from the Royal Academy, but was
almost unanimously re-elected. It was then that he painted his famous
"Christ Healing the Sick." His later works failed to attain the success of
his earlier historical paintings. When West died, his reputation had
declined appreciably, still a public funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was
accorded to him, a unique honor for an American.




1821


[Sidenote: Congress of Leibach]

[Sidenote: Naples under duress]

The Congress of Leibach met in January. It was attended by the
representatives of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, France, Sardinia and
Modena. When King Ferdinand of Naples arrived he was received by the
Emperors of Russia and Austria in person. It was predetermined that
absolute government in Naples should be restored by Austrian arms. The only
problem remaining to diplomacy was to put a respectable face on King
Ferdinand's dishonor. Capodistrias offered to make up some fictitious
correspondence in which Ferdinand was proudly to uphold the constitution
which he had sworn to support, and to yield protestingly to the powers only
after actual threats of war. The device was rejected as too transparent.
Moreover, the old king scarcely cared how his conduct appeared to his
subjects. A letter was sent in his name to his son, the acting-viceroy,
stating that the Powers were determined not to tolerate the order of things
sprung from revolution, and that certain securities for peace would have to
be given. The reference to securities meant the occupation of the country
by an Austrian army. The letter reached Naples on February 9. Three days
before the Austrian troops had received their orders to cross the Po.

[Sidenote: Battle of Rieti]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Piedmont]

The invading army of Austria was 50,000 strong. The Neapolitan soldiers
numbered a little more than 40,000, of whom 12,000 were in Sicily engaged
at Palermo in suppressing a counter revolution for home rule. At the first
encounter at Rieti in the Papal territory, the Neapolitans under General
Pepe were utterly routed. Their forces melted away, as they did when Murat
made his last stroke for Italy and Napoleon. Not a single strong point was
defended. On March 24, the Austrians entered Naples. Then came a moment of
danger. Rebellion broke out in Piedmont, and an attempt was made to unite
the troops of Piedmont with those of Lombardy. The King of Piedmont rather
than sign the Spanish Constitution abdicated his throne. On the refusal of
the King's brother, Charles Felix, to recognize a constitution, his cousin
Charles Albert of Carignano was made the regent and commander of the
troops. He advanced so cautiously that the conspirators at Milan dared not
follow suit with a revolution of their own. In the meanwhile the Czar had
ordered 100,000 Russians to march in the direction of the Adriatic. The
Austrian forces advanced westward from the Venetian strongholds, and,
brushing aside all resistance, entered Piedmont.

[Sidenote: End of Italian revolution]

[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]

The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all
over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band
of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty
acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their
lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to
distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the
author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of
Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]

[Sidenote: Mexican independence]

[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]

The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to
pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties
elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit
of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely
separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in
revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a
new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new
representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time,
issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which
proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several
rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign.
Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide
virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the
military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the
Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading
his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest
Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: War in Annam]

[Sidenote: Taouk-Wang]

At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed
itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor
Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his
sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the
encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang
was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence
against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English
merchants since 1800.

[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]

[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]

In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey.
The plan of the Philike Hetairia--_i.e._ Patriotic Association--was to
begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand
in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of
Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately
for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek
Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning
his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of
Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek
exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard
of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a
Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to
arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of
Russia was to be invoked.

[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]

In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in
Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in
March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias,
massacred the Turkish population of that town.

Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared
at Jassee with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling
upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as
to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to
support him." The Greek Hospodar of Jassee immediately surrendered the
government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of
2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]

[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]

[Sidenote: Georgakis]

Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Jassee. A month was lost before
he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of
Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay
proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of
Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from
the Russian service. The Russian consul at Jassee issued a manifesto that
Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of
Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the
rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded
the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the
revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The
Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco
plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured
the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the
Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks.
He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled
across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His
followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis
made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their
number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the
moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the
monastery of Skuleni.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]

[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]

At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population
of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a
war of extermination. They massacred all Turks, men, women and children.
Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan
population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of
Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt
vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by
his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All
Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke
came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned
away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled
before a hastily assembled synod and there degraded from his office as a
traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the
trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in
his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained
hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews
to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar
fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The
body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek ship and
carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the
Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried
by the Russian Government as a martyr.

[Sidenote: Russia aroused]

[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]

If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army
and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an
immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Ambassador at
Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him
in calling for warships to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford,
the British Ambassador, refused to accede to this proposition.
Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the
restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian
worship. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by
England's attitude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27,
the Russian Ambassador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his
moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich
prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich
persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate
disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of
Europe.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]

[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]

[Sidenote: Petrobei]

[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]

[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Navarino]

[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks
throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea,
the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to
Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in
kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly
to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the
Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border
provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter
districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain,
was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian
coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part,
proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the
islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The
real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the
Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti,
Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a
leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence.
First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of
Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared
like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was
Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born
soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some
breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early
insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the
surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed,
safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this
compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two
months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege
of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce,
the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend
protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant
soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days
of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their
women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he
rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs
touching nothing but human bodies.

[Sidenote: Philhellenism]

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe.
The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious
bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to
see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed
forth at Thermopylæ and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich
and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution
with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the
universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary
rulers of the German and Austrian states.

[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]

The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the
stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity.
His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his
best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own
phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek
songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were
the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with
the famous stanza:

  The mountains look on Marathon--
    And Marathon looks on the sea;
  And musing there an hour alone
    I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

  Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
    Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
  Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
    Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

[Sidenote: Death of Keats]

[Sidenote: Byron's satire]

[Sidenote: Keats's work]

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of
John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius.
Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph
composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was
generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his
anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the
"Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in
his "Don Juan":

  John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
    Just as he really promised something great
  If not intelligible, without Greek
    Contrived to talk about the gods of late
  Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
    Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
      'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
      Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

As a matter of fact Keats died of consumption. The ravages of this disease
in his case were accelerated by his feverish passion for poetry, his love
affair with Fanny Brawne, financial embarrassments, and only to a slight
extent by the inevitable disappointment arising from adverse criticisms.
What Byron did for modern Greece in England, Keats may be said to have done
for ancient Greece. The beautiful songs of Greece, embodied in "Endymion"
and "Hyperion," no less than the enthusiastic odes and sonnets in praise of
Hellenic works of art, opened the eyes of many of the contemporaries of
Keats to the enduring beauties of Greece. It was in his exquisite "Ode to
a Grecian Urn," that Keats expressed his poetical master passion for
beauty:

  Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  [Illustration: LORD BYRON
    Painted by Maurin]

[Sidenote: "Adonais"]

Shortly after Keats's death appeared one of the most beautiful of Shelley's
longer poems--"Adonais," written as an elegy on the death of Keats:

  I weep for Adonais--he is dead.
  Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
  Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
  And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
  To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
  And teach them thine own sorrow! Say. "With me
  Died Adonais; till the Future dares
  Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
  An echo and a light unto eternity."

[Sidenote: Wilhelm Meister]

[Sidenote: Rise of romantic literature]

[Sidenote: Victor Hugo]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Goethe's "Wilhelm
Meister's Wander Jahre," and of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's first long
poem, "Ruslan and Ludmilla." In this epic, written during Pushkin's early
banishment to Bessarabia, an old Russian theme of the heroic times of Kiev
was treated much after the manner of Byron's romantic examples. In France
the romantic period in literature was inaugurated by young Victor Hugo,
who, but the year before, had been crowned as "Maître des jeux floraux" for
a prize poem on Henri IV. Now Chateaubriand, in his journal "Le
Conservateur," welcomed him as "Un enfant sublime." By his own romantic
followers Hugo was hailed as chief of their poetic "Bataillon Sacré."
During the same year the poet, then barely nineteen, married Mademoiselle
Foucher, a girl of fifteen.

[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon]

The most important event of the year for Frenchmen was the death of
Napoleon Bonaparte at Longwood, in St. Helena. He died on May 5, after
taking the holy sacrament. He left a last will with several codicils. In it
Napoleon made the following declarations:

[Sidenote: Napoleon's will]

"I die in the Apostolical and Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was
born more than fifty years ago. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on
the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved
so well. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria
Louisa. I retain for her, to the last moment, the most tender sentiments. I
beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet
environ his infancy. I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born
a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the
hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to
fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my
motto--_Everything for the French people_. I die prematurely, assassinated
by the English oligarchy and its tool. The English nation will not be slow
in avenging me. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France,
when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason
of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. I forgive them--may the
posterity of France forgive them as I do! I pardon Louis for the libel he
published in 1820; it is replete with false assertions and falsified
documents. I disavow the 'Manuscript of St. Helena,' and other works, under
the title of 'Maxims, Sayings,' etc., which persons have been pleased to
publish for the last six years. Such are not the rules which have guided my
life. I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried because that step
was essential to the safety, interest and honor of the French people, when
the Comte d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixty assassins
at Paris. Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way."

[Sidenote: The bequests]

To his son and immediate relatives, Napoleon left most of his personal
effects. Among his relatives and favorite followers he distributed a sum of
6,000,000 francs, left in the hands of his bankers at the time of his
flight from Paris; likewise the proceeds of a possible sale of his
confiscated crown jewels. Count Lavalette and the children of Labédoyère
were remembered with bequests of 100,000 and 50,000 francs, respectively.
The final clauses were:

"To be distributed among such proscribed persons as wander in foreign
countries, whether they be French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or
inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my
executors, one hundred thousand francs. To be distributed among those who
suffered amputation, or were severely wounded at Ligny or Waterloo, who may
be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors. The Guards
shall be paid double, those of the Island of Elba quadruple, two hundred
thousand francs."

[Sidenote: Cantillon remembered]

A curious bequest was that of 10,000 francs to Cantillon, a French
subaltern, who was tried and acquitted for the attempted assassination of
the Duke of Wellington in Paris on February 11, 1818. Napoleon thus
explained this bequest:

[Sidenote: Last fling at Wellington]

"Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter
had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who
proposed this outrage, attempted to justify it by pleading the interest of
Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would
have pleaded the same excuse, and been justified by the same motive--the
interest of France--to get rid of this general, who, moreover, by violating
the capitulation of Paris, had rendered himself responsible for the blood
of the martyrs Ney, Labédoyère, etc., and for the crime of having pillaged
the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties."

This last legacy was not paid until 1855, when Napoleon III. discharged it.

[Sidenote: Fall of Richelieu's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Villèle Prime Minister]

Late in the year the Ministry of Duc de Richelieu succumbed to the
machinations of Comte d'Artois. Before his resignation, Richelieu
complained to the Count, reminding him of his promises of support at the
first formation of the Cabinet. "The fact is, my dear Duke," replied
Monsieur, "if you allow me to say so, you have taken my words too
literally. And then the circumstances at that time were so different." The
Prime Minister rose abruptly and sought out the King. "Monsieur has broken
his word of honor," he said, "he has broken his word as a gentleman." "What
would you have me do?" said Louis XVIII. "He conspired against Louis XVI.;
he conspires against me; he will conspire against himself." The explosion
of a barrel of gunpowder in the royal palace raised apprehensions of
another painful scene, like that preceding the fall of the Ministry of
Decazes. Richelieu resigned, and Villèle took his place. Chateaubriand was
sent to London as Ambassador. While Parliamentary government in France
labored thus under the onslaughts of the Royalist plotters in the Chambers,
the so-called Era of Good Feeling in America was continued under the second
administration of President Monroe.

[Sidenote: Inauguration of Monroe]

[Sidenote: Missouri admitted to Statehood]

The 4th of March fell on a Sunday, and Monroe was the first President to be
inaugurated on the 5th. Missouri was admitted conditionally, and, on August
10, the President proclaimed its admission as the twenty-fourth State amid
a tempest of political excitement. The contest over the slavery question
was now supposed to be forever settled. In the debates of 1821, the House
stood firmly against Missouri's admission as a slave State, and the Senate
was equally determined that the colored citizens of other States should be
denied citizenship in Missouri if the people so desired. At last it came to
a conference committee. It was decided that the State should be admitted,
as soon as its Legislature would agree that the section of the Constitution
in question should not be construed as authorizing a law excluding any
citizens of other States from the immunities and privileges to which they
were entitled under the Constitution. The Legislature of Missouri gave this
pledge, but it remained open whether free negroes and mulattoes were
citizens in other States, and whether they were to be made citizens in
Missouri. In the admission of Missouri there was for the first time an
unmixed issue on the question of a free government or a slave-holding
government in the United States. Doubtful dealings on the part of the
Senators from Indiana and Illinois were followed by an attempt to make
these States both slave-holding States, in face of the binding law of the
Ordinance of 1787. A popular movement led by Governor Edward Coles of
Illinois defeated this project.

[Sidenote: Liberia]

[Sidenote: Junius Brutus Booth]

On May 5, the territory of Liberia was secured on the west coast of Africa,
and a colony was founded for the repatriation of negro slaves, with
Monrovia for a capital. During this same period Junius Brutus Booth made
his first appearance in America, as Richard III., at Richmond. Late in the
year the remains of André, the British officer who was shot as a spy during
the American Revolution, were placed on a British ship for interment in
Westminster Abbey.




1822


[Sidenote: Greek independence declared]

[Sidenote: Sack of Chios]

[Sidenote: Kanaris' exploit]

Greek independence was declared on January 27. After the fall of Ali Pasha
in February, the Sultan was able to turn his undivided attention to the
Greek revolt. In March, a body of Samian revolutionists landed in Chios and
incited the islanders to rise against the Turk. They laid siege to the
citadel held by a Turkish garrison. Had the fleet of the Hydriotes helped
them, they might have prevailed. As it was they rendered themselves a prey
to the Turkish troops on the mainland. An army of nearly 10,000 Turks
landed in Chios, and relieved the besieged garrison. Then the fanatical
Moslems were let loose on the gentle inhabitants of the little island.
Thousands were put to the sword. The slave markets of Northern Africa were
glutted with Chian women and children. Within a month the once lovely
island was a ruined waste. All Greece and Europe was filled with horror.
Maurokordatos, now at the head of Greek affairs, was bitterly blamed for
not sending over a fleet to save Chios. One single Greek took it into his
hands to avenge his countrymen. The Turks were celebrating their sacred
month of Ramazan. On the night of June 18, the festival of Biram, the
Turkish fleet, under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored
lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara,
drove a fire-ship into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to
the admiral's flagship he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes.
Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his ship, he dropped into
his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment
the big Turkish man-of-war was afire. The powder magazine blew up and the
lifeboats went up in flames. The burning rigging fell down upon the doomed
crew, and the admiral was struck down on his poop-deck. The ship was burned
to the water's edge. The Turkish fleet scattered before the shower of
blazing sparks, and was only brought together under the guns of the
Dardanelles. This exploit made Kanaris the hero of Greece. Within the same
year he repeated the feat.

[Sidenote: Morea reinvaded]

[Sidenote: End of Philhellene corps]

[Sidenote: Defence of Argos]

[Sidenote: Turks demoralized]

The Sultan had thrown his whole land force into the Greek mainland.
Khurshid, after his defeat of Ali Pasha, marched to Larissa, in Thessaly.
Thence two armies, 50,000 strong, under Bramali and Homer Brionis converged
upon the Morea. In the face of so formidable an invasion, Maurokordatos
took the field himself. He mismanaged things badly. At Arta he sacrificed
his choicest regiment, the famous corps of Philhellenes, composed of
foreign officers and commanded by men who had won distinction in Napoleon's
campaigns. They were cut down almost to a man. Maurokordatos fell back to
Missolonghi. In the meanwhile Dramalis with 25,000 foot and 6,000 horse
penetrated into the Morea. The Greek Government at Argos dispersed. All
would have been lost for the Greeks had Dramalis not neglected to cover the
mountain passes behind him. While he marched on to Nauplia, the Greek
mountaineers rose behind him. Demetrios Ypsilanti, the acting-president of
Greece, with a few hundred followers threw himself into Argos. There he
held the Acropolis against the Turkish rearguard. Kolokotrones, calling out
the last men from Tripolitza, relieved Ypsilanti at Argos. The mountain
passage was seized. Dramalis had to give up his conquest of the Morea, and
fight his way back to the Isthmus of Corinth. Without supplies and harassed
by hostile peasant forces the Turkish army became badly demoralized.
Thousands were lost on the way. Dramalis himself died from over-exposure.
The remainder of his army melted away at Corinth under the combined effects
of sickness and drought.

[Sidenote: Capodistrias resigns]

A decisive turn in the Greek war for independence was reached. Europe
realized that the revolt had grown to the proportions of a national war.
Popular sympathy in Russia became more clamorous. Capodistrias, the Russian
Prime Minister, rightly measured the force of this long pent-up feeling.
Unable to move the Czar, who still floundered in the toils of the Holy
Alliance, Capodistrias withdrew from public affairs and retired to Geneva.

[Sidenote: Suicide of Castlereagh]

[Sidenote: Canning]

[Sidenote: Iturbide Emperor of Mexico]

[Sidenote: Battle of Pichincha]

[Sidenote: San Martin retires]

[Sidenote: Battle of Junin]

[Sidenote: Ayacucho]

[Sidenote: Independence of Brazil]

In England, the suicide of Castlereagh brought Canning once more into
prominence. Robert Peel was made Home Secretary. Canning's long retirement
after the fiasco of his American policy, and his breach with Castlereagh,
had served to chasten this statesman. As leader of the opposition, he had
learned to reckon with the forces of popular feeling. When he returned to
power in 1822, he was no longer an ultra-conservative, but a liberal. He
now made no disguise of his sympathies with the cause of Greece, and with
the struggle for independence in South and Central America. There the
course of freedom had gathered so much momentum that it was plain to all
that Spain could never prevail without help from others. In Mexico, upon
the refusal of Ferdinand VII. to accept the separate crown of Mexico,
General Iturbide proclaimed himself emperor. On May 19, he assumed the
dignity. As Augustine I., he was crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico in
July. At the same time San Martin and Bolivar met at Guayaquil to dispose
of the destinies of South America. San Martin had just succeeded in
liberating Peru, and had made his triumphal entry into Lima. Bolivar had
brought aid to Ecuador, and established independence there. José de Sucre,
whom Bolivar called the "soul of his army," defeated the Spaniards in the
famous battle of Pichincha, fought at a height of 10,200 feet above the
sea. When Bolivar and San Martin met on July 25, San Martin announced his
determination to give a free field to Bolivar. The two men parted at a
great public love-feast at which San Martin toasted Bolivar as the
"liberator of Colombia." In his farewell address he said: "The presence of
a fortunate general in the country which he has conquered is detrimental to
the state. I have won the independence of Peru, and I now cease to be a
public man." Speaking privately of Bolivar, he said: "He is the most
extraordinary character of South America; one to whom difficulties but add
strength." With his daughter Mercedes, San Martin retired to Europe, to
dwell there in obscurity and poverty. Bolivar, with Generals Sucre, Miller
and Cordova, assembled a great liberating army at Juarez. After a
preliminary victory at Junin, Bolivar returned to Lima to assume the reigns
of government, while his generals pushed on against the forces of the
Spanish viceroy. Late in the year a decisive battle was fought at Ayacucho.
The revolutionists charged down the mountain ridges upon the Spaniards in
the plain, and utterly routed them. The viceroy himself was wounded, with
700 of his men, while 1,400 Spaniards were killed outright. In these
casualties the unusual disparity between killed and wounded reveals the
unsparing ferocity of the fight. In Brazil a peaceful revolution was
effected in September. After the return of Juan VI. to Portugal his son Dom
Pedro reigned as regent. On September 7, he yielded to the demands of his
American subjects, and proclaimed the independence of Brazil. He was
declared constitutional emperor of Brazil on October 12, and was crowned as
such shortly afterward at Rio Janeiro.

[Sidenote: Discontent in Spain]

[Sidenote: Foreign aid invoked]

The South American colonies had now in great part secured independence.
Spain was thereby robbed of her best resources. As financial distress
became more widespread, the spirit of discontent rose. The King's plottings
with the extreme Royalists of France lost him the confidence of his
subjects. In the south the triumphant party of the so-called Exaltados
refused obedience to the central administration. The municipal governments
of Cadiz, Cartagena and Seville took the tone of independent republics. In
the north, the Serviles, instigated by French agitators and their money,
broke into open rebellion. After the adjournment of the Cortes, Ferdinand
attempted to make a stroke for himself. The Royal Guards were ordered to
march from Aranjuez to Madrid to place themselves under the King's personal
command. The people took alarm, and several regiments of disaffected
soldiers were induced to head off the guards. A fight ensued in the streets
of Madrid. The guards were scattered. The King found himself a prisoner in
his own palace. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that his crown was in peril. The
Bourbon sympathizers in the north at once seized the town of Seo d'Urgel,
and set up a provisional government. Civil war spread over Spain.
Napoleon's final prophecy that Bourbon rule would end in the ruin of Spain,
and the loss of all the best colonies was near fulfilment. It was then that
the Continental powers of Europe proposed to interfere on behalf of the
Spanish monarchy. The death of old Minister Hardenberg in Berlin did not
loosen Metternich's hold on Prussia. Emperor Alexander hoped to conciliate
his army, burning to fall upon the Turk, by treating them to a light
campaign in Spain. In France, the Spanish war party likewise had the upper
hand.

[Sidenote: Monroe Doctrine]

Nothing could save Spain; but Spanish South and Central America presented
another issue. The new republics had developed a thriving trade with Great
Britain and the United States of America, which made it impossible for
these countries to ignore their flags. In America, Henry Clay on the floor
of Congress, had already urged the recognition of South American
independence. In his annual message to Congress in 1822 President Monroe
took up the question. On behalf of the United States he declared that, the
American continents were henceforth not to be considered a subject for
further colonization by any European power. "In the war between Spain and
her colonies," said President Monroe, "the United States will continue to
observe the strictest neutrality.... With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not
interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence
and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great considerations
and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition
for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner
their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

[Sidenote: Jefferson's indorsement]

[Sidenote: Canning's part]

[Sidenote: Fyffe's comment]

It was the famous Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine that in its substance, if not
in words, had already served as the guiding star of Thomas Jefferson's and
Madison's foreign policy. It is related that President Monroe, applying to
Thomas Jefferson for his opinion on the matter, was surprised at the
positive nature of the reply which he received. "Our first and fundamental
maxim," said Jefferson, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the
broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with
cis-Atlantic affairs." At the same time that America thus flung down her
gauntlet to Europe, Canning, on behalf of the British Ministry, proposed to
inform the allied Cabinets of England's intention to accredit envoys to the
South American republics. Assured of the support of the United States, and
of Great Britain as well, South America could feel free to work out her own
destiny. This was the master-stroke of Canning's career. When brought to
bay afterward in Parliament, he could proudly boast: "I called the New
World into being, in order to redress the balance of the Old." To Americans
Canning's boast has ever seemed to rest on a flimsy foundation. As Fyffe,
the English historian of modern Europe, has justly said, "The boast, famous
in our Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part
really played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into
existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had
assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence
had been won, he threw over it the ægis of Great Britain, declaring that no
other European power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been able
to maintain."

[Sidenote: Death of Shelley]

At the time that Canning made British liberalism respected abroad, literary
England suffered another irreparable loss by the death of Percy Bysshe
Shelley. The last few weeks had been spent by Shelley in Italy in the
company of Trelawney, Williams and Lord Byron. Before this Maurokordatos,
now battling in Greece, had been their constant companion. In June Leigh
Hunt arrived. Shelley and Williams set out in a boat to meet him at
Leghorn. The long parted friends met there. On July 8, Shelley and Williams
set sail for the return voyage to Lerici. Their boat was last seen ten
miles out at sea off Reggio. Then the haze of a summer storm hid it from
view. Ten days later Shelley's body was washed ashore near Reggio. It was
identified by a volume of Sophocles and of Keats's poems found on his
person. In the presence of Byron, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt, Shelley's
remains were cremated on the shore. His ashes were buried in the same
burial ground with Keats, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome.

[Sidenote: Lyric quality of his work]

[Sidenote: Shelley's career]

[Sidenote: Shelley's threnody]

Shelley's poetry belongs primarily to the Revolutionary epoch in modern
history. Though he wrote several long narrative poems and one great
tragedy, he was above all a lyric poet--according to some the greatest
lyric poet of England. His life, like his poetry, was almost untrammelled
by convention. Both gave great offence to the stricter elements of English
society. In some respects Shelley was peculiarly unfortunate. At the age of
eighteen, after his expulsion from Oxford University, he married Harriet
Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and then found himself unable to support
her. Later he abandoned her and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
Within a year his first wife committed suicide, and, three weeks later,
Shelley married Mary Godwin. The tragedy stirred up much feeling among his
friends. Among others the poet-laureate, Southey, remonstrated with
Shelley. Shelley replied: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now
regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you
expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence--that
you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended."
Next came Shelley's trouble with the Chancery. Lord-Chancellor Elden
refused to give to Shelley the custody of his own children on the ground
that Shelley's professed opinions and conduct were such as the law
pronounced immoral. Shelley replied with his famous poetical curse "To the
Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective
it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems
his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and
atheism. When he wrote a satirical drama on so delicate a subject as the
unhappy affairs of Queen Caroline, even his publisher turned against him.
Yet the charm and beauty of Shelley's purely lyric pieces was such that he
must ever stand as one of the foremost poets of England. Either his
"Adonais" or the beautiful "Ode to the West Wind," would alone have
perpetuated his name in English letters. One of Shelley's most exquisite
pieces, written shortly before his death, has come to stand as the poet's
own threnody:

  "When the lamp is shattered
    The light in the dust lies dead--
  When the cloud is scattered
    The rainbow's glory is shed.
  When the lute is broken,
    Sweet tones are remembered not;
  When the lips have spoken,
    Loved accents are soon forgot.

  As music and splendor
    Survive not the lamp and the lute,
  The heart's echoes render
    No song when the spirit is mute,
  No song but sad dirges,
    Like the wind through a ruined cell,
  Or the mournful surges
    That ring the dead seaman's knell."

[Sidenote: Revival of letters]

[Sidenote: Golden age of music]

During this same year Thomas de Quincey published his "Confessions of an
Opium Eater," a masterpiece of balanced prose. In other parts of the world,
likewise, it was a golden period for literature. In France, Victor Hugo
published his "Odes et Poésies Diverses," a collection of early poems which
contained some of his most charming pieces. The rising Swedish poet,
Tegnér, brought out his "Children of the Last Supper." In Germany, Heinrich
Heine, then still a student at Bonn, issued his earliest verses. For
Germany this was no less a golden age of music. Beethoven, though quite
deaf, was still the greatest of living composers. His great Choral
Symphony, the ninth in D minor, was produced during this year, as was his
Solemn Mass in D major. As a virtuoso he was rivalled by Hummel, who at
this time gave to the world his famous Septet, accepted by himself as his
masterwork. Two other German composers so distinguished themselves that
they were invited to London to conduct the Philharmonic accompaniments.
They were Carl Maria von Weber, who had just brought out his brilliant
opera, "Der Freischütz," and Ludwig Spohr, who performed in London his new
Symphony in D minor. Of other composers there were Franz Schubert, whose
melodious songs and symphonies won him the recognition of the Esterhazys
and of Beethoven. Among those whose career was but beginning were Jacob
Meyerbeer, a fellow pupil with Weber under Abbé Vogler at Vienna, and Felix
Mendelssohn, the precocious pupil of the famous pianist Moscheles.

[Sidenote: Death of Herschel]

Sir Frederick William Herschel, the greatest modern astronomer, died at
Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician
of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he
deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe,
although a mere boy, and fled to England, where he taught music and
achieved success as a violinist and organist. His studies in sound and
harmony led him to take up optics; and from optics to astronomy the step
was short. Dissatisfied with the crude instruments of his time, he made his
own telescopes; for it was his ambition to be not a mere star-gazer, but an
earnest student of the heavens. By day, he and his brother and sister
ground specula; by night he observed the heavens. His astronomical work
includes a careful study of variable stars; an attempt to explain the
relation of sun-spots to terrestrial phenomenæ; the determination that the
periods of rotation of various satellites, like the rotation of our own
moon, are equal to the times of their revolutions about their primaries;
and the discovery of the planet Uranus and two of its satellites, and of
the sixth and seventh satellites of Saturn. His greatest work was his study
of binary stars and the demonstration of his belief that the law of
gravitation is universal in its application. His labors were invariably
systematic, and were characterized by dogged, Teutonic perseverance. His
discoveries were never purely accidental, but were made in accordance with
a well-conceived plan.

[Sidenote: Death of Canova]

Late in the autumn news came from Venice that Canova, the celebrated
sculptor, had died. Antonio Canova was born in 1757 at Passaguo near
Treviso. He was first an apprentice to a statuary in Bassano, from whom he
went to the Academy of Venice, where he had a brilliant career. In 1779 he
was sent by the Senate of Venice to Rome, and there produced his Theseus
and the Slain Minotaur. In 1783, Canova undertook the execution of the tomb
of Pope Clement XIV., a work similar to the tomb of Pope Clement XIII. His
fame rapidly increased. He established a school for the benefit of young
Venetians, and among other works produced the well-known Hebe and the
colossal Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea. In 1797, Canova finished the
model of the celebrated tomb of the Archduchess Christina of Austria.
Napoleon called the rising sculptor to France, and he there executed the
famous nude portrait of Napoleon now preserved in Milan. After his return
to Italy he fashioned his Perseus with the Head of Medusa at Rome. When the
Belvidere Apollo was carried off to France, this piece of statuary was
thought not unworthy of the classic Apollo's place and pedestal in the
Vatican. Among the later works of Canova are the colossal group of Theseus
Killing the Minotaur, a Paris, and a Hector. After Napoleon's second fall
in 1815, Canova was commissioned by the Pope to demand the restoration of
the works of art carried from Rome. He went to Paris and succeeded in his
mission. At his return to Rome in 1816, the Pope created him Marquis of
Orchia, with a pension of 3,000 scudi, and his name was entered into the
Golden Book at the Capitol. His closing years were spent in Venice. There
he died October 13, 1822.

[Sidenote: Congress of Verona]

[Sidenote: England slighted]

Upon Canning's accession to the Ministry in England, Wellington was
appointed representative of Great Britain at the Congress of Powers
convened at Vienna. The unsettled state of public opinion kept Wellington
in England and later at Paris. He did not join the Congress until after its
adjournment to Verona, to dispose of purely Italian affairs. Thus it
happened that the supplementary meetings at Verona became the real European
Congress of 1822. With the Neapolitan problem practically settled, and the
Greek war with Turkey at a standstill, the situation in Spain was the most
vital issue. The Czar of Russia and Metternich were determined not to
tolerate the Constitution of the Spanish liberals. Alexander hoped to make
good Russia's non-intervention in Greece by marching a victorious army into
Spain. The extreme Royalists of France, on the other hand, were so bent on
accomplishing this task themselves that they were resolved not to permit
any Russian troops to pass through France. With the spectre of a general
European war thus looming on the horizon, England endeavored to hold the
balance for peace. Acting under the instructions of Canning, Wellington
declared that England would rather set herself against the great alliance
than consent to joint intervention in Spain. In his despatches to Canning,
Wellington expressed his belief that this would result in a decision to
leave the Spaniards to themselves. The only result was that England was
left out of the affair altogether, as she had been in the case of Naples.
It was partly owing to this international slight that Canning put his foot
down so firmly in behalf of Portugal and the South American colonies.

[Sidenote: French attitude toward Spain]

At the Congress of Verona, Metternich once more won the day. With this
backing, the French envoys, Montmorency and Chateaubriand, in defiance of
their home instructions, committed France to war with Spain. An agreement
was reached that, in default of radical changes in the Spanish
Constitution, France and her allies would resort to intervention. On the
part of England, Wellington rejected this proposal, but all the other
powers consented. When the French Ambassadors returned to France, their
Prime Minister, Villèle, vented his dissatisfaction by repudiating his
envoys. He addressed himself to the foreign Ambassadors at Paris with a
request that the allies' demands on Spain be postponed. Montmorency at once
resigned. No notice was taken of Villèle's request except by England. The
King himself went over to the war party and appointed Chateaubriand his
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Great Britain's tentative offer of mediation
was summarily rejected by France. To Villèle, King Louis XVIII. thus
explained his attitude: "Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees; I shall not
allow them to be raised again. He placed my house on the throne of Spain; I
shall not allow it to fall."




1823


[Sidenote: French invasion of Spain]

The Spanish Government was resolved to maintain the national independence
of Spain. It would make no concession. The French Ambassador in Madrid was
recalled. At the opening of the French Chambers in January, the King
himself announced his decision: "I have ordered the recall of my Minister.
One hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, whom I
fondly call my son, are ready to march with a prayer to the God of St.
Louis that they may preserve the throne of Spain to the grandson of Henri
IV. They shall save that fair kingdom from ruin and reconcile it to
Europe." By the middle of March, the Duke of Angoulême and his staff left
Paris. On April 7, the French vanguard crossed the Bidassoa, and the Duke
entered Irun, welcomed by Spanish royalists. About the same time the Cortes
and Constitutional Ministry left Madrid, and compelled King Ferdinand VII.
to accompany them to Seville. The forces of the Spanish Government fell
back without striking a blow. Bands of freebooters calling themselves
royalists went pillaging throughout the northern provinces. The commandant
of Madrid felt constrained to beg the French to hasten their advance lest
the city fall a prey to the freebooters. Already the looting of the suburbs
had begun, when the French entered the Spanish capital on the 24th of May.
A regency was appointed under the Duke of Infantado. The Continental powers
sent accredited representatives to Madrid. Meanwhile the Cortes withdrew to
Cadiz. King Ferdinand refused to accompany them; so they suspended his
powers and appointed a regency over his head. The French prepared to lay
siege to Cadiz.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: Independence of Central America]

[Sidenote: The South American struggle]

Civil war broke out in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, Dom Miguel,
the second son of the absent king, excited a counter revolution. This state
of affairs in the Peninsula gave a finishing stroke to the royal cause in
America. In Central America, the revolutionists of Costa Rica and
Guatemala, who had made common cause with Mexico, proclaimed their
independence. In Mexico, Santa Anna proclaimed the republic at Vera Cruz.
Emperor Iturbide, who felt his throne tottering beneath him, retired, and
was banished from Mexico with an annuity. His sympathizers in Costa Rica
were overthrown in a battle at Ochomoco. On the first day of July, Costa
Rica was united with its neighboring States in the federation of Central
America. Nor had Peru been idle. Two royalist armies under Santa Cruz had
entered the upper provinces. During the summer months they overran the
country between La Paz and Oruro. But in early autumn they were forced back
by the revolutionists under Bolivar, who entered Lima on September 1, and
had himself proclaimed dictator of Peru. In Brazil, during this interval,
the Constitutional Assembly had been convoked in accordance with Dom
Pedro's promise. Under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers the
delegates insisted on the most liberal of constitutions. Dom Pedro's first
attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the Assembly. Finally
he dissolved the contentious assembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to
France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed.
Rebellion broke out in Cisplatina.

[Sidenote: Warring factions in Spain]

[Sidenote: Siege of Cadiz]

In Spain, the two opposing regencies vied with each other in retaliatory
measures. Odious persecutions were instituted on both sides. In vain the
Duke of Angoulême tried to restrain the reprisals of the Spanish royalists.
In August he appeared before Cadiz. He called upon King Ferdinand to
publish an amnesty and restore the medieval Cortes. But the Spanish
Ministry, in the King's name, sent a defiant answer. Cadiz was thereupon
besieged. On August 30, the French stormed the fort of the Trocadero. Three
weeks later the city was bombarded. For the Spanish liberals, the cause had
become hopeless. The French refused all terms but the absolute liberation
of the King. On Ferdinand's assurance that he bore no grudge against his
captors, the liberals agreed to release him. At last, on the 30th of
September, Ferdinand signed a proclamation of absolute and universal
amnesty. Next day he was taken across the bay to the French headquarters.
The Cortes dissolved.

[Sidenote: Release of Ferdinand VII.]

The Duke of Angoulême received King Ferdinand with misgivings. Already he
had written to France: "What most worries the liberals is the question of
guarantees. They know that the King's word is utterly worthless, and that
in spite of his promises he may very well hang every one of them."
Angoulême's first interview confirmed his impression. In reply to his
demand for a general pardon, Ferdinand pointed to the ragged mob shouting
in front of his windows, and said: "You hear the will of the people."
Angoulême wrote to Villèle: "This country is about to fall back into
absolutism. I have conscientiously done my part, and shall only express my
settled conviction that every foolish act that can be done will be done."

[Sidenote: Royalist reprisals]

[Sidenote: Riego executed]

Within twelve hours Ferdinand annulled all acts of the Constitutional
Government during the preceding three years. By approving an act of the
regency of Madrid, which declared all those who had taken part in the
removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death
warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips.
Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid
and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the
government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's
confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and
ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and
heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified
his acts with a royal pronunciamiento containing this characteristic
passage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the
sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme
Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return
to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I
offer to God holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or
forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were
shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning
pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angoulême was indignant and would have nothing more to do with
the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your
Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some assurance for the
future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has
recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but
arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread
everywhere." Angoulême returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the
cause for which he had drawn his sword.

[Sidenote: The French elections]

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed
with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to
be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The
voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the
Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in
Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the
Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the assistance granted
them by France--an assistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people.
The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sought
their support within the nation." For this alleged defence of regicide
Manuel was excluded from the Chambers. On his refusal to give up his
constitutional rights, he was forcibly ejected by the National Guards. "It
is an insult to the National Guard," exclaimed the venerable Lafayette. In
spite of the momentary triumph of the Royalists, Guizot's final verdict on
French intervention in Spain expresses the true attitude of France:

[Sidenote: Guizot's verdict]

"The war was not popular in France; in fact, it was unjust, because
unnecessary. The Spanish revolution, in spite of its excesses, exposed
France and the Restoration to no serious risk; and the intervention was an
attack upon the principle of the legitimate independence of States. It
really produced neither to Spain nor France any good result. It restored
Spain to the incurable and incapable despotism of Ferdinand VII., without
putting a stop to the revolutions; it substituted the ferocities of the
absolutist populace for that of the anarchical populace. Instead of
confirming the influence of France beyond the Pyrenees, it threw the King
of Spain into the arms of the absolutist powers, and delivered up the
Spanish Liberals to the protection of England."

During this year in France occurred the deaths of Dumouriez, the famous
general of the Revolution, and of Marshal Davoust, the hero of Eckmühl,
Auerstädt, and a score of other victories won during the Napoleonic
campaigns. At Rome, Pope Pius VII., the one time prisoner of Napoleon, died
in old age, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XII.

[Sidenote: Death of Jenner]

[Sidenote: Vaccination]

Dr. Edward J. Jenner, the great English surgeon and originator of
vaccination, died in the same year at London. Jenner was led to his great
discovery by the remark of an old peasant woman: "I can't catch smallpox,
for I have had cowpox." In 1796, Jenner performed the first vaccination on
a boy patient, James Phipps, whom he subsequently endowed with a house and
grounds. The scientific results of this experiment and those that followed
were embodied by Jenner in his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the
variolæ vaccinæ," published on the eve of the Nineteenth Century. Unlike so
many other medical innovations, Jenner's epoch-making cure for the dread
disease of smallpox won him almost instant general renown. Parliament, in
1802, voted him a national reward of £10,000, and a few years later added
another gift of £20,000. After his death a public monument was erected to
Jenner's memory on Trafalgar Square.

[Sidenote: Amherst Governor in India]

In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governorship at Calcutta and was
succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch
influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were
firmly settled in Singapore.

[Sidenote: American letters]

In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the
first boat passed through the new Erie Canal from Rochester to New York. In
Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of
streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The
earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first
book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quantities
was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of
Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his
famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under
Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies.
On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was
once more elected Speaker of the House.




1824


[Sidenote: American high tariff]

[Sidenote: Southern ascendency waning]

In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American
Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22,
Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, passed
Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent.
Before the passage of the bill England had been importing goods more
cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could
now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free
trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was
prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by
taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment,
advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States,
with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New
England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824
the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the
two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between
protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features.
Political leadership in the United States was passing from the South to the
North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pushing to the front.
Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing
rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in
the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio;
manufacturing industries multiplied. From a sparsely inhabited country in
1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.

[Sidenote: American letters]

American letters were enriched in this year by Irving's "Tales of a
Traveller," Paulding's "John Bull," Bancroft's "Politics in Ancient
Greece," and Verplanck's "Revealed Religion."

[Sidenote: South American republics recognized]

During the first session of Congress a special message from President
Monroe recommended the establishment of intercourse with the new
independent States of South America--Venezuela, New Granada, Buenos Ayres,
Chile and Peru. Congress voted for recognition by an overwhelming majority,
and the President signed the bill. The United States was the first among
the civilized powers to welcome the new republics.

The struggle for independence in South America was furthered more than ever
by the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the Peninsula. In Spain the
return of absolute rule was still followed by a reign of terror. The people
there relapsed into medieval barbarism.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Constitution triumphant]

[Sidenote: Growth of republican sentiment]

[Sidenote: Iturbide shot]

[Sidenote: Santa Anna in power]

In Portugal, the revolution stirred up by Dom Miguel ended with the
expulsion of that prince from Lisbon. His father, Dom Pedro, in Brazil,
thought it wise to recognize the liberal constitution imposed upon him by
his people. In the other Latin-American countries the people rebelled
against one-man rule. In Chile, General O'Higgins was forced to resign his
dictatorship and a provisional Triumvirate assumed the government. At Lima,
Bolivar found his powers curtailed. Mariano Prado was elected president.
The feeling against imperialism was so strong in Central America that all
the smaller States joined in confederation to ward off this danger
threatening them from Mexico. The Junta of San Salvador went so far as to
pass a resolution favoring annexation by the United States of North America
in case the Mexican imperialists crossed its borders. Eventually San
Salvador, together with Nicaragua and Costa Rica, joined the Central
American Union. The first Congress in Costa Rica elected Juan Mora
president. In Mexico, in the meantime, a strong provisional government was
established by Santa Anna. Ex-Emperor Iturbide, who in defiance of his
exile returned to Mexico, was arrested as he landed at Sota la Marina in
July. He was taken to the capital, tried, condemned, and shot. As he faced
death he said: "Mexicans, I die because I came to help you. I die gladly,
because I die among you. I die not as a traitor, but with honor." With
Iturbide out of the way, Santa Anna established a government strong enough
to accomplish the annexation of California. Henceforth there was no danger
of a return to Spanish rule. In England, Canning followed Monroe with an
absolute recognition of the independent governments in America.

[Sidenote: Death of Byron]

[Sidenote: Rhegas' hymn]

By this time public opinion in England had been aroused in behalf of the
Greeks still struggling for their independence from the yoke of Turkey. A
powerful impetus was given to this feeling by the tragic death of Lord
Byron in Greece. A few months before the poet had sailed from Genoa for
Greece to take active part in the war for freedom. He died of fever at
Missolonghi on April 19, at the age of thirty-six. One of his last poems
was a spirited translation of Rhegas' famous Greek national hymn:

  Sons of the Greeks, arise!
    The glorious hour shines forth,
  And, worthy of such ties,
    Display who gave us worth!

  Sons of Greeks! let us go
    In arms against the foe,
  Till their hated blood shall flow
    In a river past our feet.

  Then manfully despise
    The Turkish tyrant's yoke,
  Let your country see you rise,
    Till all her chains are broke.

  Brave shades of chiefs and sages,
    Behold the coming strife!
  Greeks of past ages,
    Oh, start again to life!

  At the sound of my trumpet,
    Break your sleep, join with me!
  And the seven-hill'd city seek,
    Fight, and win, till we are free!

[Sidenote: Goethe on Byron]

[Sidenote: Mazzini's verdict]

[Sidenote: Shelley's estimate]

[Sidenote: Symonds' judgment]

[Sidenote: Byron's best works]

Byron's death served the Greek cause better perhaps than all he could have
achieved had his life been prolonged. It caused a greater stir throughout
Continental Europe than it did in England. In truth Byron's poetry was
more appreciated by the world at large than by his countrymen--a literary
anomaly that has prevailed even to the end of the Nineteenth Century.
Goethe said of Byron after his death: "The English may think of Byron as
they please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be
compared with him. He is different from all the others, and for the most
part greater." Mazzini, many years later, concluded his famous essay on
Byron and Goethe with this vindication of the English poet's claim: "The
day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron.
England too, will, I hope, one day remember the mission--so entirely
English, yet hitherto overlooked by her--which Byron fulfilled on the
Continent; the European cast given by him to English literature, and the
appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened among us." Shelley,
who knew Byron intimately, has given perhaps the best expression to the
English view of him. He said of him in 1822: "The coarse music which he
produced touched a chord to which a million hearts responded.... Space
wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of
vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a
decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, Byron, like Shelley,
appeared as a monster of impious wickedness. Unlike Shelley, he attained
thereby the vogue of the forbidden. His earliest poems achieved what the
French call a _succès de scandal_. His satire, "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers," brought to the youthful poet a notoriety amounting to fame.
After the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," in 1812,
according to his own phrase, he awoke to find himself famous, and became a
spoiled child of society. Trelawney has recorded that Byron was what London
in the days of the Prince Regent made him. One of Byron's ablest critics,
Symonds, has put this even more strongly: "His judgment of the world was
prematurely warped, while his naturally earnest feelings were overlaid with
affectations and prejudices which he never succeeded in shaking off.... It
was his misfortune to be well born, but ill bred, combining the pride of a
peer with the self-consciousness of a parvenu." Byron's life in London
between 1812 and 1816 certainly increased his tendency to cynicism, as did
his divorce from his wife. While these experiences distorted his personal
character, they supplied him, however, with much of the irony wrought into
his masterpiece, "Don Juan." His poetic genius derived its strongest
stimulus from his imbittered domestic life and from his travels in Spain,
Italy and Greece. This twofold character of the poet it is that is revealed
in his best poems, "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." He used both works as
receptacles for the most incongruous ideas. "If things are farcical," he
once said to Trelawney, "they will do for 'Don Juan'; if heroical, you
shall have another canto of 'Childe Harold.'" This means of disposing of
his poetic ideas accounts for the great volume of Byron's verse as well as
for its inequality. That "Don Juan" was never finished cannot therefore be
regretted.

[Sidenote: His last verses]

Byron's last verses were lines written on January 22, 1824, at Missolonghi.
To one of his English military associates in the expedition of Lepanto he
remarked: "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now. This is
my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better
than what I usually write." They were the famous lines, "On this Day I
complete my Thirty-sixth Year":

  'Tis time the heart should be unmoved,
    Since others it hath ceased to move;
  Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
      Still let me love!

  My days are in the yellow leaf;
    The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
  The worm, the canker, and the grief
      Are mine alone!

         *       *       *       *       *

  Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!)
    Awake my spirit! Think through whom
  Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
      And then strike home!

  If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
    The land of honorable death
  Is here--Up, to the field, and give
      Away thy breath!

  Seek out--less often sought than found--
    A soldier's grave, for thee the best!
  Then look around, and choose thy ground,
      And take thy rest!

[Sidenote: Russian suzerainty rejected by Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ibrahim invades Greece]

[Sidenote: Sack of Psara]

When Byron died, Missolonghi had been delivered from its first siege.
Greece was plunged in civil war. Kolokotrones, who set himself up against
the government of Konduriottes and Kolletes, was overthrown and lodged in
a prison on the island of Hydra. An offer of Russian intervention at the
price of Russian suzerainty was rejected by the Greeks. Encouraged by this,
the Sultan appealed to his vassal, Mehemet Ali of Egypt, to help him
exterminate the Greeks. The island of Crete was held out to Mehemet Ali as
a prize. The ambitious ruler of Egypt responded with enthusiasm. He raised
an army of 90,000 men and a fleet, and sent them forth under the command of
his adopted son Ibrahim. Early in the spring the Egyptian expedition landed
in Crete and all but exterminated its Greek population. The island of
Kossos was next captured; and its inhabitants were butchered. In July, the
Turkish fleet took advantage of the Greek Government's weakness to make a
descent upon Psara, one of the choicest islands of Greece. In spite of
desperate resistance, the citadel of Psara was stormed, and the Psariotes
were put to the sword. Thousands were slain, while the women and children
were carried off as slaves. How little the miseries of the Greeks affected
the rulers of Europe may be gathered from this bright side light on
Metternich given by his secretary Gentz:

[Sidenote: Metternich's comment]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Turkish fleet]

"Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which unfortunately I could
not accompany him. I at once sent a letter after him from Ischl with the
important news of the Psariote defeat.... The prince soon came back to me;
and (pianissimo, in order that friends of Greece might not hear it) we
congratulated one another on the event, which may very well prove the
beginning of the end for the Greek insurrection." The Greeks, instead of
desponding, were aroused to fiercer resistance than ever. A Hydriote fleet
foiled Ibrahim Pasha's attempt on Samos. When he tried to return to Crete
his fleet was beaten back with a signal reverse. Finally, late in the year,
the Egyptians succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Hydriote
sea-captains, and regained their base of supplies in Crete.

[Sidenote: Burmese war]

[Sidenote: Siege of Rangoon]

[Sidenote: British checked at Donabew]

While Canning's Ministry was still preparing the ground for European
intervention in Greece, the British Government in India found itself with
another native war on its hands. In 1822, the Burmese leader Bundula had
invaded the countries between Burma and Bengal. The Burmese conquered the
independent principalities of Assam and Munipore, and threatened Cachar.
Next Bundula invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of British
sepoys. It was evident that the Burmese were bent on the conquest of
Bengal. Lord Amherst, who had assumed charge early in 1824, sent an
expedition against them under Sir Archibald Campbell. The resistance of the
Burmese was despicable. The British soldiers nowhere found foes worthy of
their steel. In May, the British expedition, having marched straight to
Burma, occupied the capital Rangoon, which was found deserted and denuded
of all supplies. Ill fed and far from succor, the British had to spend a
rainy season there. Taking advantage of their precarious position, Bundula
returned late in the year with an army of 60,000 men. The Englishmen were
besieged. In December they made a successful sortie and stormed the
Burmese stockades. Bundula with the remains of his army was driven up the
banks of the river Irawaddy. They made a stand at Donabew, some forty miles
from Rangoon, where they held the British in check.

[Sidenote: German letters]

The rest of the world throughout this year lay in profound peace. In
Germany the rulers of the various principalities were allowed to continue
their reigns undisturbed. Only in Brunswick the assumption of the
government by Charles Frederick William met with the disapproval of the
German Diet. Although pronounced incapable of reigning, he succeeded none
the less in clinging to his throne. A more important event for the
enlightened element in Germany was the appearance of the first of Leopold
von Ranke's great histories of the Romance and Teutonic peoples. In the
realm of poetry a stir was created by the publication of Rueckert's and
Boerne's lyrics, and Heinrich Heine's "Alamansor" and "Ratcliffe."

[Sidenote: French literature]

[Sidenote: Clericals in the ascendant]

[Sidenote: Chateaubriand dismissed]

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

In France, Lamartine brought out his "Death of Socrates," and Louis Thiers
published the first instalments of his great "History of the French
Revolution." Simultaneously there appeared François Mignet's "History of
the French Revolution." While these historians were expounding the lessons
of this great regeneration of France, the Royalists in the Chambers did
their best to undo its work. After the ejection of Manuel from the
Chambers, and the Ministers' consequent appeal to the country, the
elections were so manipulated by the government that only nineteen Liberal
members were returned to the Chambers. Immediate advantage was taken of
this to favor the Clericals and returned Emigrées, and to change the laws
so as to elect a new House every seven years, instead of one-fifth part of
the Chamber each year. Monseigneur Frayssinous, the leader of the
Clericals, was made Minister of Public Instruction. The friction between
Prime Minister Villèle and Chateaubriand was ended by Villèle's summary
dismissal of Chateaubriand as Foreign Minister. Chateaubriand at once
became the most formidable opponent of the Ministry in the "Journal des
Débats," and in the Chamber of Peers. At this stage of public affairs Louis
XVIII. died, on September 16, with the ancient pomp of royalty. Before he
expired he said, pointing to his bed: "My brother will not die in that
bed." The old King's prophecy was based on the character of the French
people as much as on that of his brother. Indeed, Louis XVIII. was the only
French ruler during the Nineteenth Century who died as a sovereign in his
bed. He was duly succeeded by his brother, Count of Artois, who took the
title "Charles X." and retained Villèle as Minister of France.




1825


[Sidenote: Charles X.]

Charles X. was crowned King of France in the Cathedral of Rheims. His first
public measure was the appropriation of a million francs to indemnify the
French Royalists, whose lands had been confiscated during the French
Revolution. Next came the proposal of a law on sacrilege, and one for
primogeniture. Both bills were strenuously opposed by the Liberals. Broglie
exclaimed: "What you are now preparing is a social and political
revolution, a revolution against the revolution which changed France nearly
forty years ago." Old Lafayette was glad to leave the country to visit
North America.

[Sidenote: American election contest]

[Sidenote: John Quincy Adams President]

[Sidenote: Henry Clay rewarded]

[Sidenote: Changes in American politics]

[Sidenote: Adams's first message]

In the United States the election of 1824 had to be decided by the House of
Representatives. For the Presidency the candidates were Andrew Jackson,
John Quincy Adams, Crawford and Clay, and for the Vice-Presidency Calhoun,
Sanford, Macon, Jackson, Van Buren and Clay. They all belonged to the
Democratic-Republican party. Jackson had received the highest number of
electoral votes--99 were for him and 84 for Adams. Calhoun, as candidate
for Vice-President, led with 182 votes. In the House of Representatives
Clay, as leader, opposed Jackson. Adams was declared President, with
Calhoun for Vice-President. The electoral vote of thirteen States was given
to Adams, while Jackson received seven. John Quincy Adams was then
fifty-eight years of age. Washington had made him Minister to The Hague,
and then to Lisbon, and in 1797 his father, then President, sent him as
Minister to Berlin. In 1803, he was United States Senator. Six years later
he was Minister to Russia. During both of Monroe's terms he was Secretary
of State. Upon his inauguration as President, Adams made Clay Secretary of
State. Wirt, McLean and Southard were retained in the Cabinet. The
adherents of Jackson declared that a bargain had been made between Clay and
Adams, who then paid Clay they alleged for his support in the "scrub race"
for the Presidency. Randolph characterized the supposed arrangement as a
"bargain between the Puritan and the Black Leg," and in consequence was
challenged by Clay to fight a duel. Neither was injured. The election was
followed by an immediate reorganization of political parties, on the
question of supporting Adams's administration. Whether the successor of
Adams should be a Northerner or a Southerner was the question at issue. His
opponents were slave-holders and their Northern friends; his supporters,
the antagonists of the Democratic party, whether known as National
Republican, Whig or Republican party, all of which terms were in use. For
the first time the new Congress, under the reapportionment, represented the
entire population of the country, with New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio in
the lead. In the Senate were men of brilliant promise. Clay was still a
leader, and so was Webster, in the rising majesty of his renown. The
contest between the parties was narrowed down to two great issues--internal
improvements under national auspices and tariff for the protection of
manufactures. President Adams in his first message gave opportunity for
concerted opposition. He took advanced ground in favor of national
expenditure on internal improvements, and urged the multiplication of
canals, the endowment of a national university, expenditures for scientific
research, and the erection of a national observatory. He announced that an
invitation had been accepted from the South American states to a conference
at Panama, in regard to the formation of a political and commercial league
between the two Americas. The Senate requested President Adams to give it
information "touching the principles and practice of the Spanish-American
states, or any of them--in regard to negro slavery." The subject was
debated for almost the entire session. When enough had been said to show
that slavery must not be interfered with, the delegates were nominated and
an appropriation was made. The delegates never went.

[Sidenote: Erie Canal completed]

[Sidenote: Beneficial results]

On November 4, the first boat travelling along the new Erie Canal reached
New York. Through the efforts of De Witt Clinton, the State of New York
without Congressional aid had completed the great Erie Canal. Its annual
tolls were found to amount to half its cost. The financial and commercial
results of the great work were immediate and manifest. The cost of
carrying freight between Albany and New York was reduced from the 1820 rate
of $88 per ton, to $22.50, and soon to $6.50. Travel was no less
facilitated, so that it was possible for emigrants to reach Michigan,
Illinois and Wisconsin cheaply. These fertile States grew accordingly in
population. In 1825 the Capitol at Washington was nearly completed; the
outer walls proved to be uninjured by the fire of 1814. The foundation of
the central building had been laid in 1818, and this edifice was now
completed on its original plan.

[Sidenote: Lafayette visits America]

The American visit of the old Marquis de la Fayette--to give him his French
name--was celebrated with national rejoicings. Years ago, when he left the
American republic after its independence was achieved, it was a poor, weak
and struggling nation. Its prosperity and increasing power now amazed him.
The thirteen colonies along the coast had increased to twenty-four
independent, growing and progressive commonwealths, reaching a thousand
miles westward from the sea. Lafayette was the nation's guest for a year.
On June 17, 1825, just fifty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, he laid
the cornerstone of the obelisk which commemorates that battle in Boston. On
this same occasion Daniel Webster made one of his great speeches. Lafayette
returned to France in the American frigate "Brandywine," named in honor of
the first battle in which Lafayette fought and was wounded half a century
before. Congress presented him with a gift of $200,000 in money, and with a
township of land in recognition of the disinterested services of his
youth.

[Sidenote: Argentine Republic]

Shortly before President Adams accepted the invitation to send North
American representatives to the proposed Congress of Panama, thirteen
independent States joined at Buenos Ayres in a powerful confederation and
formed the Republic of Argentine. A national constitution was adopted and
Rivadiera elected President. The new republic was soon called upon to prove
its mettle in the war levied against it by Brazil for the possession of
Uruguay. In the end Uruguay remained a part of Argentina. Brazil had
previously achieved its complete independence from the mother country by
assuming the public debt of Portugal, amounting to some ten million
dollars. England gave its official recognition to these new changes of
government as it had to the others.

[Sidenote: Burmese reverses]

[Sidenote: New British acquisitions]

The British war against the Burmese was nearly over. Early in the year the
British forces left at Rangoon advanced up the river Irawaddy toward
Donabew. The first attempt to take this stronghold was repulsed, whereupon
the British settled down to a regular siege. While trying to get the range
with their mortars the gunners succeeded in killing Bundula, the chieftain
of the Burmese. His brother flinched from the command of the army and was
promptly beheaded. The Burmese forces went to pieces. The British proceeded
to Prome, and inflicted another crushing defeat on the remaining
detachments of the Burmese army. At the approach of the British column the
Burmese rulers at Ava became frantic. All the demented women that could be
found in and about Ava were gathered together and conducted to the front
that they might bewitch the English. When this measure proved ineffectual,
Prince Tharawadi tried to stem the British approach, but could not get his
followers to face the enemy. All the country from Rangoon to Ava was under
British control. The Burmese came to terms. As a result of the conflict the
territories of Assam, Arrakan and Tenaserim were ceded to the British.

[Sidenote: Crisis in Bhurtpore]

[Sidenote: Summary British dealings]

While the British were still in the midst of this campaign a crisis
occurred in Bhurtpore. The sudden death of the Rajah there left no
successor to the throne but an infant son of seven. He was proclaimed Rajah
under the guardianship of his uncle. A cousin of the dead king won over the
army of Bhurtpore, and putting the uncle to death imprisoned the little
Rajah. Sir David Ochterlony, the aged British Resident at Delhi, interfered
in behalf of the little prince and advanced British troops into Bhurtpore.
His measures were repudiated by Lord Amherst. Sir David took the rebuff so
much to heart that he resigned his appointment. Within two months after his
retirement the old soldier died in bitterness of soul. The sequel
vindicated his judgment. In defiance of the British Government, the usurper
of Bhurtpore rallied around him all the dissatisfied spirits of the
Mahrattas, Pindarees, Jats and Rajputs. Lord Amherst was forced to retreat
to Vera. The British army under Lord Combermere crossed the border and
pushed through to Bhurtpore. The heavy mud walls of the capital had to be
breached with mines. The usurper was deposed and put out of harm's way in a
British prison. With the restoration of the infant Prince in Bhurtpore, all
danger of another great Indian rising seemed at end.

  [Illustration: SOLFERINO
    Painted by E. Meissonier
    From Carbon Print by Braun, Clement & Co., N.Y.]

[Sidenote: The first railway]

At home in England it was a period of unprecedented scientific and
industrial development. Following Faraday's recent conversion of the
electric current into mechanical motion, Sturgeon invented the prototype of
the electro-magnet. The first public railway for steam locomotives was
opened between Stockton and Darlington by Edward Peese and George
Stephenson--an innovation which caused great excitement throughout England.
On the opening day, September 27, an immense concourse of people assembled
along the line to see the train go by. Nearly every one prophesied that the
"iron horse" would be a failure. The train weighed about ninety English
tons, and consisted of six wagons loaded with coal and flour, then a
covered coach containing directors and proprietors, with twenty-one coal
wagons fitted up for invited passengers, nearly 600 in number. Stephenson's
engine, named the "Locomotion," had a ten-foot boiler and weighed not quite
1,500 pounds. As six miles an hour was supposed to be the limit of speed,
it was arranged that a man on horseback should ride on the track ahead of
the engine carrying a flag. The train was started without difficulty amid
cheers. Many tried to keep up with it by running, and some gentlemen on
horseback galloped across the fields to accompany the train. After a few
minutes, Stephenson shouted to the horseman with the flag to get out of the
way, for he was going to "let her go." Ordering the fireman to "keep her
hot, lad," he opened wide the throttle-valve and the speed was quickly
raised to twelve miles an hour and then to fifteen.

[Sidenote: Stephenson's practical demonstration]

The runners on foot, the gentlemen on horseback and the horseman with the
flag were left far behind. So, with the cross-beams and side-rods trembling
from the violent motion, the red-hot chimney ejecting clouds of black
smoke, amid the cheers of the delighted spectators and to the astonishment
of the passengers--the immortal George Stephenson brought his train safely
into Darlington.

As the "Newcastle Courant" (October 1, 1825) put it, "certainly the
performance excited the astonishment of all present, and exceeded the most
sanguine expectations of every one conversant with the subject. The engine
arrived at Stockton in three hours and seven minutes after leaving
Darlington, including stops, the distance being nearly twelve miles, which
is at the rate of four miles an hour; and upon the level part of the
railway, the number of passengers was counted about four hundred and fifty,
and several more clung to the carriages on each side. At one time the
passengers by the engine had the pleasure of accompanying and cheering
their brother passengers by the stage coach, which passed alongside, and of
observing the striking contrast exhibited by the power of the engine and of
horses; the engine with her six hundred passengers and load, and the coach
with four horses and only sixteen passengers."

[Sidenote: Immediate railroad development]

So successful was the Stockton and Darlington railway that a bill was
brought in Parliament for the construction of a railroad between Liverpool
and Manchester after Stephenson's plan. The scheme was violently opposed.
Its detractors, among whom were Lords Lefton and Derby, declared that
Stephenson's locomotive would poison the air, kill the birds as they flew
over them, destroy the preservation of pheasants, burn up the farms and
homesteads near the lines; that oats and hay would become unsalable because
horses would become extinct; travelling on the highways would become
impossible; country inns would be ruined; boilers would burst and kill
hundreds of passengers. Indeed, there was no peril imaginable that was not
predicted to attend the working of a railroad by steam.

When Stephenson was examined by a Parliamentary committee, one of the
members put this question: "Suppose, now, one of these engines to be going
along a railroad at a rate of nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow
were to stray upon the line, and get in the way of the engine, would not
that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?" "Yaw," replied
Stephenson, in his broad Northumbrian dialect, "ay, awkward--for the
_coo_." On account of his speech Stephenson was denounced as a "foreigner,"
and the bill was thrown out by the committee, by a vote of 37 against 36.
After a second Parliamentary battle, the bill was passed through both
Houses by a majority of forty-seven votes. The passage of the act cost
£27,000.

[Sidenote: Other modern inventions]

[Sidenote: English financial crisis averted]

[Sidenote: Canning's attempted reforms]

Almost coincidentally, Faraday found that benzine was a constituent of
petroleum, a discovery destined to affect the modern construction of
automobile vehicles toward the close of the century. A number of other
achievements made this an important year for science in England. John
Crowther took out a patent for his invention of a hydraulic crane. The
steam jet was first applied to construction work by Timothy Hackworth.
Joseph Clement built a planing machine for iron. One of the earliest chain
suspension bridges was erected at Menai Strait by Thomas Thelford, and at
the same time Brunel sunk his first shaft for the Thames tunnel.
Significant of the industrial revival of those days was the opening of
mechanics' institutes at Exeter and Belfast. In Canada, the newly founded
McGill College was raised to the rank of a university. A financial measure
of far-reaching import was the Bank of England's sudden diminution of its
circulation to the extent of £3,500,000 by the combined exertions of the
bank and of the royal mint. A crisis in public funds was thus averted. The
most important political measure of the year was Canning's attempt to
repeal the political disabilities of the Catholics in England. A bill to
this effect was passed through the Commons, but was thrown out by the House
of Lords. Canning's friend Huskisson inaugurated a commercial policy, which
was founded on the theory of free trade, destined to bring about the repeal
of the corn laws.

[Sidenote: Greek reverses]

[Sidenote: Nauplia and Missolonghi besieged]

[Sidenote: Greece devastated]

The situation in Greece was calculated to stiffen the backbone of Canning's
foreign policy. On February 22, Ibrahim's Egyptian army had crossed the sea
unopposed and overran the Morea. The Greeks were defeated near Nodoni, and
the garrison of Sphakteria was overwhelmed. The forts of Navarino
capitulated. In vain was old Kolokotrones released from his prison to
oppose the onslaught of Ibrahim's Arabs. The Greeks were driven back
through Tripolitza, and did not succeed in making a stand until the Turks
reached Nauplia. Here Demetrios Ypsilanti with a few hundred men repulsed
the Turkish vanguard at Lerna. Ibrahim settled down to the siege of Nauplia
and of Missolonghi. The country round about was laid waste and the people
killed. Ibrahim's hordes even cut down all trees and saplings. Thus the
fertile mountains and hillsides of Greece were changed into the barren
rocks they are to-day. Nothing so excited the sympathy of the lovers of
liberty in Europe as these wanton ravages on classic soil committed by the
savages of the desert. Even Alexander of Russia was so moved by the rising
indignation of his people that he dissolved diplomatic conferences at St.
Petersburg in August. He issued a declaration that Russia, acting on its
own discretion, would put a stop to the outrages of Greece. Accompanied by
the leaders of the Russian war party, he left St. Petersburg and travelled
to the Black Sea. All Europe waited for the long-threatened Russian advance
on Constantinople. Suddenly news arrived that the Czar had died at
Taganrog.

[Sidenote: Death of Czar Alexander]

[Sidenote: Alexander's early reforms]

[Sidenote: Russian letters stimulated]

Alexander expired on November 19 (December 1), in the arms of Empress
Elizabeth. His last hours were clouded by revelations of a plot to
assassinate him. As if to recant his reactionary measures of the last few
years, he said: "They may say what they like of me, but I have lived and
will die republican"--a curious boast which is justified only by the
earlier years of Alexander's reign. In the beginning of his rule the Czar
reversed the despotic tendencies of his predecessors. Free travel was
permitted; foreign books and papers were allowed to enter; the better
classes of the community were exempted from corporal punishments; the
emancipation of serfs was begun, and the collegiate organization of the
administration was supplanted by ministries modelled after those of the
chief European countries. As early as 1802 Alexander could boast of a
Cabinet as good as that of any constitutional monarch. Another far-reaching
reform was the reorganization of Russian public education, and the
encouragement given to the publication of Bibles. A temporary relaxation of
the censorship resulted in the foundation of societies of literature and of
such journals as the "Russian Messenger," "The Northern Mercury," and the
"Democrat." Writers like Pushkin and Gogol brought forth their earliest
works. Koltsov discovered a new source of poetry in the popular songs.
Lermontov sang the wild beauty of the Caucasus, and Ozerov wrote his
classical drama "Dmitri Donskoi," which recalled the struggles of Russia
against the Tartars. Modern romantic tendencies were advanced by
Joukovsky's translation of Schiller's and Byron's poems. Ginka composed the
scores for his earlier operas.

[Sidenote: Changes for the worse]

[Sidenote: Araktcheyev]

[Sidenote: The Russian succession]

[Sidenote: Conflicting proclamations]

[Sidenote: Nicholas, Czar of Russia]

[Sidenote: Moscow mutiny]

[Sidenote: Miloradovitch shot]

[Sidenote: End of revolt]

When Alexander came under the influence of Madame de Krüdener and the more
baneful ascendency of Metternich everything was changed for the worse. The
publication of Bibles was stopped; the censorship was re-established in its
full rigor; Speranski's great undertaking of a Russian code of laws was
nipped in the bud; Galytsin, the liberal Minister of Publication, had to
resign, and Araktcheyev, a reactionary of extreme type, was put in his
place. Some idea of the dark days that followed may be gathered from
Araktcheyev's first measures. The teaching of the geological theories of
Buffon and of the systems of Copernicus and Newton were forbidden as
contrary to Holy Writ. Medical dissection was prohibited, and the practice
of medicine was reduced to that of faith cure. All professors who had
studied at seats of learning abroad were dismissed. Then it was that the
secret societies sprang up in Poland and in the north and south of Russia.
One of the foremost conspirators was Pestel, who had undertaken to frame a
new code of laws for Russia. When Alexander died, Russia was on the brink
of a military revolution. It was the intention of the conspirators to
assassinate the Czar in the presence of his troops and to proclaim a
constitution; but his unexpected departure to the Black Sea frustrated the
plan. Alexander's death threw the Russian court into confusion. For a while
it was not known who was to succeed him. The supposed heir to the throne
was Alexander's brother, Constantine. Unbeknown to the people he had
formally renounced his right to the throne. At the time of his brother's
death he was in Warsaw. His younger brother, Nicholas, at St. Petersburg,
had him proclaimed emperor. When they brought him Constantine's written
abdication, Nicholas refused to acknowledge it and caused the troops to
take their oath of allegiance to his brother. Constantine in Warsaw
proclaimed Nicholas emperor. Nicholas would not accept the crown unless by
the direct command of his elder brother. At length the matter was adjusted,
after an interregnum of three weeks. On Christmas Day, Nicholas ascended
the imperial throne. The confusion at St. Petersburg was turned to account
by the military conspirators who had plotted against Alexander's life. To
the common soldiers they denounced Nicholas as a usurper who was trying to
make them break their recent oath to Constantine. When ordered to take the
oath to Nicholas, the Moscow regiment refused, and marched to the open
place in front of the Senate House. There they formed a square and were
joined by other bodies of mutineering soldiers. It is gravely asserted by
Russian historians that the poor wretches, ignorant of the very meaning of
the word constitution, shouted for it, believing it to be the name of
Constantine's wife. An attack upon them by the household cavalry was
repulsed. When General Miloradovitch, a veteran of fifty-two battles
against Napoleon, tried to make himself heard, he was shot. The mutineers
would not listen even to the Emperor. Not until evening could the new Czar
be brought to use more decisive measures. Then he ordered out the artillery
and had them fire grapeshot into the square. The effect was appalling. In a
few minutes the square was cleared and the insurrection was over. Its
leaders were wanting at the moment of action. A rising in the south of
Russia was quelled by a single regiment. Before the year ended, Nicholas
was undisputed master of Russia.

[Sidenote: Death of Fresnel]

By the death of Augustin Jean Fresnel, France lost a brilliant scientist,
who shares with Thomas Young the honor of discrediting the old emission
theory of light, and of formulating the undulatory theory.

[Sidenote: Death of David]

Jacques Louis David, founder of the new French school of classicism in
painting, died at the close of the year at Brussels. Many of his paintings
were on exhibition before the fall of the old régime in France. In the days
of the French Revolution, David was a Jacobite and friend of Robespierre,
and suffered in prison after the latter's fall. It was not, however, until
the time of the First Empire that David's fame spread. He then reached the
zenith of his success. His masterpieces of this period are "Napoleon
Crossing the Alps"--a canvas on which is founded Hauff's story of "The
Picture of the Emperor"--"The Coronation of Napoleon," "Napoleon in His
Imperial Robes," and the "Distribution of the Eagles." Equally famous is
his portrait of "Madame Recamier resting on a Chaiselongue." After the fall
of the First Empire, David was exiled from France, and retired to
Brussels. David, unlike so many other beneficiaries of the Empire, remained
warmly attached to Napoleon. Once when the Duke of Wellington visited his
studio in Brussels and expressed a wish that the great artist would paint
him, David coldly replied, "I never paint Englishmen." In his declining
years he painted subjects taken from Grecian mythology. Among the paintings
executed by David during his banishment were "Love and Psyche," "The Wrath
of Achilles," and "Mars Disarmed by Venus." The number of David's pupils
who acquired distinction was very great, among whom the best known were
Gros, Gérard, Derdranais Girodet, Jugros, Abel de Pujel and Droming.




1826


[Sidenote: Czar Nicholas' measures]

[Sidenote: Ryleyev and Pestel hanged]

[Sidenote: Russian laws codified]

Driven to assert his rights to the crown by bloodshed, Nicholas I. showed
himself resolved to maintain the absolute principles of his throne. He
accorded a disdainful pardon to Prince Trubetskoi, whom the conspirators of
the capital had chosen as head of the government. The mass of misled
soldiery was likewise treated with clemency. But against the real
instigators of the insurrection the Czar proceeded with uncompromising
severity. One hundred and twenty were deported to Siberia; and the five
foremost men, among whom were Ryleyev, the head of the society in the
north, and Pestel, were condemned to be hanged. All died courageously.
Pestel's chief concern was for his Code: "I am certain," said he, "that one
day Russia will find in this book a refuge against violent commotions. My
greatest error was that I wished to gather the harvest before sowing the
seed." In a way the teachings of these men gave an impetus to Russia that
their death could not destroy. Even the Czar, with his passion for military
autocracy, made it his first care to take up the work of codifying the
Russian laws. Alexis Mikhaielovitch during the next four years turned out
his "Complete Code of the Laws of the Russian Empire."

[Sidenote: Persian war]

[Sidenote: Defence of Choucha]

[Sidenote: Russian victories]

[Sidenote: Persia abandoned by England]

[Sidenote: Russia's ultimatum to Turkey]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Janizaries]

The military ambitions of Nicholas found a vent in the direction of Persia.
The encroachments of Ermolov, the Governor-General of the Caucasus, so
exasperated the Persians that soon a holy war was preached against Russia.
Ebbas-Mirza, the Prince Royal of Persia, collected an army of 35,000 men on
the banks of the Araxes. A number of English officers joined his ranks.
Nicholas at once despatched General Kasevitch with reinforcements for
Ermolov. Ebbas-Mirza was checked on his march on Tivlas by the heroic
defence of Choucha. In the meanwhile the Russians concentrated their
forces. The Persian vanguard, 15,000 strong, was defeated at Elizabethpol.
On the banks of the Djeham, Paskevitch, with a division of the Russian
army, overthrew the main body of the Persians and forced them back over the
Araxes. The Persians continued their resistance, relying on the terms of
the treaty of Teheran, wherein England had promised financial and military
subsidies in case of invasion. The English, promise was not kept. Hence
forth the Persians were at the mercy of the Russian army of invasion.
Almost simultaneously a rebellion against the Chinese Government broke out
in Kashgar. Undeterred by this diversion, Nicholas took up a vigorous stand
against the Turks. In March he presented an ultimatum insisting on the
autonomy of Moldavia, Wallachia and Servia, and on the final cession to
Russia of disputed Turkish territory on the Asiatic frontier. Turkey
yielded. Nicholas then joined in an ultimatum with England and France for
an immediate stop of the Turkish outrages in Greece. In this matter
Nicholas, who regarded the Greeks as rebels, showed himself more lenient to
the Turks, and negotiations with the Porte were permitted to drag. The
Sultan profited by the lull to execute a long contemplated stroke against
the Janizaries. The whole of this famous corps of bodyguards was massacred.

[Sidenote: Death of Bennigsen and Rostopchin]

During this year two men died in Russia who had distinguished themselves at
the time of Napoleon's invasion. One was General Bennigsen, a soldier of
German extraction and training, who took a leading part in all the Russian
campaigns against Napoleon. The other was Prince Rostopchin, who as
Governor of Moscow consigned that city to the flames after Napoleon's
triumphant entry.

[Sidenote: Death of Hastings and Heber]

[Sidenote: Alfred Tennyson]

[Sidenote: English letters flourishing]

[Sidenote: Scientific progress]

England lost two men who had distinguished themselves in India. One was the
Marquis of Hastings, who had but lately relinquished his
Governor-Generalship of British India, and whose rule there both from a
military and from a political-economical point of view must be regarded as
pre-eminently successful. The other was Reginald Heber, the Bishop of
Calcutta, who endeared himself to Anglo-Indians by his translations of the
folk songs and classic writings of Hindustan. In other respects this year
is notable in English literary annals. Alfred Tennyson published his
earliest verses in conjunction with his brother; Elizabeth Barrett also
brought out her first poems; Macaulay had begun to captivate England by his
essays; Thomas Hood issued his "Whims and Oddities"; Scott and Coleridge
were then in the heyday of literary favor. Scott had just brought out his
"Talisman" and "The Betrothed," and now published "Woodstock." Coleridge
contributed his "Aids to Reflection." A new impetus was given to
scholarship by the foundation of the Western and Eastern literary
institutions of England, and the establishment of a professorship for
political economy at Oxford. London University was chartered. Drummond's
namesake, Lieutenant Thomas Drummond, perpetuated his name by his
limelight, produced by heating lime to incandescence in the oxy-hydrogen
flame.

[Sidenote: English lotteries suppressed]

While Herschel was working out his spectrum analysis, Fox Talbot
contributed his share by his observation of the orange line of strontium.
John Walker perfected his invention of friction matches. Industrially, on
the contrary, England still suffered from the canker of the corn laws and
the recent financial crisis resulting from the operations of ill-fated
stock companies. In Lancashire nearly a thousand power looms were destroyed
by the distressed operatives. Some relief was given by Canning's abolition
of all public lotteries.

[Sidenote: Louis I. of Bavaria]

[Sidenote: Munich embellished]

[Sidenote: German romantic literature]

[Sidenote: "Die Wacht am Rhein"]

[Sidenote: Froebel]

In Germany, arts and literature flourished in the same degree. King Louis
I. of Bavaria, upon his accession to the throne, gathered about him in
Munich some of the foremost artists and writers of Germany. The capital of
Munich was embellished with public monuments; public buildings were
decorated with fresco paintings, and art galleries were established. The
University of Bavaria was transferred from Landshut to Munich, and other
institutions of learning were erected by its side. Streets were widened,
new avenues and public squares laid out, and public lighting introduced
throughout the city. Within a short time the quasi-medieval town of Munich
was changed into a modern metropolis and became the Mecca of German art.
Among the artists who gathered round Louis of Bavaria were Moritz von
Schwind, Cornelius, Hess, Raupp, and the elder Piloti. Among the writers
who drew upon themselves the notice of this liberal king were the Count of
Platen, who during this year published his "Ghazels" and the comedy "The
Fatal Fork"; and Hauff, who brought out his romantic masterpiece,
"Lichtenstein." Of the rising writers, Heinrich Heine alone withstood the
blandishments of Louis with verses of biting satire. Little noticed at the
time was the appearance of Reichardt's "Wacht am Rhein," a song which was
destined to become the battle hymn of Germany. Scant attention, likewise,
was given to Froebel's epoch-making work, "The Education of Man." On the
other hand much pother was made over some curious exchanges of sovereignty,
characteristic of German politics in those days. The Dukes of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Meiningen exchanged their respective possessions.
Saalfeld Meiningen received Gotha. Altenburg was assigned to
Saxe-Hilburghausen, which latter principality in turn was relinquished to
Meiningen. The settlements of the succession in those petty principalities
called forth volumes of legal lore.

Jens Baggesen, the most prolific Danish humorist, died this year,
seventy-two years of age. After his death Baggesen's writings declined in
popularity.

[Sidenote: American semi-centennial]

[Sidenote: Death of Jefferson and Adams]

[Sidenote: "The Father of Democracy"]

In America, the people of the United States commemorated the
semi-centennial of their independence. The Fourth of July, the date of the
declaration of American independence, was the great day of celebration. The
day became noted in American history by the simultaneous death of two
patriots: Jefferson and Adams. Thomas Jefferson's greatest achievements, as
recorded by himself on his gravestone at Monticello, were his part in the
declaration of American independence, in the establishment of religious
freedom and in the foundation of the University at Virginia. He was the
most philosophic statesman of his time in America. Much of the subsequent
history of the United States was but the development of Jefferson's
political ideas. His public acts and declarations foreshadowed the policies
of his most worthy successors. The essentials of the Monroe Doctrine, of
the emancipation of slaves, as well as of the doctrine of State rights and
of American expansion, can all be traced back to him. Thus he has come to
be venerated by one of the two great political parties of America as "The
Father of Democracy."

[Sidenote: Jefferson's principles]

[Sidenote: Third term discountenanced]

Jefferson's principles were stated in his first inaugural address: "Equal
and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or
political; peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments and
all their rights as the most competent of administrations for our domestic
concerns; the preservation of the general government in its whole
constitutional vigor, as a sheet anchor of peace at home and safety
abroad.... The supremacy of civil over military authority; economy in
public expense, honest payment of public debts; the diffusion of
information; freedom of religion; freedom of the press and freedom of the
person, under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by jury." When
Jefferson's second term as President came to an end he retired from the
White House poorer than he had entered it. A third term was declined by him
with these words: "To lay down a public charge at the proper period is as
much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the
services of a chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied
by practice, this office, nominally four years, will in fact become for
life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance."
Together with Washington's similar action, this established a custom which
has since been followed in the North American Republic.

[Sidenote: John Adams's career]

Jefferson's predecessor, John Adams, who died on the same day, though
likewise a model President, was less fortunate in his career. His
administration was a struggle almost from beginning to end. The troubles
with France, though not attaining the dignity of international warfare,
presented all the difficulties of such a war. Adams's extreme measures
against domestic danger, as embodied in his "alien and sedition laws," were
unfortunate. They were in fact an infringement of the rights of free
speech and personal liberty, and were with justice denounced as
unconstitutional and un-American. His departure from the American Bill of
Rights among other things effectually prevented his re-election as
President. His wisest closing act was the appointment of John Marshall to
the Chief Justiceship of the American Supreme Court.

[Sidenote: Stars of the stage]

[Sidenote: "The Last of the Mohicans"]

In the annals of the American stage the season of 1826 is remembered for
the first appearance of the three great actors Edwin Forrest, Macready and
James H. Hackett, the American comedian. The same year saw the first
appearance of Paulding's "Three Wise Men of Gotham," and Cooper's "Last of
the Mohicans."

[Sidenote: Philhellenic efforts]

The Greek cause found friends in Switzerland, England and America. Two
loans for $14,000,000 were raised in London by American and English
subscriptions. Both loans were disgracefully financed. Barely one-half of
the amount was finally accounted for. With the proceeds contracts were made
for eight warships. The "Perseverance," a steam corvette, mounting eight
68-pound cannon, reached Nauplia in September. The "Hope," a staunch
frigate of 64 guns, built in New York, arrived in December. She was
rechristened the "Hellas."

[Sidenote: Dom Pedro IV.]

The death of Dom Juan de Braganza in March had placed the throne of
Portugal as well as that of Brazil at the disposal of his oldest son, Dom
Pedro IV., at Rio. Under the terms of England's mediation of the previous
year, Dom Pedro renounced the throne of Portugal in favor of his infant
daughter, Maria Gloria, while at the same time he conferred upon Portugal a
liberal constitution, the so-called Charta de Ley, similar to that conceded
to Brazil in 1822.

[Sidenote: Dom Miguel's revolt]

[Sidenote: Canning's policy]

Dom Pedro IV. had intrusted the throne of Portugal to the regency of his
sister Maria Isabella, on condition that his infant daughter should marry
her uncle, Dom Miguel. It was his intention that the infant Princess should
be recognized as Queen, while Dom Miguel would reign as regent. Under the
leadership of Marquis de Chaves, instigated by Dom Miguel, several
provinces revolted and declared for Miguel as absolute king. Conquered in
Portugal, the insurgents retired to Spain, where they were well received.
The Portuguese constitutional government called for help from England.
France threatened to invade Spain. Canning acted at once: "To those who
blame the government for delay," declared Canning in Parliament, "the
answer is very short. It was only last Friday that I received the official
request from Portugal. On Saturday the Ministers decided what was to be
done. On Sunday our decision received the King's sanction. On Monday it was
communicated to both Houses. At this very moment the troops are on their
way to Portugal." It was then that Canning delivered the great speech in
defence of his foreign policy which he closed with Shakespeare's famous
lines:

                          Oh, it is excellent
     To have a giant's strength. And it is tyrannous
     To use it like a giant.




1827


[Sidenote: Portuguese revolt suppressed]

On the first day of January an English army corps under Clinton was landed
at Lissabon and a squadron of eleven British ships of the line came to
anchor at the mouth of the Tagus. The news of this foreign intervention
dismayed the revolutionists. On the banks of the Mondego the Marquis de
Chaves, with 10,000 rebels, still commanded the approach to Coimbra. On
January 9, a drawn battle was fought with 7,000 constitutional troops under
Saldanha. Next morning Dom Miguel's followers, on the news of an
approaching British column, quitted the field and dispersed. The Spanish
troops on the frontier disarmed those that crossed into Spain.

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in France]

In France, the government of Charles X., after some violent attacks in the
Chambers, recalled the Swiss brigade sent to protect the royal family in
Madrid. There was trouble enough at home. The clerical reaction in France
brought about a popular outcry against the order of the Jesuits. On the
occasion of a royal military review on April 29, some of the companies of
the National Guards shared in demonstrations against them. "I am here,"
said the King, "to receive your homage, not your murmurings." The entire
National Guard of Paris was disbanded by royal ordinance.

[Sidenote: Russians invade Persia]

Early in the spring the Russian forces under Paskievitch had crossed the
Araxes and forced the defiles of the Persian frontier. By a rapid flank
movement an army of 10,000 Persians was detached and brought to surrender.
Erivan, the bulwark of Persia, was taken by assault. The triumphant Russian
column entered Pauris, the second city of the kingdom. Thence an advance
was made on Teheran.

[Sidenote: Intervention in Greece favored]

These easy victories in Persia left the Czar free to resume his threatening
attitude toward Turkey. In this he received the hearty support of Canning.
A protocol at St. Petersburg, concluded between the Duke of Wellington and
Nesselrode, formed the basis for Anglo-Russian intervention in the East.
The royalists of France were won over by an offer from the Greek insurgents
to place the Duke of Nimours on the throne of Greece. Without giving actual
support to the proposed intervention the French ambassador in
Constantinople was instructed to act with his English and Russian
colleagues. Under the weight of this combination even Prince Metternich
gave way.

Affairs in Germany were calculated to excite his alarm. At Dresden the
accession of Anthony Clement to the crown of Saxony met with extreme
disfavor on the part of the Saxon people by reason of Anthony's pronounced
Catholicism. Soon his measures provoked a rising of the people. Anthony had
to resign, and Frederick Augustus II. became regent.

[Sidenote: Death of Hauff]

In Wurtemberg, where public affairs had taken a more liberal turn, the
death of Wilhelm Hauff, the young author, was felt as a great loss. Hauff
died in his twenty-fifth year, while still in the first promise of his
literary activity. His stories of the Black Woods and his Oriental Tales,
together with his medieval romance "Lichtenstein," modelled after the best
of Walter Scott's romances, have assured him a prominent place in German
letters.

[Sidenote: Laplace]

[Sidenote: The nebular hypothesis]

On March 15, Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace, one of the greatest
mathematicians and physical astronomers of all time, died at Arcueil.
Laplace was born in 1749, in Normandy. Although a poor farmer's son, he
soon won the position of a teacher at the Beaumont Military School of
Mathematics, and later at the Ecole Militaire of Paris. One of the early
notable labors of Laplace was his investigation of planetary perturbations,
and his demonstration that planetary mean motions are invariable--the first
important step in the establishment of the stability of the solar system
and one of the most brilliant achievements in celestial mechanics. In his
"Exposition du Systeme du Monde" was formulated the theory called the
"nebular hypothesis," the glory of which he must share with Kant. "He would
have completed the science of the skies," says Fourier, "had the science
been capable of completion." As a physicist he made discoveries that were
in themselves sufficient to perpetuate his name, in specific heat,
capillary action and sound. In mathematics he furnished the modern
scientist with the famous Laplace co-efficients and the potential function,
thereby laying the foundation of the mathematical sciences of heat and
electricity. Not satisfied with scientific distinction, Laplace aspired to
political honors and left a public record which is not altogether to his
credit. Of his labors as Minister of the Interior, Napoleon remarked: "He
brought into the administration the spirit of the infinitesimals." Although
he owed his political success, small as it was, to Napoleon--the man whom
he had once heralded as the "pacificator of Europe"--he voted for his
dethronement.

[Sidenote: Death of Beethoven]

Shortly after the death of Laplace, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on
March 26. The last years of his life were so clouded by his deafness and by
the distressing vagaries of his nephew that he was often on the verge of
suicide. In December, 1826, he caught a violent cold, which brought on his
ultimate death from pneumonia and dropsy. Beethoven, though he adhered to
the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions
such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the
great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so
very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians,
until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached
such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must
stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The
profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his
music above that of his greatest predecessors: Bach, Haydn and Mozart.

[Sidenote: Beethoven's career]

[Sidenote: Notable compositions]

[Sidenote: "Fidelio"]

[Sidenote: Beethoven's declining years]

Beethoven came of a line of musical ancestors. His grandfather and
namesake was an orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a
professional singer, who took his son's musical education in hand at the
age of four. At eight the boy was a fluent performer both on the violin and
on the piano. When but ten years old Beethoven produced his first
pianoforte sonata, and was installed as assistant organist in the Electoral
Chapel at Bonn. When the lad visited Vienna, in 1787, his extemporizations
on the piano made Mozart exclaim: "He will give the world something worth
listening to." It was Haydn that persuaded Beethoven's patron to send the
youth to Vienna; there he became Haydn's pupil and received material
support from Prince Lichnovsky, one of his warmest admirers. From his first
entrance into the musical circles of Vienna, Beethoven was justly regarded
as a highly eccentric man. His generosity of soul and transcendent genius
made all those that learned to know him condone his freaks. It was after
the opening of the Nineteenth Century that Beethoven reached his freest
creative period. Between 1800 and 1815 he composed the first six of his
great symphonies, the music to "Egmont," the best of his chamber-music
pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the
"Appassionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first
named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its
first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the
capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten
years later, after complete revision by Beethoven, "Fidelio" achieved its
first great success. The great "Heroica Symphony" composed at the same time
was originally dedicated to Bonaparte. When Napoleon had himself proclaimed
Emperor, Beethoven tore up the dedication in a rage. It was subsequently
changed "to the memory of a great man." After 1815, when the composer had
grown quite deaf, his compositions, like his moods, took a gloomy cast. The
extravagances of his nephew, whose guardianship he had undertaken, caused
him acute material worries. In truth he need have given himself no concern,
for his admirers, Archduke Rudolph and Princes Lobkovitz and Kinsky,
settled on him an annuity of 4,000 florins; but to the end of his days the
unhappy composer believed himself on the verge of ruin. When he died, his
funeral was attended by the princes of the imperial house and all the
greatest magnates of Austria and Hungaria. Twenty thousand persons followed
his coffin to the grave.

  [Illustration: BEETHOVEN AND HIS ADMIRERS
    Painted by A. Grafle]

[Sidenote: English officers in Greece]

[Sidenote: Fall of Athens]

[Sidenote: Turks reject armistice]

By this time a number of foreign volunteers had flocked to Greece. Lord
Cochrane, an English naval officer of venturous disposition, was appointed
High Admiral. Sir Richard Church was put in command of the Greek land
forces. Early in May, Church and Cochrane sought in vain to break the line
of Turks under Kiutahi Pasha pressing upon Athens. They were defeated with
great loss, and on June 5 the Acropolis of Athens surrendered to the Turks.
In July a treaty for European intervention in Greece was signed in London.
Turkey and Greece were summoned to consent to an armistice, and to accept
the mediation of the powers. All Turks were to leave Greece, and the Greeks
were to come into possession of all Turkish property within their limits on
payment of an indemnity. Greece was to be made autonomous under the
paramount sovereignty of the Sultan. The demand for an armistice was gladly
accepted by Greece. But the Sultan rejected it with contempt. The conduct
of the Turkish troops in Bulgaria caused the Bulgarians to rise and call
for Russian help.

[Sidenote: Death of Canning]

[Sidenote: Canning's policy]

It was at this crisis of European affairs that Canning died. His Ministry,
brief as it was, marked an epoch for England. Unlike his predecessors,
George Canning was called to the Ministry by a king who disliked him. What
he accomplished was done amid the peculiar embarrassments and difficulties
of such a situation. On the other hand, it freed him from certain
concessions to the personal prejudices of his sovereign that hampered other
Ministers. Thus he was able to introduce in Parliament his great measure
for the removal of the political disabilities of the Catholics, a reform on
which so great a Prime Minister as the younger Pitt came to grief. Had this
measure passed the House of Lords it would stand as the crowning act of
Canning's administration. By an irony of fate the same Canning that so
bitterly opposed the French Revolution and the claims of America achieved
highest fame by his latter day recognition of the rights of revolution in
the New World.

[Sidenote: William Blake]

[Sidenote: Artist and poet]

[Sidenote: Blake's mysticism]

[Sidenote: Thomson's lines]

William Blake, the English poet and artist, died at Fountain Court in
London on August 12. While Blake's poems and paintings belonged to the
Eighteenth Century, chronologically, the spirit of his works, with its
extraordinary independence of contemporary fashions, make him a herald of
the poetic dawn of the Nineteenth Century. An engraver by profession and
training, Blake began while still very young to apply his technical
knowledge to his wholly original system of literary publication. As a poet
he was not only his own illustrator, but his own printer and publisher as
well. Beginning with the "Poetical Sketches" and his delightful "Songs of
Innocence," down to the fantastic "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," all of
Blake's books, with the exception of his "Jerusalem" and "Milton," were
issued during the Eighteenth Century. Blake's artistic faculties seemed to
strengthen with advancing life, but his literary powers waned. He produced
few more satisfying illustrations than those to the Book of Job, executed
late in life. His artistic work also was left comparatively untainted by
the morbid strain of mysticism that runs through his so-called "prophetic
writings." The charm of Blake's poetry, as well as of his drawings, was not
fully appreciated until late in the Nineteenth Century. Charles Lamb, to be
sure, declared, "I must look upon him as one of the extraordinary persons
of the age," but his full worth was not recognized until Swinburne and
Rossetti took up his cause. In America, Charles Eliot Norton, at Harvard,
was Blake's ablest expounder. Famous are James Thomson's lines on William
Blake:

  He came to the desert of London town,
    Gray miles long;
  He wandered up and he wandered down,
    Singing a quiet song.

  He came to the desert of London town,
    Mirk miles broad;
  He wandered up and he wandered down,
    Ever alone with God.

  There were thousands and thousands of human kind,
    In this desert of brick and stone;
  But some were deaf and some were blind,
    And he was there alone.

  At length the good hour came; he died
    As he had lived, alone;
  He was not missed from the desert wide,
    Perhaps he was found at the Throne.

[Sidenote: Richard Bright]

In this year Dr. Richard Bright of London published his famous "Reports of
medical cases with a view to illustrate the symptoms and cure of diseases
by a reference to morbid anatomy." A special feature of the book was a full
description of Bright's discoveries in the pathology of the peculiar
disease of the kidneys which bears his name. Bright, in response to urgent
demands, lectured more fully on his great discovery before the London
College of Physicians and Surgeons.

[Sidenote: Delacroix]

Eugene Delacroix, the great exponent of French romantic art, and a pupil of
Guerin, exhibited this year his "Christ in the Garden of Olives." He had
previously exhibited "Dante and Virgil," which created a sensation by its
rich coloring. This was followed by his "Massacre of Scio," "The Death of
the Doge," "Marino Faliero," "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi" and
"Death of Sardanapalus." Not until some time after his death was he
recognized as the greatest early master of the French art after David. The
great majority of his works, embracing mural paintings and pictures of
immense size, are to be found in the principal churches and galleries of
France.

[Sidenote: Wellington Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: Powers intervene in Greece]

[Sidenote: Greek Naval victory]

[Sidenote: Turkish warships stopped]

[Sidenote: The Morea ravaged]

[Sidenote: An international demonstration]

After the brief interregnum of Goderich's administration in England,
Canning was succeeded by his rival, the Duke of Wellington. The good sense
and great renown of this distinguished soldier promised strength and
prestige to his administration. For a while the change of Ministry brought
no avowed change in Canning's plans. Huskisson and Palmerston were retained
in the Cabinet, and Canning's policy of active intervention in Greece was
upheld. In consequence of the Turkish refusal of mediation, the war
continued on both sides. The Turks got heavy reinforcements from Egypt, and
a strong expedition was on the point of leaving Navarino to make a descent
upon Hydra, the last stronghold of the insurrection. An Anglo-French fleet
under Admirals Codrington and Regnier made a demonstration in Greek waters.
The foreign admirals exacted a promise from Ibrahim that he would make no
movement until further orders should arrive from Constantinople. An oral
agreement to this effect was reached late in September. A few days later
the Greeks in free continuance of hostilities won a brilliant naval victory
in the Gulf of Corinth. The hero on this occasion was Captain Hastings, an
English volunteer. Ibrahim was so incensed that he sailed out of Navarino
and made for Patras. Codrington threw his British squadron across the
track of the Egyptian ships and forced them to turn back by a threat to
sink them. It was regretted at the time that Codrington did not compel
Ibrahim to take his expedition out of Greek waters back to Alexandria. As
it was, Ibrahim returned to Navarino, and there found orders from the
Sultan to carry on the war without regard to Western intermeddling. Another
Turkish column was forthwith despatched into the Morea and devastated that
country with fire and sword. Clouds of smoke revealed to the European naval
officers how the Turks had met their proposals for peace. Admiral
Codrington sent messages to Ibrahim, calling for instant cessation of
hostilities, for the evacuation of the Morea, and the return of his fleet
to Constantinople and Alexandria. The answer to this message was that
Ibrahim had marched into the Morea and could not be reached. The three
squadrons of England, Russia and France cruising off Zante immediately came
together. They consisted of twenty-nine vessels, ten ships of the line, ten
frigates, four brigs and five schooners. United in one column, under
command of Codrington as senior admiral, they sailed for Navarino.

Codrington was unhampered by instructions. He could feel sure of the
support of his government, however, for in his pocket was a confidential
note from the Duke of Clarence, the royal commander of the navy,
encouraging him to "find" a quarrel with the Turkish admiral.

[Sidenote: Navarino]

On October 20, the three squadrons sailed into Navarino harbor in battle
array, and came to anchor within pistol shot of the Turkish fleet,
composed of seventy warships, forty transports and four fire-ships,
anchored under cover of the land batteries. To windward of the British
corvette "Dartmouth" lay a Turkish brulote or fire-ship. A gig was sent to
demand the withdrawal of this dangerous vessel. The Turks fired on the boat
with cannon-shot and musketry. When Codrington sent a boat to the Egyptian
flagship, Moharem Bey, the admiral, opened with his guns. One shot struck
the "Asia," Codrington's flagship, and his pilot was killed. Codrington
opened with all his guns. The British broadsides soon reduced the Egyptian
flagship on one side, and a Turkish man-o'-war on the other side to mere
wrecks. The French and Russians joined in. The Moslem ships, which had a
superiority of 800 guns, replied with spirit. At close range they fought
the combined fleets of their hated Christian adversaries. From the
surrounding shores 20,000 Moslem soldiers discharged their guns into the
land-locked harbor. The fight lasted from three in the afternoon until
seven in the evening. All bravery was in vain when pitted against Western
seamanship and gunnery. In the course of a short afternoon one Turkish ship
after another was sunk or blown to pieces. By sundown little was left of
the Turkish fleet but a mass of wreckage. Only fifteen ships escaped, to be
scuttled by their own sailors. Four thousand Moslem seamen lost their
lives. All night long the Turkish gunners on shore kept up their fire. On
the morrow, when Ibrahim returned to Navarino, he found the waters of the
harbor strewn with wreckage and the floating bodies of his sailors. One of
the best accounts of the battle of Navarino has been given by Eugène Sue,
the novelist, who then served as surgeon on one of the French vessels.

[Sidenote: Greece saved]

The island of Hydra and with it all Greece was saved. The subsequent course
of Sultan Mahmoud was that of blind infatuation and fury. So far from
accepting the European demands for an armistice, he put forward a
peremptory request for an indemnity for the losses inflicted upon him. The
Ambassadors of the Powers quitted Constantinople. It was then that the loss
of Canning was felt in England. Instead of pursuing the vigorous policy to
which it stood committed by the battle of Navarino, Great Britain hung
back. Further intervention, with the profits accruing therefrom, was left
to Russia.




1828


[Sidenote: Peace of Tourkmanchay]

The time for undisturbed intervention in the East was most auspicious for
Russia. Peace with Persia was concluded early in the year. By the treaty of
Tourkmanchay, Fet Aly of Persia ceded to Russia the provinces of Erivan and
Nakhitchevan and paid an indemnity of 20,000,000 roubles. The river Araxes
was recognized as the frontier of both states. England's ascendency in
Persia was effectually set at naught. Even in China Emperor Taouk-Wang felt
encouraged to issue edicts prohibiting England's pernicious opium trade on
the Chinese coast. Russia's armies were now let loose on Turkey.

[Sidenote: Independence of Greece]

[Sidenote: Capodistrias summoned]

[Sidenote: Russia's double game]

[Sidenote: Understanding with France]

In the meanwhile, the Greeks profited by the Turkish check at Navarino to
assert themselves as an independent people. On January 18, Capodistrias,
the former Prime Minister of Russia, was summoned from Geneva and made
president of the Greek republic. His term of office was to last seven
years. This eminent statesman justified his selection by immediate
beneficent measures. A grand council of state was established and a
national bank opened in Athens. With the help of France, immunity from
further incursions from the Turks was practically assured. To preserve the
_status quo_ in Greece, Russia undertook to limit its single handed war on
Turkey to operations on the mainland and in the Black Sea. Within the
waters of the Mediterranean the Czar proposed to continue as an armed
neutral in harmony with the other Powers under the treaty of London, and,
to allay the apprehensions of Austria, the Russian forces in the Balkans
were ordered to carry their line of operations as far as possible from
Austria's sphere of influence. A still more effectual check on Austria was
secured by the Czar's secret encouragement of French aspirations toward the
Rhine. Charles X. exposed the plot when he said: "If the Czar attacks
Austria, I will hold myself in reserve and regulate my conduct according to
circumstances. If Austria attacks, I will instantly march against her." As
Prince Metternich put it, "The two powers were at one: France against the
European _status quo_; Russia against that of the Orient."

[Sidenote: Holy War proclaimed in Turkey]

[Sidenote: Russia declares war]

[Sidenote: Early success]

Although the recent Turkish concessions to Russia left to the Czar no
ground for war, a pretext was supplied by Sultan Mahmoud himself. With true
Turkish infatuation he chose this moment to issue a direct challenge to
Russia. The Czar was denounced as the instigator of the Greek rebellion,
and the arch enemy of Islam. The treaty of Akerman was declared null and
void. A holy war was proclaimed against the Muscovites. "The Turk does not
count his enemies. If all the unbelievers together unite against us we will
enter on the war as a sacred duty, and trust to Allah for help." This
proclamation was followed by the expulsion of all Christians from
Constantinople. Unfortunately for the Sultan, his recent massacre of the
Janizaries deprived him of the flower of his troops, and the reorganization
of the Turkish army, which was the motive of that act, was only under way.
For seven years the Russians had been preparing for this war. Nicholas lost
no time in answering the Sultan's challenge. He replied with a declaration
of war on April 26. Field Marshal Wittgenstein crossed the Pruth, while
Paskievitch entered Asia Minor. The Russian troops overran the Roumanian
provinces, Wallachia and Moldavia. The Danube was crossed early in June,
under the eyes of the Czar. Unable to meet their enemy in the open field,
the Turks withdrew into their strongholds, Ibraila and Silistria on the
Danube, Varna and Shumla in the Balkans. The Russians besieged and stormed
Ibraila, and thence pushed on through the Dubrudsha toward the Black Sea.
In the meanwhile Paskievitch in Asia Minor defeated two Turkish armies and
captured Erzeroum.

[Sidenote: Brionis victorious]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Varna]

After these early successes the Russian operations began to lag. The Czar's
presence at headquarters was a source of embarrassment rather than of
strength. Wittgenstein committed the error of dividing his army into three
slender columns. Too weak to conduct forward operations, they were held in
check before Silistria, Varna and Shumla. The Russian transport service,
none too good at best, collapsed under the threefold strain. The ill-fed
soldiers wasted away by thousands. At length Homer Brionis, the commandant
of Shumla, took advantage of the weakness of his besiegers. On September 24
he broke out of Shumla and marched to the relief of Varna. The Czar,
notwithstanding the evident weakness of his troops, ordered his cousin,
Eugene of Wurtemberg, to check the Turkish advance with a frontal attack.
The result was a severe defeat. Had Brionis marched onward Varna would have
been relieved. He clung to Shumla, however, and the Turks at Varna were
forced to surrender. It was late in autumn now, and cold weather put a stop
to the campaign for the year. The display of military weakness seriously
injured the prestige of Russia. The manifold mistakes of this campaign have
been unsparingly laid bare in a famous monograph of Moltke. Henceforth the
successful prosecution of the war became a _sine quâ non_ for Russia.

[Sidenote: Turks evacuate Morea]

[Sidenote: Vacillation in France]

During the progress of these events, French forces were landed in Greece.
They occupied Navarino, Patras and Modon. The Turks gave in and consented
to evacuate the Morea. In France, the ultra-royalist measures of Charles X.
gave rise to an ever growing spirit of dissatisfaction. The death of
Manuel, the outcast of the Chambers, was made the occasion of a great
public demonstration. The coalition of Liberals with a faction of Royalists
opposed to the Ministry had a brilliant triumph. Villèle's Cabinet offered
to resign. Instead of that, the King placed Martignac above him. "You are
deserting M. Villèle," said the Princess Royal to the King. "It is your
first step downward from the throne." The Duc de Broglie wrote: "Should we
succeed, after the fall of the present Ministry, in getting through the
year tranquilly, it will be a triumphant success." By way of concession to
the Liberals, a royal edict suppressed all the educational institutions
maintained by the Society of Jesus. The effect of this measure was offset
later in the year by renewed imprisonment and a heavy fine inflicted upon
Béranger for writing political songs.

[Sidenote: South American revolutions]

[Sidenote: Mitré's résumé]

Latin attempts at parliamentary government in America were productive of
even more discouraging results. In the Argentine Republic, the army, after
defeating the Brazilians, was led against its own government by General
Lavalle. The administration was overturned and President Dorrego was shot.
General Rosas became the leader of the Federalist forces and took the field
against the revolutionists. In Chile, the different parties contending for
the government patched up a precarious peace which was not destined to last
long. In Colombia, the Nueva Granada of the Spaniards, Bolivar clung to the
dictatorship. A new proclamation of dictatorial powers was issued by him on
February 10. Soon afterward an insurrection broke out against him led by
Peadella. Scarcely had this uprising been quelled when an attempt was made
to kill Bolivar at his seat of government. Henceforth the history of Latin
America degenerated into an endless series of revolutions and
counter-revolutions. The only real strength supplied to the various
republican governments, so called, was that derived from strong personal
characters, yielding one-man power. General Mitré, the great statesman and
historian of South America, has drawn up this striking résumé of the fate
of the foremost leaders of Spanish American revolutions. Their story is the
quintessence of the subsequent turbulent career of Latin America during the
Nineteenth Century.

[Sidenote: The gratitude of republics]

"The first revolutionists of La Paz and of Quito died on the scaffold.
Miranda, the apostle of liberty, betrayed by his own people, died, alone
and naked, in a dungeon. Moreno, the priest of the Argentine revolution,
and the teacher of the democratic idea, died at sea, and found a grave in
the ocean. Hidalgo, the first popular leader of Mexico, was executed as a
criminal. Belgrano, the first champion of Argentine independence, who saved
the revolution, died obscurely, while civil war raged around him.
O'Higgins, the hero of Chile, died in exile, as Carrera, his rival, had
done before him. Iturbide, the real liberator of Mexico, died a victim to
his own ambition. Montufar, the leader of the revolution at Quito, and his
comrade Villavicencio, the promoter of that of Cartagena, were strangled.
The first presidents of New Granada, Lozano and Torres, fell sacrifices to
colonial terrorism. Piar, who found the true base for the insurrection in
Colombia, was shot by Bolivar, to whom he had shown the way to victory.
Rivadavia, the civil genius of South America, who gave form to her
representative institutions, died in exile. Sucre, the conqueror of
Ayacucho, was murdered by his own men on a lonely road. Bolivar and San
Martin died in exile."

[Sidenote: Dissension in North America]

[Sidenote: New tariff]

[Sidenote: North _vs._ South]

In North America, likewise, the radical issues between the Northern and
Southern States produced ever more dissensions and discord. The question of
State sovereignty was prominent in the discussion of the tariff law of
1828, and assumed more and more a sectional aspect. The North had grown
rich and prosperous; when under free trade her energies were directed to
agriculture and commerce. This was the more emphasized when, under a
protective policy, her labor and her capital were devoted to the
development of manufactures. The Southern States had originally desired a
protective policy for their own supposed advantage; now they demanded free
trade for the same reason. But the North had put much money into
manufactures, and therefore demanded that Congress, which had placed her in
this position, should protect her in it. So the tariff of 1828, the highest
adopted in the United States up to that time, was a more comprehensive
measure than any which preceded it, and was adjusted throughout to
encourage Northern industry. New England was largely at one on this
subject, and the Middle and Western States were practically united. Thus it
became a question of party politics. From the tariff of 1828 dates a new
era in American Federal legislation. The division between the North and the
South began. Led by Daniel Webster, the New England States became advocates
of the protective system. The question, from being a national issue, became
distinctly sectional.

[Sidenote: Injustice to Indians]

[Sidenote: State rights precedent]

State sovereignty was the most important problem that presented itself
during John Quincy Adams's administration. The trouble with the Creek and
Cherokee Indians in Georgia brought this issue to the front. These tribes
were now partially civilized, and were tilling their lands in contentment.
Although they held their lands under treaty with the United States, Georgia
sought to eject them. Instead of protecting the Indians the national
government allowed Georgia to have its way and sent them to the Indian
Territory. Thus was an individual State permitted to act in defiance of the
national government.

[Sidenote: Industrial development]

[Sidenote: Webster's Dictionary]

[Sidenote: The "Book of Mormon"]

In other respects, it was a year of great prosperity and progress for the
United States. The differences with British North America in regard to
boundaries and to the proposed joint settlement of Oregon were amicably
settled by arbitration. The question of indemnities arising out of the
differences with England was likewise satisfactorily adjusted. England's
recent introduction of railroads was eagerly followed up in America. The
rails of the first American steam road were laid at Baltimore. They were
made of wood covered with iron bars. At Baltimore, too, the manufacture of
fire bricks was begun. Boston harbor beheld its first steamboat. The new
canal between Providence and Worcester was opened and produced an instant
increase of traffic for New England. In the other Eastern States factories
grew in number and new processes were introduced. Thus, the first varnish
made in America was produced at New York. Damask table linen was
manufactured at Pittsburg. The first straw paper was turned out at
Meadville, Pennsylvania. The planing mill was introduced. The Franklin
Institute at Philadelphia awarded to Stephen Boyden of Newark the premium
for his malleable castings. Arts and literature likewise flourished. Among
the new paintings exhibited during this year in America were Inman's
portrait of Halleck, Stuart's "Jared Sparks," Greenough's "Chanting
Cherubs," Dunlap's "Calvary" and Thomas Cole's "Garden of Eden." At Boston
the first lithographic press was established. Noah Webster published his
dictionary. Fenimore Cooper brought out his American romances, "The
Prairie" and "Red Rover," while Richard H. Dana published his "Buccaneer."
A book of singular fruition was Joseph Smith's "Book of Mormon," a
corrupted version of Spaulding's "The Manuscript Found."

[Sidenote: Heine's "Book of Songs"]

About the same time Wergeland in Norway published his tragedy, "Sinclair's
Death." In Germany the appearance of the "Book of Songs," instantly raised
Heine to the foremost rank among German lyric poets. The early influence of
Byron was revealed by his masterly translations from "Manfred," and of the
opening stanzas of "Childe Harold" and the lines addressed to "Inez." Most
felicitous was Heine's German version of Byron's famous farewell to his
wife:

  "Fare thee well, and if forever,
  Still forever, fare thee well."

Heine's own lyrical pieces, now put forth in profusion, were fully equal to
those of his English prototype. The "Book of Songs" throughout breathed
the spirit of the poet's sad boast:

  "From my heavy sorrows
  Made I these little songs...."

Heine's love songs, alone, by their subtile fusion of exquisite simplicity
with cynicism in a perverse form, won him immediate recognition outside of
Germany. This in itself has never been forgiven by the Germans. Such
prejudice did not deter German song composers from setting to music Heine's
melodious verses. Franz Schubert, the foremost song composer, just before
his death found inspiration in Heine's poems for his famous "Swan Song."

[Sidenote: Death of Schubert]

Schubert died in Vienna on the 19th of October, at the age of thirty-one.
Notwithstanding his brief career and lack of systematic schooling, he was
one of the most prolific as well as original of German composers. His
earliest extant song, "Hagar's Lament," was written at the age of fourteen.
Such early master works as "Margaret at the Spinning Wheel," and the
"Erl-King," both written for Goethe's words, mark the swift development of
his genius. During his eighteenth year, when he wrote the "Erl-King," he
composed no less than 144 songs. On one day alone he wrote eight. Besides
this he composed two operettas, three song plays, three other stage pieces,
four masses and several cantatas. In spite of his astonishing fecundity the
young composer suffered signally from lack of recognition. His whole life
was a long-drawn battle for subsistence. All his efforts to obtain a steady
income were unavailing. Though he composed scores for no less than
seventy-two of Goethe's lyrics, that great poet was indifferent to the
young composer. Beethoven, too, gave him but reluctant recognition. Not
until the year of his death did Schubert succeed in giving a public concert
that was a pecuniary success. He was wretchedly underpaid by his
publishers, and his greatest works utterly failed of contemporary
recognition. He died in the depths of poverty. In accordance with his last
request, Schubert was buried in the eastern graveyard at Waehring, close to
the grave of Beethoven. Schubert achieved immortal fame as the creator of
the modern lyric song. No less original were his effective transfers of the
song motive to pianoforte music, as shown in his "Moments Musicales" and
"Impromptus." Some of his symphonies, notably that in C and the "Fragment"
in B minor, are equal to those of Beethoven.

[Sidenote: Moratin]

Spain lost one of her most distinguished modern playwrights by the death of
Nicolas Fernandez de Moratin, a pupil of Goldoni, and the author of such
enduring Spanish comedies as "El Baron," "La Mogigata" and "El Sí de Las
Niñas." Besides his plays, Moratin also wrote an authoritative work on the
"Origins of the Spanish Stage."

Toward the end of the year the disorders in Portugal appeared to have
subsided sufficiently to warrant the withdrawal of the British troops. Dom
Miguel, the regent, promptly proclaimed himself King. After having grasped
the reins of power, one of his first measures was the dissolution of the
seven ancient estates of Portugal. In Spain King Ferdinand VII., in
December, celebrated his wedding to Maria Christina of Naples.

[Sidenote: Huskisson]

[Sidenote: O'Connell]

[Sidenote: Robert Peel]

Domestic affairs in England at this turn furnished an all-absorbing topic.
In the Cabinet, Huskisson's strong stand on the rotten borough question,
with his desire to accord Parliamentary representation to the working
people of Birmingham, had caused his expulsion from the Duke of
Wellington's councils. His resignation was followed by that of the former
members of the Canning Cabinet. Among those chosen to supply their place
was Vesey Fitzgerald, member for County Clare in Ireland. His acceptance of
office compelled him to go back to his constituents. It was then that
Daniel O'Connell, the great leader of the Catholic Association in Ireland,
saw his chance to strike a blow for Catholic emancipation. Though
disqualified from sitting in the Commons as a Catholic, O'Connell ran
against Fitzgerald. From the first Fitzgerald's cause was hopeless. The
great landowners, to be sure, supported his cause with all their wealth and
influence, but the small freeholders, to a man, voted against him. After a
five days' poll, Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest. The result was that
the hitherto irresistible influence of England's territorial aristocracy
lay shattered. The Protestant conservatives of England were filled with
consternation. Every debate in Parliament showed that the Catholic party
was daily gaining strength, while the resistance of the government became
weaker. It was clear that something must be done. At this crisis Robert
Peel, hitherto the champion of the Protestant party in the House of
Commons and Cabinet, became convinced of the necessity of yielding. He lost
no time in imparting this conviction to the Duke of Wellington, his chief,
and therewith offered his resignation. Wellington had learned a lesson from
the events that followed Huskisson's withdrawal. He refused to let Peel go.
Reluctantly he became a party to Peel's change of views. As late as
December 11, Wellington wrote a letter to the Catholic primate of Ireland,
deferring all hope of Catholic emancipation to the distant future. Before
the year closed, however, Wellington, armed with the arguments of Peel,
wrung from the King the Crown's consent to concede Catholic emancipation
without delay. Peel, as the author of this radical measure, consented to
take charge of the bill in Parliament.




1829


[Sidenote: Wellington's change of front]

At the opening of Parliament in England, the concessions of the government
in regard to Catholic emancipation were revealed in the royal speech,
delivered by commission. The great Tory party, thus taken unawares, was
furious. The Protestant clergy opposed the bill with all their influence
and clamored for a dissolution of Parliament. In the excited state of
public feeling, an immediate appeal to the country would undoubtedly have
wrecked the bill. Unable to carry out such a plan, the Tory opposition
showed itself ready to unite with any party in order to defeat the measure
and wreak vengeance on its framers. Within the Cabinet itself, Wellington's
change brought him bitter opposition. When the bill was brought into
Parliament in March, the Attorney-General, Sir C. Wetherell, not content
with refusing to draw the bill, sprang up to explain his position.

[Sidenote: Wetherell's attack]

"Am I, then," he exclaimed, "to blame for refusing to do that, in the
subordinate office of Attorney-General, which a more eminent adviser of the
Crown, only two years ago, declared he would not consent to do? I dare them
to attack me! I have no speech to eat up. I have not to say that a thing
is black one day and white another. I would rather remain as I am, the
humble member for Plympton, than be guilty of such treachery, such
contradiction, such unexplained conversion, such miserable and contemptible
apostasy.... They might have turned me out of office, but I would not be
made such a dirty tool as to draw _that_ bill. I have therefore declined to
have anything to do with it." Of course, Wetherell was at once dismissed.

[Sidenote: Defeat of Peel]

[Sidenote: Emancipation of English Catholics]

But an opportunity to avenge his dismissal was soon afforded. Robert Peel,
since he was not suffered to withdraw from the Ministry, felt in honor
bound to go back to his constituents at Oxford. The Protestant party that
had sent him to Parliament now opposed him with a simple country gentleman,
in no wise his Parliamentary equal. Peel was crushingly defeated. On the
other hand, the Whig party almost in a body went over to the government.
With their help the Catholic Emancipation act was passed. The Tories waited
only for the time to strike down their former leaders.

[Sidenote: Reforms in India]

[Sidenote: Fanny Kemble]

[Sidenote: Humphry Davy]

[Sidenote: Thomas Young]

The precarious position of Wellington's Ministry at home was offset by a
firm policy abroad. In British India the new Governor-General, Lord
Bentinck, upheld British prestige by his firm abolition of the native
custom of burning widows and by his extermination of the roving gangs of
Thugs. In regard to the Eastern Question and the war in the Balkans,
England came to an agreement with Austria to frustrate Russia's plans with
respect to Constantinople. Thanks to this _entente cordiale_ between the
two countries, enterprising English capitalists and engineers were allowed
to put into operation the first line of steamboats that plied the waters of
the Danube. Among other minor events of interest to Englishmen during this
year, may be mentioned the first public appearance of Fanny Kemble, the
actress, and the earliest boat race between student crews from the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. England lost two of her famous
scientists during this year--Sir Humphry Davy and Thomas Young. Davy was
born in 1778 and died in Geneva. Besides inventing the miner's safety lamp,
with which his name will be forever associated, he made valuable
experiments in photography; discovered that the causes of chemical and
electrical attraction are identical; produced potassium and sodium by the
electric current; proved the transformation of energy into heat; formulated
a theory of the properties of particles of matter (or atoms); and made
remarkable experiments which led to the theory of the binary composition of
chemical compounds. Young was born in 1773. At Cambridge they called him
"Phenomenon Young," because he was said to know everything. In truth, Young
developed into the most profound English scientist of the century. When
only twenty he was asked to read papers before the Royal Society. In 1801
he delivered the Bakerian lecture, his subject being "The Theory of Light
and Colors." That lecture marks an epoch in physical science; for it
brought forward for the first time convincing proof of the correctness of
the undulatory theory of light. The intangible substance which pulsates
and undulates to produce light, Young christened the "luminiferous ether."
And the term is still to be found in our scientific vocabulary.

  [Illustration: AMERICAN INVENTORS
    Painted by C. Schussele

   1 Dr Morton, Etherization
   2 Bogardus, Iron Architecture
   3 Colt, Revolvers
   4 McCormick, Reapers
   5 Saxton, Coast Survey Machinery
   6 Goodyear, Vulcanizing Gum Elastic
   7 Cooper, Gelatine
   8 Prof Henry, Electricity as a Motor
   9 Mott, Works in Iron
  10 Dr Nott, Management of Heat
  11 Ericsson, Caloric Engine Monitors, etc.
  12 Sickles, Steam Cut off, etc.
  13 Morse, Telegraph
  14 Burden, Horseshoe Machine
  15 Hoe, Rotary Press
  16 Bigelow, Carpet Loom
  17 Jennings, Friction Matches
  18 Blanchard, Eccentric Lathe
  19 Howe, Sewing Machine]

[Sidenote: War in the Balkans]

[Sidenote: Battle of Kulevtcha]

[Sidenote: Fall of Adrianople]

[Sidenote: Powers save Turkey]

[Sidenote: Russia's hold on Turkey]

In the Balkans Russia's war with Turkey was waged with vigor. The winter
months had been spent in bringing up reserves. The Czar withdrew from
interference at headquarters, and Wittgenstein was superseded by General
Diebitsch, a trained Prussian soldier. This general made preparations to
cross the Balkans as soon as Silistria should have fallen, without waiting
for the fall of Shumla. On the other side of the Balkans the Russian fleet
made a diversion so as to prepare the way for joining forces on the banks
of the Black Sea. In accordance with these plans Diebitsch sent a strong
force against Silistria. Before anything had been effected in front of
Silistria, Reshid Pasha, the Turkish Grand Vizier, moved eastward from
Shumla and took the field against the weak Russian forces at Varna. He lost
time, however, and suffered himself to be held at bay by the Russians.
Diebitsch hurried across Bulgaria in forced marches. Coming up in Reshid's
rear he could either fall upon Shumla or force the Turks to open battle. He
chose the latter course. The Turks, harried in their rear, attempted to
regain the roads to Shumla. On June 10, the two forces met in a pitched
battle at Kulevtcha. Reshid was badly defeated, losing 5,000 men and
forty-three guns, but made good his retreat to Shumla. Diebitsch had to lay
siege to Shumla. Soon after this, Silistria fell into the hands of the
Russians. Turning Varna over to the Bulgarians, and leaving a blockading
force before Shumla, Diebitsch boldly crossed the Balkans. The resistance
of the Turks was weak. On August 19, the Russians appeared before
Adrianople. In the Black Sea the Russian frigate "Mercury" defeated two
Turkish men-of-war. The Turks were seized with terror. Adrianople
surrendered without a blow. In the Morea the Turks evacuated Tripolitza and
Missolonghi and acknowledged the independence of Greece. The ports of the
Black Sea, almost as far south as the Bosphorus, fell into Russian hands.
Flying columns of the Russian army penetrated down to the Ægean coast and
as far as the Euxine. Yet the Russians were so weak in numbers that
anything like determined resistance could easily have checked them. As it
was, all Turkish resistance collapsed before the Russian onward march
toward Constantinople. The Sultan appealed to the Powers for help. England
and Austria intervened, and peace was forced upon Russia. The treaty of
Adrianople, signed on September 14, confirmed to Russia its protectorate
over the Danubian principalities. No Mussulman was to be permitted to stay
within the principalities, and all Turkish lands were to be sold within
eighteen months. No fortified point on the left bank of the Danube was left
to Turkey. Territory in Asia was ceded to Russia, as well as the ports of
Poti and Anapa on the Black Sea. The waters of this sea were thrown open to
international navigation; and the straits of Constantinople and the
Dardanelles were declared open to the merchant ships of all powers at
peace with the Porte. The payment of a money indemnity of 2,000,000 roubles
to Russia was deferred, thus leaving to Russia the means for exerting
pressure on the Yildiz Kiosk.

[Sidenote: French ambitions]

[Sidenote: Polignac Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: Liberal opposition]

Russia's acceptance of foreign mediation at Adrianople brought
disappointment to France. Reverting to Napoleonic ambitions, King Charles's
Ministers had proposed a partition of the Ottoman Empire on the basis of a
general rearrangement of Europe. Russia was to have the Danubian provinces
near the Austrian empire, Bosnia and Servia; Prussia was to have Saxony and
Holland; Belgium and the Rhine provinces were to fall to France, and the
King of Holland was to be installed in the Sultan's divan at
Constantinople. It was a chimerical project which it was hoped might avert
the impending troubles at home by dazzling acquisitions abroad. A
formidable majority had been raised up against the government by its
persistent encroachments upon the freedom of speech and of the press.
Martignac's Ministry resigned and Prince Polignac, a crony of the King, was
put in his place. In August, the "Journal des Débats" thundered against
him: "Now again is broken that bond of love and confidence which joined the
people to the monarch. The people pay a million of taxes to the law; they
will not pay two millions on the orders of the Minister. What will he do
then? Will he bring to his assistance the force of the bayonet? Bayonets in
these days have become intelligent. They know how to defend the law.
Unhappy France, unhappy King!" The Bertins were prosecuted for that
article and condemned. It only made matters worse. Societies were formed
throughout France to refuse the payment of taxes should the government
attempt to raise them without the consent of the Chambers. In the face of
this growing popular opposition, the King and his Minister resolved to
prepare an expedition against Algiers. As Guizot put it, "They hope to get
rid of their difficulties through conquest abroad and a resulting majority
at home." The death of Paul Barras about this time served to revive
revolutionary memories in France.

[Sidenote: The Schlegels]

The memory of Madame de Staël and her struggle for freedom of speech and of
literary opinion against Napoleon were recalled by the death of her
long-time friend and biographer, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm von Schlegel,
brother of August Wilhelm, the German poet. Karl studied at Göttingen and
Leipzig, devoting most of his time to the classics. It was his ideal to
become the "Winckelmann of Greek Literature." Schlegel's first publication
was "Greeks and Romans." In 1798 he wrote "Lucinda," an unfinished romance,
and "Alarcos," a tragedy. In 1803 he joined the Roman Church, and several
years later was appointed an imperial secretary at Vienna. He served as
Consul of Legation for Austria in the German Diet at Frankfort. Besides his
published lectures, Schlegel's chief works are: "History of the Old and New
Literature" (1815), "Philosophies of Life" (1828), "Philosophy of History"
(1829), and the posthumous work "Philosophy of Language." His wife, a
daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, was the author of several works published
under Schlegel's name. During the same year Pope Leo XII. died at Rome and
was succeeded by Pius VIII.


[Sidenote: Andrew Jackson inaugurated]

In the United States of North America, John Quincy Adams was succeeded by
Andrew Jackson. Calhoun was re-elected Vice-President. A motley crowd of
backwoodsmen and mountaineers, who had supported Jackson, crushed into the
White House shouting for "Old Hickory." For the first time the outgoing
President absented himself from the inauguration of his successor. He had
remained at his desk until midnight of the previous day signing
appointments which would deprive Jackson of so much more patronage. Jackson
took his revenge by the instant removal of 167 political opponents. His
remark, "To the victor belong the spoils," became a byword of American
politics. The system of rotation in office dates from his administration.


[Sidenote: "The Kitchen Cabinet"]

[Sidenote: "Pocket Vetoes"]

[Sidenote: Peggy O'Neill]

Jackson's first Cabinet was headed by Van Buren, with Samuel D. Ingham for
Secretary of the Treasury. The President also encouraged a set of
confidential advisers, among whom Kendall, Lewis and Hill were the most
influential. They came to be known as the "Kitchen Cabinet." The regular
members of the Cabinet were treated as mere head clerks. In one week
Jackson vetoed more bills than any of his predecessors had done in four
years. Other bills he held back until after the adjournment of Congress,
and then failed to sign them. The bills remained, as it were, in the
President's pocket. This new method of vetoing became notorious as the
"Pocket Veto." In other respects Jackson's first administration was stormy.
International relations were repeatedly threatened by the long-standing
controversy over the indemnity for French spoliations. An adjustment of the
indemnity claims with Denmark was likewise forced to an issue. At home,
Jackson's abandonment of the principle of extreme protection and his
hostility to the United States Bank lost him the support of the loose
constructionists. As a Freemason, the President was likewise opposed by the
new anti-Masonic party in politics. In a quarrel over the character of the
wife of Secretary Eaton, the beautiful Peggy O'Neill, all Washington was
involved. It was commonly believed that the subsequent break-up of
Jackson's Cabinet was caused by the social bickerings among the wives of
the members. Van Buren was the first to resign. Soon he was appointed
Minister to England, but the Senate rejected him through the vote of
Vice-President Calhoun. Jackson afterward took his revenge by defeating
Calhoun's aspirations to the Presidency through Van Buren. The new Cabinet
consisted of Livingston, McLean, Cass, Woodbury, Tracy and Berry. By reason
of the new protective tariff, the States of Georgia and South Carolina,
toward the close of 1829, returning to the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799,
affirmed the right of any State to declare null and void any act of
Congress which the State Legislature deemed unconstitutional. This was the
doctrine of nullification which grew to secession in 1860.

[Sidenote: American development]

The industrial progress of the United States was little affected by the
political dissensions during Jackson's first Presidential year. On July 4,
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was opened. The first trip of an American
locomotive was made on the Carbondale and Honesdale road. Throughout the
country many canals were opened; to wit, the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal,
the Delaware and Hudson, and the Oswego in New York; the Farmington in
Connecticut, and the Cumberland and Oxford Canal in Maine. Among the
literary productions of the year were a collection of minor poems by Edgar
Allan Poe, Parkman's earlier essays, Cooper's "Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish,"
Sparks's "John Ledyard," and Washington Irving's "Granada."

[Sidenote: Early automobile vehicles]

In England the first successful experiments with steam-propelled stage
coaches were made by Sir Goldsworth Gurney. These machines were the
precursors of the latter-day automobile vehicle. This account of a ride in
the Gurney stage coach was published by the "United Service Journal":

[Sidenote: A contemporary description]

"We numbered four in a coach attached to the steam carriage, and we had
travelled without difficulty or mishap as far as Longford, where they were
repairing the bridge over the Cambria. On this was a large pile of bricks,
so high as to conceal what was happening on the other side. Precisely at
the moment we began to cross the bridge the mail-coach from Bath arrived on
the other end. As soon as we perceived it we shouted to the driver to take
care; but, as he was not aware of the extraordinary vehicle he was going
to meet, he did not slacken speed. To avoid a collision, Mr. Gurney guided
our steam carriage into the pile of bricks. Some damage to our apparatus
resulted, but was repaired in less than a quarter of an hour. As to the
horses of the coach, they had taken the bit between their teeth and had to
be cut loose.

"Upon our arrival at Melksham, we found that there was a fair in progress,
and the streets were full of people. Mr. Gurney made the carriages travel
as slowly as possible, in order to injure no one. Unfortunately, in that
town the lower classes are strongly opposed to the new method of
transportation. Excited by the postilions, who imagined that the adoption
of Mr. Gurney's steam carriage would compromise their means of livelihood,
the multitude that encumbered the streets arose against us, heaped us with
insults, and attacked us with stones. The chief engineer and another man
were seriously injured. Mr. Gurney feared we could not pursue our journey,
as two of his best mechanics had need of surgical aid. He turned the
carriage into the court of a brewer named Ales, and during the night it was
guarded by constables."

[Sidenote: Jobard]

[Sidenote: Jobard's impressions]

To have assisted at the experiment of Gurney's steam carriage was, in those
days, almost a title to glory. These carriages became speedily one of the
curiosities of London. Foreign travellers who printed accounts of their
journeys, did not fail to devote a chapter to the new means of locomotion.
Jobard, the Belgian savant and economist, was of the number, and so were
Cuchette, St. Germain Leduc and C.G. Simon, three prominent scientific
writers of that time. Jobard's impressions noted down at the time are
worthy of record: "My first visit in England was to the starting station of
Sir Goldsworth Gurney's steam omnibus, running between London and Bath.
This carriage does not differ materially from other stage-coaches, nor has
it had any serious mishap as yet. For my benefit it manoeuvred back and
forth over the street pavement and later on the smooth macadam of the
highway, without any apparent difficulties of guiding. The drivers of other
stage-coaches are agreed that the thing is a success, and that before long
it will do them much harm."

[Sidenote: Lamarck]

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, a forerunner of Charles Darwin died in this year.
As early as 1801 Lamarck had outlined his ideas of the transmutation of
species and attempted to explain the manner in which that transmutation had
been brought about. There is no such thing as a "species," he held; there
are only individuals descended from a common stock and modified in
structure to suit their environment. Lamarck was scoffed at in his own
time; he was respected as a naturalist, but unrecognized as a prophet.




1830


[Sidenote: First sewing machine]

Early in the year, Bartholemy Thimonnier, a French tailor, took out a
patent for his invention of a sewing machine. It was an invention destined
to revolutionize the manufacture of clothing and the matter of dress in all
civilized countries. Thimonnier's device was a chain stitch sewing machine
worked with a treadle. It had taken the inventor, ignorant as he was of
mechanics, four years of painful application to perfect it. The first to
recognize the real value of the invention was M. Beunier, supervisor of
mines at Paris. He took Thimonnier to Paris and installed him as a partner
and manager of a large clothing firm that manufactured army uniforms. They
set up eighty machines and did so well with them that the workmen of Paris,
profiting by the revolutionary disturbances of the times, wreaked their
vengeance on the new labor-saving device by wrecking the establishment. The
inventor was compelled to flee for life. During the same year, another
Frenchman, Charles Barbier, invented the system of raised printing for the
blind.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas Lawrence]

Sir Thomas Lawrence, the celebrated English portrait painter, died at the
outset of the year. In his early youth at Bristol and Oxford, this artist
showed marked talent for portraiture, and became a pupil of Sir Joshua
Reynolds at the Royal Academy. His delicate pastel portraits obtained great
vogue in the most aristocratic circles of London. On the death of his
master, Lawrence was appointed painter to the King. He became the
fashionable portrait painter of the age. As such, Lawrence was summoned to
Aix-la-Chapelle during the International Congress of 1818 to paint the
various dignitaries of the Holy Alliance. While at Vienna he painted the
famous pastel of Napoleon's son, the little King of Rome--by all odds the
most charming of all the many likenesses of that unfortunate eaglet.
Lawrence returned to England a few days after the death of Benjamin West,
and was immediately elected to succeed him as President of the Royal
Academy. He held this office for ten years, until his death. Among the most
noted works of Lawrence, executed during this time, were the portraits of
Master Lambton and of the Duke of Wellington. Lawrence's ambitious essays
beyond the limits of portrait painting, such as his once celebrated
"Satan," obtained no lasting success. After the artist's death a number of
his best known canvases were collected for permanent exhibition in the
Waterloo Gallery of Windsor.

[Sidenote: Lister's microscope]

In this year Joseph Jackson Lister, an English amateur optician,
contributed to the Royal Society the famous paper detailing his recent
experiments with the compound microscope. Aided by Tully, a celebrated
optician, Lister succeeded in making of the microscope a practical
scientific implement rather than a toy. With the help of his own
instrument Lister was able to settle the long mooted question as to the
true form of the red corpuscles of the human blood.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Algiers]

[Sidenote: England's vain protest]

In the face of the menacing attitude of the liberal elements of France,
which had been rendered more acute by the King's increase of the Chamber of
Peers to the detriment of the Deputies, the French Government launched
forth upon the conquest of Algiers. It was believed to be an auspicious
moment. The Sultan's reluctant acknowledgment of the independence of
Greece, April 25, showed how powerless he was. The Dey of Algiers had
insulted France by his discourteous treatment of a French consul. He
refused the satisfaction demanded by France. On the failure of a blockade
to reduce the city of Algiers, an expedition commanded by Bourmont set out
for Africa in spring. A landing was successfully effected by the middle of
June. Early in July, Algiers was taken. Immense spoils, valued at
48,000,000 francs, were seized by the French. England grew apprehensive.
George IV. had just died (June 26), and the Duke of Wellington, who was
retained in power by the new king, William IV., demanded from the French
Government an engagement to retain none of its new conquests. "Never," said
Lord Alverdon to Lavel, the French Ambassador, "never did France, under the
Republic or under the Empire, give England such serious ground of complaint
as she has been giving us for the last year." It was in vain. The seething
spirit of the people in France seemed to demand an outlet. The victories
of French arms in Africa were cast before the French people as a sop. The
permanent annexation of Algiers was announced. It was too late.

[Sidenote: "Hernani"]

[Sidenote: Théophile Gautier]

[Sidenote: Honoré de Balzac]

[Sidenote: French Government outvoted]

[Sidenote: Charles Xth's Coup d'État]

The heated spirit of the rising generation had already been revealed in the
hysterical demonstrations that occurred on the occasion of the first
performance of Victor Hugo's "Hernani" on February 25. Conspicuous among
the leaders of the literary tumult was Théophile Gautier, then a youth of
eighteen, but already an author and an _Hugolâtre intransigeant_, who led
the claque on this first night resplendent in a rose-colored doublet and
streaming long hair. With him was young Balzac, who had just won renown and
notoriety by his "Physiologie du Mariage," and the first of his "Contes
Drôlatiques." In March, the Liberals in the Chambers declared their want of
confidence in the government by a majority of forty votes. Charles X.,
staking all on the success of his Algerian campaign, dissolved the
Chambers. "No compromise, no surrender," was the motto of the Royalists as
they appealed to the people. The result was an overwhelming majority
against the government. No less than 202 deputies pledged to opposition
were elected. The whole of France was now waiting for the _coup d'état_,
and Europe waited with France. "Your two weakest points are the electoral
law and the liberty of the press," said Metternich to the French Ambassador
in Vienna, "but you cannot touch them except through the Chambers. A _coup
d'état_ would ruin the dynasty." The Czar, in St. Petersburg, spoke in a
like strain to the Duc de Mortemart. Charles X. could not be restrained.
"There are only Lafayette and I who have not changed since 1789," said the
King. On July 24, a Sunday, after attending mass, Charles X. signed the
orders that were to rid him of his Chambers. All his Ministers signed with
him. "For life and for death, gentlemen," said the King. "Count upon me as
I count upon you."

[Sidenote: Thiers]

[Sidenote: Marmont]

[Sidenote: The July revolution]

The Orders in Council appeared in the "Moniteur" the next day. It was said
that Sauvo, the editor of the "Moniteur," as he gave the order to go to
press, exclaimed: "God protect the King." The publication of the edict
caused an instant extraordinary fall in stocks. Thiers thundered against it
in the "Journal des Débats." Government troops seized the printing presses
of the leading journals. Murmuring crowds gathered on the streets. The King
appointed Marshal Marmont commandant of Paris. It was the last stroke, for
Marmont was popularly execrated as the betrayer of Napoleon. The National
Guards brought forth their old tricolor cockades of the Revolution and the
Empire. Though military patrols tramped the streets, the night passed
quietly. Next morning all work stopped, and the people fell to building
barricades. Whole streets were torn up. The pupils of the Polytechnic
School broke open the gates and the tricolor flag floated on the towers of
Notre Dame. Marshal Marmont reported to the King: "Sire, it is no longer a
riot, but a revolution. There is urgent need for your Majesty to take means
of pacification. Thus the honor of the Crown may yet be saved. To-morrow
it will be too late." The King's answer was to declare Paris under a state
of siege. The so-called "Great Week," or "three days' revolution," had
begun. The bourgeoisie or middle class and all the students joined the
revolt. Before nightfall 600 barricades blocked the streets of Paris. Every
house became a fortress. "Where do the rebels get their powder?" asked the
King in astonishment. "From the soldiers," was the curt reply of the
Procureur-General.

[Sidenote: Charles X. obstinate]

[Sidenote: Fall of Ministry]

[Sidenote: An interim republic]

[Sidenote: Duke of Orleans summoned]

In the evening the Hôtel de Ville was captured. That evening the Ministers
tried to enlighten the King, but he only replied: "Let the insurgents lay
down their arms." While the discharges of artillery shook the windows of
the palace the King played whist. Next day two line regiments openly joined
the revolt. The Louvre was stormed. Still the King at St. Cloud would not
yield. "They exaggerate the danger," said he. "I know what concessions
would lead to. I have no wish to ride like my brother on a cart." Instead
of concessions he vested the command in the Dauphin, having grown
suspicious of Marmont. The mob sacked the Tuileries and hoisted the
tricolor flag on the clock tower. At the Hôtel de Ville a municipal
commission was installed, composed of Lafayette, Casimir Périer, General
Lobau and Audry de Puyraveau. At last, when it was too late, the King
countermanded his obnoxious orders and dismissed Polignac with his
Ministry. The people no longer paid attention to the King's acts. He was
declared deposed. A republic was proclaimed and its presidency offered to
Lafayette. But the old hero declined the honor. With Thiers he threw his
influence in favor of the Duke of Orleans. The Duke of Orleans, the son of
Philip Egalité, of Revolutionary fame, was invited to Paris to exercise the
functions of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The deposed King at St.
Cloud hastened to confirm the appointment. The Duke of Orleans respectfully
declined the royal appointment. "You cannot receive things from everybody,"
said Dupont. General Lafayette soon came to pay his respects. "You know,"
said he, "that I am a republican, and consider the Constitution of the
United States as the most perfect that has been devised." "So do I,"
replied the Duke; "but do you think that in the present condition of France
it would be advisable for us to adopt it?" "No," answered Lafayette; "what
the French people must now have is a popular throne, surrounded by
republican institutions." "That is just my opinion," said Prince Louis
Philippe.

[Sidenote: Charles X. abdicates]

Lafayette's conversation with the prince led to the so-called programme of
the Hôtel de Ville. "I shall not take the crown," said the Duke of Orleans,
"I shall receive it from the people on the conditions it suits them to
impose. A charter will henceforth be a reality." At last Charles X.
abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux. The Duke of
Orleans refused to recognize the claims of Henri V., and France and Europe
were with him. Charles X. relinquished further hopes.

[Sidenote: Louis Philippe, King of France]

The Dauphin, formerly Duke of Angoulême, in like manner resigned his rights
to his nephew. The act was signed on the 2d of August. Charles X. now set
out for Normandy with his guards, commanded by Marmont, and, on August 16,
embarked at Cherbourg in two American vessels, with the Dauphin and
Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, the Duke of Bordeaux, and a numerous
suite of attendants. The ships sailed for England, and, anchoring at
Spithead, the royal fugitives took up their residence at Lulworth Castle,
in Dorsetshire, but eventually removed to Holyrood Castle at Edinburgh,
which was placed at their disposal by the British Government. On August 9,
Louis Philippe, on the formal request of the two Chambers, accepted the
crown of France with a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution.

[Sidenote: Louis Philippe's previous career]

[Sidenote: Sojourn in America]

[Sidenote: "Le Roi Citoyen"]

[Sidenote: A new power in France]

The overthrow of the Bourbons was not a revolution in the sense of the
great French Revolution of the previous century. It resulted chiefly in the
transfer of government from one political faction to another. Louis
Philippe, raised to the throne by reason of his supposed democratic
principles, rather than for his royal lineage, was a Republican only in
name. His early education, together with that of his brothers, was directed
by the Countess of Genlis. On the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, the
young Prince, then Duke of Chartres, fought with distinction by the side of
Kellermann and Dumouriez at Valmy and Jemmapes. He accompanied the latter
when he took refuge in the camp of the imperialists in April, 1793. After
the death of his father, Philippe Egalité, refusing to bear arms against
France, he joined his sister and Madame de Genlis in Switzerland, where
they lived for some time under an assumed name. In 1795 he travelled into
the north of Germany, Sweden and Norway, and in the following year sailed
from Hamburg for the United States of America. Here he was joined by his
two brothers, and after some years in America, during which they were often
in distress, the three princes went to England in 1800. The Duke of Orleans
now obtained a reconciliation with the heads of his family, Louis XVIII.
and the Count of Artois. Subsequently he became a guest at the court of
Ferdinand IV., the dispossessed King of Naples, at Palermo; and here was
celebrated, in November, 1809, his marriage with the Princess Marie Amelie,
daughter of that monarch. Upon the restoration of Louis XVIII. he
re-entered France, and took his seat in the Chamber of Peers; but having
fallen under suspicion of disaffection, he once more retired to England and
did not reappear in France till 1817. During the remainder of the reign of
Louis he took no part in public affairs and lived in tranquillity at his
favorite villa of Neuilly. He was a "citizen king," only in so far as he
sent his children to the public schools and walked about the streets of
Paris with an umbrella under his arm. The most lasting effect in France of
the July revolution was the obliteration of clerical influences in the
administration and public education. The Royalist nobility likewise lost
what political ascendency they had regained during the Restoration.
Henceforth the party in power was that of the bourgeoisie or great middle
class of France, of which Louis Philippe himself was the self-constituted
representative.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Belgium]

[Sidenote: Bombardment of Antwerp]

[Sidenote: Talleyrand's last mission]

[Sidenote: Belgian Independence recognized]

Outside of France, on the contrary, the effects of the short revolution
were far-reaching. In the Netherlands ever increasing friction between the
Dutch-speaking Protestants of Holland and the French Catholics of Belgium
had excited the country to the point of revolution. Recent repressive
measures on the part of the Dutch Government made matters worse. On August
25, the performance, at the Brussels Opera House, of Auber's "La Muette di
Portici," with its representation of a revolutionary rising in Naples, gave
the signal for revolt. From the capital the insurrection spread throughout
Belgium. The King summoned the States-General to The Hague and agreed to an
administrative separation of Belgium and Holland; but the storm was not
quelled. On the appearance of Dutch troops in Brussels, barricades were
erected and the insurgents drove the soldiers out of the city. For several
days fighting continued in the outskirts. A provisional government declared
the independence of Belgium. Mediation by a conference in Holland was
frustrated by the bombardment of Antwerp by its Dutch garrison. The French
Liberals were burning to give assistance. Austria and Russia stood ready to
prevent their intervention by force of arms. Louis Philippe, while holding
the French war party in check, felt constrained to look about him for an
ally. In this extremity Prince Talleyrand, the old-time diplomat of the
Bourbons, the Republic, the Empire and the Restoration, now in his
eightieth year, was sent to London. He approached Wellington and the new
King with such consummate address that an understanding was soon reached
with England, which set at naught all projects of European armed
intervention on behalf of the Prince of Orange. Such intervention could not
have failed to drag the French into war. Now it was agreed that the
regulation of Belgian affairs should be submitted to a conference at
London. In the interim Belgian independence was accepted in effect and
hostilities ended.

[Sidenote: Leopold of Coburg declines Greek crown]

In Greece, the government of Capodistrias was beset with such difficulties
that it was decided to invite some European prince to set up a
constitutional monarchy. The throne was offered to Prince Leopold of
Coburg, the husband of the late Princess Charlotte of England. Leopold
accepted, but when he learned that the Powers would not grant complete
independence to Greece, without restoring Ætolia, Thessaly and the fertile
islands of Samos and Candia to the Sultan, he withdrew his acceptance.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Poland]

[Sidenote: War declared on Russia]

Peace had scarcely been restored in the Netherlands when the spirit of
revolt, travelling northward, seized the ardent people of Poland.
Alexander's recognition of home rule in Poland had given the Poles a
parliament and army of their own. After the Polish conspiracies at the
outset of Nicholas's reign, Alexander's successor would no longer invoke
the Polish Diet, and Russian troops and officers were sent into Poland. Of
course this was bitterly resented. Plans for an uprising had already been
made in 1828 during the Turkish war. The example of the successful risings
in Paris and Brussels now brought matters to a head. On November 29, the
revolt broke out in Warsaw. The Polish regiments of the garrison joined the
insurgents. The Russian troops, finding the odds against them, withdrew.
Grandduke Constantine narrowly escaped with his life. A provisional Polish
Diet was convoked. Prince Czartoryski was elected President. The Poles, in
remembrance of the late Czar's kindly attitude toward them, flattered
themselves that the fruits of their revolution might be left to them.
Lubecki, the former chief of the Imperial Council in Poland, with two
associates, set out for St. Petersburg to voice the Polish demands for
constitutional government before the Czar. It was even proposed that
constitutional government should be conceded to those Russian provinces
that had formerly belonged to Poland. On the way to St. Petersburg the eyes
of the envoys were opened as they met the formidable columns of Russian
troops marching to the Polish frontier. Forthwith, Lubecki forsook the
cause of Poland. His colleagues found difficulty in obtaining a hearing
from the Czar. When they were finally admitted to the imperial palace,
Nicholas gave them clearly to understand that Poland had but two
alternatives, unconditional submission or complete subjugation. When this
answer reached Warsaw it was too late to swing the outside Polish provinces
and Lithuania into the movement. Yet the Polish Diet, in a spirit of
patriotic frenzy amounting to national suicide, passed a resolution
declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown.
Feverish preparations were made for a life and death struggle with Russia.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Spain]

The fall of the Bourbons in France had once more raised the hope of the
Spanish Liberals. On the other hand, King Ferdinand's abolition of the
Salic law of succession in Spain, so as to assure the throne to his new
wife, raised up a party of absolutists against him. His brothers, Don
Carlos and Francisco, became the heads of this movement and rallied their
supporters around them, in the Basque provinces. In Portugal kindred
dissensions rent the land in twain. Dom Miguel's claims to the crown were
disputed on behalf of the constitutional government by the Duke of Palermo.
Across the seas, Dom Pedro of Brazil proclaimed himself the legitimate heir
to the throne of Braganza.

[Sidenote: Death of Bolivar]

Like other South American States, Brazil was itself a prey to internal
dissensions and civil strife. To put an end to the recurrent revolutions of
South America, Simon Bolivar conceived a scheme for a Pan-American Congress
to weld together all the quasi-republican governments of the Southern
Hemisphere and Central America. Unfortunately for this project, Bolivar's
own aspirations to dictatorial rule told against him. His chief opponents
were those who were striving for a disruption of the Colombian Union. His
own States, Peru and Bolivia, had already declared against him. The
Congress finally voted to give Bolivar a pension of $3,000 a year on
condition that he should leave America forever. Bolivar's pride was stung
to the quick. He resigned all public offices and honors, and went to
Caracas to sail for England. He died at Santa Marta, on the sea-shore, on
December 17. His last words were: "The people send me to the tomb, but I
forgive them."

[Sidenote: Bolivar's career]

In Bolivar, South America lost the most fiery of her liberators. Born at
Caracas, in 1783, he was pre-eminently a child of the modern spirit
engendered by the French Revolution of 1792. He saw Spain in the days of
its quasi-medieval darkness, and was in Paris at the close of the great
revolution. Later he was a witness of Napoleon's coronation as King of
Italy, and saw for himself the benefits of republican institutions in North
America. The turning-point in his career was the loss of his young wife
after two years of domestic happiness. As he said himself: "I loved my wife
so much that at her death I made a vow never again to marry. I have kept my
oath. Perhaps, had I not lost her, my career would have been different. I
might not, then, have been General of the Liberators. My second visit to
Europe would never have been made. The ideas which I imbibed during my
travels would not have come to me, and the experience I have had, the study
of the world that I have made, and of men and things--all this, which has
so well served me, would never have been. Politics would never have
attracted me. But the death of my wife caused the love of my country to
burn in my heart, and I have followed the chariot of Mars rather than
Ceres' plow."

[Sidenote: Van Diemen's Land]

[Sidenote: Extermination of natives]

In the new English penal colony of Van Diemen's Land in Australia, the
Tasmania of latter days, the self-assertive and domineering traits of the
Anglo-Saxon race were no less apparent among the convicts than among the
few free settlers. A few years before this the colonists had proclaimed
themselves independent of New South Wales and established a separate
government. The Van Diemen's Land Company received a grant of twenty-five
thousand acres; white population increased; religious, educational and
commercial institutions were founded. The natives were all but
exterminated. During this year Governor Arthur made an extraordinary
attempt to settle the native problem. His idea was to catch all the
aborigines of the island and pen them up on the narrow neck of land known
as Tasman's Peninsula. Upward of three thousand five hundred white persons,
including three hundred soldiers, turned out for the exciting operation of
clearing Van Diemen's Land by means of a cordon across the island. All
seemed to be going well until the line of beaters contracted, when it was
found that the natives were in the rear, instead of in the front. The
attempt proved a total failure; only two natives were captured. The total
cost of the expedition amounted to £35,000. The individual measures of the
settlers against the despised natives proved more efficacious. Within a few
years, when the last of the Tasmanian aborigines were transferred from the
mainland to Flinder's Island, by the instrumentality of George Augustus
Robinson, it was found that but three hundred were left. The white
population--largely of convict antecedents--by this time numbered more than
15,000 persons.

[Sidenote: North American dissensions]

[Sidenote: Nullification debate]

[Sidenote: Webster's declaration]

In North America the doctrine of nullification, newly put forth, emphasized
the growing differences between the Northern and Southern States. The great
debate between Hayne and Webster came about casually in the course of a
discussion of the sale of public lands. The topic of nullification was
dragged in by Southern speakers. Webster felt called upon to uphold the
cause of the Northern States. Smarting under some of his animadversions of
Southern sloth, Hayne made a two-day speech in which he inveighed against
the spirit of the New Englanders. His own State, South Carolina, and her
sister States in the South, he declared, would defend their sovereign
rights, or "perish in the last ditch." Webster's reply to those prophetic
words was the grandest oratorical effort of his life. He declared for the
continued union of all the States in all their strength: "Liberty and
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." Jackson's progressive foreign
policy poured oil on the troubled waters. His repeal of the shipping acts
of 1818 and 1823 brought about a resumption of direct trade with the West
Indies. On October 5, Jackson was able to issue a proclamation announcing
the opening of permanent trade with all ports of the West Indies, Bermudas,
Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico and South America.

[Sidenote: Anglo-American treaty]

[Sidenote: O'Connell's State trial]

[Sidenote: Anti-reform utterances]

[Sidenote: Wellington unpopular]

[Sidenote: Fall of Ministry]

[Sidenote: Earl Grey, Prime Minister]

This friendly treaty with America was the last satisfactory measure passed
by Wellington's Ministry in England. As elsewhere in Europe the success of
the sudden revolution in Paris created a great stir, and was brought home
to Englishmen all the more forcibly by the deposed king's flight to English
shores. In Ireland, matters were stirred up by Daniel O'Connell, who now
commenced an agitation for the repeal of the union with England. His
prosecution for treason became a State trial. O'Connell's ultimate
conviction once more alienated the powerful Catholic Association of
Ireland. The Duke of Wellington became so prejudiced against reform that he
declared in Parliament: "I am not only averse to bringing forward any
measure of this nature, but I will at once declare, so far as I am
concerned, so long as I hold any station in the government of the country,
I shall always feel it my duty to resist such a measure when proposed by
others." After this declaration the fall of the Ministry was assured.
Stocks fell in London from 84 to 77 points. Abuse and obloquy were heaped
upon the Ministers from every quarter. Caricatures of them were stamped
even on handkerchiefs and calico aprons. The Duke was mostly represented in
the livery of an old hackney coachman, while Sir Robert Peel figured as a
rat catcher. The King no longer concealed his dislike of Wellington, who in
former days had mortally offended him by his support of Admiral Cockburn,
resulting in the resignation of the Prince as Lord High Admiral of England.
As soon as Parliament was reopened late in the year, a significant rebuff
was administered to the Ministry by the Crown. The King preferred to
deliver his speech in person. In the face of the Prime Minister's
declaration against reform, Sir Harry Parnell, even before the delivery of
the King's speech, announced a bill for the revision of the civil list.
Parnell's motion was carried. Brougham followed this up with a motion for a
reform of the rotten borough system. Rather than submit to another
inevitable defeat Wellington's Ministry resigned. Earl Grey, leader of the
Whig opposition, was made Prime Minister. Brougham was raised to the
peerage, and accepted the post of Lord Chancellor. Palmerston was
reappointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Lord Grey's appointment of six or
seven of his relatives to administrative posts weakened his Ministry from
the outset.




1831


[Sidenote: Belgian conference]

[Sidenote: Leopold, King of Belgium]

[Sidenote: Luxemburg question]

[Sidenote: Dutch invasion of Belgium]

[Sidenote: French counter-invasion]

[Sidenote: Foreign intervention]

Under the leadership of Lord Palmerston, the Belgian Conference in London
was conducted to a successful issue. Early in January the representatives
of the Powers signed a protocol defining the limits of Belgium and Holland
and apportioning to each country its share in the national debt. The
problem of providing an acceptable government for Belgium still remained.
The Belgians themselves would have welcomed incorporation into France. With
this object in view they elected for their sovereign the Duc de Nemours,
second son of Louis Philippe. When a proclamation to this effect was made
on February 3, Louis Philippe, acting under Talleyrand's advice, withheld
official sanction. Privately he had encouraged his son's candidacy, the
more so as a Bonapartist rival, the son of Eugene Beauharnais, was in the
field. The conference at London determined not to permit Belgium thus to
become a dependency of France. The British Government decided that it would
no longer discountenance armed intervention in Belgium against French
schemes of aggrandizement. Talleyrand obtained the best terms open to his
sovereign by insisting on the withdrawal of the Bonapartist pretender. The
selection of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who had just been disappointed
in his aspirations for the empty throne of Greece, was encouraged by France
on the understanding that Leopold, if elected King of Belgium, should marry
a daughter of Louis Philippe. Leopold was elected on June 4, and accepted
the crown only on the condition that the London Conference should modify
its territorial arrangements of January. This brought up the Luxemburg
question. Since the Paris treaty of 1814, the formidable stronghold of
Luxemburg, though under the sovereignty of the King of Holland, was
maintained as the strongest border fortress of the German Confederation.
Now, the Luxemburgers had made common cause with the Belgians. Leopold
accordingly insisted that Luxemburg should be treated as an integral part
of Belgium. The powers at London yielded to this demand sufficiently to
annul the declarations of January, with the promise of a future settlement
of the status of Luxemburg. On this repudiation of the recent international
declaration in favor of the Netherlands, the King of Holland took up arms.
A Dutch army of 50,000 advanced into Belgium. Leopold at once appealed to
France for assistance. A French army marched into Belgium from the other
side. The powers at London made haste to intervene. A British fleet made a
demonstration before Antwerp. Under pressure Leopold signed an agreement to
raze the fortifications on the Belgian frontier. Reluctantly the King of
Holland recalled his army. Under the threat of another armed coalition
against France, Louis Philippe withdrew his forces. Outward tranquillity
was once more restored. No immediate settlement, however, was reached in
regard to Luxemburg. The union of the Luxemburgers with the Belgians
remained in effect, while on the other hand strong German garrisons
continued to hold the fortifications. For years to come this remained a
vexatious problem.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in Greece]

[Sidenote: Holocaust of Greek fleet]

[Sidenote: Mavromichalis imprisoned]

[Sidenote: Assassination of Capodistrias]

After the restriction of the Greek frontiers by the Powers, Capodistrias'
government was appreciably weakened. As difficulties thickened about him,
he resorted to the restrictive measures he had become accustomed to while
Prime Minister of Russia. He felt that the cause of Greece would be
jeopardized unless order was maintained at any cost. When the old
revolutionary leaders became turbulent, Capodistrias only put his
government on a firmer basis. Mavrocordato, Konduriottes and Miaulis at
this juncture waited upon the President as a committee from the opposition
and demanded the withdrawal of the obnoxious measures. Capodistrias would
not yield, and the popular leaders betook themselves to Hydra. Preparations
for civil war were begun. The President sent out an expedition to suppress
them. To prevent the fleet from falling into his hands at Paros, Miaulis
set fire to the "Hellas," the American-built frigate, and that ship and
twenty-eight others were burned to the water's edge. Among those that were
imprisoned by Capodistrias was Petro Mavromichalis, the hero of the Morea.
The Russian admiral sailed to Nauplia to intercede in his behalf, but in
vain. Mavromichalis' brother and son, Constantine and George, appealed to
the President in person, but were put under arrest themselves. On October
9, Constantine and George Mavromichalis fell upon Capodistrias as he was
going to church and shot him dead. One of the assassins was killed on the
spot while the other was executed later. Capodistrias' brother, Augustine,
assumed charge. His government was short-lived. After a few months he
sailed away with his brother's body to Corfu.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Bologna]

[Sidenote: Menotti]

[Sidenote: Mazzini]

[Sidenote: Papal legate repudiated]

In the meantime another blow for national unity was struck in Italy. On the
death of Pius VIII., late in 1830, Gregory XVI. was elected. He had
scarcely been installed in the chair of St. Peter, when a report reached
him that Bologna had revolted against papal rule. On February 3, Menotti
raised the signal of revolt at Modena. He was lured into the power of the
Grandduke of Modena, but the insurrection spread so rapidly throughout the
north of Italy that the Grandduke had to fly to Austria. Menotti was
carried to Austria and there put to death. It was about this time that
Mazzini made his first public appearance as a revolutionist and was
imprisoned. Pope Gregory sent Cardinal Benvenuti to Bologna as a legate to
treat with the rebels, but the legate was made a captive and the revolt
spread southward to the papal dominions. In his extremity the Pope called
upon Austria for help.

[Sidenote: Austrian intervention invoked]

[Sidenote: Attitude of France]

Austria, whose own dominions in Italy were threatened, had every reason to
grant this request. The only obstacle was the threatening attitude of
France. Before sending out his troops, Metternich took pains to ascertain
the immediate intentions of France. The official answer given to the
inquiries of the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, was that Austrian
intervention in favor of the sovereigns of Parma and Modena, who were
related to the House of Hapsburg, might be tolerated. An extension of such
intervention to the Papal States or to Piedmont would certainly constitute
a _casus belli_. In token of this declaration, the French Ambassador at
Constantinople was instructed to make overtures for an offensive and
defensive alliance to the Sultan.

[Sidenote: Metternich diplomacy]

[Sidenote: Papal dominions invaded]

[Sidenote: Casimir Périer's French policy]

In this crisis Metternich put forth all the powers of statesmanship at his
command. He declared that it was better for Austria, if necessary, to
perish by war than by revolution. On the instant he assured to Russia the
support of Austria against the Poles, while he worked upon the fears of
Louis Philippe by pointing to the presence of young Louis Bonaparte and his
brother with the Italian insurgents. As a last resort he could always let
loose upon France Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, now growing to
manhood at Vienna. In defiance of the French declaration, Austria advanced
a strong army through northern Italy into the papal dominion. The
insurrection was ruthlessly stamped out. Louis Philippe did nothing.
Lafayette resigned his Ministry in chagrin. He was succeeded by Casimir
Périer, a constitutional statesman of modern mold. On behalf of France he
put forward a double-edged demand that the Austrians should evacuate the
papal dominions as soon as the papal government should reform its abuses.
For the first time in their history, Austria and the Papacy were made to
declare for constitutional reforms. A conference at Rome agreed upon the
schemes of reforms to be instituted by the Pope. Further pretext for
revolution was thus removed. In July, the last Austrian forces were
withdrawn from the Papal States.

[Sidenote: War in Poland]

[Sidenote: Early successes]

[Sidenote: Polish disasters]

[Sidenote: Ostrolenka]

[Sidenote: Ravages of cholera]

[Sidenote: Death of Diebitsch]

[Sidenote: Civil war in Poland]

[Sidenote: Paskievitch, Russian commander]

[Sidenote: Fall of Warsaw]

The Polish struggle, during the earlier part of this year, had assumed the
proportions of a national war. In February, the Russians took the
offensive. General Diebitsch at the head of a column of 120,000 men marched
into Poland. In the first encounters against the Polish forces, who were
led by officers who had served under Napoleon, the Russians sustained such
losses at Stoczek, Grochov and Bialolenska that Diebitsch had to call for
reinforcements. The main body of the Russian army had to abandon the bank
of the Vistula. Three detached corps remained stationed there. The Polish
general, Skrzynecki, who had succeeded Prince Radzivil in the command, then
took the offensive. He defeated the Russians under Geismas at Waver, and
General Rosen at Dembevilkie and Igknie, but then stopped short. In the
meanwhile a Polish expedition into Volhynia failed completely. Dvernicki
was driven back into Gallicia. Another Polish expedition sent into
Lithuania under Vilna likewise ended in disaster. The main body of the
Poles had to cross the Prussian frontier. Only one division under Dembinski
recovered the road to Warsaw. In the interval, the Polish army under
Skrzynecki fought a pitched battle on May 26 with the right wing of the
Russian main army at Ostrolenka. After a severe fight the Poles had to fall
back over the Narev. Cholera now broke out in both camps. General Diebitsch
and Grandduke Constantine on the Russian side succumbed to the disease.
During this breathing space for the Poles, a revolution against the
provisional government broke out in Warsaw. The streets ran with blood.
Czartoryski fled in disguise. General Krukoviecki was made dictator. He
shot a number of the mutineers and replaced Skrzynecki by Dembinski.
Prussia and Austria turned against the Poles. The Prussian arsenals and
military stores at Dantzig and Koenigsberg were placed at the disposal of
Diebitsch's successor, General Paskievitch. He crossed the Vistula at
Warsaw and marched on the capital along the left bank. On September 6, the
Russians attacked Warsaw from the side of Vola and Czyste. On the Polish
side Wysocki, who had begun the revolution, and General Suvenski, who had
lost a leg at Borodino, were killed. Krukoviecki offered to capitulate. The
Russians demanded unconditional surrender. The Polish Diet deposed
Krukoviecki and put Niemoievski in command. Paskievitch ordered a general
attack on the city. The Russians stormed the ramparts and Warsaw
capitulated. "Sire, Poland lies at your feet," wrote Paskievitch to the
Czar. It was the truth. At Plock 20,000 Poles laid down their arms.
Ramarino took 15,000 into Gallicia.

[Sidenote: Poland's aspirations crushed]

[Sidenote: Polish patriots scatter]

Emperor Nicholas made an example of Poland. All those who had borne a
prominent part in the insurrection were banished to Siberia. The
constitution granted by Alexander was annulled. No more Polish Diets were
tolerated. Poles in public office were superseded by Russians. The Polish
soldiers and officers were mustered into Russian ranks and distributed over
widely different points of the empire. The country was divided into Russian
provinces, and Russian systems of taxation, coinage and of administration
of justice were imposed upon Poland. In Lithuania, the Polish language was
banished from the schools. The University of Vilna was suppressed.
Henceforth the ancient spirit of Poland lived only in those foreign exiles
who fomented revolutionary risings in Italy, France, Austria and Germany.

[Sidenote: Spirit of revolt in Germany]

[Sidenote: Liberal leaders lost]

Until the subjugation of Poland, the German governments, apprehensive of
the course that events might take, had shown moderation in meeting the
liberal movements incited by the French and Polish revolution. Trouble
first broke out in Brunswick and Hesse, the two worst-governed States of
Germany. The despotic princes of Brunswick and Hesse had to resign, and
reforms were instituted by their successors. In Hanover and Saxony, too,
the people had to be appeased by parliamentary concessions and an extension
of the liberty of the press. In the Bavarian Palatinate, where French
institutions and ideas prevailed, the tricolor of France and the flag of
Poland were saluted side by side with the red, black and gold banner of
ancient Germany. After the fall of Warsaw the governments of Prussia and
Austria insisted on new reactionary measures. The Diet of the German
Confederation began a campaign against all liberal tendencies. German
liberalism during this dark period lost some of its foremost leaders by the
deaths of Stein the statesman, Arnim the poet, Niebuhr the historian, and
Hegel the philosopher.

[Sidenote: Death of Hegel]

[Sidenote: German emigration to America]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in 1770 at Stuttgart. He held chairs
successively at the Universities of Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin. His works
reached an aggregate of eighteen volumes. As a philosopher he was one of
the most brilliant exponents of modern rationalism. He reached this
standpoint by pushing to their extreme logical conclusions the
philosophical doctrines enunciated by Kant. Hegel's most lasting works
proved to be his "Phenomenology of the Mind," "History of Philosophy," and
"Philosophy of Religion." At the time of Hegel's death there was a general
exodus of German liberals to Switzerland, France and America.

Despite a small but influential class of Americans who copied foreign
manners, the United States of America had gained something of a national
character in European estimation. In the New World alone, labor was deemed
compatible with gentility. The increasing facilities of traffic and
manufacture gave a tremendous impulse to the development of the country.
Thus a surprising number of railroads were opened in the States of New
York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Improvements connecting Philadelphia and
Pittsburg were completed at a cost of twelve million dollars. Several
thousand miles were covered by canals.

[Sidenote: Development of the United States]

[Sidenote: Chicago founded]

[Sidenote: Black Hawk war]

The American census of 1831 showed nearly 13,000,000 inhabitants, a
doubling of the population since the beginning of the century. An area of
725,406 square miles of territory was contained in thirty-four States and
three Territories. The population spread westward, no longer in large
groups, but in small bodies of pioneers, travelling along the chief rivers.
West of the Missouri River all was still virgin soil. During this year
Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi. The settlement of
Chicago was laid out and the first sale of lots there was held. A boundary
and commercial treaty was concluded with Mexico in the spring. Later in the
year President Jackson obtained from the French Government a promise of
25,000,000 francs indemnity for the spoliations on American commerce made
under Napoleon. On April 21, the so-called Black Hawk war broke out with
the Indian tribes of the Sacs and Foxes. Some 6,500 soldiers were
despatched to subdue them. In this war it so happened that Abraham Lincoln
and Jefferson Davis served as captain and lieutenant.

[Sidenote: Abolitionist movement]

[Sidenote: William Garrison]

[Sidenote: Nat Turner's revolt]

The issue of slavery was brought to the front early in the year. On the
first day of January, Garrison's "Liberator" appeared in Boston. Garrison
advocated immediate and unconditional emancipation of the black slaves. In
his first issue he said: "I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be
heard." It was not long before Garrison made himself heard, and gathered
about him a few men and women as determined as himself. Among them was the
young poet Whittier, Louis Tappan, and Lucretia Mott, the Quaker. A storm
of obloquy and persecution was raised against Garrison. Social and public
ostracism was visited upon him and his fellow abolitionists. Garrison's
efforts to free the negroes were made especially unwelcome in the South by
an insurrection of blacks led by Nat Turner of South Hampton. The revolt
was speedily suppressed, and Turner with seventeen of his followers
suffered death by hanging. Turner's attempt called forth a debate of
several weeks in the Virginia Legislature, remarkable throughout for its
exposure of the evils of slavery and their bad effect on national
prosperity.

[Sidenote: Death of Monroe]

[Sidenote: Monroe's career]

One of the foremost statesman of the day was lost to America by the death
of James Monroe. He expired on July 4, the third President to die on
Independence Day. Monroe was born in Virginia in 1758. He was educated at
William and Mary College, studied law under Jefferson, and became a member
of the Continental Congress at twenty-five. He saw his first military
service in the War of the Revolution. Appointed Minister to France in 1794
he was recalled in 1796, and was Governor of Virginia from 1799 to 1802. He
then returned to France as envoy extraordinary and helped to accomplish the
purchase of Louisiana. In 1811 he was again made Governor of Virginia. He
served as Secretary of State under Madison from 1811 to 1817 and also as
Secretary of War from 1814 to 1815. When the War of 1812 emptied the
national treasury he pledged his personal credit for the defence of New
Orleans. In 1816 he was elected President of the United States. While
serving his second term as President, Monroe sent to Congress the famous
message against European intervention in South America, which has
permanently linked his name with the doctrine of "America for the
Americans." His name has been preserved likewise in Monrovia, the capital
of Liberia, the negro free state in Africa, which was founded under his
auspices.

[Sidenote: The Reform Bill]

Throughout this year in England raged the great debate over the
government's proposed reform of the rotten borough system. A bill to this
effect was introduced by Lord Russell on March 1, immediately after the
opening of Parliament. In the seven days' debate that followed the best
speakers of England took part, among them Lord Palmerston, Sir Robert Peel,
Daniel O'Connell, and young Macaulay, who had only just entered Parliament.
By the opponents of the bill reform was denounced as revolution. The
government of the United States of North America was cited as a deterrent
example. Thus Sir Robert Peel said:

[Sidenote: Robert Peel's speech]

[Sidenote: America a "Deterrent Example"]

"Many experiments have been tried to engraft democratical on monarchical
institutions, but how have they succeeded? In France, in Spain, in
Portugal, in the Netherlands, in every country on the face of the earth,
with the exception of the United States, has the experiment of forming a
popular government, and of uniting it with monarchy, been tried; and how,
I will again ask, has it succeeded? In America, the House has been told
that the most beneficent effects of a representative form of government are
plainly visible. But I beg to remind the House that there is a wide
difference indeed between the circumstances of this country and of America.
In the United States the Constitution has not been in existence more than
forty years. I will not say it has been deteriorating, for I wish to avoid
all invidious phrases; but it has been rapidly undergoing a change from a
republic to a mere democracy. The influence of the executive--the influence
of the government--has been daily becoming less, and more power has
consequently been vested in the hands of the people. And yet, in that
country, there is land uncultivated to an extent almost incalculable--there
is no established church, no privileged orders--property exists on a very
different tenure from that on which it is held in this country; therefore
let not the people of England be deceived, let them not imagine, from the
example of the United States, that because democracy has succeeded and
triumphed there, it will also succeed and triumph here."

[Sidenote: Reform Bill debate]

[Sidenote: Exciting elections]

[Sidenote: Tories defeated]

[Sidenote: Cobbett's state trial]

Altogether seventy-one speakers joined in the debate. In the end the
government obtained a second reading of the bill by a bare majority of one.
The opposition had made a motion to withdraw the bill. After another
prolonged debate this was carried against the government by a majority of
eight. Parliament was dissolved as both Houses were on the point of
carrying a motion asking the King not to consent to a dissolution. The
elections which followed were turbulent in the extreme. Throughout England
the reformers raised the cry: "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but
the bill." It was then that the custom of electioneering by means of
processions and bands of music came into vogue. When the results of the
elections were announced it was found that the Tories had lost more than a
hundred seats. On the other hand a few of the most prominent supporters of
the government suffered signal defeat, notably Lord Palmerston and
Cavendish. On the Tory side, young Gladstone, then still a student at
Oxford, came into notice by his warm speech against the proposed reform.
Parliament was reopened with another hot debate on the all-engrossing bill.
It was passed to a second reading by a strong majority of 135 votes.
Scarcely had this been accomplished when the government was embarrassed by
William Cobbett's state trial for sedition. Throughout the trial the
Attorney-General treated Cobbett with marked courtesy, speaking of him as
"one of the greatest masters of the English language who had ever composed
in it."

[Sidenote: Macaulay]

[Sidenote: Commons pass Reform Bill]

[Sidenote: Rejected by the Lords]

In truth Cobbett's pure, virile, racy, Saxon style, while it delighted men
of taste, was also intelligible to the humblest commoner, and accounted in
some measure for the tremendous popularity of his journal, the "Political
Register." The government was unable to secure Cobbett's conviction and he
was suffered to escape punishment by a disagreement of the jury. After this
interlude the debate on the Reform Bill went on. On the second night of
the debate Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered his first reform speech.
When he sat down he had taken rank among the best Parliamentary orators.
"Portions of the speech," said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as
anything I have ever heard or read. It reminded me of old times. The names
of Burke, Fox and Canning during the evening were linked with that of Mr.
Macaulay." The "Spectator" computed the number of speeches which were
delivered in committee between the middle and end of July at more than two
hundred. Sir Robert Peel alone spoke forty-eight times, while Wetherell,
the Tory wag of the House, spoke fifty-eight times. Finally the Opposition
was caught unawares late one night on September 19, when they could muster
but fifty-eight votes before the doors closed for division, and the bill
was thus passed to its third reading. The Tories took pains to be present
in force a few days afterward, when the final passage of the bill was
moved. After a last passionate debate lasting through three days and nights
the Commons passed the bill by a majority of 106 votes. That same night
Earl Grey proposed the bill before the Lords. Addressing himself to the
bishops he said significantly: "I specially beg the spiritual portion of
your lordships to pause and reflect. If this bill shall be thrown out by a
narrow majority and the scale should be turned by the votes of the
prelates, what would be their situation? Let them set their houses in
order!" These menacing words gave great offence to the clergy. The Duke of
Wellington spoke strongly against the measure. The bill was thrown out by
the Lords after an all-night debate.

[Sidenote: Riots in England]

The immediate effect was a sharp decline in stocks. A few hours after the
House of Peers adjourned at six o'clock in the morning, a run for gold
began on the Bank of England. The simultaneous effort of the French to
abolish their hereditary peerage was hailed as an omen of what was coming
in England. Riots broke out all over England. The return to Bristol of Sir
C. Wetherell, one of the chief opponents of the bill, was made the occasion
of ominous demonstrations. A riotous mob burned the mansion house over his
head. Next, the Bishop of Bristol was driven from his episcopal seat. The
mob fired the mansion house, the bishop's palace, the excise office, the
custom house, three prisons, four toll houses, and forty-two private houses
of prominent Tories.

No one was injured until the troops were called in to disperse the mob.
Then a number of rioters were sabred and shot. About the same time riots
broke out at Bath, Worcester, Coventry, Warwick, Lichfield, Nottingham and
Canterbury. With difficulty Archbishop Howley of Canterbury was rescued
from the hands of an infuriated mob. The Bishops of Winchester and Exeter
were burned in effigy before their very palaces. The Bishop of London did
not dare to hold services at Westminster. The news from France served to
increase the alarm. Disturbances of a far more serious character were
reported from Lyons.

[Sidenote: Reform Bill up again]

Late in the year, after another rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords,
the bill was triumphantly reintroduced in the Commons. The question now was
no longer, "What will the Lords do?" but, "What will be done with the
Lords?" Rather than risk the threatening downfall of the House of Peers,
the Ministers reluctantly determined to pack the Upper House by the
creation of a sufficient number of new peers pledged to vote for the Reform
Bill. A verse attributed to Macaulay ran:

  What though now opposed I be,
  Twenty peers shall carry me,
  If twenty won't, thirty will,
  For I'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill.

"Thus," as Molesworth, the historian of the Reform Bill, has put it, "amid
the anxieties of the reformers on one hand, and the dread of revolution on
the other, amid incendiary fires and Asiatic cholera spreading throughout
the country, amid distress of trade and dread of coming bankruptcy, the
year 1831 went gloomily out."




1832


[Sidenote: English sedition trials]

[Sidenote: Fall of Grey's Cabinet]

[Sidenote: Wellington impotent]

[Sidenote: The King humiliated]

[Sidenote: Passage of Reform Bill]

[Sidenote: Changes effected]

The new year opened in England with a series of trials arising out of the
disturbances which followed the rejection of the Reform Bill in the House
of Lords. A great number of rioters were convicted. Altogether, seven men
were put to death at Bristol and Nottingham. The officers who commanded the
troops during the riots were court-martialed. When Parliament reassembled,
the Commons once more passed the Reform Bill and carried it up to the
Lords. In the course of the renewed debate on the Reform Bill in the House
of Peers the Duke of Wellington announced that he had reason to believe
that the King did not approve of the bill. The statement was confirmed by
the King's refusal to create new peers wherewith to pass the bill through
the Upper House. Thereupon Lord Grey and his colleagues resigned from the
Ministry. The King accepted their resignation. Monster petitions were
immediately sent in to the Commons from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and
other great centres of population, urging the Commons to refuse the
supplies until reform should have been secured. Once more stocks fell
sharply. For the express purpose of embarrassing the King's chosen
successors for the Cabinet, runs were made on the Bank of England, and on
the savings banks at Birmingham and Manchester. The streets of London were
covered with placards: "Go for gold and stop the Duke!" In the face of this
agitation the Duke of Wellington declined the King's offer to form a
Ministry. Sir Robert Peel likewise declined. As a last resort Wellington
consented to form a Ministry, but could not get together a Cabinet strong
enough to stem the storm. The Iron Duke's popularity as well as the King's
was at an end. When the King came up to London, accompanied by his sons,
they were received with hoots and insults. Missiles were thrown at the
royal carriage, and the Life Guards had to fight a way through the mob with
their swords. The King was driven to the humiliating expedient of recalling
his dismissed Ministers. William IV. now consented to create the required
number of new peers. Lord Brougham gave mortal offence to the King by a
request that he should put his promise in writing. With the King's written
pledge in their hands the Ministers obtained an agreement from their
opponents to pass the bill without further coercion. Early in June, at
length, the Reform Bill passed through the House of Lords after a third
reading. One hundred and six peers voted for it and only twenty-two against
it. On this occasion Sir Robert Peel made a remark to which his subsequent
change of front gave peculiar significance: "Whenever the government comes
to deal with the corn laws, the precedent formed by the present occasion
will be appealed to." The reform measure, as at last adopted, swept away
142 seats in the Commons. It gave to the counties sixty-five additional
representatives and conferred the right of sending members to Parliament on
Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and thirty-nine other large towns hitherto
unrepresented. The King showed his disapproval of the reform by
peremptorily declining to give his assent to the bill in person. The
Crown's sanction was given by commission. This ended all agitation for the
time being.

[Sidenote: Otto, King of Greece]

It was in May that the great Powers, in response to another appeal from
Greece, suggested Prince Otto of Wittelsbach, the second son of the
Philhellene King of Bavaria, for the vacant throne. This choice was
ratified in October amid general rejoicings by the population of Greece.

[Sidenote: Foreign intervention in Italy]

In Italy, early in the year, the Pope's failure to carry out his promise of
reform created new troubles. An amnesty, which had been granted by the
legate Benvenuti, was disregarded and the papal soldiery practiced all
manner of repression. Another revolt broke out and once more the Austrians,
at the Pope's request, crossed the frontier. They restored order so well
that they were actually welcomed as protectors against the ruthless
condottieri of the papal troops. Austria's intervention was resented by
France as a breach of the peace. Casimir Périer, now on his deathbed,
despatched a French force to Ancona. The town was seized before the
Austrians could approach it. Austria accepted the situation, and both
powers in Italy remained face to face jealously watching each other. Had
Casimir Périer lived he might have made Ancona a lever for effecting the
desired reforms at Rome. As it was, the French garrison at Ancona remained
merely as a balancing point between the contending parties in Italy.

[Sidenote: Death of Cuvier]

[Sidenote: Cuvier's Works]

France in the same year lost one of its distinguished men of science, by
the death of Baron Cuvier, the great naturalist. Georges Leopold Cuvier was
born in 1769 at Montbeliard. After studying at Stuttgart he became private
tutor in the family of Count D'Hericy in Normandy, where he was at liberty
to devote his leisure to natural science and in particular to zoology. A
natural classification of the _Vermæ_ or worms was his first achievement.
The ability and knowledge shown in this work procured him the friendship of
the greatest naturalists of France. He was invited to Paris, took a chair
at the Ecole Centrale, and was received by the Institute as a member of the
first class. His lectures on natural history, distinguished not less for
the elegance of their style than for profound knowledge and daring
speculation, were attended by some of the most accomplished persons of
Paris. In January, 1800, Cuvier was appointed to the Collège de France.
Under Napoleon, who fully recognized his merits, Cuvier held important
offices in the department of public instruction. Under the Restoration he
was made one of the forty members of the French Academy. In 1831, a year
prior to his death, he was appointed a Peer of France. Among the numerous
works by which Cuvier greatly expanded the study of natural history may be
mentioned as foremost "Researches into Fossil Bones," "Discourse of the
Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe," "A Course of Comparative
Anatomy," "Natural History of Fishes," and his great work, "The Animal
Kingdom," with its subdivisions into the four great classes--vertebrates,
mollusks, articulates and radiates.

[Sidenote: Death of Goethe]

On March 22, Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's foremost man of letters,
expired at Weimar. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in 1749, at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, the son of a councillor under the old German empire.
His best traits were inherited from his mother. As he himself sang in later
years:

  Vom Vater hab ich die Statur,
  Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren,
  Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur
  Und Lust zum Fabuliren.[A]

[Footnote A:
  From my father I have my stature
  And serious view of life;
  From dear little mother my glad heart
  And fondness for telling stories.]

[Sidenote: Goethe's career]

[Sidenote: "Goetz von Berlichingen"]

[Sidenote: "The Sorrows of Werther"]

[Sidenote: Goethe at Weimar]

[Sidenote: "Hermann und Dorothea"]

His father had him educated for the study of law. In his sixteenth year he
was sent to the University at Leipzig. Later he went to Strasburg, where he
became acquainted with the poet Herder, and had his first love affair with
Friederike Brion of Sesenheim, whose charm has been kept alive in Goethe's
autobiography, "Dichtung und Wahrheit." In 1772 he returned to Frankfort
and practiced law. While thus engaged he wrote his first
romantic-historical play, "Goetz von Berlichingen." In the following year
he published his sentimental romance, "The Sorrows of Werther," based in a
measure on one of his own unfortunate love affairs at Wetzlar. Both of
these early works achieved instant success. "The Sorrows of Werther"
inaugurated in German literature what is known as the period of storm and
stress. Disenchantment of life, or "Weltschmerz," became a fashionable
malady. The romantic suicide of Goethe's sentimental hero Werther was aped
by a number of over-susceptible young persons. Wieland drew the attention
of the Duke of Weimar to Goethe, and the young poet was invited to Weimar.
He remained under the patronage of this enlightened prince until the end of
his days. At Weimar, Goethe was the centre of a court comprising some of
the foremost spirits of Germany. The little capital became a Mecca for
poets, scholars, artists and musicians from all over the world. Goethe's
only rival poet in Germany, Schiller, was drawn into the circle and the two
became life-long friends. Most of Goethe's lyric poems were written during
the first ten years at Weimar. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he
accompanied the Duke of Weimar in one of the campaigns against France. The
thrilling atmosphere of the Revolution furnished him with a literary
background for his epic idyl, "Hermann und Dorothea." Goethe's subsequent
journey to Italy, which was a turning-point in the poet's career, was
commemorated in his "Letters from Italy"--a classic among German books of
travel. Another eminently successful creation was the epic of "Reynard, the
Fox," modelled after the famous bestiary poems of early Flemish and
French literature.

  [Illustration: THE KING OF ROME
    Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence]

[Sidenote: Goethe's dramas]

[Sidenote: "Wilhelm Meister"]

[Sidenote: "Dichtung und Wahrheit"]

[Sidenote: "Faust"]

During the same period Goethe wrote four of his greatest dramas, "Iphigenie
in Tauris," "Torquato Tasso," "Egmont," and the first part of "Faust."
Later he wrote his great prose work, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften," a
quasi-physiological romance; "Wilhelm Meister's Lehr und Wander Jahre," a
narrative interspersed with some of Goethe's finest lyrics, such as the
songs of Mignon and of the old harper, as well as the famous critique of
Hamlet. The height of Goethe's superb prose style was reached in "Dichtung
und Wahrheit," which stands as one of the most charming autobiographies of
all times. Goethe's versatility as a writer and man was shown not only by
his free use of all literary forms, but also by his essays on such abstruse
subjects as astrology, optics, the theory of color, comparative anatomy and
botany. Shortly before his death, the poet finished the greatest of his
works, the tragedy "Faust." He died in the eighty-third year of his life,
uttering the words "More Light." Goethe was entombed in the ducal vault at
Weimar, by the side of his friends, Friedrich Schiller and Carl August of
Weimar.

[Sidenote: Goethe's genius]

Like Heine, Goethe offended his fellow Germans by his apparent lack of
purely national and patriotic sentiments. To the present day his outspoken
admiration of Napoleon and his cold abstention from the ardent enthusiasm
of the Prussian war of Liberation have not been forgiven by certain
Germans. As a man, Goethe has been denounced as an egotist, for the
apparently selfish character of his relations with women, ending with his
marriage to a woman far below him. On the other hand, Goethe must be
regarded as the most universal literary genius produced by Germany. He
stands in line with those master spirits of all ages, Homer, Virgil, Dante,
Cervantes, Shakespeare and Molière.

[Sidenote: Death of Scott]

[Sidenote: Walter Scott's poems]

[Sidenote: "The Waverley Novels"]

[Sidenote: Scott a bankrupt]

[Sidenote: Literary drudgery]

A few months after the death of Goethe, in September, Sir Walter Scott died
in England. Goethe was accustomed to speak of Scott as "the greatest writer
of his time." Shortly before his death Goethe said: "All is great in
Scott's 'Waverley Novels'--material, effect, characters and execution."
Scott himself derived much of his inspiration from Goethe's writings. One
of his earliest works was a translation of "Goetz von Berlichingen." The
creation of Mignon, in "Wilhelm Meister," furnished Scott with the
character of Fenella in his "Peveril of the Peak." Scott began his career
as a writer with a translation of Buerger's "Ballads." His most successful
metrical pieces, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," "The Lay of the
Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake," for the most part
appeared during the opening years of the Nineteenth Century. Then came the
great series of the "Waverley Novels," named after the romance of
"Waverley," published anonymously in 1814. The series comprised such
classics as "Guy Mannering," "The Heart of Midlothian," "Kenilworth,"
"Quentin Durward," and "Ivanhoe." Scott's historical romances, based as
they were on painstaking researches into old chronicles, revived in
Englishmen an interest in their own past. The romance of the Middle Ages
was recognized for the first time, if in an exaggerated degree, throughout
the civilized world. The romantic movement in French literature, now in
full swing, was directly inspired by Scott. Notwithstanding his great
success as a writer, Scott's later career was clouded by difficulties and
debt. Through his friendship with Canning early in his career he obtained
the post of court clerk in Edinburgh. This left him leisure to edit a
number of literary works, such as the editions of Swift, Dryden and Sir
Tristan. The great popular success of his novels soon made him rich. His
hospitality at Abbotsford grew so lavish that in order to defray his
expenses he joined in a financial partnership with his publishers. The
failure of the Bank of Constable, in 1826, and the consequent failure of
the house of Ballantyne, ruined Scott. His debts amounted to £117,000. In
his efforts to earn enough money wherewith to pay this enormous sum, Scott
became a literary drudge. It was at this time that he wrote his
seven-volume history of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, "Tales of a
Grandfather," and a two-volume "History of Scotland." His work as a
historian was by no means equal to that of his purely literary creations.
In 1830, as the result of overwork, Sir Walter Scott suffered from a stroke
of paralysis. A journey to Italy brought no relief. Two years later he
died. He was buried at Dryburgh Abbey. For several generations after his
death Scott remained one of the most popular authors of England.

[Sidenote: Advances in Medicine]

A remarkable instance of good resulting from evil was afforded this year by
the revolting murders committed by Burke and Hare in Edinburgh. These two
men deliberately killed a number of persons to sell their bodies to medical
dissecters. The discovery of their crimes led to a Parliamentary
investigation in the course of which Sir Astley Cooper boldly stated that
any man's body could be obtained in the United Kingdom if enough money were
offered. The scandal resulted in the passage of an Anatomy Act licensing
the traffic in human bodies within strict limitations. Before this reform
surgeons experimenting in human anatomy had to rely on body-snatchers for
their material. The repeal of the old laws on this subject removed much of
the odium hitherto attached to the science of dissection, while the
increase of experimental material gave a fresh impetus to the study of
anatomy.

[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon II.]

A menace to the royal crown of France was removed by the death of
Napoleon's son, the young Duke of Reichstadt, erstwhile King of Rome. He
expired at Schoenbrunn, after an empty life spent under Metternich's
tutelage in Vienna, and was buried there. His death at the time was
commemorated in the famous German ballad, beginning with the lines:

  In the gardens of Schoenbrunn
  Lies buried the King of Rome.

The French playwright Rostand made the life and death of this unfortunate
Prince the subject of a romantic tragedy "The Eaglet," in which Sarah
Bernhardt achieved so striking a success at the close of the Nineteenth
Century.

[Sidenote: Attempted revolts in France]

[Sidenote: Repressive measures]

The removal of another menace to Louis Philippe's throne was accompanied by
circumstances less tragic. In April, the Duchesse de Berry, wearying of her
exile, crossed over to Marseilles and travelled thence in disguise to
Château Plassac, in the Vendée, where she summoned the Royalists to arms.
She was betrayed into the hands of constables sent to arrest her, and was
placed in safe keeping at Château Blaye on an island in the Gironde. The
affair took an awkward turn for the cause of the Orleanists in France, when
the Duchess gave birth to an infant daughter, whose parentage she found it
difficult to explain. Next, the death of General Lamarque, a popular
soldier of France, started an insurrection at Paris in the summer. An
attempt was made to build barricades, and conflicts occurred in the
streets, but the National Guard remained true to the army and the King, and
the revolt was soon put down. The government of Louis Philippe resorted to
severe repressive measures, and trials for sedition were common. In Germany
a revolutionary appeal to arms, made at a popular festival at the Castle of
Homburg, near Zweibrücken, resulted in renewed reactionary measures. The
German Diet, at the instance of Metternich, declared that the refusal of
taxes by any legislature would be treated as an act of rebellion. All
political meetings and associations were forbidden and the public press was
gagged.

[Sidenote: Naval demonstration at Lisbon]

[Sidenote: Civil war in Portugal]

The excesses of Dom Miguel's followers in Portugal were followed by more
serious international results. A series of wanton attacks upon foreign
subjects in Lisbon called for outside intervention. English and French
squadrons appeared in the Tagus. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign
Secretary, declared himself satisfied after Portugal had apologized and
paid an indemnity to the British sufferers. The French admiral, unable to
obtain quick redress, carried off the best ships of the Portuguese navy.
The worst result for Dom Miguel was the foreign encouragement given to his
brother, Emperor Pedro of Brazil, who was preparing an expedition against
him in the Azores. Some of the best British naval officers and veterans of
the Peninsular War were permitted to enlist under Dom Pedro's banner.
Captain Charles Napier took charge of Dom Pedro's navy. In July a landing
was made near Oporto, and that important city was captured by Dom Pedro's
forces. Dom Miguel was constrained to lay siege to Oporto. Thus the civil
war in Portugal dragged on.

The most formidable revolt of the year was that of Mehemet Ali, the Viceroy
of Egypt, against his suzerain, Sultan Mahmoud of Turkey. The disappointing
results of Egypt's participation in Turkey's war in Greece left Mehemet Ali
dissatisfied. He considered the acquisition of Crete by Egypt but a poor
recompense for the loss of his fleet at Navarino.

[Sidenote: Mehemet Ali's revolt]

[Sidenote: Siege of Acre]

[Sidenote: Turkish reverses]

[Sidenote: Russian intervention]

A quarrel with the Pasha of Acre, Abdallah, gave Mehemet Ali a chance for
Egyptian aggrandizement in that direction. Egyptian forces under the
command of Mehemet Ali's adopted son Ibrahim marched into Palestine and
laid siege to Acre. That stronghold resisted with the same stubbornness
that Bonaparte had encountered years before. The protracted struggle there
gave the Sultan time to prepare an expedition wherewith to intervene
between his warring vassals. He took the part of the Pasha of Acre. A
proclamation was issued declaring Mehemet Ali and his son rebels. A Turkish
army under Hussain Pasha entered Syria. The fall of Acre, while the
relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled Ibrahim to throw his full
force against the Turks. In the valley of the Orontes the two forces met.
The Turkish vanguard was routed and the Turkish main column fell back on
Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the surrounding country to the Egyptians.
The Pasha of Aleppo, won over by Mehemet Ali, closed the gates of his city
against Hussain's disordered forces. The Turks retreated into the mountains
between Syria and Cilicia. The Egyptians pursued. At the pass of Beilan a
stand was made by Hussain. The fierce mountain tribes turned against him,
and with their help Ibrahim won a signal victory over the Turks, on July
29. The retreat continued through Cilicia far into Asia Minor. After
several months a new Turkish army under Reshid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague
in the siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. A pitched battle was
fought at Konieh on the 21st of December. The Turks were utterly routed.
The army was dispersed and Reshid himself was made a prisoner. The road to
Constantinople now lay open to Mehemet Ali. Sultan Mahmoud was so alarmed
that he turned to his old adversary, Russia, for help. General Muravieff
was summoned to Constantinople and was empowered to make terms for Turkey
with Mehemet Ali.

[Sidenote: Affair of Quallah Buteau]

In America, likewise, President Jackson had found it necessary to assert
the rights of the United States by means of a punitive expedition. This
grew out of the affair of Quallah Buteau on the Island of Sumatra in the
Dutch East Indies. The American ship "Friendship" had put in there during
the previous year to load with pepper. The captain, whose men were on
shore, permitted the crew of a Malay boat to come on board. There was not a
sign of danger, when suddenly the Malays attacked the Americans, killing
the first officer and two sailors and plundering the vessel. They then
tried to beach the vessel, but two other American ships compelled the
Malays to flee. The Rajah of Quallah Buteau appropriated the plunder and
refused to return it. Commodore Downs, with the frigate "Potomac," was
ordered to Sumatra. He reached there early in February. Finding that
nothing could be accomplished by peaceful means he landed two hundred and
fifty of his sailors under command of Lieutenant Shubrick. The Malays
refused to give or receive quarter. Their palisades were torn down and
turned into a bridge, and the fort was stormed. The Stars and Stripes were
hoisted. Another fort with its magazines was blown up. The town was
occupied. In all one hundred and fifty Malays were killed and wounded,
among them the Rajah. The total loss of the Americans was two men. The
offending town was razed.

[Sidenote: Struggle over United States Bank]

Jackson's domestic policy during this year brought him into conflict with
two powerful factors. One was the United States Bank at Philadelphia.
Jackson disapproved of the Bank on the ground that it failed to establish a
sound and new form of currency. A financial panic had been caused by
worthless paper currency issued by so-called "wildcat" banking
institutions. A petition for the renewal of the National Bank's charter,
which was to expire in 1836, was laid before the Senate. Both Houses passed
a bill to that effect. Jackson vetoed it, and a two-thirds vote wherewith
to override his veto could not be obtained for the measure. Jackson then
ordered the Bank's deposits removed. He read to the Cabinet a long paper,
in which he accused the officers of the Bank of mismanagement and
corruption, and stated that he would assume the entire responsibility for
the removal of the deposits. The Bank made a stubborn fight and spent over
$50,000 in defending itself. In the Senate, Benton was the chief opponent
of the Bank, and Webster was its principal defender. In December, the
President sent a message to Congress recommending the removal of the public
funds from the National Bank to certain State banks. Congress refused to
remove the funds.

[Sidenote: American tariff legislation]

[Sidenote: South Carolina nullification]

[Sidenote: Jackson's vigorous measures]

The passage of a new tariff law, on July 14, which was considered harmful
to Southern interests, brought the Federal Government into armed conflict
with the South. On November 19, a State Convention met at Columbus, South
Carolina, in response to a call of the Legislature, and on the 24th a
nullification ordinance was adopted. The tariff laws were declared
unconstitutional, and therefore "null and void and no law, nor binding upon
the State." On December 10, President Jackson issued a proclamation against
nullifiers, threatening them with trial for treason. Governor Hamilton of
South Carolina in reply warned citizens not to be diverted from their
allegiance to their State by this Federal proclamation. Jackson summoned
General Scott to Washington and sent a part of the army to Charleston with
a ship of war to collect the revenues. On December 28, J.C. Calhoun
resigned the office of Vice-President on account of Jackson's proclamation.
He was forthwith elected Senator from South Carolina.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Payne's Landing]

[Sidenote: Troubles with Indians]

[Sidenote: Black Hawk War]

It was during this year that renewed troubles with the Seminoles in Florida
resulted in one of the most serious Indian wars of the century. By the
treaty of Fort Muller, in 1823, the Indians were to be confined to a
reservation on the eastern peninsula, but the Territorial Legislature
petitioned Congress for their removal. Finally, in 1832, the treaty of
Payne's Landing stipulated that seven Seminole chiefs should examine the
country assigned to the Creeks west of the Mississippi, and that if they
could live amiably with the Creeks, the Seminoles were to be removed within
three years, surrendering their lands in Florida, and receiving an annuity
of $15,000 and certain supplies. President Jackson sent a commission to the
West to convince the seven chiefs that the country was eminently
desirable, and a supplementary treaty from these seven was obtained without
consulting the rest of the Seminoles. Many Seminoles were opposed to moving
West through fear of the Creeks. The Sacs and Foxes and Winnebago Indians
of Wisconsin by treaty, in 1830, had ceded their lands to the United
States, but they still refused to leave their territory. Governor Reynolds,
of Illinois, called out troops to compel them to go to the lands set apart
for them, west of the Mississippi. Black Hawk returned, but was again
driven off. In 1832 he came back with a thousand warriors and Indian
warfare broke out. Generals Scott and Atkinson were sent with troops to
Rock Island. It was the first time that a steamboat was used as a military
transport. The force was there divided. General Scott could effect nothing,
but General Atkinson pushed on, and in August defeated the Indians and took
Black Hawk and his two sons prisoners.

[Sidenote: Cholera reaches America]

[Sidenote: Death of Charles Carroll]

In many other ways public attention was engrossed in America. On June 21,
the Asiatic cholera appeared in New York with appalling results. The
epidemic spread to Philadelphia, Albany, Rochester, and westward. A number
of new railroads were opened in New York and Pennsylvania. The first
horse-drawn street cars began running in New York. On July 2, the
Agricultural Society of New York was founded, and the first public trial
was held of Obett Hussy's new reaping machine, which Cyrus MacCormick also
claimed as his invention. The device was destined to give a tremendous
impetus to agriculture in the development of the western prairies. About
the same time the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence,
Charles Carroll of Maryland, died at the age of ninety-six. In American
letters, this year is noted for the appearance of Smith's national anthem,
"My Country, 'tis of Thee." Among the books that attracted attention were
Whittier's "Moll Pitcher," Sparks's "Gouverneur Morris," and Irving's
"Alhambra." James Gordon Bennett began the publication of the "New York
Globe."




1833


[Sidenote: American abolition movement]

At the very outset of this year in America the slavery question burst into
flame. The abolition movement inaugurated by Garrison and Whittier in the
North was in full sway. In the slave-holding States large rewards were
offered for the apprehension of Garrison, Whittier and others connected
with the publication of the Boston "Liberator," Philadelphia "Freeman" and
New York "Emancipator." The legislatures of Northern States were called
upon to suppress anti-slavery societies by penal enactments. Governor
Edward Everett of Massachusetts and Governor Marcy of New York commended
such legislation. Prominent Northern citizens travelling in the South were
arrested, imprisoned and flogged for flimsy reasons. At New York,
Montpelier, Utica, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Alton, meetings
were broken up, houses sacked, newspapers destroyed and public halls
burned. Berry's "Philanthropist" at Cincinnati and Lovejoy's "Observer" at
Alton were destroyed and Pennsylvania Hall at Philadelphia, a costly
building intended for anti-slavery discussion, was burned on the day after
its dedication, at which a poem by Whittier had been read. The firemen
refused to extinguish the flames. In Boston, Garrison was dragged through
the streets with a rope around his neck. Whittier and Thompson tried to
lecture against slavery in Boston, but their meeting could not be held in
the face of the following placard posted in all parts of Boston:

[Sidenote: A typical manifesto]

"That infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson, will hold forth this afternoon
at 46 Washington Street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends
of the Union to snake Thompson out. It will be a contest between the
Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of _one hundred
dollars_ has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the
individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be
brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant!"

[Sidenote: Wendell Phillips]

These events inspired Wendell Phillips, who was present at a meeting in
Faneuil Hall, Boston, called to approve these outrages, to take an open
stand in favor of the rights of the people, which were threatened, and gave
to the cause for thirty years his active brain and eloquent tongue.

[Sidenote: Compromise tariff]

As a counterpart to the popular excesses in behalf of slavery, the
Catholics of New England had to suffer persecution. At Charlestown, in
Massachusetts, a mob burned the Ursuline Convent. Another indignation
meeting was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston to denounce this outrage. As a
concession to the Southern agitators, the American Congress, on February
26, adopted a so-called "Compromise tariff." The new bill cut down all
duties of over twenty per cent by one-tenth of the surplus of each year,
so as to bring about a uniform rate of twenty per cent within a decade. On
the other hand, Congress passed a "force bill," which empowered the
President to execute the revenue laws in South Carolina by force of arms. A
State Convention in South Carolina for its part repealed the ordinance of
nullification, but proceeded to declare the new Federal force bill null and
void.

[Sidenote: Death of Randolph]

On May 24, John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, a descendant of Pocahontas,
died at the age of sixty. He commenced public life in 1799, and served
thirty years in Congress. There he became distinguished for his eccentric
conduct, his sharpness of wit, and his galling sarcasm, which made him
feared by all parties. He had to resign from the Cabinet under odious
charges. In 1830, Jackson appointed him Minister to Russia. Randolph's
speeches are still widely read.

[Sidenote: Texas filibusters]

In the extreme South the American settlers of Texas, aided by Davy
Crockett's filibusters from the United States, began a war for independence
against Mexico.

[Sidenote: English abolition movement]

[Sidenote: Gladstone's first speech in Parliament]

[Sidenote: Misgovernment in Ireland]

[Sidenote: Irish resentment]

The abolition of slavery was likewise the most absorbing topic that came up
during this year in the Parliament of England. Young Gladstone, the newly
elected member from Newark, taunted with his father's slave-holding methods
at Demerara, made his maiden speech in Parliament on this subject. One who
heard the rising orator recorded: "Burke himself could not be more
sympathetic, more earnest, and more strong." Another engrossing topic was
that of Ireland. The state of Ireland at this period, as conceded by a
Tory historian of modern England, was a disgrace to the history of the
Nineteenth Century. So wretched was the government of this unhappy
dependency that during the year 1832 alone nearly 1,500 people were
murdered and robbed in Ireland. Instead of giving to Ireland a better
administration, Parliament passed another coercion bill. Tithes for the
Protestant clergy were collected at the point of the bayonet. The cause of
Ireland, as heretofore, was pleaded most eloquently by Daniel O'Connell. He
denounced the Irish Church bill as "the basest act which a national
assembly could sanction." The people became so enraged that when an
Englishman was killed in a riot the coroner's jury returned a verdict of
justifiable homicide. The Court of King's Bench quashed the verdict and
tried the murderer before a jury. He was acquitted in the face of the
clearest proofs against him and in direct contravention of the instructions
of the judge. The spirit of the English aristocracy was indicated by the
fact that a bill for relieving Jews from their civil disabilities was
thrown out by the House of Lords.

[Sidenote: Death of Wilberforce]

On July 26, William Wilberforce died in his seventy-fourth year. He lived
long enough to hear that the bill for the abolition of slavery in the
British colonies, to which he had devoted the greater part of his life, had
passed its second reading, and that success was assured. Of all English
advocates of human freedom he was the most persevering and faithful. After
a distinguished Parliamentary career of forty-five years, he gave up all
political ambitions to devote himself to the cause of humanity and
religion. He had been the intimate friend and associate of Pitt, Fox, G.
Milner, Brougham and Macaulay. His wish that he be buried simply and
privately was not granted by England. He was buried in Westminster Abbey,
close to the tombs of Pitt, Fox and Canning. Around his open grave stood
the royal dukes of Sussex and Gloucester, the Duke of Wellington, Lord
Chancellor Brougham, the venerable Archbishop Howley, with other
representatives from the House of Lords and Commons.

[Sidenote: Tractarian Movement]

[Sidenote: Newman]

[Sidenote: Dr. Arnold]

It was at this period of the ecclesiastical history of England that the
Tractarian Movement began at Oxford. It is a significant fact that the
"Tracts for the Times" appeared at Oxford within less than a year after the
passage of the Reform Bill. The connection of the two movements has been
revealed in Newman's "Apologia Pro Vita Sua." In January, Dr. Arnold, the
celebrated headmaster at Rugby, published his "Principles of Church
Reform." He aimed at a reunion of all Christians within the pale of a great
national church. In the discussion that followed, the foremost spirits were
Newman, Froude, Dr. Pusey, and Keble, the sweet singer of the Church of
England, whose "Christian Year" will live as long as that Church endures.

[Sidenote: Browning]

[Sidenote: Keane]

[Sidenote: Steel pens]

[Sidenote: Electro-magnetism]

Enlightened Englishmen were further stirred at this time by the publication
of Robert Browning's "Pauline," a narrative in unusually virile verse, and
by Edmund Keane's original creation of the character of "Othello." The new
invention of steel pens first came into general use during this same year,
as did Hansom's "safety cab," and Lord Brougham's favorite style of
carriage. Robert Brown, an English scientist, in the course of his
microscopic studies of orchids happened to make the important discovery of
the nucleus of cells. Joseph Saxton, an American, constructed the first
electro-magnetic machine in England.

[Sidenote: Bismarck]

[Sidenote: Revolt at Frankfort]

[Sidenote: Caspar Hauser]

The invention of the electro-magnetic telegraph was claimed by Gauss and
Weber in Germany. The first telegraph actually constructed and used was set
up at Göttingen. Among those who witnessed it was young Bismarck, who had
already achieved a reputation as a duellist among the students of
Göttingen. An impulse toward his political ambitions of the future may
possibly have been given by the sensational events at Frankfort during this
year. A band of misguided enthusiasts attempted to establish German unity
by a _coup de main_. They overpowered a small detachment of guards and
hoisted the black-red-gold banner of Germany. The expected rising of the
population did not follow. The little band of revolutionists was dispersed
at the first appearance of a strong military force. It is characteristic of
the premature nature of this movement that it excited less serious
attention in Germany than the death of Caspar Hauser, a freak foundling,
whose unexplained origin has remained one of the mysteries of the
Nineteenth Century.

[Sidenote: Teplitz conference]

[Sidenote: Zollverein]

The affair at Frankfort received the usual serious consideration by
Metternich, who arranged for meetings of the allied monarchs at
Münchengrätz, and of their ministers and authorized representatives at
Teplitz. The most beneficial measure agreed on at these meetings was the
comprehension of all German States in a tariff union known as the
Zollverein.

[Sidenote: Otto's reign in Greece]

Full recognition was given to Prince Otto of Wittelsbach as King of Greece.
The young prince, then in his eighteenth year, had already landed at
Nauplia. He commenced his reign with a regency consisting of Bavaria's
ablest ministers, Count Armandsberg, Von Maurer, and Heideck. King Louis of
Bavaria commemorated the accession of his son to the throne of Greece by
erecting a number of monumental buildings at Munich in imitation of the
architecture of ancient Greece, and by mural paintings in the arcades of
his palace garden depicting all the most famous places and incidents of the
Greek struggle for independence.

[Sidenote: French painters]

[Sidenote: Death of Legendre]

In France, a new impetus was likewise given to art. Jean Baptiste Leloir
began his career as a painter of religious and historical subjects;
Lecquereux, the great historical painter, stood already at the zenith of
his power, and Corot's exquisite landscapes were receiving their full
measure of appreciation. In French letters, this year is noted for the
first appearance of Balzac's "Eugénie Grandet" and Prosper Mérimée's
"Double Erreur." Legendre, the great French mathematician, died during this
year.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Keteya]

[Sidenote: Compact of Unkiarskelessi]

[Sidenote: Moltke]

It was the foreign policy of France to supplant Russia as mediator between
Turkey and Egypt. Admiral Roussin had made it plain to the Sultan that if
Syria could not be reconquered from the rebellious Mehemet Ali except by
Russian forces the province was more than lost to Turkey. Accordingly, a
French envoy was sent to Mehemet's victorious son, Ibrahim, with powers to
conclude peace on any terms. The French suggestions were adopted on April
10, in the treaty of Keteya. The Sultan made over to his viceroy all of
Syria and a part of Adana. The Egyptians consented to leave Anatolia. The
Sultan took the spoliation so much to heart that he turned from France.
Once more he entered into negotiations with Russia. Russian warships were
permitted to enter the Dardanelles, and Russian troops camped side by side
with the Turks on the east bank of the Bosphorus. A secret treaty for
defence and offence was concluded between Russia and Turkey at the palace
of Unkiarskelessi: The Porte undertook to close the Dardanelles to the
warships of all other nations whenever Russia should be at war. Thus the
entrance to the Black Sea was made practically a Russian stronghold. As
soon as the purport of this treaty was apprehended it had the effect of
uniting the rest of Europe against Russia--notably, France and England.
Henceforth Russia's ascendency in the East was watched by the chancelleries
of Europe with growing suspicion. Sultan Mahmoud set himself seriously to
reorganize his army after Western models. Following the example of Mehemet
Ali, he summoned foreign officers to his general staff. It was then that
Moltke, the subsequent strategist of Germany, entered Turkish service.

[Sidenote: Portuguese civil war]

[Sidenote: Civil war in Spain]

[Sidenote: Revolt in Cuba]

Lord Napier's namesake, Captain Charles Napier, had won fresh laurels in
the Portuguese war for the succession to the throne. In command of the
fleet fitted out by Dom Pedro of Brazil he attacked and annihilated Dom
Miguel's navy off St. Vincent. Napier's colleague, Villa Flor, landed his
forces and marched on Lisbon. The resistance of Dom Miguel's forces was
overcome. On July 28, Dom Pedro was able to enter Lisbon as a victor. Still
the struggle went on. Among those who linked themselves with Dom Miguel was
Don Carlos, the rebellious pretender to the throne of Spain. Upon the death
of King Ferdinand VII., in September, and the coronation of the Infanta
Isabella as Queen of Spain under a regency, Don Carlos was proclaimed king
by his followers. The Basque provinces declared in his favor. Civil war
began. Had Don Carlos crossed the border at once he might have captured his
crown. Unfortunately for his cause, he lingered in Portugal until the end
of the year. The regency of Spain, in the face of this embarrassment at
home, was called upon to proceed energetically against a revolutionary
rising in Cuba under the leadership of Manuel Quesada. Henceforth the Pearl
of the Antilles was no longer the "ever faithful Isle."




1834


[Sidenote: Death of Pedro IV.]

[Sidenote: Quadruple alliance]

[Sidenote: Foreign intervention in Portugal]

[Sidenote: Pretenders withdraw]

The death of Pedro IV., the Emperor of Brazil and claimant king of
Portugal, made matters worse in Portugal. Diego Antonio Fergio set himself
up as Regent. Monasteries were suppressed and the Society of Jesus was
expelled from the kingdom. Dom Miguel continued his fight for the throne.
Don Carlos, the Spanish pretender, remained with him. The situation grew so
threatening for the established governments in Portugal and Spain that
they, too, combined for mutual defence. Queen-Regent Christina of Spain
found that she would have to rely for support upon the Spanish Liberals.
Martinez de la Rosa was made Prime Minister. His first measure was to give
his country a constitution, which was ratified, on April 10, by royal
statute. He then entered into negotiations with Portugal as well as with
England and France to crush the two rebellious pretenders by a combined
effort. On April 22, a fourfold treaty was signed at London by the terms of
which the Spanish and Portuguese Governments undertook to proceed
conjointly against Miguel and Carlos. England promised to co-operate with
her fleet. France agreed to send an army into the Peninsula if called upon.
Before the treaty had been ratified even by the English Parliament and
French Chambers, General Rodil marched a Spanish division into Portugal.
Dom Miguel's forces were driven before him. The threatening demonstrations
of British cruisers and the simultaneous publication of the terms of the
quadruple alliance in Lisbon and Madrid cowed the revolutionists. On May
22, Dom Miguel yielded. On the promise of a handsome pension, he renounced
his rights to the crown of Braganza and agreed to leave Portugal forever.
Don Carlos, while declining thus to sell his rights, took refuge with the
British admiral on his flagship and was taken to London.

[Sidenote: Return of Don Carlos]

[Sidenote: Zumalacarregui]

For a while it seemed as if order had been restored in the Peninsula. The
problem of Portugal was settled. Don Carlos' shrewd move, however, left
matters open in Spain. The pretender had not been made a prisoner of war,
nor was he placed under any constraint or obligations. After a short
residence in England he crossed the Channel, and, travelling through France
in disguise, reappeared on July 10 in Navarre, where Zumalacarregui, a
brigand chief of considerable military ability, was conducting brilliant
operations against the Spanish government forces. Of the detachments sent
against him one after another was defeated in the mountains of Navarre.

[Sidenote: Spanish reverses]

All manner of help from the peasants was obtained by a system of ruthless
intimidation. The personal presence of Don Carlos strengthened the cause.
It was in vain that old General Mina, who had won renown in these parts ten
years ago, was sent against the Carlists. Unable to cope with them, the
old soldier resigned from his command. The Spanish Minister, Valdes,
thereupon took the field himself. His attempt to operate in Navarre with a
large army resulted in the worst defeat that had yet befallen the
government forces. He had to retreat before the victorious Carlists.
Zumalacarregui prepared to cross the Ebro to march upon Madrid.

[Sidenote: Delacey's expedition to Spain]

[Sidenote: French intervention refused]

[Sidenote: Fall of La Rosa's Ministry]

The Spanish Ministry in alarm turned to its allies for aid. The English
Government would render no further aid beyond that already given by the
British squadron in Spanish waters. Permission, however, was granted to
enroll volunteers for the Spanish cause in England and in Ireland. Colonel
Delacey Ebbons raised a corps of needy adventurers, and, having been
supplied with arms and funds, crossed over to Spain. The first appeal for
French intervention resulted in like failure. France had cause to hesitate
before embarking in another Peninsular War. Lord Palmerston's refusal on
behalf of the British Government to co-operate with France in any such
undertaking gave Louis Philippe reason to reflect. A large party in France,
moreover, was in sympathy with Don Carlos. The Spanish Government was
informed that French military assistance, under the circumstances, was
impossible. The first result of this refusal was the downfall of La Rosa's
Ministry in Spain. The civil war continued.

[Sidenote: Revolts in France]

[Sidenote: Fall of Broglie's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Thiers, Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: Death of Lafayette]

In France, domestic troubles rather than international questions were the
problems of the day. On April 5, a violent outbreak had been precipitated
by Mazzini among the workingmen of Lyons, which arose from a labor strike
involving thousands. Soon the whole city was in uproar. Barricades were
thrown up. Blood was shed in hand-to-hand fights with the troops. Similar
outbreaks had been prepared at St. Etienne, Vienne, Grenoble, Châlons,
Auxerre, Arbois, Marseilles, and Luneville. The insurrection spread to
Paris. On April 13, a conflict of some workmen with the troops was followed
by the building of barricades all over the city. The revolt was ruthlessly
suppressed by General Bugeaud, the commandant of Paris, who was henceforth
denounced as a butcher. After it was all over the Ministry of Duc de
Broglie fell in consequence of an adverse vote of the Chambers on the
subject of the indemnities due to America. The succeeding Ministry lasted
just three days. Then came the recall of Thiers, Guizot, Duchatel, Humann,
and Rigny. Marshal Mortier became President of the Council. The Chamber of
Deputies was dissolved. The aged Prince Talleyrand quitted the embassy at
London. A proposal to form a Ministry headed by Marquis de la Fayette for
the last time brought the name of that venerable hero into the public
affairs of France. Shortly afterward he died in peace at La Grange,
surrounded by his children and calling for his dead wife. His burial in the
graveyard of Picpus, consecrated to the memory of the victims of the
Terror, was left undisturbed by political demonstrations.

[Sidenote: Lafayette's career]

The name of Lafayette is indissolubly linked with the cause of the American
Revolution and struggle for independence. To join the revolutionists'
cause, Lafayette not only had to sacrifice his private fortune and
brilliant prospects at home, but also to leave a young, dearly-loved wife
with an unborn babe. Throughout the weary struggle of America against the
overwhelming power of England, Lafayette, together with Kosciusko and De
Kalb, stood by Washington and the cause for which he had drawn his sword.
Lafayette's presence in the American army, and the example of his constant
financial sacrifices for the American cause, were instrumental in winning
France over to that offensive alliance against England which helped to turn
the tide of war against that country. Throughout his subsequent career,
Lafayette sustained the reputation he had won in early manhood. He was one
of the few prominent figures of the French Revolution who emerged from that
ordeal with untainted reputation. From then until his closing days he was
the foremost champion of liberal thought and political freedom in France.

[Sidenote: Delaroche]

[Sidenote: Death of Blackwood]

Another distinguished Frenchman who died during this year was Jacquard, the
inventor of the loom which bears his name. In the French Salon in spring,
"The Execution of Lady Jane Grey in the Tower," by Paul Hippolyte
Delaroche, took the highest prize. The picture was a happy medium between
the ultra-romantic method of Delacroix and the classicism of David. Three
years previous to this, Delaroche sent to the Salon his famous paintings
"Cromwell at the Bier of Charles I.," and "The Children of Edward IV. in
the Tower." At this same time he was engaged on the greatest of his works,
"The Hemicycle," now in the Hall of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
England lost three men prominent in letters, Blackwood, Lamb, and
Coleridge. Blackwood's contribution to English letters was the "Edinburgh
Magazine," founded and maintained by him from 1817 until his death.

[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]

[Sidenote: "Essays of Elia"]

Charles Lamb appeared in the world of letters as "Elia," a fancifully
adopted name of an Italian fellow clerk at the South Sea House, where Lamb
served his literary apprenticeship. While serving as a clerk for the South
Sea Company he published his first poems at the age of twenty-two, followed
shortly by "Rosamond Gray" and "John Woodville," at the beginning of the
century. With his sister Mary he shared in the publication of the two
children's books, "Tales from Shakespeare" (1806), and "Poetry for
Children" (1809). During this same period he compiled and edited the famous
"Specimens of Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare." The "Essays of
Elia," which made Lamb's reputation, did not appear until 1823. The charm
of these essays is a frank note of autobiography tempered by a kindly humor
and whimsicality peculiar to Lamb. His fond appreciation of the poetry of
Elizabethan days, as revealed in these essays, was instrumental in bringing
about that revival of Shakespeare and old English poetry which set in early
in the Nineteenth Century.

[Sidenote: Death of Coleridge]

Thus it happened that Lamb and Coleridge were intimately associated. Lamb's
first poems appeared in a volume of Coleridge's. Lamb repaid the debt by
his tribute to Coleridge in his letters. There he has aptly described him
as a "logician, metaphysician and bard." It so happened that both friends,
who were almost of the same age, died in the same year.

[Sidenote: The "Lake School"]

[Sidenote: "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"]

[Sidenote: Swinburne on Coleridge]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire,
the son of a clergyman. He studied at Cambridge and then went to London,
where he enlisted as a trooper in a regiment of dragoons. Finding military
service uncongenial, he obtained a discharge and devoted himself to
literature. Together with Southey and Lovell he undertook to found a
communistic colony on the banks of the Susquehanna in America. The project
failed from lack of money. The three friends married the three sisters
Fireckes of Bristol and settled in Stowey. There Coleridge, Southey and
Wordsworth founded their so-called "Lake School of Poetry." Coleridge has
told in his "Biographia Literaria," how the "Lyrical Ballads," issued at
that time, derived their inspiration from two sources; to wit, supernatural
themes, which appealed to Coleridge, and homely every-day subjects, which
Wordsworth loved to beautify. Occasionally Coleridge tried himself in the
other field, as in his "Lines to a Young Ass." In the same year Coleridge
brought out the famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," his "Odes," and wrote
his first version of "Christabel." The period at Nether Stowey, from 1797
to 1798, was Coleridge's most fruitful year as a poet. All his best poetic
works had their origin at that time. Swinburne has said of Coleridge: "For
height and perfection of imaginative quality he is the greatest of lyric
poets, this was his special power and is his special praise." Much of the
charm and magnetic suggestion of his famous poem "Christabel" rests on its
exquisite vowel-music. The same is true of his wonderful "Rime of the
Ancient Mariner." There the running prose glossary accompanying the poem
displays the same delicate, fanciful tone as his most musical verse. By
these two poems alone Coleridge proved himself the most successful of the
English poets who have tried to imbue their verse with an eerie sense of
the invisible and the unreal:

  Like one that on a lonesome road,
  Doth walk in fear and dread,
  And, having once turned round, walks on,
  And turns no more his head;
  Because he knows a frightful fiend,
  Doth close behind him tread.

[Sidenote: "Aids to Reflection"]

[Sidenote: "Sartor Resartus"]

After his twenty-fifth year, Coleridge's poetic qualities declined. As a
result of his travels in Germany he published, in 1800, a translation of
Schiller's "Wallenstein," after which he reluctantly undertook to edit the
"Morning Post," a government organ. In 1804 he went to Malta as secretary
of Governor Ball. His last works were "Biographia Literaria" (1817),
"Zapolya" (1818), "Aids to Reflection" (1825), "Constitution of the Church
and State" (1826), as well as his posthumous "Literary Remains,"
"Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," and the "Theory of Life." In English
literary annals this year is noted likewise for the appearance of Carlyle's
"Sartor Resartus."

[Sidenote: The Church of Ireland]

[Sidenote: Royal interference]

[Sidenote: Earl Grey resigns]

A Parliamentary bill admitting dissenters to university honors in England
was thrown out by the House of Lords. Another bill for the removal of the
civil disabilities of the Jews was again carried in the Lower House only to
be rejected by the Lords. Next, another coercion bill against Ireland was
introduced by the Ministry early in July. In the Commons much fault was
found with the Government's manner of dealing with Irish questions. In
spite of the concessions to O'Connell, that formidable leader had not been
won over. The Tories held that the Ministry had gone altogether too far. At
this critical moment, on the King's birthday, the Irish prelates, with the
Primate at their head, presented an address signed by fourteen Irish
clergymen in which they deprecated the proposed changes in the discipline
of the Church in Ireland. Instead of leaving the reply to his Ministers,
the King answered it in person: "I had been by the circumstances of my life
led to support toleration to the utmost extent of which it is justly
capable, but toleration must not be suffered to go into licentiousness....
I have spoken more strongly than usual, because of unhappy circumstances
that have forced themselves on the observation of all. The words which you
hear from me have not been learned by heart, but do indeed flow from my
heart." This speech was received with transports of joy by the opposition.
Earl Grey and his colleagues, on July 9, handed in their resignation.
Viscount Melbourne was called in with a heterogeneous Cabinet. During this
interregnum, on October 16, the two Houses of Parliament burned down.
Westminster Hall, the Abbey and the Speaker's residence were saved, but all
the rest, including the interior of the tower and the library of
Parliament, was destroyed.

[Sidenote: Troubles in China]

[Sidenote: Opium trade resented]

[Sidenote: Lord Napier's defiance]

[Sidenote: British ships fired on]

The most serious of the many embarrassments inherited from the
Administration of Grey was the trouble with China, that had arisen out of
the East India Company's opium trade in the Far East. When the charter of
the East India Company was renewed in 1834, it was shorn of its monopoly of
this trade. The consequent extension of the trade in opium, so strenuously
opposed by the Chinese Government, incensed Emperor Taouk-Wang. Lord
Napier, the new British Commissioner, reached the Canton River in July. His
instructions from Lord Palmerston were to foster the English opium trade
not only at Canton, but to demand an extension of the trade to other parts
of the Chinese empire. The Chinese mandarins, under instructions from the
Viceroy of Canton, refused to have anything to do with Napier. He was
lampooned in Chinese prints as "the foreign eye." The Viceroy issued an
edict forbidding the British Commissioner to proceed up the river. At the
same time all trade with English merchants was suspended. In defiance of
the Chinese orders Lord Napier left Macao, and sailing up the river made
his way to the English factory at Canton. There he found himself isolated.
An Imperial proclamation declared that the national dignity was at stake,
and ordered all Chinese subjects to keep away from the Englishmen. The
Canton factory was deserted by all of its coolies and domestic servants.
Lord Napier, ailing in health as he was, found his position untenable. He
sent a final defiance to the Viceroy of Canton: "The merchants of Great
Britain wish to trade with all China on principles of mutual benefit. They
will never relax in their exertions until they gain this. The Viceroy will
find it as easy to stop the current of the Canton River, as to carry into
effect his insane determination." After this the Viceroy sent his troops
into the foreign settlements, and ordered the Bogue forts to fire on any
English ship that attempted to pass. On September 5, two British ships in
the river were fired upon by the Chinese. The English merchants petitioned
Lord Napier to retire to Macao. This he did with a futile protest against
China's acts "of unprecedented tyranny and injustice." Lord Napier died,
leaving to others the settlement of the difficulties which his presence had
intensified.

[Sidenote: Lord Melbourne dismissed]

[Sidenote: Peel dissolves Parliament]

The death of Earl Spencer, which raised Lord Althorp, his son, to the Upper
House, gave the King a chance to get rid of his new advisers. When Lord
Melbourne, on November 14, submitted to the King the changes he proposed to
make in the Ministry in consequence of the vacancies in the Exchequer,
William IV. expressed his disapproval and called in the Duke of Wellington
in his stead. The Duke advised that the task of forming a new Cabinet be
intrusted to Sir Robert Peel, then in Rome. Sir Robert arrived in London
on December 9, and at once accepted the task imposed on him. The opposition
against his new-formed Ministry was so strong that it was decided to appeal
to the country. On December 30, Parliament was dissolved.

[Sidenote: American slavery agitation]

[Sidenote: "Atherton Gag"]

[Sidenote: American events]

In North America, the contest between the Northern and Southern States in
regard to slavery steadily gathered force. President Jackson, in his annual
message, called attention to "the fearful excitement produced in the South
by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed
to the slaves." The Federal postmasters of the South and in several cities
of the North were encouraged in the practice of rifling the mails of
possibly offensive matter. John Quincy Adams was threatened with public
censure at the bar of the House for proposing to print a petition for
freedmen. All attempts to get such petitions before Congress were defeated
by a standing rule known as the Atherton Gag. During this year the national
debt was almost liquidated by Jackson's payment of $4,760,082. A measure
was passed through Congress establishing the value of gold and silver. Gold
flowed into the Treasury through all channels of commerce. The mint was
kept busy, and specie payments, which had been suspended for thirty years,
were resumed. Gold and silver became the recognized currency of the land.
The President's measures against the National Bank were less successful. On
March 28, the Senate debated Clay's resolution censuring the President for
his removal of the government deposits. A joint resolution by both Houses
of Congress was passed, in the Senate, June 3, by a vote of 29 to 10. Other
events of the year of interest to Americans were the popular riots that
threw New York into a turmoil on the occasion of the first mayoralty
election in that city, the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Legislature
of Illinois, the establishment of the Indian Territory; and the first
appearance of Bancroft's "History of the United States."

[Sidenote: Friction matches]

Of world-wide interest was the emancipation of all black slaves in the
British West Indies, South Africa, and other colonies; the establishment of
the German tariff union, including all German States except Austria; the
transfer of the capital of Greece from Nauplia to the site of Athens; the
foundation of the free university of Brussels, and the death of the great
German theologian Schleiermacher. An innovation that was destined to add to
the convenience and comfort of domestic life throughout the world was the
introduction of lucifer matches during this year.




1835


[Sidenote: Irish balance of power]

[Sidenote: Gladstone's anti-Irish speech]

[Sidenote: O'Connell's reply]

On February 19, Parliament reassembled. It was found that a working
majority of Tories had been returned, but the first vote on the King's
speech revealed a junction of the Whigs with O'Connell's Irish party, which
foreboded disaster to the government. For the first time in Parliamentary
history the Irish members held the balance of power. In vain did Sir Robert
Peel attempt to stave off his downfall by the introduction of welcome
measures of reform. Once more it was on a question affecting Ireland that
the government was defeated. This was Peel's high commutation bill. Lord
Russell in reply moved that the surplus revenues of the Irish Church be
used for non-ecclesiastical purposes. In the debate that followed,
Gladstone spoke strongly against the measure. For this early speech,
embodying as it did views so radically different from those of his later
life, he was constantly reproached during his career. It ended with the
words, "I hope I shall never live to see the day when such a system shall
be adopted in this country; for the consequences of it to public men will
be lamentable beyond all description." O'Connell said in reply: "I shall
content myself with laying down the broad principle that the emoluments of
a church ought not to be raised from a people who do not belong to it....
All that the Catholics of Ireland require is justice--equal and even-handed
justice."

[Sidenote: Fall of Peel's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Melbourne's second Administration]

When the matter came to a vote the government was defeated by a majority of
thirty-three. On April 8, the resignation of the Ministry was announced to
Parliament. The King sent for Earl Grey, and, on his refusal to form a
Ministry, was driven to the humiliating expedient of recalling Lord
Melbourne. On April 18, a new Cabinet was formed, composed largely of the
men who had been so summarily dismissed by the King a few months before.
Lord Melbourne's second Administration was marked by the elevation of the
settlements of South Australia to a Crown colony. The city of Melbourne,
which was founded that year, was named in his honor.

[Sidenote: Death of William Cobbett]

An extraordinary career was ended, on June 18, by the death of William
Cobbett, from overwork in Parliament. With but little school education,
this remarkable man succeeded in becoming not only one of the foremost
prose writers of English, but the leader of a great popular party.

[Sidenote: The Orange Lodges]

[Sidenote: Duke of Cumberland implicated]

During the early part of Lord Melbourne's Administration, the discontent
and irritation prevailing in Ireland were heightened by the agitation
against the Orange lodges. The original purpose of these lodges had been to
defend, against the Stuarts and their supporters, the Protestant ascendancy
which had begun with the reign of William of Orange. The lodges had grown
in strength until, in 1835, it was estimated that they numbered 140,000
members in Ireland, and as many as 40,000 in London alone. The Grand Master
of all the Orange Lodges was no less a personage than the Duke of
Cumberland, the King's brother. It was believed in Ireland that a
conspiracy existed on the part of the Orangemen to set aside the Princess
Victoria, the next heir to the throne, in favor of the Duke of Cumberland.
The subject was brought to the notice of Parliament by Hume and O'Connell,
who drew special attention to the illegal introduction of Orangemen into
the British army, under warrants signed by the Duke of Cumberland. The
scandal grew to such an extent that the Duke of Cumberland hastened to
dissolve the order before a resolution condemning his conduct could pass
through the Commons.

[Sidenote: D'Urban in South Africa]

[Sidenote: Beginning of Boer trek]

In South Africa, another war over boundary questions broke out between the
Dutch and English settlers and the Kaffirs. Sir Benjamin d'Urban advanced
the frontier of Cape Colony to the Keir River. The Zulu chief, Dingaan, on
the assassination of King Chaka, who had welded together a confederation of
warlike tribes, succeeded to his powers. In the midst of these difficulties
an advance guard of Boers, exasperated by Great Britain's abolition of the
old Dutch moot courts or "Heemraden," and of slavery in Cape Colony,
trekked across the Orange River and founded a colony of their own.

[Sidenote: South American disorders]

[Sidenote: Revolution of Texas]

In South America, political changes rapidly followed one upon the other.
Rocafuerte seized the reins of power in Ecuador. About the same time
General Rosas had himself re-elected for fifteen years as dictator of the
Argentine Republic. President Santa Cruz of Bolivia made a raid into Peru,
and in his absence the State of Bolivia promptly fell a prey to internal
disorders. In Mexico, General Santa Anna established his rule as dictator.
The affairs of Texas soon demanded his attention. On December 20, Texas
declared itself independent of Mexico. Support came from the United States.
The revolution began with the battle of Gonzales, in which 500 Americans
took part. The Mexicans were defeated. Soon afterward Goliad and the strong
citadel of Bexar, known as the Alamo, were taken and the Mexican forces
dispersed.

[Sidenote: Osceola in Florida]

[Sidenote: Treaty of Payne's Landing disputed]

In the meanwhile the Seminole war in Florida had assumed a serious aspect.
The chief Indian leader who opposed the removal of the Seminoles west of
the Mississippi was Osceola, son of a half breed squaw and an Englishman.
His wife, the daughter of a slave, had been seized and returned to her
mother's master. Thenceforth Osceola became an uncompromising enemy of the
whites. The Indian controversy with the American Government turned on the
interpretation of a pronoun in the treaty of Payne's Landing. President
Jackson held that the word "they" in the most important clause of the
treaty relating to the compensation of the despoiled Indians referred only
to the deputies who executed the document, whereas Osceola contended that
it was meant to stand for all the Indians. The continued quibbling so
enraged Osceola that he drove his knife into the table exclaiming: "The
next treaty I will execute is with this."

[Sidenote: American progress]

[Sidenote: New York conflagration]

[Sidenote: Death of Justice Marshall]

Among the intellectual and scientific achievements of this year in America
must be reckoned Colt's invention of a revolver and the manufacture of
pins. Longfellow brought out his "Outre-Mer," and Audubon published his
"Birds of America." On December 16, a disastrous fire destroyed most of the
commercial houses of New York City. In all 530 houses burned down and
$18,000,000 worth of property was consumed. Chief Justice Marshall of the
United States Supreme Court died during this year, eighty years of age. As
a member of Congress, a Cabinet officer, and the foremost jurist of the
United States, Marshall won lasting distinction. His ability as a writer
was conspicuously displayed in his popular "Life of Washington."

[Sidenote: Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria]

[Sidenote: Wilhelm von Humboldt]

[Sidenote: Andersen's Fairy Tales]

In Europe, in the meanwhile, there had been some significant changes. On
March 2, Emperor Francis of Austria died at the age of sixty-seven. The
succession of Archduke Ferdinand to the throne produced no change in the
national policy. Metternich was retained at the head of affairs. Almost of
more moment to Germany was the death of Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt, the
diplomat, and brother to Alexander, the great German explorer and
philosophic writer. Besides his services as a statesman at the time of the
international conferences at Paris and Vienna, he is distinguished for his
philological researches in the Basque and Kauri languages. About the same
time Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish author, published his first
collection of fairy tales. The book had an immediate success, and after its
translation into German achieved a world-wide reputation. Various
translations from the German version and from the original had large sales
in England and America.

[Sidenote: Artistic activity in France]

[Sidenote: May riots of Paris]

[Sidenote: Fieschi's infernal machine]

[Sidenote: Second campaign in Algiers]

In France, too, notwithstanding political disturbances, fine arts and
letters flourished. New creations appeared from the pens of Lamartine,
Victor Hugo, Balzac, De Vigny and Alfred De Musset. Théophile Gautier
brought out his masterpiece "Mademoiselle de Maupin." Among the musicians
at Paris, Meyerbeer, Auber, Berlioz, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Spontini,
and Schapa were at the height of their activity. Politically it was a year
of disturbances for France. The opening of the State trial of last year's
conspirators before the Chamber of Peers was followed by diatribes in the
press. The liberties of the press were further restricted. Riots again
broke out in May. After all, but one man was condemned to death. Most of
those who were implicated were sentenced to transportation. New laws for
the repression of sedition were proposed by the Cabinet. Then it was that
the first serious attempt was made on the life of Louis Philippe. Already
seven projects of assassination had been discovered and frustrated, when a
grand review of the National Guards, on July 28, gave an opportunity for a
telling stroke. At the moment when the royal procession arrived on the
Boulevard Temple, an infernal machine was set off by a Corsican named
Fieschi. The King was saved only by the fact that he had bent down from
his horse to receive a petition when the machine was discharged. Among
those that were struck down were the Dukes of Orleans and Broglie, Marshal
Mortier, General Verigny, and Captain Vilate. The perpetrators of the crime
were put to death. In French foreign affairs a renewed uprising of Arab
tribes under Abd-el-Kader necessitated another military campaign in
Algeria.

In Greece, King Otto, having come of age on June 1, dissolved the Bavarian
regency and assumed his full royal powers at Athens. His reign, lacking
though it was in national spirit or sympathies, assured to Greece an era of
undisturbed peace and tranquillity.

[Sidenote: Seminole War]

Toward the close of the year, the American Government's attempt to remove
the Seminole Indians from their hunting grounds in Florida resulted in a
sanguinary Indian war. Micanopy the Seminole Sachem and Osceola were the
Indian leaders. Osceola opened hostilities with a master stroke. On
December 28, he surprised General Wiley Thompson at Fort King. Thompson had
wantonly laid Osceola in chains some time before. Now Osceola scalped his
enemy with his own hands. On the same day, Major Dade, leading a relief
expedition from Tampa Bay, was ambushed and overwhelmed near Wahoo Swamp.
Only four of his men escaped death. Within forty-eight hours, on the last
day of the year, General Clinch, commanding the troops in Florida, won a
bloody fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.




1836


[Sidenote: Withlacoochee]

[Sidenote: Creek Indians subdued]

[Sidenote: Fight in Wahoo's swamp]

Throughout this year the Seminole War in Florida dragged on. Gaines's
command was assailed by the Indians near the old battleground of the
Withlacoochee on February 27. In May, the Creeks aided the Seminoles in
Florida, by attacking the white settlers within their domain. Success made
them bold, and they attacked mail carriers, stages, river barges and
outlying settlements in Georgia and Alabama, until thousands of white
people were fleeing for their lives from the savages. General Scott was now
in chief command in the South, and he prosecuted the war with vigor. The
Creeks were finally subdued, and during the summer several thousand of them
were forcibly removed to their designated homes beyond the Mississippi.
Governor Call of Georgia marched against the Seminoles with some two
thousand men in October. A detachment of five hundred of these had a severe
contest (November 21) with the Indians at Wahoo swamp, near the scene of
Dade's massacre. As in so many other engagements with the Seminoles in
their swampy fastnesses, both sides claimed the victory.

[Sidenote: Diet of Pressburg]

[Sidenote: Magyar demands]

[Sidenote: Kossuth]

[Sidenote: Scechenyi]

[Sidenote: Transylvanian Diet]

[Sidenote: Vesselenyi]

In Europe, early during 1836, the conclusions reached by the long-sitting
Diet of Hungary opened the eyes of the new Emperor of Austria and of
Metternich to the changed spirit within their own dominions. For many years
during the long period when the government did not dare to convoke the
Diet, the Hungarians in their county assemblies had opposed a steady
resistance to the usurpations of the crown. These county assemblies,
rejoicing as they did in the right of free discussion, and the appointment
of local officials, were one of the hardiest relics of home rule existing
anywhere in Europe, comparable only to the democratic government of the
Swiss cantons and to the old English town meetings reconstituted in New
England. By banishing political discussion from the Diet to the county
sessions, Metternich only intensified the provincial spirit of opposition
which he thought to quell. When the Hungarian Diet reassembled at Pressburg
at last, the new spirit showed itself in the demand of the Magyars for the
substitution of their own language, in all public debates, for the older
customary Latin. The government speakers, who attempted to address the
deputies in Latin, were howled down by the Magyars. When the government
forbade the publication of all Magyar speeches, Kossuth, one of the
youngest of the deputies, circulated them in manuscript. After the
dissolution of the Diet, in summer, he was punished for this act of
defiance by a three years' imprisonment. The foremost leader of the
Hungarian Liberals at this time was Count Scechenyi, a Magyar magnate of
note. He it was that opened the Danube to steam navigation by the
destruction of the rocks at Orsova, known as the Iron Grates, and to him,
too, Hungary owes the bridge over the Danube that unites its double capital
of Budapesth and Ofen. Of the Hungarian noblemen he was one of the few who
recognized the injustice of the anomalous institution which restricted
Parliamentary representation to the noblemen, and absolved them at the same
time from taxation. The new liberal spirit thus manifested was turned into
revolutionary channels by Metternich himself. The dissolution of the
Hungarian Diet and the subsequent imprisonment of deputies whose persons
should have been inviolable aroused bad blood among the Magyars. This was
made worse by the peremptory dissolution of the Transylvanian Diet, where
the Magyar element likewise predominated. The leader of the Transylvanian
opposition, Count Vesselenyi, a magnate in Hungary, betook himself to his
own county session and there inveighed against the government. He was
arrested and brought to trial before an Austrian court on charges of high
treason. His plea of privilege was supported by the Hungarian county
sessions as involving one of their oldest established rights. In the face
of this agitation Count Vesselenyi was convicted and sentenced to exile.
Henceforth opposition to the government and hostility to all things
Austrian were synonymous with patriotism in Hungary.

[Sidenote: Poland restive]

The discontent in Hungary and the Slav provinces of Austria was fomented by
a keen sympathy with the misfortunes of Poland groaning under the yoke of
Russia. Notwithstanding Austria's official conference with Russia, Polish
refugees were received with open arms in Galicia, Bohemia and Hungary.

[Sidenote: The great Boer trek]

[Sidenote: Piet Retief]

[Sidenote: Zulu treachery]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Weenen]

In various other parts of the world the spirit of revolution would not be
quelled. More Dutch settlers in South Africa sought relief from British
interference with their customs and the institution of slavery by
emigrating into the virgin veldt lying to the north of their former
settlements. It was in vain that the British authorities of Cape Colony
tried to stop this "great trek." Rather than submit to British domination,
the Boers preferred to renew the inevitable struggle with the wild beasts
and the savages of the African wilderness. While one part of the emigrant
body remained in the Transvaal and Northern Free State, the foretrekkers
passed over the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal, under the leadership of
Piet Retief. The land of Natal was at that time practically unpopulated.
Chaka and his warriors had swept the country clean of its native
inhabitants, so Dingaan considered it within his sphere of influence. The
Boers accordingly made overtures to Dingaan, Chaka's successor, who resided
at his kraal on the White Umvolosi, a hundred miles distant in Zululand,
for the right to trek into this country. This was granted after the Boers
had undertaken to restore some cattle of the Zulus stolen by the Basutos. A
thousand prairie wagons containing Boer families trekked over the
Drakensberg into Natal, and scattered over the unpeopled country along the
banks of the Upper Tugela and Mooi Rivers. Piet Retief, with sixty-five
followers, went to visit Dingaan in his kraal. They were made welcome. A
solemn treaty of peace and friendship was drawn up by one Owens, an English
missionary with the Zulus. During a feast, the Boers, disarmed and wholly
unprepared for an attack, were suddenly seized and massacred to a man. Then
the Zulus, numbering some ten thousand warriors, swept out into the veldt
to attack the Boer settlements. Near Colenso, at a spot called Weenen
(weeping), in remembrance of the tragedy there enacted, the Zulus
overwhelmed the largest of the Boer laagers, and slaughtered all its
inmates--41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves. In spite of
this and other battles the Boers held their ground.

[Sidenote: South Australia settled]

[Sidenote: British seize Aden]

The Englishmen likewise extended their colonial conquests. The unsettled
Bushland of South Australia was colonized by Captain Hindmarsh and his
followers. They founded the city of Adelaide, named after the consort of
William IV. A wrecked British ship having been plundered by Arabs, the
Sultan of Aden, under a threat of British retaliation, was made to cede
Aden to Great Britain. New claims for territory were preferred by Great
Britain against the Republic of Honduras, in Central America.

[Sidenote: Mexican independence acknowledged]

[Sidenote: Defence of the Alamo]

[Sidenote: Joaquin Miller's lines]

The neighboring republic of Mexico, under the dictatorship of Santa Anna,
at last succeeded in having its independence formally acknowledged by
Spain. On March 6, Santa Anna, having raised a new force of 8,000 men,
marched on Fort Alamo, which had been left in charge of a small garrison of
Americans under Colonel Jim Bowie. All night they fought. Every man fell
at his post but seven, and these were killed while asking quarter. Here
died David Crockett, the famous American frontiersman, whose exploits had
made him so popular in Tennessee, that, though unable to read, he was
thrice elected to Congress. Joaquin Miller, the American poet, based on
this encounter his stirring ballad on "The Defence of the Alamo":

  Santa Anna came storming, as a storm might come;
  There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;
  There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,--
  Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,
  The chivalry, flower of Mexico;
  And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo!

[Sidenote: Battle of San Jacinto]

On April 21 was fought the decisive battle of San Jacinto, in which Santa
Anna with 1500 men was defeated by 800 Texans under Sam Houston. On the
next day General Santa Anna was captured. He was compelled to acknowledge
the independence of Texas, but the people of Mexico refused to ratify his
act. Nonetheless serious hostilities against the Texans were abandoned.

[Sidenote: Peru and Bolivia joined]

The abolition of slavery in Bolivia gave a new impetus to the government of
that republic. President Santa Cruz of Bolivia felt encouraged by this to
attempt to carry out his pet project of the amalgamation of Peru with
Bolivia. A prolonged guerilla war was the result.

[Sidenote: Spanish rule in Cuba and Philippines]

[Sidenote: Civil war in the Peninsula]

[Sidenote: Portuguese slave trade abolished]

The example of these movements in Central and South America encouraged the
revolutionists of Cuba to keep up their struggle against the rule of Spain.
Unfortunately for them, the apparent weakness of the Spanish
constitutional government at Madrid did not extend to the more distant
possessions of Spain. The only result of the rising of Manuel Quesada was
that Cuba was deprived of her representation in the Spanish Cortes. In the
Philippine Islands, Spanish rule was extended to the Island of Sulu. On the
Peninsula, on the other hand, matters went from bad to worse. The Carlist
war continued unabated. On May 5, General Evans, commanding the
constitutional troops and foreign volunteers, won a victory over the
Carlists at Vigo, but within a few months he was himself defeated at San
Sebastian. On Christmas Day, another crushing defeat was inflicted on the
Constitutionalists by the Carlist leader Espertero at Bilboa. In Portugal
the marriage of Princess Maria II. to Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
was followed by fresh disorders. Revolution broke out at Lisbon, on August
9, and could be subdued only by the re-establishment of the Constitution of
1832. On November 8 came another popular rising. It was a sign of the times
and of a more liberal turn of affairs at Lisbon that one of the first
measures of the new government was a total abolition of Portuguese slave
trading.

[Sidenote: British reforms]

[Sidenote: Charles Dickens]

[Sidenote: "Pickwick Papers"]

[Sidenote: Marryat]

[Sidenote: Landor]

[Sidenote: Death of Mill]

[Sidenote: Wheatstone]

[Sidenote: Balfe]

Reform of all kinds had become popular in England under the dexterous
resistance of O'Connell, who held the balance in Parliament. The government
was induced to bring in a corporation reform bill for Ireland. An official
register of births, deaths, and marriages was conceded to the dissenters.
Next came the abolition of one of the most barbarous practices of English
and Irish law courts. Up to this time prisoners accused of felony were not
allowed to be defended by counsel. At the instance of Lord Lyndhurst this
was now changed. Another gain for humanity was made by the abolition of the
law which required that persons convicted of murder should be executed on
the next day but one. On the other hand a bill for the abolition of
imprisonment for debt miscarried. The most potent plea against the abuses
of this particular relic of barbarism in England was put forth by Charles
Dickens in his "Pickwick Papers." These serial papers relating the humorous
adventures of Mr. Pickwick and his body servant Sam Weller, when brought in
conflict with the English laws governing breach of marital promise and
debt, had an immense success in England and all English-speaking countries.
Already Dickens had published a series of "Sketches of London," under the
pseudonym of Boz, while working as a Parliamentary reporter for the
"Morning Chronicle." The success of the "Pickwick Papers" was such that he
felt encouraged to emerge from his pseudonym and to devote himself entirely
to literature. Other literary events of the year in England were the
publication of the initial volumes of Lockhart's "Memoirs of the Life of
Sir Walter Scott," of Captain Marryat's "Mr. Midshipman Easy," and "The
Pirate and the Three Cutters," and of Landor's "Pericles and Aspasia." The
first Shakespeare jubilee was celebrated at Stratford-on-Avon in the
spring. A loss to English letters was the death of James Mill, the great
political economist, in his sixty-third year. About this time Wheatstone
constructed his electro-magnetic apparatus by which he could send signals
over nearly four miles of wire. The Irish composer Balfe began his
brilliant career as a composer of English operas with the "Siege of
Rochelle," produced at Drury Lane in London. About the same time
Mendelssohn brought out his "St. Paul" in Düsseldorf.

[Sidenote: Death of La Malibran]

[Sidenote: Her operatic career]

[Sidenote: Alfred de Musset's lines]

Maria Felicitá Malibran, the great contralto singer of the early part of
the Nineteenth Century, died on September 23, at Manchester, in her
twenty-eighth year. Taken from Paris to Naples at the age of three, she
made her first appearance as a public singer in her fifth year. Two years
later she studied solfeggio with Panseron. At the age of sixteen she made
her début as Rosina in "Barbiere di Seville" at London. The success of her
first appearance was so great that she was at once engaged for the season.
Next she appeared in New York, where she was a popular favorite for two
years, singing in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," in "Tancred," "Romeo and
Juliet," and two of her father's operas. Here she married a French
merchant, Malibran. After her separation from him she returned to Paris,
where she was engaged as prima donna at a salary of 50,000 francs.
Thereafter she sang at every season in Paris, London, Milan, Rome and
Naples. For one engagement of forty nights in Naples she received 100,000
francs. Both as a singer and woman she exercised an extraordinary
fascination over her contemporaries. Only a few months before her death she
married the violinist De Beriot. In England she suffered a severe fall
from her horse, which shattered her health. After this she literally sang
herself to death. Her loss was mourned most of all in France, where her
death has been commemorated by Alfred de Musset's beautiful threnody ending
with the lines:

  Die, then. Thy death is sweet, thy goal is won;
  What is called genius by men here below
  Is the great cry for Love; all else is but show;
  And since, soon or late, human love is undone,
  It is for great hearts and great voices like thine
  To die as thou didst--for Love all-divine.

[Sidenote: Meyerbeer's "Huguenots"]

[Sidenote: Gounod]

[Sidenote: Chopin]

[Sidenote: Liszt]

[Sidenote: Georges Sand]

[Sidenote: Death of Ampère]

In France, great strides had been made in music, art and literature.
Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose real name was Jacob Beer, surpassed the success of
his "Robert le Diable" with his greatest opera "Les Huguenots," produced on
February 20, at the Paris Opera House. The success of this masterpiece so
disheartened Rossini that he resolved to write no more operas, and withdrew
to Bologna. Charles François Gounod, on the other hand, now began his
musical career by entering the Paris Conservatory. Frederick Chopin, the
Polish composer, at this time was at the height of his vogue as the most
_recherché_ pianist of Paris. He was the favorite of a circle of friends
consisting of Meyerbeer, Bellini, Berlioz, Liszt, Balzac, and Heine. It was
during this year that Liszt introduced Chopin to Madame Dudevant, better
known as Georges Sand, the famous French novelist. Their attachment was the
talk of Paris. André Marie Ampère, the noted French mathematician and
physicist, died during this year at sixty-one years of age. He was the
inventor of the electrical unit of measure which bears his name.

[Sidenote: Thiers Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: Algerian reverses]

[Sidenote: Thiers resigns]

[Sidenote: Fiasco of Strasburg]

[Sidenote: Louis Napoleon exiled]

[Sidenote: Amnesty acts]

Politically it was a turbulent year for France. On the question of the
budget the Ministry was defeated in January and had to resign. The new
Ministry called in went to pieces on February 22, when Guizot and De
Broglie retired from the Cabinet. Thiers was placed at the helm. On June
26, another attempt to assassinate the King was made by Louis Alibaud, a
former soldier of the south who had taken part in the revolution of July.
The military expedition to Algeria under Marshal Clauzel and the Duke of
Orleans first met with distinguished success. The French army occupied
Mascera. But later the unfortunate issue of an expedition against the town
of Constantine caused the retirement of Marshal Clauzel as Governor-General
of Algeria. Commander Changarnier at the head of a French battalion was
beaten back step by step by an overwhelming body of Achmet Bey's cavalry of
the desert. The question of French intervention in Spain resulted in the
downfall of the Ministry of Thiers. King Louis Philippe, ever since Lord
Palmerston's chilling reply to his overtures for joint intervention, was
opposed to such a project. "Let us aid the Spaniards from a distance," said
he, "but never let us enter the same boat with them. Once there we should
have to take the helm, and God knows where that would bring us." He
demanded the retirement of the French corps of observation in the Pyrenees.
Thiers was utterly opposed to this: "Nothing can bring the King to
intervention," said he, "and nothing can make me renounce it." On
September 6, the Cabinet resigned, having been in power but six months.
Count Molé was charged with forming a new Ministry. A new cause of
disquietude was given late in October by Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte at
Strasburg. On the last day of that month, Louis Napoleon, with no other
support than that of Persigny and Colonel Vauterey, paraded the streets of
that town and presented himself at the barracks of the 4th regiment of
artillery. He was received with the cry "Vive l'Empereur." An attempt to
win over the soldiers of the other barracks failed. The young prince was
arrested. Ex-Queen Hortense interceded in his behalf. The attempt to regain
the Napoleonic crown had been so manifest a fiasco that Louis Philippe
thought he could afford to be generous. Louis Napoleon was permitted to
take himself off to the United States of America with an annuity of fifteen
thousand francs from the royal purse. His adherents were taken before the
court at Colmar and were all acquitted by the jury. A simultaneous military
mutiny at Vendome was treated with like leniency. After the death of
ex-King Charles X., Prince Polignac and other of his Ministers who had come
to grief after the revolution of 1830 were sent out of the country. A
general amnesty was announced.

[Sidenote: American elections]

[Sidenote: The "Gag Law"]

[Sidenote: Smithson's bequest]

[Sidenote: Jackson's specie circular]

The arrival of Prince Louis Napoleon created little stir in the United
States. The people there were in the midst of a Presidential election.
President Jackson wished Vice-President Van Buren to be his successor. He
therefore recommended that the Democratic nomination should be by national
convention. The National Republicans had by this time generally adopted the
name of Whigs. They supported William H. Harrison and John McLaine of Ohio
with Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. The opposition hoped to throw the
Presidential election into the House, but did not succeed in doing so. A
majority of Van Buren electors were chosen by 761,549 votes against 736,656
divided among the other candidates. Congress met on December 5. Arkansas
and Michigan were admitted as new States of the Union. Before this
Jackson's Administration had won a complete success over his opponents. The
President gave his sanction to a Congressional resolution in favor of the
South, that "all petitions, memorials, and resolutions relating to slavery
shall be laid on the table, and no further action whatever shall be had
thereon." A select committee resolved that "Congress cannot
constitutionally interfere with slavery in the United States and it ought
not to do so." The so-called "Gag Law" was adopted by 117 over 68 votes.
About this same time Congress accepted the bequest of James Smithson, an
Englishman, who left $515,169 to be expended in America "for the general
diffusion of knowledge among men." After the fall of the United States
Bank, a number of State banks were formed, many of which were without
adequate capital. Their notes were used in large quantities for the
purchase of public lands from the United States. Thereupon President
Jackson issued the so-called specie circular, ordering federal agents to
receive no other money but gold and silver. This caused such a demand for
specie that many of these minor banks fell into difficulties. By the close
of the year bank failures had become so numerous that a financial crisis
was at hand.

[Sidenote: Death of Madison]

Ex-President James Madison died this year at the ripe age of eighty-five.
His entire career was such as to make him one of the great line of Southern
Presidents of Virginian stock: Washington, Jefferson and Monroe.

[Sidenote: Seminole War]

[Sidenote: American railroad development]

The military campaign against the Seminoles was far from satisfactory. Many
of the soldiers sent into Georgia and Florida succumbed to disease. They
had to abandon Forts King, Dane and Micanopy, giving up a large tract to
the Indians. The Indians were defeated in battle at New Mannsville, and in
the fall of the year General Call rallied them on the Withlacoochee, but
could not drive them into the Wahoo Swamp. A change in commanders was once
more made, and Jesup succeeded Call. With 8,000 men he entered on a winter
campaign. The Indians were forced from their positions on the
Withlacoochee, and were pursued toward the Everglades, and at the end of
1836 sued for peace. On December 15, the Federal Post-Office and
Patent-Office burned down. Irreparable loss was caused by the destruction
of 7,000 models and 10,000 designs of new inventions. At the close of
Jackson's Administration some three thousand miles of railroad had been
constructed. Eight years previously, when he came into office, no railway
had ever been seen in America.




1837


[Sidenote: American financial crisis]

[Sidenote: Government relief measures]

[Sidenote: Sub-Treasury system]

[Sidenote: Texas independent]

The financial crisis of this year was not only one of the most severe, but
also the most remarkable in the financial history of the United States. A
Congressional act of the previous year provided that after January 1, 1837,
all surplus revenues of the government should be divided as loans among the
States. The amount to be distributed this year aggregated $28,000,000. No
part of this large sum was ever recalled. When the government called for
its deposits in order to distribute the surplus an immediate shrinkage of
specie was the result. As bank after bank suspended, it was found that the
paper issue had increased from $51,000,000 in 1830 to $149,000,000 in 1837.
Jackson's attacks on the National Bank had shaken public confidence in this
institution, and it likewise suspended specie payments. The mercantile
failures of a single fortnight in New York City amounted to $100,000,000. A
repeal of Jackson's order that payments for public lands should be in coin
filled the National Treasury with paper money. Congress met in special
session to relieve the financial distress. A law was passed authorizing the
issue of $10,000,000 in Treasury notes. This brought some relief. President
Van Buren's first message recommended the adoption by the government of
the Sub-Treasury plan. A bill for the establishment of an independent
treasury passed the Senate, but was defeated in the House by a union of
Whigs and Conservatives. The Sub-Treasury plan, as eventually carried out,
provided for complete separation of the National Bank and the government,
and established the principle that the government revenues should be
received in coin only. President Van Buren in his message specially
deprecated any interference by Congress in the struggle between Texas and
Mexico. Texas, which had been bargained away by Southern votes in 1819, was
now an eagerly desired prize. It had now become a part of Coahuila, and had
declared its independence. Still Congress persisted in its attempt to
interfere, but a bill to that effect was voted down by the adherents of the
President.

[Sidenote: Distress in Spain]

In Mexico, Bustamente had again become President. In the neighboring State
of Colombia, President Marquez, likewise, had himself re-elected. The
influence of North American progress was shown in Cuba by the opening of
the first railway there, long before the mother country, Spain, could boast
of such an advance in civilization. There the civil war was still draining
the resources of the country. On May 17, General Evans took Trun, but
failed to follow up his success. In Portugal, the restoration of Pedro's
Charta de Ley was proclaimed by the Duke of Terceira.

[Sidenote: Fall of Guizot]

[Sidenote: Death of Fourier]

In France, an unfortunate attempt to fix large dowries on the Duc de
Nemours and the Queen of the Belgians raised an outcry against the private
avarice of the King. As the result of the Ministerial crisis that followed
the defeat of these measures in the Chambers Guizot had to retire from the
Ministry. Molé remained in charge with the reconstituted Cabinet. The
success of a second expedition against Constantine, in which the Duc de
Nemours gained distinction, invested Molé's new Ministry with a certain
popularity. Measures for a general political amnesty and for the closing of
gambling houses were readily voted by the Chambers. The people of Paris
were kept amused first by the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans to Princess
Hélène of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and by the subsequent wedding of Princess
Marie d'Orleans, the amateur sculptress, to Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg, a
dilettante, like herself, in letters. The occasion provoked the German poet
Heine, then lying ill at Paris, to some of his most pungent witticisms.
Ailing though he was, Heine was made a member of the new "Société des Gens
de Lettres," founded by Balzac, Lamennais, Dumas and Georges Sand. Further
events in French letters were the publication of Eugène Sue's
"Latréaumont," and the appearance of the early part of Michelet's "History
of France." François Charles Marie Fourier, the philosophic writer and
follower of St. Simon, died in his sixty-fifth year. Before his death his
well-elaborated system of communism, as put forward in his "Traité de
l'Association Domestique et Agricole," had found general acceptance among
the radical orders of France.

[Sidenote: Death of Leopardi]

[Sidenote: Ode to Brutus Minor]

[Sidenote: A self-apostrophe]

Count Giacomo Leopardi, the foremost lyric poet of modern Italy, died on
June 14. Leopardi's genius was tinctured with pessimism. Like Byron, he was
powerfully moved by the painful contrast between the classic grandeur of
ancient Italy and the degeneracy of its latter days. The tendency toward
pessimism was increased by his own ill health. His first works were the
result of his eager study of classic antiquities. Thus he brought out a new
edition and translation of Porphyrios' "De vita Plotini." His earliest
verses, such as the fine "Ode to Italy," and his poem on a projected
monument for Dante, already contained the strain of sadness that ran
through all his later poems. On the publication of Leopardi's first
collection of verses, Niebuhr, the Prussian Ambassador at Rome, offered him
a professorship at Berlin, but the poet's failing health prevented
acceptance. Religious dissensions with his father depressed his spirits
still more. He gave expression to his increasing sadness in the beautiful
ode on the "Minor Brutus." In 1825 he took part in bringing out the famous
"Antologia" at Florence, and also issued an edition of Petrarch and two
collections of Italian verse. Another collection of his own poems was
published in 1826, followed by the prose dialogues "Operette Morali." In
1833, declining health led Leopardi to withdraw to Naples. One year before
his death he brought out a last collection of poems distinguished alike for
poignant pessimism and for their high lyric beauty. Characteristic of
Leopardi's verse is this poem addressed to himself:

  Now lie forever still,
  My weary heart. Farewell, my last illusion
  The dream that we endure. Farewell! Too surely
  I know my end, and now of self-deception
  The hope long since and dear desire has left me.
  Be still forever! Enough
  Of fluttering such as thine has been. Vain, vain
  Thy palpitation, the wide world is not worth
  Our sighs; for bitter pain
  Life's portion is, naught else, and slime this earth.
  Subside henceforth, despair forever!
  Fate gave this race of ours
  For only guerdon death. Then make a sport
  Of thine own self, of nature, and the dark
  First power that, hidden, rules the world for harm--
  And of the infinite emptiness of all.

[Sidenote: Death of Pushkin]

[Sidenote: Lermontov]

Russia lost her foremost man of letters at this period by the death of
Count Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, as the result of a duel. His last
work, the drama "Boris Goudunov," was left uncompleted. After his recall
from his exile in Bessarabia, Pushkin had been appointed as imperial
historian by Czar Nicholas, in which capacity he wrote a history of Peter
the Great and an account of the conspiracy of Pugatshev. Of his poetic
works, the most important was "Eugene Onegin," an epic written after the
manner of Byron's "Don Juan." "Eugene Onegin" has remained one of the
classics of Russian literature throughout the Nineteenth Century. Pushkin's
brother poet Lermontov, then an officer of the Guards, wrote a poem
demanding vengeance for Pushkin's death. He was banished to the Caucasus,
and his writings were suppressed. Under a false name he now wrote his
famous epic: "Song of Czar Ivan Vasilyevitch."

[Sidenote: The first kindergarten]

[Sidenote: German clerical struggle]

A joyful event in German letters was the great festival at Mainz in honor
of Gutenberg and his invention of the art of printing. Froebel opened his
first kindergarten at Blankenburg in Thuringia. Auerbach, the popular
novelist, brought out his "Spinoza." Much was made by Germans of the
opening of the first railway between Dresden and Leipzig, and of the
invention of coal-tar colors, or aniline dyes, by a process destined to
revolutionize the arts of coloring and dyeing throughout the world. A great
stir was created by the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne at Minden
after a quarrel with the Prussian Government concerning marriages between
persons of different creeds. He was forbidden to go to Bonn. Backed by the
Holy See in Rome, he continued to defy the Protestant authorities.

[Sidenote: Death of William IV.]

[Sidenote: Victoria's accession]

A change of rule, fraught with future consequences for Hanover, resulted
from the death of William IV., King of England and Hanover, on the 20th of
June. By the death of the old King, his niece, Victoria Alexandra, then in
her eighteenth year, became Queen of England. Miss Wynn, in her "Diaries of
a Lady of Quality," has told how the news was brought to the young Princess
at Kensington by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Howley) and the Lord
Chamberlain (Marquis Conyngham): "They did not reach Kensington Palace
until five o'clock in the morning. They knocked, they rang, they thumped
for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate;
they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the
lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell,
and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to
inform Her Royal Highness that they requested an audience on business of
importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause,
the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a deep
sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 'We are
come on business of state to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to
that.' In a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown
and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her
shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected
and dignified."

[Sidenote: Her first Privy Council]

Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, was summoned, and at eleven o'clock
that same morning a Privy Council was held, which is thus described by
Charles Greville, an eye-witness: "Never was anything like the first
impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is
raised about her manner and behavior, and certainly not without justice. It
was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her
extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning
her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this
trying occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace,
notwithstanding the short notice which was given. The first thing to be
done was to teach her her lesson, which for this purpose Melbourne had
himself to learn.... She bowed to the Lords, took her seat, and then read
her speech in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any
appearance of fear or embarrassment."

[Sidenote: Hanover separates from England]

[Sidenote: Ernest, King of Hanover]

[Sidenote: Royal breach of faith]

[Sidenote: Revolt at Göttingen]

The first signature to the Act of Allegiance was that of Ernest, Duke of
Cumberland, eldest surviving brother of the late King William. To him
passed the crown of Hanover, which for a hundred and twenty-five years had
been held by the occupants of the British throne. Under the Salic law,
restricting succession to the male line, Hanover now became separated from
England. On June 28, the new King arrived in Hanover. He refused to receive
the deputation of the estates that had come to greet him. Dispensing with
the formality of taking the required oath to the constitution, he dissolved
the estates. The validity of the Hanoverian Constitution was next called in
question, and the restoration of the less liberal constitution of 1819 was
ordained. The first to protest against this royal breach of faith were
seven professors of the University of Göttingen. Among them were the two
brothers Grimm, to whom the German language and literature are so deeply
indebted, and Gervinus, the great historian of modern Europe. The
professors were instantly dismissed. This high-handed act provoked an
insurrection among the students, which had to be quelled by troops, with
bloodshed.

The departure of the unpopular Duke of Cumberland and the dissolution of
the embarrassing connection with Hanover wrought distinct relief to the
people of England. According to usage on the accession of a new sovereign,
Parliament was dissolved, in this instance by the Queen in person. She
drove to the House of Lords in state, and created a sensation by her youth
and graciousness. What she said of her own good intentions, her confidence
in the wisdom of Parliament and the love of her people and her trust in
God, was re-echoed throughout the English dominion. Her popularity speedily
became unbounded. The change in the person of the sovereign was a great
advantage for the Melbourne Ministry. They had no longer to fear such a
summary dismissal or interference by the throne as they had suffered during
the last reign. The dissolution of Parliament only resulted in their favor.
The Tories were in despair. The departure of the Duke of Cumberland, their
power behind the throne, had deprived them of a leader. The old Duke of
Wellington regarded the accession of a female sovereign a probable bar to
his return to power. To a friend he said: "I have no small talk, and Peel
has no manners."

[Sidenote: The Victorian era]

The Victorian era in England, a period comparable for brilliancy only to
that of Queen Elizabeth, began indeed under auspicious circumstances. In
the field of letters there was the galaxy of diverse spirits: Southey,
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning. A new start was given to English prose
by such powerful writers as Lord Macaulay, Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and
William Makepeace Thackeray, who brought out his "Yellowplush Papers" this
very year. Another newcomer in the field of romance was the Irish
novelist, Charles Gaines Lever, whose early "Adventures of Harry Lorrequer"
found instant favor. Among the women writers were Maria Edgeworth, Jane
Austen, and Elizabeth Barrett. Great strides were also made in science.
Shortly after the appearance of Whewell's "History of Inductive Sciences,"
the Ornithological and Electrical Societies were founded at London. The
principle of working clocks by electricity was advanced by Alexander Bain.
Wheatstone and Cooke invented the magnetic needle telegraph. Ericsson's new
screw steamer "Francis Bogden" was found to develop a speed of ten miles an
hour. John Upton patented his steam plow, and the first photographic prints
on paper were made by Fox Talbot.

[Sidenote: Macaulay joins Cabinet]

[Sidenote: Famine in India]

[Sidenote: Boers defeat Zulus]

When Parliament was reconvened, Lord Macaulay was added to the Cabinet. In
the northwestern provinces of East India a widespread famine, which cost
the lives of 8,000 natives, necessitated relief measures on a large scale.
In the midst of these troubles the death of the ruling King of Delhi caused
a vacancy, which was filled by Mahmoud Bahadour Shah, the last titular
Great Mogul under the protection of the British colonial government. In
South Africa some measure of home rule was accorded to Cape Colony by the
institution of a representative legislative council under a governor
appointed by the Crown. To the north of Cape Colony the Boer emigrants
carried on their war of revenge against the Zulus. In a fierce battle on
December 16, at Blood River, the Boers under Maritz and Potgieter utterly
defeated Dingaan's warriors. Pantah, the brother of Dingaan, became King of
the Zulus. The anniversary of this battle was ever after celebrated as a
holiday by the Boers. A settlement was founded in the conquered land, and
the first church was built on the site of Pietermaritzburg, named after the
Boer leaders.

[Sidenote: Canada restive]

[Sidenote: Papineau]

[Sidenote: The "family compact"]

On December 22, the British Parliament received the news of rebellion in
Lower Canada. The distress occasioned by the financial panic of this year
in the United States had spread to Canada. It found vent in agitation
against English rule on the part of the French Canadians. On the occasion
of the announcement of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, when Te
Deums were sung in the churches, the French Canadians signified their
disapproval by walking out of church. Louis Joseph Papineau, Speaker of the
Lower House, led the opposition to the government proposals regarding the
application of the revenues of the province. The home government kept up a
narrow "British party" devoted to the so-called interests of the mother
country. The majority in the Legislative Council constantly thwarted the
resolutions of the vast majority of the popular Assembly. In Upper Canada,
a British and official class practically held within its control the
government of the province. This class became known as the "family
compact." The public offices and lands were parcelled out among themselves
and their followers.

[Sidenote: Supplies refused]

The immediate points in dispute in 1837 were, that the government retained
in its service certain officials contrary to the wishes of the
Representative Assembly, and insisted on paying their salaries out of
colonial funds. The Representative Assembly declined to furnish the
supplies, complained of arbitrary infringement of the Constitution, and
demanded that the Legislative Council, instead of being nominees of the
Crown, should be made elective.

[Sidenote: Lord Russell's measures]

When intelligence reached England that the Assembly obstinately refused
supplies for the payment of public officials, and of the arrears, which up
to that time amounted to nearly one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
sterling, Lord John Russell carried in the English House of Commons a
series of resolutions rejecting the demand for an elective legislative
council and other changes in the Constitution, and empowering the executive
government to defray the expenses of the public service out of the
territorial and casual revenues.

[Sidenote: Fils de la Liberté]

[Sidenote: Mackenzie]

[Sidenote: American filibusters]

[Sidenote: Sinking of "Carolina"]

[Sidenote: Major Head's measures]

On November 6, the so-called "Fils de la Liberté" rose in Montreal under
the leadership of Papineau. In Upper Canada, a similar rising was headed by
William Lyon Mackenzie, a journalist. On December 4, an attempt was made to
surprise Montreal. With the help of the militia the insurgents were
defeated, on December 4, at St. Eustace. The leaders of the insurrection at
Toronto fled to the United States and persuaded Van Rensselaer with other
citizens of Buffalo to join them. On December 12, they seized Navy Island
in Niagara River, established a provisional government, and issued paper
money. Loyalists of Canada attempted in vain to capture the place. On
December 29, they attacked the steamer "Carolina" and sent her over the
Falls, resulting in the loss of several lives. This incident caused great
excitement, both in England and this country. President Van Buren issued a
proclamation of neutrality forbidding all interference in Canada, and sent
General Wool with a military force to compel obedience to the proclamation.
In Upper Canada, Major Head--afterward Sir Francis Head--undertook to
suppress the rebellion by throwing the Canadians on their honor. Trusting
to the good will of the people, he sent all the regular soldiers out of the
province to the assistance of Governor Gosford in Lower Canada. The plan
worked well. The Canadians, proud of the confidence reposed in them,
enrolled themselves in the militia to the number of ten or twelve thousand,
and when Mackenzie and the rebels assembled to show fight, they were routed
at the first encounter, and the rebellion in Upper Canada was at once
suppressed. But Major Head's policy was not approved by the British
Government, and Head had to make way for Lord Durham, the newly appointed
Governor of Canada.




1838


[Sidenote: Lord Durham in Canada]

[Sidenote: Napierville]

[Sidenote: Prescott]

[Sidenote: Durham repudiated]

[Sidenote: Canadian interregnum]

Early in the year the Canadian insurgents and their sympathizers at Navy
Island were compelled to surrender. United States troops were posted at the
frontier. In the meanwhile Lord Durham had taken charge in Canada with
dictatorial powers. He undertook to remodel the Constitution of Canada. His
first act was a proclamation of amnesty from the Queen. The beneficent
effect of this was spoiled by a clause of exceptions providing for the
perpetual banishment of a number of men implicated in the recent rising. On
April 2, Lunt and Matthews, two conspicuous rebels, were hanged. Lord
Durham's confession that his measures were illegal evoked a storm in
Parliament. Lord Brougham, who had a personal quarrel with him, led the
opposition there. In Canada, Mackenzie promptly proclaimed a republic. On
June 5, a fight between the rebels and British troops near Toronto quelled
the rebellion for a short time. Within a few months it broke out again at
Beauharnais. A pitched battle was fought at Napierville early in November.
After their defeat there, the rebels made another stand at Prescott on
November 17, but suffered so crushing a defeat that the insurrection was
believed to have been ended. In the meanwhile, Lord Brougham had succeeded
in passing a bill through the House disapproving Lord Durham's measures.
Durham, he said, had been authorized to make a general law, but not to hang
men without the form of law. To save his own Administration Lord Melbourne
on the next day announced that the Cabinet had decided to disallow Durham's
expatriation ordinances. Durham was called upon to proclaim to the
rebellious colonists that the ordinance issued by him had been condemned by
his own government. Venting his mortification in a last indignant
proclamation, he quitted Canada without waiting for his recall. By the
express orders of the government the honors usually paid to a
Governor-General were withheld from him. Lord Durham returned to England a
broken-hearted and dying man. He was succeeded by Sir John Colbourne. His
first measure was to offer a reward of £1,000 for the apprehension of
Papineau. The storm of indignation that followed was so violent that
Colbourne incontinently threw up his post, and hastened back to England.
The Hudson's Bay Fur Company improved the interval of the interregnum to
monopolize the functions of government in the vast regions of the extreme
north of America. An expedition was sent out to explore the northernmost
coast. The United States also fitted out an Antarctic exploring expedition,
consisting of six vessels, under the command of Lieutenant Wilkes.

[Sidenote: Renewed agitation in England]

[Sidenote: People's Charter]

In the British Parliament, the question of the adoption of the ballot was
raised by Duncombe, but Lord John Russell spoke against it, stating that
the majority of the people were against fresh changes, or any renewal of
the agitating circumstances which preceded the Reform Bill. But twenty
members voted with Duncombe, of whom six were asked to meet six members of
the Workingmen's Association to discuss a programme of action. At that
meeting a document in the shape of a Parliamentary petition was prepared
containing "six points," which were: Universal suffrage, or the right of
voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual
Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of
Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal
electoral districts. At the conclusion of the meeting, Daniel O'Connell
rose and handed the petition to the secretary of the Workingmen's
Association, saying, "There, Lovett, is your Charter. Agitate for it and
never be content with anything else."

[Sidenote: Feargus O'Connor]

[Sidenote: Chartist leaders]

The "People's Charter" was submitted to a large public meeting and
enthusiastically approved, and the leaders of the movement began to
organize. They soon fell into two factions; those who were in favor of
force and those in favor of agitation only. The leader of both parties was
Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, and once a follower of O'Connell,
with whom he subsequently quarrelled. Associated with him as leaders of the
movement at various periods were Lovett, Heatherington, Henry Vincent,
Ernest Jones, and Thomas Cooper "the poet of Chartism."

  [Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA TAKING THE OATH
    Painted by Sir George Hayter]

[Sidenote: French expedition to Mexico]

[Sidenote: Coast towns bombarded]

In France, the sympathies of the people with the cause of the French
Canadians were kept under firm control by the government of Louis
Philippe. A dissolution of the Chambers, which modified the condition of
the Assembly, served to strengthen the Ministry of Molé. To vent the
feelings excited in behalf of the Frenchmen of Canada, the French
Government picked a quarrel with the Republic of Mexico. Reparation was
demanded late in March for injuries inflicted on French residents during
the internal dissensions of Mexico. The demand was refused. A French
squadron of warships, under Admiral Baudin and Prince de Joinville, was
sent out to blockade the coast of Mexico. On November 27, San Juan de Ulloa
was bombarded. Vera Cruz likewise suffered bombardment. The Argentine
Republic became involved and declared war on France. French cruisers
blockaded Buenos Ayres.

[Sidenote: Louis Napoleon returns]

[Sidenote: Alexandre Dumas]

On the occasion of his mother's death, Prince Louis Napoleon returned to
Europe. His book, "Idées Napoléoniennes," which was widely read throughout
France, at once drew attention upon him. At the request of the French
Government he was expelled from Switzerland. Louis Philippe's friend,
Alexandre Dumas, at this time achieved a popular success with his book "Le
Capitaine Paul." Dumas's romantic plays and several of his latest comedies,
written in the style of Scribe, were at the height of their vogue.

[Sidenote: Daubigny]

In the French salon of this year, François Daubigny, the great pupil of
Delaroche, first exhibited his early masterpieces, "Banks of the River
Oulins" and "The Seine at Charenton." Both paintings were purchased by the
French Government.

[Sidenote: Poe]

[Sidenote: Hawthorne]

[Sidenote: Emerson]

[Sidenote: Wendell Phillips]

In America, a new writer had arisen in Edgar Allan Poe, who disputed the
field with Longfellow and Whittier. Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,"
a story of marine adventures, which had begun in Poe's own journal, "The
Messenger," was published in complete form by Harpers. Before this several
of his works, among them that of "Ligeia," had already brought him into
some prominence. Nathaniel Hawthorne during this same year wrote his early
stories, which were afterward collected under the title of "Twice Told
Tales." Ralph Waldo Emerson at Concord, Massachusetts, had begun to deliver
those penetrating lectures which, rewritten in the form of essays, later
established his rank as the foremost philosophic writer in America. Wendell
Phillips made his appearance as a lecturer against slavery in Boston.
Shortly before this a pro-slavery mob at Alton, Illinois, murdered the Rev.
E.P. Lovejoy and destroyed the press and building of his newspaper,
published in the interests of abolition. Abraham Lincoln, who had been
re-elected to the Legislature of Illinois, voiced a strong protest against
this and other pro-slavery tendencies in Illinois.

[Sidenote: Removal of Cherokees]

Other acts of persecution during this year brought lasting disgrace upon
America. In direct violation of the Federal treaties with the Indians the
State troops of Georgia forcibly removed 16,000 Cherokees from their lands
in that State. Nothing was done to alleviate the sufferings of the
Cherokees, who were driven from their settlements in midwinter. The
resulting death rate was fearful. More than 4,500 Indians, or one-fourth
of the whole number, perished before they reached their destination in the
distant Indian Territory.

[Sidenote: Persecution of Mormons]

The members of the new sect of Mormon, numbering some 12,000 souls, were
driven from their homes at Nauvoo in western Missouri. They went across the
plains of Iowa, stopping temporarily at Council Bluffs. From there they
passed over the great American prairies, and, crossing the Rocky Mountain
range, settled near the Great Salt Lake of Utah.

[Sidenote: Record transatlantic trip]

Chicago was incorporated with a population of 4,170 residents. Much comment
was excited by a record trip of the steamboat "Great Western," which
steamed from Bristol, England, to New York in fifteen days. Among those who
lived to witness this event was John Stevens, one of the pioneers of modern
steamboat building. Shortly afterward he died in his eighty-ninth year.

[Sidenote: Indian truce broken]

[Sidenote: Betrayal of Osceola]

[Sidenote: Zachary Taylor in Florida]

Within a short time after suing for peace, the Southern Indians broke the
truce and made a determined effort to take Fort Mellon. In this they were
unsuccessful. In March, at Fort Dade, five of the chiefs signed an
agreement, in which they stipulated to cease from war until the government
decided whether they might remain in Florida. Some seven hundred Indians
and negroes were taken by the government before its decision was announced,
and were sent off to Tampa for shipment. In violation of a flag of truce,
Osceola and several of his principal chiefs were seized and sent to Fort
Moultrie as prisoners. Their treatment there was such that Osceola soon
died. In May, Colonel Zachary Taylor succeeded Jesup. The remaining forces
of the Indians were now wary. They scattered in the swamps, eluding
attempts of organized troops to capture them. In December, Colonel Taylor
set out with over a thousand men for their almost inaccessible haunts. On
Christmas Day they found the Seminoles prepared to receive them near
Okeechobee Lake. After a hard fought battle, in which Taylor lost 139 men,
the Indians once more retreated into the swamps of Florida.

[Sidenote: Boers in Natal]

[Sidenote: Pretorius]

In South Africa during this year, the new community of Dutch settlers, who
had evaded English jurisdiction, soon revived their peculiar institutions
in the region that is now Natal--from the Drakensberg to the sea at Durban,
and from the Tugela River to the Umzimbolbu. The fight against the African
savages continued. Early in the spring, a Boer expedition was defeated by
the Zulus, who followed up their advantage by an attack on the nearest Boer
laager. Seventy Boers, with their Kaffir servants, were massacred. A large
Boer settlement, numbering some 800 persons, was saved from extermination
only by a timely relief expedition under Pretorius, in December. On the
other side troubles arose between the Boers and the Bechuanas in
consequence of King Moroka's prohibition of the importation of spirituous
liquors into Bechuanaland. The growth of a new Dutch State to the north of
Cape Colony caused uneasiness among the British authorities at Cape Town. A
movement was started to extend British rule to Natal, and to secure the
important seaport of Durban.




1839


[Sidenote: French hold on Mexico]

[Sidenote: Ancona evacuated]

[Sidenote: Status of Belgium]

[Sidenote: Fall of Molé's Ministry]

[Sidenote: French provincial government]

[Sidenote: Parisian revolt suppressed]

The French expedition against Mexico was brought to a successful close
after the capture of the fort of San Juan d'Ulloa and the town of Vera
Cruz. General Santa Anna's attempt to relieve Vera Cruz resulted only in
another upheaval of the government at the capital. President Bustamente had
to call in a new Ministry, with which, through the mediation of England,
negotiations for peace were undertaken. On March 9, the terms of peace were
concluded. Mexico had to pay an indemnity of $600,000. Further use for the
French squadron in American waters was found in the complicated affairs of
the small South American republics at the mouth of the Plata and the
alleged injuries suffered by Frenchmen from the disordered state of affairs
in Hayti. On the other hand, France withdrew its troops from the citadel of
Ancona in the Papal dominions, simultaneously with the withdrawal of the
Austrian forces of occupation from the Papal States. The long-pending
difficulties between Belgium and Holland were brought to a settlement at
last by the King of Holland's acceptance of the conditions of separation
fixed by the international conference. The abandonment of Casimir Périer's
vigorous foreign policy in Europe was viewed with regret by the Liberal
party in France. Guizot combined with Thiers and Odilon Barrot against the
Ministry, and thus accomplished its downfall, though they retained Marshal
Soult, the most popular member of Molé's Cabinet. "I must have that gallant
sword," remarked Louis Philippe. Their efforts to conduct the government
proved a failure. The King established a provisional government in their
place, which prolonged the crisis. On May 12, an insurrection broke out in
the most populous quarters of Paris. Under the leadership of Barbes,
Bernard and others, attacks were made on the Hôtel de Ville, the Palace of
Justice and the Préfecture of Police. The revolt had to be put down by
merciless measures. Marshal Soult was placed at the head of the government
to the exclusion of Guizot and Odilon Barrot, while Thiers was made
president of the Chambers. Guizot employed his leisure time to write his
famous "Life of Washington." About the same time Daguerre published his new
invention of making the sun prints which were called daguerreotypes after
him. A life pension of 6,000 francs was awarded to him by the government of
Louis Philippe. The interest in the family of Bonaparte and its dreaded
pretensions in France was revived by the death of Letizia Buonaparte, the
mother of Napoleon, in her eighty-ninth year. The first problem confronting
the new administration of France was the fresh trouble that had broken out
in the Orient.

[Sidenote: Turkish-Egyptian War]

[Sidenote: Battle of Nissiv]

[Sidenote: Abdul Medjid, Sultan]

The long-brewing war between Sultan Mahmoud of Turkey and his vassal,
Mehemet Ali of Egypt, broke out in May. In the face of new assurances of
peace, the Sultan ordered his commander-in-chief of the Euphrates to
commence hostilities. The Turkish troops crossed the Euphrates on May 23.
In spite of the good counsels of Moltke and other European officers at the
Turkish headquarters, the Turks were outmanoeuvred by the Egyptian forces
under Ibrahim. June 24, Ibrahim Pasha inflicted a crushing defeat on the
Turkish army at Nissiv. All the artillery and stores fell into his hands.
The Turkish army dispersed in another rout. Mahmoud II. did not live to
hear of the disaster. One week after the battle of Nissiv, before news from
the front had reached him, he died. The throne was left to his son, Abdul
Medjid, a youth of sixteen.

[Sidenote: Turkish fleet betrayed]

[Sidenote: Anglo-French intervention]

[Sidenote: French diplomacy offset]

Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when the Turkish admiral,
Achmet Fevzi, who had been sent out to attack the coast of Syria, sailed
into Alexandria and delivered his fleet over to Mehemet Ali. Turkey, now
practically rulerless, was left without defence, on land and on water.
Mehemet Ali not only declared Egypt independent of the Porte, but,
encouraged by France, prepared to move on Constantinople. In this extremity
the foreign Ambassadors at Constantinople addressed a collective note to
the Divan, announcing European intervention. Shortly afterward a squadron
of British and French warships sailed into the Dardanelles for the
ostensible purpose of protecting Constantinople against Mehemet Ali, in
reality to prevent Russia from profiting by the terms of its treaty of
Unkiar Skelessi. In vain did Russia propose to join the coalition. The
recent acquisition of Aden gave England the upper hand. Russian diplomacy
accordingly directed itself toward effecting a breach between the allies. A
good opening was afforded by the French intrigues at Cairo, which fell in
with the ambitions of Mehemet Ali. As a result, France was gradually
crowded out of the European coalition during the course of 1839.

[Sidenote: Decamps]

At the French Salon of this year Decamps exhibited his celebrated
"Punishment of the Hooks," "Executioners at the Door of a Prison," and
"Children Playing with Turtles." Decamps with Delacroix, the leader of the
French school of romanticism, was praised at this time for the exceeding
charm of his colors.

[Sidenote: Rise of English Conservatives]

England during this period passed through a Cabinet crisis. The popularity
of Melbourne's Ministry was waning. Lord Melbourne was a typical Whig,
opposed to the policy of the Tories, or, as they were beginning to be
called at that time, the Conservatives. The alteration in title is
attributed to John Wilson Croker, who, in the "Quarterly Review," referred
to "what is called the Tory, but which might with more propriety be called
the Conservative party." This new name was indorsed by Lord John Russell,
who said, "If that is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old
distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, in
opposition to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer,
and to stand by that opposition." Sir Robert Peel defined Conservatism when
he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a
great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its
strength from the popular will, should diminish the risk and deaden the
shock of collisions between the two branches of the legislature."

[Sidenote: Fall of Melbourne Ministry]

[Sidenote: Bedchamber question]

In May, the government's proposition to suspend the Constitution of Jamaica
brought about the fall of the Ministry. The measure was sustained by a
majority of only five. The Queen sent for Sir Robert Peel. Her wish to
retain as ladies of her household the wife and sister of two members of the
last Cabinet brought forth a respectful remonstrance from Peel. The Queen
replied in this wise: "The Queen having considered the proposal made to her
yesterday by Sir Robert Peel, to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber,
cannot consent to a course which she considers to be contrary to usage, and
is repugnant to her feelings."

[Sidenote: Queen Victoria yields]

This ended Peel's attempt to form a Ministry and Melbourne was recalled.
The question created much discussion at the time. Lord Brougham maintained
that Lord Melbourne "had sacrificed liberal principles and the interests of
the country to the private feelings of the sovereign." "I thought," he
said, "that we belonged to a country in which the government by the Crown
and the wisdom of Parliament was everything, and the personal feelings of
the sovereign were absolutely not to be named at the same time." In the
end the Queen yielded her point. A statement was put forth that "the Queen
would listen to any representation from the incoming Prime Minister as to
the composition of her household, and would arrange for the retirement, of
their own accord, of any ladies who were so closely related to the leaders
of Opposition as to render their presence inconvenient."

[Sidenote: Chartist agitation]

On behalf of the Chartists large public meetings were organized in London
and in all parts of England at which violent speeches were made. On the 1st
of April, at a public meeting in Edinburgh to support the Ministry, the
Chartists took possession of the platform, ejected the Lord Provost, and
passed their own resolutions. On the same day at Devizes, in Wiltshire,
Vincent entered the town at the head of about a thousand men, carrying
sticks, and attempted to address them in the market-place. In May, the
Chartist National Convention removed from London to Birmingham. There they
were met by a mob of five thousand persons and conducted through the
principal streets to the meeting-place.

[Sidenote: Chinese oppose opium trade]

[Sidenote: English opium destroyed]

[Sidenote: British resentment]

[Sidenote: Chinese orders defied]

[Sidenote: Opening of hostilities]

[Sidenote: Sea fight off Chuenpee]

[Sidenote: British squadron sails for China]

Meanwhile, Great Britain was embroiled in another Oriental war. The
despatch of Admiral Maitland and Captain Elliot to China to deal with the
difficulties growing out of the English opium trade there only served to
make the situation more acute. In January, Emperor Taouk-Wang ordered Lin
Tsiaseu, Viceroy of Houk Wang, to proceed to Canton to put a definite stop
to the opium traffic. The peremptory instructions given to Commissioner
Lin were "to cut off the fountain of evil, and if necessary to sink the
British ships and to break their caldrons, since the hourly thought on the
Emperor's part was to do away with opium forever." Within a week of Lin's
arrival at Canton he issued an edict wherein he stigmatized the foreigners
as a heartless people who thought only of trade and of making their way by
stealth into the Flowery Land, whereas the laws of England, he asserted,
prohibited the smoking of opium in their own country. A demand was made to
surrender to him all stores of opium within three days. To enforce this
demand, Chinese troops were concentrated around the European settlement.
Eventually more than 20,000 chests of opium were seized and dumped into the
sea. After this triumph, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria calling upon
her government to interdict the importation of opium. At the same time a
memorial was sent to England by the British merchants of Canton begging the
government to protect them against "a capricious and corrupt government"
and demanding compensation for the opium confiscated by the Chinese. On the
part of the British Government no answer was vouchsafed to the demands of
the viceroy. In China, matters took their course. Captain Elliot at Canton,
on May 22, issued a notice in which he protested against the action of the
Chinese Government "as utterly unjust per se," and advised all British
merchants to withdraw to Hong Kong. The merchants acted on the suggestion,
and the English factory at Canton, which had existed for nearly 200 years,
was abandoned. The British sailors in Chinese waters threw off all
restraint. Frequent collisions occurred between them and the natives. In
one of them a Chinaman was killed. The Chinese viceroy denounced this act
as "going to the extreme of disobedience to the laws" and demanded the
surrender of the British sailor who perpetrated the murder. This demand was
flatly refused. The Chinese thereupon refused to furnish further supplies
to the ships and prohibited all British sailors from coming ashore on
Chinese soil. The official notice said: "If any of the foreigners be found
coming on shore to cause trouble, all and every one of the people are
permitted to withstand and drive them back, or to make prisoners of them."
The English naval officers retaliated by sending out their men to seize by
force whatever they needed. A boat's crew of the British ship "Black Jack"
was massacred. Thus hostilities began. Two British men-of-war exchanged
shots with the forts in the Bogue. On November 3, the two frigates "Volage"
and "Hyacinth" were attacked by twenty-nine junks-of-war off Chuenpee. A
regular engagement was fought and four of the junks were sunk. On the news
of the fight at Chuenpee, Emperor Taouk-Wang promoted the Chinese admiral.
On December 6, an imperial edict prohibiting all trade with Great Britain
was issued. Already a strong British squadron was on its way to China.

[Sidenote: War with Afghans]

[Sidenote: Fall of Kandahar]

[Sidenote: British enter Kabul]

[Sidenote: Failure of Russian counter move]

Simultaneously with these troubles the British had become embroiled in war
with the Afghans. The ostensible purpose was to depose Dost Mohammed Khan
from his usurpation of the throne of Afghanistan. In reality this chieftain
had aroused the ire of England by entering into negotiations with Russia,
after Lord Auckland had declined to call upon Runjit Singh to restore
Peshawar to Afghanistan. When it was learned that a Russian mission had
been received at Kabul, the British Government resolved to dethrone Dost
Mohammed Khan and to restore Shah Shuja to the throne of Kabul. War was
declared at Simla. Columns were sent out from Bombay and Bengal and were
united at Quetta under the command of Sir John Keene. Kandahar was captured
in April. In July, Ghasni was taken by storm. It was on this occasion that
Sir Henry Durand, then a young subaltern, distinguished himself by blowing
up the Ghasni gate. In August, the British entered Kabul. Dost Mohammed
Khan fled over the Oxus into Bokhara. Shah Shuja was restored as ruler of
Afghanistan under the tutelage of a British resident minister. In response
to Dost Mohammed's appeals, the Russian Government sent out an expedition
toward Khiva, in November; but the winter weather in the mountains was so
severe that the expedition had to return.

[Sidenote: British colonial problems]

Other problems engaged the attention of the British Colonial Office. A
rebellion in Borneo had to be suppressed by force of arms. In Canada, the
new Governor-General, Charles Pollot Thompson, later Lord Sydenham, found
it difficult to carry out Durham's scheme of union. In November, martial
law had to be declared again at Montreal. The reported discovery of gold
by Count Strzelescki in New South Wales, and the discovery of copper in
South Australia, drew great numbers of emigrants thither. New Zealand was
incorporated in New South Wales. The wild financial speculations engendered
by these changes plunged almost all of Australia into bankruptcy. In Cape
Colony the public school system was introduced by Sir W. Herschel.

[Sidenote: Industrial development]

[Sidenote: Charles Darwin]

In England, it was a period of material advances in civilization. Postal
reforms were introduced by Sir Roland Hill. In July, a bill for penny
postage was introduced in Parliament, resulting in a new postage law
providing a uniform rate of fourpence per letter. New speed records were
made on land and on water. While the steam packet "Britannia" crossed from
Halifax to Liverpool in ten days, the locomotive "North Star" accomplished
a run of thirty-seven miles in one hour. Wheatstone perfected his invention
of a telegraph clock. A patent was obtained for the process of obtaining
water gas. Charles Darwin, having returned from his scientific travels on
H.M.S. "Beagle," published his "Journal of Researches."

[Sidenote: Death of Schelling]

[Sidenote: Agassiz]

A loss to German philosophic literature was the death of Joseph Schelling,
whose theories formed the main inspiration of the romantic poet Novalis.
Agassiz, the naturalist, published his original researches on fresh-water
fishes.

[Sidenote: Schwann's cell theory]

[Sidenote: Liebig's theory of fermentation]

It was then that Dr. Theodore Schwann, stimulated in his microscopic
researches by the previous discoveries of Robert Brown, Johannes Müller
and Schleiden, propounded the famous cell theory in his work, "Microscopic
Researches Concerning the Unity in the Structure and Growth of Animals and
Plants." Schwann's book became a scientific classic almost from the moment
of its publication. It was Schwann, too, who, simultaneously with Cagniard
la Tour, discovered the active principle of gastric juice to be the
substance which he named pepsin. The cell theory was for some time combated
by the most eminent German men of science. Thus Liebig, in apparent
agreement with Helmholtz, took a firm stand against the new doctrine with
his famous "theory of fermentation" promulgated this same year.

[Sidenote: Death of William Smith]

[Sidenote: The new geology]

In England, William Smith, "the father of English geology," died. Born in
1769, Smith, like many another English scientist, was self-taught and
perhaps all the more independent for that. He discovered that the fossils
in rocks, instead of being scattered haphazard, are arranged in regular
systems, so that any given stratum of rock is labelled by its fossil
population; that the order of succession of such groups of fossils is
always the same in any vertical series of strata in which they occur, and
that a fossil, having once disappeared, never reappears in a later stratum.
The facts which he unearthed were as iconoclastic in their field as the
discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo.

[Sidenote: Spanish civil war]

[Sidenote: Carlist reverses]

[Sidenote: Flight of Don Carlos]

[Sidenote: Decline of Spain]

In Spain, a signal defeat of the Carlists at Pennecerrada during the
previous year had caused a decisive turn in the civil war. Don Carlos'
attempted march on Madrid had to be abandoned, and was followed by the
retreat of his forces to the Ebro. General Espartero forced back the
Carlist forces step by step, and carried the fight into the Basque
provinces. There the struggle degenerated into a war of extermination. The
Carlist leaders turned against one another. The priests excommunicated the
generals, and the generals in turn shot the priests. At last, by the middle
of September, so many of the insurgents had surrendered to Espartero that
Don Carlos found himself almost without followers. He gave up the struggle
and fled into France. This ended the civil war. It had lasted six weary
years, and had proved almost as disastrous for Spain as the great
Peninsular War. Robbed of her former colonial resources, excepting only
those from Cuba and the Philippines, Spain's finances were all but ruined.
Of industrial progress there was next to none. The country relapsed into
semi-barbarism.

[Sidenote: American Whig Convention]

[Sidenote: Henry Clay's candidacy.]

[Sidenote: Financial failures]

[Sidenote: Longfellow's poems]

In the United States, prominent Northern abolitionists met at Warsaw, New
York, and resolved to form an independent political party. A Whig
Convention, the first of such gatherings, was held at Harrisburg, fifteen
months before the next Presidential election. Harrison was nominated for
President and John Tyler for Vice-President. In the West, Henry Clay,
popularly known as "Harry of the West," was the ideal of a strong minority.
His repeated failures to attain the Presidency led to the remark: "He is
too good a man to be President." The first session of the Twenty-sixth
Congress opened in December. An organization of the House was at last
effected by John Quincy Adams, who put a question to vote which the
Speaker had refused to present. The Representatives indulged for the first
time in the practice of "pairing off." Adams opposed this, declaring that
it was a violation of the Constitution, of an express rule of the House
which the Representatives owed to their constituents. Another event of the
year in America was the failure of the United States Bank at Philadelphia,
in consequence of speculations in cotton, as the result of which the
government lost $2,000,000 of its deposits. Other bank failures followed.
Mississippi repudiated $5,000,000 of its State bonds. The first power loom
for making carpets was set up at Lowell, Massachusetts. Charles Goodyear
obtained his first patent for making vulcanized rubber. The express
business was organized by Harndon, who sent his first pack from New York to
Boston by the public messenger. Longfellow published his romance
"Hyperion," and "Voices of the Night," a collection of verses embracing
some of his most widely known poems. In the same year appeared Willis's
"Letters from Under a Bridge" and Cooper's "History of the Navy."

Toward the close of the year, Queen Victoria held a Privy Council at
Buckingham Palace, at which she announced her intention to marry her
cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

[Sidenote: Queen Victoria's betrothal]

Greville wrote in his diary that "about eighty Privy Councillors were
present, the folding-doors were thrown open, and the Queen came in, attired
in a plain morning gown, but wearing a necklace containing Prince Albert's
portrait. She read the declaration in a clear, sonorous, sweet tone of
voice, but her hand trembled so excessively that I wonder she was able to
read the paper which she held."

All this time the agitation for the People's Charter in England went on
unabated. In the autumn, St. Paul's Cathedral in London was temporarily
taken possession of by a large body of Chartists. Churches were likewise
entered in Manchester.

[Sidenote: Popular riots in England]

[Sidenote: The Charter propaganda]

At Newport, in Monmouthshire, an organized attempt was made, under the
leadership of John Frost and Zephaniah Williams, to rescue Henry Vincent
from prison. Armed with guns, crowbars and pick-axes the mob poured into
the town twenty thousand strong. They were met by a small body of soldiery,
and after a sharp conflict were scattered with a loss of ten killed and
fifty wounded. The leaders were arrested and condemned in court. A vast
periodical literature kept alive the agitation. Among the new Chartist
newspapers were the "Northern Star," the property and the organ of Feargus
O'Connor; the London "Despatch"; the Edinburgh "New Scotsman"; the
Newcastle "Northern Liberator"; the Birmingham "Journal," and many others.




1840


[Sidenote: England declares war on China]

The Chinese edict prohibiting all trade and intercourse with England was
put in force on January 5. The English missionaries in China fled to Hong
Kong, which port was put in readiness for defence against the Chinese.
Great Britain declared war, and sent out an expedition consisting of 4,000
troops on board twenty-five transports, with a convoy of fifteen
men-of-war.

[Sidenote: End of Dingaan]

In South Africa, during January, the Boers inflicted a crushing defeat on
the Zulus under Dingaan. The Zulu King himself was killed. His brother,
Upanda, succeeded him as ruler.

[Sidenote: Union of Upper and Lower Canada]

[Sidenote: Canadian boundary commission]

On the other side of the globe, the legislative union of Upper and Lower
Canada was at last effected, after a separation of forty-nine years. Each
had equal representation in the common legislature, with practical
concession on the part of the mother country of responsible government.
Kingston was selected as the new seat of government, to be shifted
presently to Montreal. To settle the long pending boundary dispute between
Canada and the United States, a commission was appointed, consisting of
Lord Ashburton for England and Daniel Webster for America. Between the line
claimed by Great Britain and that demanded by the United States lay 12,000
square miles of territory. The commission sat all the year.

[Sidenote: American Presidential election]

[Sidenote: Morse]

[Sidenote: Draper]

[Sidenote: Florence]

[Sidenote: Fanny Ellsler]

The American Senate early in the year passed the Sub-Treasury bill. By this
measure it was required that the national funds should be kept at
Washington, and in federal sub-treasuries in some of the large cities,
subject to the orders of the Washington office. The first National
Convention against anti-slavery met at Albany. James G. Birney, a
Kentuckian, was nominated for President. The Whigs were incensed at the
nomination and Birney withdrew. The Democratic National Convention at
Baltimore unanimously renominated Van Buren. The political campaign that
followed began a new era in American elections. The facilities of transit
effected by the railroads now first rendered possible immense gatherings at
central points. In May, 20,000 political followers gathered at Baltimore in
Harrison's interest. The contest had just opened, when a leading Democratic
paper stated "if some one would present Harrison with a barrel of cider he
would sit down on a log content and happy the rest of his days." The log
cabin and hard cider jug forthwith became the emblems of the Whigs. Log
cabin songs were heard, with shouts for "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too." All
the Middle States gave their majorities to Harrison. Harrison and Tyler
were elected by a vote of 1,275,017 to 1,128,702 for Van Buren. It was a
political revolution, breaking the Democratic success of forty years. It
was during this year that Samuel F.B. Morse obtained his first American
patent on the telegraph. William Draper of New York turned out the most
successful daguerreotype portraits yet obtained. Florence, the actor, made
his first appearance at the National Theatre in Philadelphia, while Fanny
Ellsler appeared at the Park Theatre in New York City. Ralph Waldo Emerson
published the "Dial." Other notable publications in American letters were
Poe's "Tales of the Arabesque and Grotesque," Willis's "Loiterings of
Travel," Cooper's "Pathfinder," and Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast."

[Sidenote: New Mexico]

[Sidenote: Yucatan]

[Sidenote: Revolution in Mexico]

[Sidenote: Dom Pedro II. of Brazil]

[Sidenote: General Lavalle shot]

In Central and South America, it was likewise a year of political
upheavals. The Yankee settlers of Texas maintained their independence
against Mexico. Their movement was joined by the Northern States along the
Rio Grande. The independent State of New Mexico was formed. Yucatan
likewise became an independent government. On July 25, a revolution broke
out in the City of Mexico. General Urrea captured in person President
Bustamente. After two days Bustamente was released on a pledge of general
amnesty and administrative reforms. Santander, the first President of
Colombia, died in May. The election of Marquez to the Presidency was
followed by civil war. The province of Cartagena seceded from Colombia. The
union of Central American States was dissolved, and Costa Rica became an
independent republic. In Brazil, another political overturn resulted in
material changes in the Constitution. In July, the Brazilian Legislature
declared Dom Pedro II., then still under age, Emperor of Brazil. In the
Argentine Republic, General Lavalle, who had taken the field against his
opponents, was utterly defeated and shot. A new treaty was concluded
between Argentina and Montevideo.

[Sidenote: Hawaiian Islands recognized]

In the distant South Seas, the Hawaiian Islands were recognized as an
independent kingdom by the Powers on the condition that free access be
given to white missionaries and the teachings of Christianity.

[Sidenote: Oriental problems]

[Sidenote: Egypt's status defined]

In regard to the affairs of the Orient, the Powers found agreement more
difficult. France gave continued support to the pretensions of Mehemet Ali
of Egypt against Turkey. The French scheme to anticipate Russia's designs
on Constantinople by a dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the
establishment of Mehemet Ali at Constantinople found little favor with the
Powers. The Russian statesmen understood the true weakness of Turkey, and
were willing to bide their time. Metternich and Lord Palmerston clung to
the belief that the Ottoman Empire could still be reconstructed. Thus Lord
Palmerston said at this time: "All that we hear about the decay of the
Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body, or a sapless trunk, and so
forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense." Metternich affected to look
upon Mehemet Ali as a mere rebel. At last, on July 15, the negotiators of
Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, without waiting for France,
concluded a treaty at London. Egypt was offered to Mehemet Ali in
perpetuity with southern Syria for his lifetime. If this offer was not
accepted within ten days, Egypt alone was to be ceded; if, after twenty
days, this alternative were not accepted, joint action was to be taken
against Mehemet Ali.

[Sidenote: France slighted]

[Sidenote: French pretensions on the Rhine]

[Sidenote: Becker's Rhine song]

[Sidenote: Musset's defiance]

The exclusion of France from the concert of Europe aroused a storm of anger
at Paris. Guizot, the French Ambassador at London, expostulated with Lord
Palmerston. Thiers, then at the head of affairs in France, issued orders
for an increase of the strength of army and navy. The long-delayed
fortifications at Paris were begun. Military spirit was so awakened in
France that the familiar cry was raised to avenge Waterloo and recover the
Rhine. The Germans fiercely resented this threat of invasion, prompted
largely by French exasperation over the turn which Egyptian affairs had
taken. Even the Rhenish provinces, which owed so much to France, shared in
this national feeling. It was at this time that Becker, himself a man from
the Rhine, wrote the lines which in later years became one of Germany's
most famous war songs:

  "Sie sollen ihn nicht haben
  Den freien deutschen Rhein."

Alfred de Musset answered this with his defiant verses:

  "Nous avons eu votre Rhin Allemand,"

[Sidenote: Napoleonic memories]

[Sidenote: Louis Napoleon's second fiasco]

Under the stress of this new military ardor in France, agitation was
revived for the return of Napoleon Bonaparte's remains from St. Helena to
France. The consent of the British Government having been obtained, a
decree to this effect was passed by the French Chambers. Other events
helped to fan to fresh life the smouldering flames of Napoleonic
imperialism. Thus the death of Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's eldest
brother, and of Marshal MacDonald, hero of Wagram, recalled a host of
Napoleonic memories. On August 6, Prince Louis Napoleon deemed the time
ripe for another Napoleonic rising. Crossing over from England with General
Moltenon and fifty followers he attempted to incite an insurrection at
Vimereux near Boulogne. He hoped to re-enact the events after Elba. Once
more his plans ended in a fiasco. "Bonaparte or not, I see in you only a
conspirator," exclaimed Colonel Puygelier. The conspirators fled back to
their boat and capsized. Louis Napoleon was taken and sentenced to life
imprisonment within the fortress of Ham. As a sop to popular feeling, King
Louis Philippe permitted the bronze statue of the Great Napoleon to be
replaced on the column of the Grande Armée in Paris.

  [Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING AND HIS FRIENDS
    Painted by Daniel Huntington

   1 Henry T Tackerman
   2 Oliver Wendell Holmes
   3 William Gilmore Simms
   4 Fitz Greene Halleck
   5 Nathaniel Hawthorne
   6 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
   7 Nathaniel Parker Willis
   8 William H Prescott
   9 Washington Irving
  10 James K Paulding
  11 Ralph Waldo Emerson
  12 William Cullen Bryant
  13 John P Kennedy
  14 J Fenimore Cooper
  15 George Bancroft]

[Sidenote: Prince Consort Albert]

[Sidenote: First attempt to assassinate Victoria]

In England, great popular rejoicings had been occasioned by the marriage of
Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. A bill was passed
appointing the Prince Consort regent of England in case of the Queen's
death. The royal couple were well matched. The credit of having brought
about this marriage was chiefly due to Lord Melbourne. The tactful conduct
of Prince Albert after the marriage fully justified his choice. Yet Prince
Albert was never popular in England. Parliament cut down his proposed
income from the Crown by nearly one half. The lower classes were prejudiced
against him as a foreigner, while the nobility and army turned against him
when they found that he preferred the society of men eminent for their
intellectual attainments to that of dukes and marquises. On June 10, an
insane pot-boy named Oxford attempted to assassinate the Queen and the
Prince Consort with a pistol. The would-be assassin was confined in an
asylum. On November 21, Queen Victoria gave birth to her eldest child,
Augusta, who subsequently became Empress of Germany.

[Sidenote: First Charter petition]

[Sidenote: Jack Frost's revolt]

Other English events of domestic importance were the passage of the
vaccination act, the introduction of screw propellers in the British navy,
and the State trial of the three leaders of the Chartist movement of the
previous year. A monster petition subscribed by 1,280,000 signatures on a
great cylinder was rolled into Parliament. In it were embodied new demands
for a bill of rights, or the "People's Charter," comprising universal
suffrage, including that of woman, secret ballots, payment of Parliamentary
representatives, and the like. The denial of this petition provoked a
popular uprising under the leadership of Jack Frost at Newport, which had
to be suppressed by the military. After a sensational trial, the leaders
were condemned to deportation.

[Sidenote: Death of Beau Brummel]

Echoes of the English Regency were re-awakened by the death of "Beau"
Brummel, a dandy after the manner of the French exquisites. It was a boast
of this leader of fashion that he spoiled twenty-five cravats before one
was tied to his liking. The Prince Regent in his dress imitated Brummel.
The offended beau retaliated one day, when some of his friends saluted the
Prince on Rotten Row, by asking, "Who is your fat friend?" Leigh Hunt
improved upon this in his "Examiner" by describing the Prince as "a
corpulent Adonis of fifty." For this Hunt was sentenced to imprisonment for
two years and fined £500. After George IV. became king, Brummel fell into
disfavor and had to leave London. Years later, the bankrupt beau, who had
been cheated out of a snuff-box by Prince George, presented the King with
another in token of submission. In the words of Thackeray, "the King took
the snuff, and ordered his horses, and drove on, and had not the grace to
notice his old companion--favorite, rival, enemy, superior." Poor Beau
Brummel died in extreme poverty. Some of the striking episodes of the
beau's career were dramatized in a play, which has kept alive the memory of
this lesser light of modern English society.

[Sidenote: Death of Paganini]

[Sidenote: Foremost violin virtuoso]

[Sidenote: Genius and charlatan]

[Sidenote: Paganini's compositions]

The career of another striking figure of the Nineteenth Century was ended
by the death of Paganini, the most remarkable of violin virtuosi. The son
of a poor shopkeeper, with little musical knowledge, but of some
proficiency on the mandolin, Paganini received an indifferent early
schooling in music. After the boy had come under the tutelage of Costa, the
orchestral leader of Genoa, his progress on the violin was rapid. At the
age of eight he composed a violin sonata. Soon he surpassed his
instructors. At sixteen he ran away from his father, after a concert at
Lucca, and made a tour of his own through Italy. Already he was addicted to
gambling and other forms of dissipation. At Leghorn he had to sell his
violin to pay a gambling debt. A Frenchman, M. Levron, lent him his own
Guarnero violin. When he heard him play on it he was so charmed that he
made him a present of the instrument. Paganini kept the Guarnero throughout
the rest of his life. It was the turning-point of his career. After two
years of incessant practice, Paganini appeared in public again at Lucca,
where he aroused unbounded enthusiasm by his novel performances on the G
string. For the next twenty years he travelled and played throughout Italy,
vanquishing all rivals. His superstitious countrymen believed him to be in
league with the Evil One, an impression which Paganini loved to confirm by
dark utterances and eccentricities of dress. Not until 1828 did he leave
his own country to gather foreign laurels. His first appearance at Vienna
was an unprecedented triumph. The Emperor appointed him court violinist and
the city of Vienna presented him with a gold medal. From there he made a
triumphal tour through Europe, appearing in Berlin, Paris and London. He
was acknowledged the most wonderful violinist that had ever been heard. He
soon amassed a colossal fortune. Withal, Paganini was almost as much a
charlatan as he was an original genius. He liked to impress his audiences
by fantastic eccentricities and by mere tricks of legerdemain, such as
dropping and catching his instrument, or breaking one string after another
to finish his concert on one alone. Other tricks of virtuosity, such as
tuning up the A string by a semi-tone, left hand pizzicato, or his double
thirds, were executed with such stupendous technique that they held
connoisseurs and amateurs spellbound. His individuality, in fact, was so
abnormal that it rendered him unfit to play with others in quartets or
other chamber music. As a man he had all the worst faults of a genius. The
vast sums of money which he accumulated were gambled away. His whole life
was disgraced by unbridled sensuality coupled with sordid avarice. This
explains in a measure Paganini's inferior rank as a composer. Famous are
his variations on the tune "God Save the King," his "Studies," his twenty
variations on "Il Carnevale di Venezia," and the concert allegro "Perpetual
Motion." The celebrated twenty-four violin capricci, written early in
Paganini's career, have been rendered familiar by their transcriptions to
the pianoforte by Schumann and Liszt. Paganini died from the results of
dissipation. He left his famous Guarnero fiddle to his birthplace, Genoa.

[Sidenote: Frederick William IV. King of Prussia]

In Germany, King Frederick William III. of Prussia died in his sixty-sixth
year. He was succeeded by Frederick William IV. The pending dispute between
the Prussian Government and the Vatican, arising out of the refusal of the
Rhenish priests to sanction marriages between Catholics and Protestants,
found a temporary adjustment by the new king's concessions to the clergy.

[Sidenote: Religious discussions]

[Sidenote: Chinese naval brigade]

[Sidenote: Capture of Chusan]

In England, too, church questions temporarily rose uppermost during debates
in Parliament over the proposed government assistance to schools in which
the Douay Bible, or Roman Catholic version of the Scriptures, was used. On
account of these Parliamentary debates, and the attempted reform of Irish
registration by which more Roman Catholic voters were to be admitted, a
loud anti-Popery cry was raised by the English Tories. Once more the House
of Peers rejected a bill for removing the political disabilities of the
Jews, after its passage through the Commons by a handsome majority of 113
yeas. The attention of Englishmen at this time was diverted to questions of
foreign policy. The British expedition against China had arrived at the
mouth of the Canton River in June. A naval blockade was established in
Chinese waters. The Chinese retaliated by offering a reward for every
Englishman taken, and a prize of $20,000 for the destruction of a British
man-of-war. Sir Gordon Bremer sent an expedition against the Island of
Chusan. The Chinese officials refused to surrender until after the city of
Tinghai had been all but demolished by the English guns. Tinghai was made a
British base of supplies, but proved a very unhealthy place. The Chinese
capture of an English subject, Vincent Stanton, was followed by a British
expedition into the Canton River. The barrier forts, after a heavy
bombardment, were taken by storm. Stanton was released. The British fleet
made demonstrations at Amay, Ningpo, and in the Gulf of Pechili. Emperor
Taouk-Wang sent for troops from the interior. Mandarin Lin, who had entered
into negotiations with the British, was degraded and was succeeded by
Viceroy Keshen of Peiho. Keshen received Lord Palmerston's formal demands
upon China and forwarded them to Pekin. By dilatory tactics he succeeded in
gaining a breathing space.

[Sidenote: Burmese expedition]

[Sidenote: Sikhs restive]

[Sidenote: Fall of Kelat]

[Sidenote: Todd leaves Herat]

In India, the British occupation of Kabul continued. New trouble broke out
in Burma where the British Resident was expelled from Ava. An expedition
had to be sent against Burma. The death of Runjit Singh led to a series of
revolutions which shook the Sikh dominion to its foundations. The
successive deaths of Runjit Singh's son and grandson, who had succeeded him
as Maharajas, led to a general belief that they had been murdered by the
Prime Minister, Dhian Singh. All the chief Sirdars rose against Dhian. The
Sikh army of Khalsak, numbering 7,000 soldiers, became a menace for
Hindustan. In July, the British garrison of Kelat in Beluchistan was
overpowered by the natives. Lord Auckland had to prepare another expedition
to restore English prestige in that quarter. Kelat was retaken by the
British in November. New complications arose at Herat. This had long been
the bone of contention between Great Britain and Russia in Central Asia.
British ascendency over Herat had been gained by large financial subsidies,
which had been spent in frustrating the designs of the Persians and
Russians in that quarter. Major d'Arcy Todd, the English envoy at Herat,
incensed by King Kamram's continued dealings with Russia, withheld the
further payment of the British subsidies, unless British troops were
admitted to Herat. The situation became so acute that Major Todd on his own
authority threw up his post and left Herat. It was a severe setback for
British influence in Central Asia. Lord Auckland in exasperation dismissed
his erstwhile ambassador from political employ. Todd found a soldier's
death on the field of Ferozeshahar. The continued rebellion of the
Sarawacks in Borneo gave the British an opportunity for interference there.
Sir James Brooke, at the head of a British expedition, helped the Sultan of
Borneo in quelling the rising.

[Sidenote: Turkish-Egyptian War]

[Sidenote: Mehemet Ali brought to terms]

The operations of the international coalition against Mehemet Ali of Egypt
had now begun. Though the Viceroy's soldiers lay on Turkish soil without a
foe before them, and France stood at his back, Mehemet Ali found himself
checkmated. While Russia undertook to keep Ibrahim's army out of
Constantinople, all French support was neutralized by Germany's
mobilization on the Rhine. A naval squadron, composed of British and
Austrian warships, was free to land the Turkish forces in Syria. On October
10, Commodore Napier bombarded Beyrout. The Syrians were armed against
their Egyptian oppressors. On November 3, the British and Austrian fleets
captured Acre. Ibrahim, with the remains of his army, fell back toward the
Egyptian frontier. When the British fleet arrived before Alexandria,
Mehemet Ali made haste to come to terms. In contravention of the ultimatum
of the Powers, he was allowed to retain his hereditary dominion over Egypt
upon relinquishment of Syria, and of the Turkish fleet, which had been
betrayed into his hands. Sir Charles Napier in later years, while speaking
of his part in this expedition in Parliament, said: "I was ashamed for my
country and for myself."

[Sidenote: Fall of Thiers' Ministry]

[Sidenote: Oriental affairs readjusted]

The humiliating position forced upon France caused the downfall of the
Ministry of Thiers. Marshal Soult was placed at the head of affairs. Guizot
was recalled from his embassy at London to take the portfolio of Foreign
Affairs. He succeeded in restoring France to her former place in the
concert of Europe. The French Government joined with the other powers in
the restoration of the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire by which all
foreign warships were excluded from the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.
Russia thereby virtually conceded the abrogation of her treaty of Unkiar
Skelessi. On the other hand, Sebastopol and the Russian arsenals of the
Euxine were thus safeguarded against any maritime attack except by Turkey.

[Sidenote: Napoleon's body returned]

The revival of the Napoleonic legend by such writers as Béranger,
Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, together with other influences which served to
keep bright the glories of the Empire, bore their fruit in the return of
Napoleon's remains to France. On October 15, his body had been removed from
the simple tomb at St. Helena. On November 30, the ship bearing Napoleon's
remains arrived at Cherbourg. A million francs were voted by the Chambers
for the new sepulchre under the dome of the chapel of the Hôtel des
Invalides. On this occasion great publicity was given to Lord Palmerston's
letter to Ambassador Granville: "The government of her British Majesty hope
that the promptness of their response to this French request will be
considered in France as a proof of their desire to efface all traces of
those national animosities which, during the life of the Emperor armed
against each other the French and English nations. The government of her
Majesty are confident that if such sentiments still exist anywhere, they
will be buried in the tomb in which the remains of Napoleon are to be
laid." Napoleon's reburial was witnessed by a million of persons including
a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers drawn up in line to do him honor. The
ceremonies were attended by the royal family and all the dignitaries of
France, excepting only the immediate relatives of the great Napoleon. As it
happened, those of the Napoleonides that were not dead were either in exile
or in prison.

[Sidenote: Floods in France]

[Sidenote: Earthquake of Zante]

Shortly before this, great havoc had been wrought in France by disastrous
inundations of the Saone and Rhone. The water, which covered 60,000 acres,
and flooded Lyons, rose higher than it had within 250 years. In Greece, a
tremendous earthquake laid the city of Zante in ruins. These catastrophes
were made the object of special study in Germany and Switzerland, where
Agassiz was in the midst of his epoch-making discourses on the glacial
period.

[Sidenote: Isabella abdicates]

[Sidenote: Rule of Espartero]

Toward the end of the year wretched Spain suffered another political
upheaval. After the last abandonment of the cause of Don Carlos by General
Cabrera, in July, the Queen-Regent found herself confronted by a strong
democratic party both in the Cortes and the country. The scandals of her
private life undermined her political authority. By an insurrection at
Barcelona she was forced to call in General Espartero, the chief of the
Progressist party, as her Prime Minister. Rather than submit to his demands
she abdicated the Regency in October and left Spain. Espartero, toward the
close of the year, was acknowledged by the Cortes as Regent of Spain. His
first measures turned a large part of the people against him. On December
29, as a result of the growing discussions between the government and the
clergy, the Papal Nuncio was expelled from Madrid. Thereafter Espartero and
the clerical party of Spain were at daggers' points.

[Sidenote: Overbeck]

This year Friedrich Overbeck finished his masterpiece, the "Triumph of
Religion and the Arts." This German artist, at the time when the classicism
of David was at its height, had become his most strenuous opponent, and had
brought about the regeneration of the German religious school of painting.
He and several of his followers formed the Nazarites, whose fundamental
principle was that art existed only for the service of religion. Overbeck's
frescoes of the "History of Joseph" and "Jerusalem Delivered" are best
known. Among his paintings of this period, "The Entrance of Christ into
Jerusalem" at Luebeck, "Christ on the Mount of Olives" at Hamburg, and "The
Coronation of Mary" in the Cathedral of Cologne, are the most celebrated.




1841


[Sidenote: British capture Bogue forts]

[Sidenote: Hong Kong ceded to Britain]

The dilatory tactics of Viceroy Keshen in China had prolonged the
negotiations there for several weeks. In the meanwhile a large Chinese army
was gathering in the interior. Early in the year, after the arrival of the
British plenipotentiaries, orders were issued for an attack on the Bogue
forts. On January 7, 1,500 British troops were landed on the flank and rear
of the forts at Chuenpee. After a sharp cannonade by the fleets, the forts
were carried by a storming party under Captain Herbert. Simultaneously the
forts at Taikok were destroyed by the fleet, and their Chinese garrison was
routed by landing parties. Several Chinese junks were sunk during the
engagement. In all the Chinese lost some 1,500 men in casualties; the
British losses were small. After the capture of the Bogue forts, Viceroy
Keshen came to terms. He agreed to pay a large money indemnity and to cede
Hong Kong absolutely. On January 29, Hong Kong was declared a British
possession, and was heavily garrisoned with the troops transferred from
Chusan. The importance of the new acquisition was scarcely realized by
Englishmen at the time.

[Sidenote: Chinese convention repudiated]

[Sidenote: British threaten Canton]

[Sidenote: English opium factory destroyed]

[Sidenote: Canton bombarded]

[Sidenote: Heavy ransom exacted]

[Sidenote: British camp attacked]

[Sidenote: More ransom saves Canton]

The suspension of hostilities proved but temporary. Keshen was degraded and
banished. Emperor Taouk-Wang issued an edict that he was resolved "to
destroy and wash the foreigners away, without remorse." Keshen's successor,
Elang, repudiated the convention signed by his predecessor. On February 25,
the British proceeded to attack the inner line of forts guarding the
approaches to Canton. The formidable lines of Anunghoy, with batteries of
two hundred guns, were carried in the first rush. In quick succession the
other positions of the Chinese were taken, until,